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

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm part of that diminishing fan base WotC no longer cares about,

Is it diminishing, or was it always tiny?

 

[Hussar]

Thinking about the Star Wars thing for a second.

Imagine if they came out with a new Star Wars RPG set in the time of the Andor series. That's about three years (or so) before ANH. So, the setting/adventure book talks about the state of the Empire as it is at the moment and suggests a few projects (like the Death Star) and whatnot. The Rebellion is just getting going and organized. The Imperial Senate is still in power (such as it is). The Emperor is ascending but, not yet at the top quite yet.

That's where you start your campaign. All of the events of A New Hope etc. are one possible future, among many possible futures. Maybe you're the one to go find Yoda and become the last Jedi. Maybe you're like Asohka, already a trained Jedi but, the Jedi Order has fallen and is actively being hunted. So on and so forth. The future is no longer written. You have to be the heroes the galaxy needs to bring peace and order and defeat the Empire.

To me, that's so much better than "Oh, ok, well, you can do whatever you want, but, since we're playing in ANH era, you cannot ever actually make any real changes to the setting. Have fun being a smuggler or whatever."

Who would want to play Dragonlance knowing that absolutely nothing you do in your game matters in the slightest. All the stuff that actually matters is being done by NPC's, somewhere off camera. Does anyone actually want to play in that campaign because I sure don't. At least the DL series tried to cast you as the actual Heroes of the Lance. Even if you didn't play the pregen's, you were still assumed to be taking their place with your own characters.

Dragonlance always placed the players right front and center as the most important people in that universe. Your job was to stop the Dragonarmies and free Krynn. And you could. You very much could win the war. Not some NPC doing it off screen. Not some cut scene where the DM tells you that these canon characters are doing the great deeds. No. YOU. You the player are supposed to be the heroes.

It's one of the coolest things about Dragonlance. Unlike any other setting in D&D, you and your group were THE HEROES in this setting. Not just some heroes alongside a bunch of other heroes like Forgotten Realms. Not just some mercenaries, completely replaceable by any other group of mercenaries in Greyhawk. No, you were it. You were the ones who either succeed and drive back the dragonarmies or fail and watch everything burn.

Why on earth would I ever want a Dragonlance where I'm NOT those heroes?

/edit to add

Heh, just watched the trailer for DL. "In the War of the Lance, what will your legend be?" is the tag line. To me, that's pitch perfect.

 

[mamba]

Well, I never wanted that, for my part.

If you're right about what they're doing, it is essentially ignoring decades of progress. I never wanted that.

Not sure I consider piling on tons of newer, ever more ridiculous material progress.

I for one hated the ‘progress’ in Krynn, it is only progress in the sense of time moving forward in the setting.
The best thing WotC could do is go back and forget about anything after the initial campaign (and because you are supposed to have an epic adventure in it, the original campaign cannot have happened yet either), and that is exactly what they did.

I have zero interest in continuing on from whatever the most recent Krynn was, if it were my decision I would have done the exact same thing WotC did.
It is a return to what made DL great instead of a continuation of what killed it.

 

[Velderan]

That's where you start your campaign. All of the events of A New Hope etc. are one possible future, among many possible futures. Maybe you're the one to go find Yoda and become the last Jedi. Maybe you're like Asohka, already a trained Jedi but, the Jedi Order has fallen and is actively being hunted. So on and so forth. The future is no longer written. You have to be the heroes the galaxy needs to bring peace and order and defeat the Empire.

They've done that before though, that's exactly what DL1 is if you choose to swap in your own PCs. As people have said before, the material exists whether you go track down some old books, go to DM's Guild, or google "dragonlance pdf". There really wasn't a need to set the adventure when they did; they certainly didn't reset Forgotten Realms lore back to the Time of Troubles because it was easier to handle Realms lore. Because of that, I can certainly understand the member-berries criticism of this book because the height of Dragonlance popularity was the War of the Lance storyline so seems like you hit the widest audience revisiting it.

Who would want to play Dragonlance knowing that absolutely nothing you do in your game matters in the slightest. All the stuff that actually matters is being done by NPC's, somewhere off camera. Does anyone actually want to play in that campaign because I sure don't. At least the DL series tried to cast you as the actual Heroes of the Lance. Even if you didn't play the pregen's, you were still assumed to be taking their place with your own characters.

Dragonlance always placed the players right front and center as the most important people in that universe. Your job was to stop the Dragonarmies and free Krynn. And you could. You very much could win the war. Not some NPC doing it off screen. Not some cut scene where the DM tells you that these canon characters are doing the great deeds. No. YOU. You the player are supposed to be the heroes.

It's one of the coolest things about Dragonlance. Unlike any other setting in D&D, you and your group were THE HEROES in this setting. Not just some heroes alongside a bunch of other heroes like Forgotten Realms. Not just some mercenaries, completely replaceable by any other group of mercenaries in Greyhawk. No, you were it. You were the ones who either succeed and drive back the dragonarmies or fail and watch everything burn.

Why on earth would I ever want a Dragonlance where I'm NOT those heroes?

This is the second time I've seen this general argument presented and I really can't understand it. If a DM chooses to set a campaign during the War of the Lance NOT running the DL series of modules and did not have a plan to make the campaign interesting and meaningful for the PCs at their table, that sounds like a table I would not like to be part of. I ran a campaign back in the 2e days set during the War of the Lance that centered on southern Solamnia around Solanthus and the country of Lemish. The only reference we made to the companions was the PC cleric was freed from Pax Tharkas and was one of the first true clerics converted after meeting Elistan there. The cleric decided to head north to help in the fight against the Dragonarmies there, but that was just notes in his backstory and never actually came into play. Without going into too much detail, the campaign theme was largely around Lemish betraying Solamnia by allowing the Dragonarmies easy passage through their woods to attack Solanthus so the group helped root out the source of the betrayal which ended up being a green dragon who lived in the woods there and had secretly been manipulating local events for years. The PCs felt like they helped bring word of the good gods back to Lemish and surrounding areas since the PC cleric was the first cleric any of the locals had encountered so he was special in their eyes. Anything going on outside of that campaign didn't matter because it was up to the PCs to fix things.

Not sure I consider piling on tons of newer, ever more ridiculous material progress.

I for one hated the ‘progress’ in Krynn, it is only progress in the sense of time moving forward in the setting. The best thing WotC could do is go back and forget about anything after the initial campaign, and that is exactly what they did.

Actually I wish they would have just rolled up their sleeves and went the hard path of trying to take Dragonlance at it's most recent point in lore (after the Dark Disciple trilogy I think) and forged a new path trying to get it back on track. It certainly would have been easier to incorporate all of the things added to D&D for 5E with some lore updates and they could have addressed any controversial topics at the same time. How bad could it be, could they possibly screw up things worse than SAGA did? lol

 

[mamba]

Actually I wish they would have just rolled up their sleeves and went the hard path of trying to take Dragonlance at it's most recent point in lore (after the Dark Disciple trilogy I think) and forged a new path trying to get it back on track. It certainly would have been easier to incorporate all of the things added to D&D since 2E with some lore updates and they could have addressed any controversial topics at the same time. How bad could it be, could they possibly screw up things worse than SAGA did? lol

I am not sure that would be easier… Let’s agree that the end goal is to return to an epic war between good and evil with armies of dragons and draconians, as that is obviously what WotC did.

Well, you already had a setting that was custom made for that and had jumped the shark after that storyline concluded, losing many fans in the ensuing chaos (pun intended).

So either you can make all the ensuing nonsense part of your setting and then look for a way to essentially undo it by moving time forward, or you could declare it never happened / is still ahead and return the setting to its origins. One requires actively undoing stuff, the other requires essentially nothing but a willingness to do it.

Same as your campaign you mentioned, you did not continue on from wherever, looking for a way to undo the past. You jumped right into the original war, in a location we know little about because the original campaign was elsewhere. Just like what WotC is doing now.

Granted, at the time you did it, maybe Dragons of Summer Flame and anything after had not yet happened, but resetting the clock is at least as valid to me as piling on more ridiculous stuff to undo the previous ridiculous stuff.
I’d guess you at least did your campaign at a time where the original campaign was already published, in which case you did a mini-reset too.

If they had continued on from wherever Krynn was last, finding some ridiculous explanation for how the setting essentially manages to find itself in a copy of the original war, but 50 or so years later, I probably would not bother with it. As it stands I am interested in what they are doing, so at least for me WotC made the right decision.

 

[Fifth Element]

But, here's the thing. They are not erasing the original. They are RESETTING to the original.

That's the problem with most purist arguments - the "pure" version of the thing is simply the purist's preferred version, not some objective original state.

 

[Fifth Element]

No its a not a "reset". If so it would like like it did in 1st ed. WotC has said its a "Reimagining". That's their words.

Reset and reimagining are not mutually exclusive.

 

[mamba]

That's the problem with most purist arguments - the "pure" version of the thing is simply the purist's preferred version, not some objective original state.

That seems to cut both ways, whether you reset or move forward from whatever lore already exists because you insist that it all is sacred and cannot be changed.

To me insisting that anything that was written is now fixed history of the world is much more radical / purist than allowing for a reset, whether with adjustments or not.

I assume most people do not care either way, as for them the new adventure is the first time they learn about DL.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Is it diminishing, or was it always tiny?

Thanks for making me feel worse about it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Thanks for making me feel worse about it.

You can feel good for other people.

Personally, I would rather Dragonlance had stayed dead, but if other people are happy, I'm pleased for them.