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

 

[R_J_K75]

I haven't seen anything official, even boardgamegeek seems to be in the dark about it. What is odd is the number of minimum players - 3.

It should be moddable/expandable to be used elsewhere, we don't know if the game will contain suggestions for creating ad hoc scenarios, but it shouldn't be too difficult.

We should see more info by mid-November, hopefully with folks recieving promo copies and/or a basic walk-through.

I'm intrigued by the fact that its compatible with the hardcover adventure and always wanted to run large scale battles. My instinct tells me the learning curve for the board game may be a bit much for our group to make integrating it seamless enough to get a lot of use out of it. But you are right, I will wait and see if there's any reviews/play throughs before its released in December before I decide if I'm going to buy it or not.

 

[Maxperson]

For me, it was Orcus. One of the first dungeons I ran when we switched from D&D to AD&D had Orcus at the bottom. I feel like I did him dirty by this. One day I want to run him as the big bad in a campaign to atone.

I'm pretty sure I had multiple demon lords and arch devils in different rooms in that dungeon. Like they were all hanging out on whatever world it was sipping tea or something.

 

[Jaeger]

I believe that the current group of writers and freelances employed by WotC are straight-up not as talented as those that worked on D&D under the TSR banner. i.e. WotC 'worldbuilding' is so superficial precisely because they are literally incapable of doing anything better.

Here's an alternate hypothesis: since we have sales data from the TSR era and therefore know that many of their settings sold like naughty word, they know that writing in that way drives sales down because it appeals to too small a subset of players. ...

Your alternate hypothesis has a flaw in your core assumption:

TSR settings sales numbers from Ben Riggs, starting with Lankmar, Maztica, Al-Qadim and Planescape!

Ben is releasing quite a few settings today so I thought I’d do a mega thread for those. I’ll update when things are posted. Lankhmar is one of my favorite things. In fact after The Hobbit it was among the first fantasy I read. In 1985, TSR produced Lankhmar: City of Adventure based on the...

www.enworld.org

Yes, we have sales data: So why then did they pick one of the more naughty word selling settings (Spelljammer) to revive? By your own criteria it will appeal to too small a subset of players.

Dark Sun was less naughty word than Spelljammer, yet it is nowhere to be seen. (Probably a good thing though...)

If not being a naughty word seller is the criteria; Then why haven't we seen an Oriental Adventures revival yet?

So maybe assuming incompetence is unfair to the human beings you so easily deride?

Don't put words in my mouth.

I said that they were "...not as talented" - which is not the same thing at all as incompetent - they are just not as talented. I also said that they were "...incapable of doing anything better." You know, because of the whole not as talented thing...

If they were just as, if not more talented, then why is WotC continually mining the back catalogue for content instead of introducing something new and original?

Having most of their adventures/AP's set in the 5e default setting of the forgotten realms is understandable. But aside from those: It's all a bunch of one and done nostalgia berry setting/Adventure books.

Yes, TSR put out some pants settings in their day. But they also put out the very fan favorite settings that WotC is continually mining for content to this day!

Where is the new original Setting that has captured everyone's attention? The follow up with AP's and new adventures due to popular demand?

Nowhere. That's where it is: Nowhere to be seen at all.

I absolutely stand by my assertion that WotC Worldbuilding is superficial. They have yet to do anything good or popular that has not been taken and re-worked from the TSR back catalogue.

 

[Kai Lord]

Have the only new settings that have been released under the D&D banner since the 90's been Eberron and WIldemount/Exandria? Neither of which were conceived by WOTC's own staff?

 

[Stormonu]

I'm intrigued by the fact that its compatible with the hardcover adventure and always wanted to run large scale battles. My instinct tells me the learning curve for the board game may be a bit much for our group to make integrating it seamless enough to get a lot of use out of it. But you are right, I will wait and see if there's any reviews/play throughs before its released in December before I decide if I'm going to buy it or not.

It kind of reminds me of the old Battlesystem game; the later Dragonlance modules had scenarios for fighting out the battles on tabletop. Also, Birthright had a mass battle system that was even more streamlined, which used stat cards and a basic board with Left Flank, Right Flank, Center. I think this is going to be actually similar to the system used for doing mass battles in Birthright, with some cleaning up and modernizing of stats.

 

[Stormonu]

Have the only new settings that have been released under the D&D banner since the 90's been Eberron and WIldemount/Exandria? Neither of which were conceived by WOTC's own staff?

Well, Nerath - but it never got a boxed set/book, just a risk-like Battle for Nerath and was the default setting for 4E.

 

[mamba]

A certain group of old timers would like the setting to acknowledge a particular part of the fandom.

I don’t know, to me it looks like there are a few people on here that just hate WotC and make ridiculous claims / accusations no matter what, facts (of which there aren’t all that many since the module is still over a month away) be damned

Not sure if these are OSR fans or what their stance is, but I am also not that interested in finding out.

 

[mamba]

erasing the original without allowing for that version in the text is a problem for me.

why? As the DM you are always free to make any change you want. WotC couldn’t provide a list of all allowed changes even if they wanted to / tried. Any change is allowed, always.

A sidebar explaining that this is a different Dragonlance from what was originally published and a broad review of what is and isn't different would be enough.

As long as they limit to to a high level overview and one page, fine, otherwise there is more important stuff to put into that section… I am sure the Internet will provide all the small changes in excruciating detail soon enough

 

[Jaeger]

Expect anything controversial (such as Gully Dwarves) to be skirted or avoided.

If it was just tidying up the lore around Kender or gully dwarves, and not having the company of the lance save everything before the PC's do anything, there would be a lot less commentary.

But that's not what WotC is doing. They are giving DL the Nu-Ravenloft treatment:

This is why, as we discussed a while back, I hated the 5e Ravenloft so much. They fundamentally altered the setting in a way that is inconsistent with its past without explanation in the text or acknowledgment that they were doing so.

When you start to fundamentally alter entire aspects of the setting - you can expect the commentary to have a significant uptick...

I haven't read the 28 pages of this thread so sorry if this has been discussed but heres the Warriors of Krynn board game description off Amazon.

- Warriors of Krynn—3–5 player cooperative board game in which heroes battle the fearsome Dragon Army, explore in search of treasure, and earn rewards for use in their next adventure
-Immerse yourself in mass battlefield play experiences by running Shadow of the Dragon Queen encounters through 6 scenarios in the board game that alter the course of your adventure

I'm intrigued by the fact that its compatible with the hardcover adventure and always wanted to run large scale battles. My instinct tells me the learning curve for the board game may be a bit much for our group to make integrating it seamless enough to get a lot of use out of it.

I find it interesting that they announce a compatible wargame, when AD&D1e had things set-up so that you just scaled the number of combatants in an encounter using a 1:10 or 1:20 scale to conduct mass combats.

That's why Orc's had number appearing in ranges like 30-300. That ability to scale the encounter to conduct mass combats was baked into the system from the get go.

Of course Gygax assumed prior wargaming experience for people to recognize that the system was set up this way to even pick up on this. Which most missed because it is inferred from how Gygax wrote the game - he never explicitly spells it out.

It's not hard to integrate combat scaling the same way Gygax did into AD&D into the core game design - but that ship has sailed for 5e.

Have the only new settings that have been released under the D&D banner since the 90's been Eberron and WIldemount/Exandria? Neither of which were conceived by WOTC's own staff?

Well, Nerath - but it never got a boxed set/book, just a risk-like Battle for Nerath and was the default setting for 4E.

And all are explicitly kitchen sink settings that encompass all the assumptions of the corebooks. Which limits how original they could really be.

 

[R_J_K75]

It kind of reminds me of the old Battlesystem game; the later Dragonlance modules had scenarios for fighting out the battles on tabletop. Also, Birthright had a mass battle system that was even more streamlined, which used stat cards and a basic board with Left Flank, Right Flank, Center. I think this is going to be actually similar to the system used for doing mass battles in Birthright, with some cleaning up and modernizing of stats.

I had that same impression myself that it is going to be similar to Battle Systems. I had the 1E and 2E versions, read them but we never used it. I also had and read the original Birthright box but again we never used it, it was just too far removed from traditional D&D for our group at the time. I think I see a pattern and if those trends continue, I'm questioning whether we will use the board game enough to justify the price. I'm glad I asked the question because talking about it has made me realize this.