WotC Dragonlance: Everything You Need For Shadow of the Dragon Queen

WotC has shared a video explaining the Dragonlance setting, and what to expect when it is released in December.

World at War: Introduces war as a genre of play to fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons.

Dragonlance: Introduces the Dragonlance setting with a focus on the War of the Lance and an overview of what players and DMs need to run adventures during this world spanning conflict.

Heroes of War: Provides character creation rules highlighting core elements of the Dragonlance setting, including the kender race and new backgrounds for the Knight of Solamnia and Mage of High Sorcery magic-users. Also introduces the Lunar Sorcery sorcerer subclass with new spells that bind your character to Krynn's three mystical moons and imbues you with lunar magic.

Villains: Pits heroes against the infamous death knight Lord Soth and his army of draconians.

Notes --

• 224 page hardcover adventure
• D&D's setting for war
• Set in eastern Solamnia
• War is represented by context -- it's not goblins attacking the village, but evil forces; refugees, rumours
• You can play anything from D&D - clerics included, although many classic D&D elements have been forgotten
• Introductory scenarios bring you up to speed on the world so no prior research needed

 

[Ixal]

Its a self fulfilling prophecy. For years now WotC used the, sadly successful, strategy of relying on their brand name and windfalls like the Stranger Things tie-in to draw in people who have no idea about the RPG market and know of any competitors and to make D&D as bland and generic as possible so that the people drawn in that way do not find anything off putting or are overwhelmed with having to read lore.
It should be no surprise that this wave of players doesn't care at all about settings and lore. They want instant gratification and power fantasies while goofing around with their friends. Thats all.

In addition to that WotC ran a "say yes" platform which reflects the current Zeitgeist of Karennness and self-centricness so of course WotC won't restrict anything but instead continue to mash everything into a generic pulp so that everything is in every setting and there are no restrictions at all (Tasha says hello)

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Its a self fulfilling prophecy.

What is a self-fulfilling prophecy? Who are you responding to and what are you referencing?

For years now WotC used the, sadly successful, strategy of relying on their brand name and windfalls like the Stranger Things tie-in

Wait, tying a popular TV series that references D&D and is one of the driving factors of why D&D is so popular in the modern day into official products is somehow a bad thing? And it's somehow sad that the game is becoming more popular?

to draw in people who have no idea about the RPG market and know of any competitors and to make D&D as bland and generic as possible so that the people drawn in that way do not find anything off putting or are overwhelmed with having to read lore.

. . . 5e book have lore and are definitely not "as bland and generic as possible". Spelljammer is the weirdest setting published in 5e, and it was the most recent official book. And drawing people into the hobby encourages them to dig deeper into the lore and worlds of the game. That's how you get new players and expand the game. And not wanting the lore to actively offend the players is a weird thing to complain about.

In addition to that WotC ran a "say yes" platform which reflects the current Zeitgeist of Karenness and self-centricness so of course WotC won't restrict anything but instead continue to mash everything into a generic pulp so that everything is in every setting and there are no restrictions at all (Tasha says hello)

Oh, please. "Players want to play the character ideas they like" is nowhere near narcissistic. And how in the world does Tasha's get rid of restrictions? The closest thing to an actual rule restriction that it removed was Bladesingers being required to be Elves, which doesn't fit a product that is supposed to be usable in settings other than the Forgotten Realms.

This is the most ridiculous overreaction and strawman to saying "hey, the world is yours to specialize, choose to include or exclude whatever you feel like" position that has been in 5e books for a while now.

5e books have restrictions. There's a limited amount of races that are playable in Theros and Ravnica. Strixhaven requires you to be a mage because it's a magic school. There are still setting-specific races (Kalashtar and Warforged for Eberron, Simic Hybrids, Loxodons, and Vedalken for Ravnica, almost all of the Spelljammer races, etc). 5e has restrictions. It's just rethinking which ones make the game/settings better and making it clear that things are in the DMs hands.

 

[AnotherGuy]

There's a limited amount of races that are playable in Theros and Ravnica. Strixhaven requires you to be a mage because it's a magic school.

Why? Why the restrictions here but somehow disallowing orcs in DL gets much pushback?

 

[Velderan]

I might be running a classic Dragonlance campaign soon (using A5E) and I'll almost certainly let people play orcs if they want. Dragonborn maybe not, as draconians really are iconic and intrinsic to the setting, but the absence of orcs? Eh.

When did you plan to set it?

I think early in the war creates a pretty easy explanation to have refugees fleeing a land people may not be familiar with. You had strange cloaked figures visiting towns as agents of the Dragonarmies so having a PC orc/tabaxi/kenku cloaked to not draw attention would be fine though perhaps draw suspicious from locals. A dragonborn could be explained as a draconian who escaped corruption somehow and wanted to work towards freeing their people. Minotaur were typically represented as an evil race and they portrayed one as a hero in the Legend of Huma novel without breaking the world.

 

[Morrus]

When did you plan to set it?

The original DL modules, starting with Dragons of Despair. Maybe only DL1, but we'll see how it goes! I'm not sure i'm doing it yet (considering it as a livestream).

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Why? Why the restrictions here but somehow disallowing orcs in DL gets much pushback?

Because it actually matters in those settings now. Theros is Greek Mythology inspired. All of the races in the setting are either a part of or heavily inspired by Greek Mythology (Satyrs, Minotaurs, Centaurs, Tritons/Merfolk, etc). For Ravnica it's not as important, but Orcs don't exist because the setting wasn't designed for D&D and the color combinations that Orcs typically fall under in M:tG (Red and Black) are filled with other niches in the setting.

The reason why Orcs aren't present in Dragonlance is that the role they had in early D&D and Lord of the Rings as an always-evil monster race that serves the Dark Lord/Lady of the setting is filled by the Draconians instead. Which makes sense why they weren't included in original Dragonlance. However, in modern D&D worlds, Orcs are no longer the Tolkien-esque always evil monster race and have more range. So banning them from the setting no longer serves the same purpose that it used to.

And a major part of this is the setting book doesn't need to waste pages on banning character options. Especially when there's not an important reason anymore for those options not being present, unlike a setting such as Strixhaven or Dark Sun which does still have good justifications for why they're lacking certain character options.

 

[Hussar]

Heh, it's funny really.

This release for Dragonlance couldn't possibly be more core to the original DL experience if Tracy Hickman came to your house and ran it.

Hear me out. I started in DL when the modules and novels came out. Which meant, when I bought the final DL module, DL 14 Dragon's of Triumph in around January of 1986, there was, in total, the modules and 3 novels - the original three and that was it. The Legends stuff wouldn't come out for another month. That was the sum total of all DL canon that existed.

There was no setting guide - the DL Adventures book was years away still. Heck, IIRC, (and I'm sure someone will correct me) the first full map of Ansalon wasn't until DL 5. I was a THIRD of the way through the campaign before I even knew what Ansalon actually looked like. No orcs? Why not? Sure, there weren't orcs in the modules, but, nothing there told me that I couldn't have orcs in Krynn. Same with Drow. Sure, there weren't any drow in the modules, but, heck, in the 80's, LOTS of modules didn't have drow in them. That wasn't unusual at all. No druids? Why on earth would I think that? There was a druid NPC right there in the modules for anyone to play.

All that stuff that people talk about being the "core Dragonlance experience" came later. None of it was detailed particularly when I got into the setting. Other than a paragraph or two here or there, there was no cosmology. There was a couple of pages of history, but, that was about it.

Now, fast forward to today. Someone who, like me back in the day, gets into Dragonlance as a teenager - same age, 15 (ish). He or she is going to get to play an adventure path series of adventures set in Ansalon during the War of the Lance. That is as core to the setting as you can possibly get. They don't care about all that stuff that came after, any more than I did. They don't know about it same as me. They are going to get the full on, 100% authentic Dragonlance experience.

It doesn't get any more old school authentic than that.

 

[Remathilis]

Picking up on the 'worldbuilding by subtraction' point: I think one of the most useful things any setting book (or any RPG) can do is establish a certain aesthetic and tone, and that necessarily involves implicit or explicit constraint.

As a DM, a setting that doesn't tell players what kinds of characters they can play and which things they can do (in both a positive and negative sense) isn't much use to me. If it's just going to be robot gnomes and cat people from Ravenloft to Birthright, with the same ubiquitous magic and easy healing and twee aesthetic, what's the point?

Eberron is a magic-punk pulp/noir with shapechangers, construct people, magical birthright marks, trains, airships, sinister cults, artificers, dinosaur riding halflings, necromancer elves, and druidic orcs. Everything in D&D can be put into Eberron, though most of it isn't featured directly. But by your metrics, it doesn't ban races and classes so it's no different than the Forgotten Realms.

Ravenloft, in the 5e version, is a world where horror and the surreal infuse the very essence. Due to the planar nature, realms can be pulled from anywhere and its inhabitants can look like anything, though humanity has a distinct numerical advantage. Still, it doesn't ban any race or class, so it's no different than the Forgotten Realms.

Spelljammer, Planescape, the Radiant Citadel, all settings where you literally can come from anywhere, each with a unique theme and tone. All Forgotten Realms.

If there is any grognard-era thinking I want to die in a fire, it's that you can only make D&D interesting by banning the stuff that is in D&D. Especially the core PHB stuff. You can make a setting interesting with addition, tone, theme, and refluff, and banning should be used sparingly as a last resort.

If you can't make a setting interesting without banning half the Players Handbook, maybe your idea wasn't all that interesting to begin with.

 

[Hussar]

I do find it rather bizarre that people would balk at PHB races in a setting with walrus people. But, hey, to each his own. Oh, and let's not forget Kyrie - aaracokra by any other name. That's a 1e addition.

 

[gorice]

Eberron is a magic-punk pulp/noir with shapechangers, construct people, magical birthright marks, trains, airships, sinister cults, artificers, dinosaur riding halflings, necromancer elves, and druidic orcs. Everything in D&D can be put into Eberron, though most of it isn't featured directly. But by your metrics, it doesn't ban races and classes so it's no different than the Forgotten Realms.

Ravenloft, in the 5e version, is a world where horror and the surreal infuse the very essence. Due to the planar nature, realms can be pulled from anywhere and its inhabitants can look like anything, though humanity has a distinct numerical advantage. Still, it doesn't ban any race or class, so it's no different than the Forgotten Realms.

Spelljammer, Planescape, the Radiant Citadel, all settings where you literally can come from anywhere, each with a unique theme and tone. All Forgotten Realms.

If there is any grognard-era thinking I want to die in a fire, it's that you can only make D&D interesting by banning the stuff that is in D&D. Especially the core PHB stuff. You can make a setting interesting with addition, tone, theme, and refluff, and banning should be used sparingly as a last resort.

If you can't make a setting interesting without banning half the Players Handbook, maybe your idea wasn't all that interesting to begin with.

I think we've got some wires crossed, because I've never mentioned FG or the PHB. I just advanced the very mild idea that there's official material that isn't suited in all settings, and that I think it's the job of a setting book to make clear what is and isn't.