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

 

[Velderan]

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.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant easier to explain adding in orcs and tieflings and sorcerer and tabaxi and whatever else you can think of. Just create another event like the graygem creating the kender and you can easily explain why this stuff is now there and you don't have to ignore previous lore while doing it. The 5E FR material barely goes into previous lore, so it's up to each DM how much that stuff matters in their campaign which is exactly the way it should be. For my suggestion of picking up after the Dark Disciple books, it would have required more work to write the lore so in that regard it's probably easier overall to just go back to the beginning of the War of the Lance, keep things vague so each table can decide how to approach it, and plug the story in somewhere we've previously not heard much about. I completely agree from a design and marketability perspective, WotC made the right choice for a safe product that's more likely to sell and ultimately that's what matters. Without going into everything covered in the 32 pages of this topic, I don't hate what they're doing and I fully expect them to anger/please both sides of this whole debate by just not clarifying anything that doesn't need to be clarified for the adventure contained in the book. It's 224 pages, it won't be an in-depth setting book like we've seen in the past.

As for the bolded part, I'm not sure the campaign I ran would have been considered a mini-reset because the events of the DL module series and the events of my campaign didn't really impact each other one way or the other. Thinking about it, I also ran a very brief campaign as a teenager with minotaur PCs who were all Lawful-Evil. It was set in the Blood Sea and they were on a ship in the Dragonarmy fleet that was pursuing the Perechon into the maelstrom when they backed off because it became clear they would die if they persisted into the storm. I never explicitly said the Companions were on the ship they were chasing but rather explained all they knew was the ship carried high-profile enemies of Takhisis. The Dragonarmy commander in the region had their ship's captain executed for failing to follow orders and the PCs weren't ok with that so the goal of the campaign was going to be the PCs seeking independence of their nation from the Dark Queen's minions. Kind of a shade of grey type campaign because the minotaurs were typically LE and had a code of honor, but sadly that campaign was ended when summer break was over and we never revisited the idea. Stuff like that was what I liked about Dragonlance.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Given what's been going on, I'd rather they kept it dead too. Failing that, I'd like to see a sidecar explaining that this is a new telling of the story of Dragonlance, and it can go in a different direction and include things that weren't in the original.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

I loved Dragonlance back in the days, but I won't get this one since after Spelljammer I don't trust WotC to deliver everything needed to make this or upcoming settings fully playable. I don't care if orcs or whatnot are allowed, I just don't trust the company to deliver all the core components.

I really would love for the upcoming Planescape to be good, but I don't see how that would be possible with the current setting standard and the walkaway from alignment.

But hey, in just a few weeks I start to GM Savage Pathfinder Rise of the Runelords for my table, with Curse of the Crimson Throne ready to go after that, so things are still looking good for the next couple of years!

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I could be worse, a crossover with Disney's characters. Maybe they are Disney's Descendants playing a module of Dragonlance, with a lot of changes.

 

[Arnie_Wan_Kenobi]

Who said only Goldmoon was called by the deities for a sacred mission? Maybe when Ariakas became Takishis's cleric the other deities also chosen their own clerics, but it had to be secret. Or those chosen ones weren't really clerics but something like warloks.

In my game there are psionic powers (mainly by the order of the seekers) but also primal magic (rangers, druids, shamans..) even after the Cataclysm. And if I want there are crusaders (ki martial maneuvers) among the different knight orders, and "cavaliers".

I'm only this far in the thread, so I don't know if anyone else has replied. But, this was EXACTLY a character concept/NPC I made in 2E: Half-Elf ranger/cleric of Habakkuk, chosen-of-bespoke-god like Goldmoon. I mean, in retrospect he was basically Shandakul from FR, but with a two-handed battle axe instead of a two-handed sword.

 

[Faolyn]

WotC definitely has less creative freedom than TSR, I agree.

The life of TSR mirrors that of early evolution: they had relatively little competition at first so they could throw everything against the wall and see what would stick. Which, comparatively speaking, wasn't that much. A lot of settings and other products died out with little or no support, out-competed by "fitter" settings and other companies who had filled the niche first. No more Birthright or Maztica settings, no more Spellfire cards. Like how we don't have Hallucigenia around anymore while their better-performing cousins, like the velvet worms and tardigrades, still exist. What did survive was the stuff that sold well and--like with actual evolution--that's the stuff that sticks around. Newer ideas have too much competition to really flourish and it takes a rare setting (like Eberron) to hang on.

But also (to continue the metaphor), there has been creativity/speciation because of WotC. Existing product lines have produced new creative "mutations" and have evolved. For example: Ravenloft, which is effectively a new subspecies of OG Ravenloft that has evolved to fit a new niche (that is, new players). You just don't like the creativity in it. But that's not the same as saying it's not creative. I don't like naked mole rats, but they are definitely creative, as mammals go.

...I've had speculative evolution on my mind recently.

 

[Reynard]

The life of TSR mirrors that of early evolution: they had relatively little competition at first so they could throw everything against the wall and see what would stick.

Except that is not when the experimentation if AD&D settings took place. It happened when TSR was under siege by competitors like White Wolf and Magic: the Gathering, when they were in desperate need of cash -- which they got by shipping product they never really expected to sell. When Lorraine Williams wanted to see books sent to the warehouse so she could get loans against (nonexistent) future sales, she didn't really car what was shipped so designers were allowed to go crazy. That is when all the interesting settings came out with TONS of support (that no one asked for). All this is recently very well documented.

 

[Faolyn]

Play what you want. But the setting should reflect the work that has been put into it over its history, or it should explicitly, in the text, say that it doesn't. Ravenlift didn't do that. Soelljammer didn't do that. There is every possibility that Dragonlance won't do that either.

In Ravenloft, it has been said numerous times in prior editions that the Dark Powers can rewrite history, literally modify people's memories, and even change the topography of the land. This has been canonical to the setting since it was a Core. It's why every domain had a false history that people just blindly accepted, even if they predated the domain's creation--except for a rare few domains such as Richemulot that had no history and the Dark Powers made it so nobody native to the domain was interested in finding out why and that nobody from outside could learn anything. The Dark Powers also have fired darklords who got boring (Nathan Timothy, Lord Soth).

New Ravenloft absolutely follows that paradigm. Things have changed because the Dark Powers want things to have been changed. They were probably bored with the Core. The end.

Spelljammer didn't really change things, except for the hadozee's origins and some of the monsters like the reigar, who now only care about "the art of war" instead of art in general. Spelljammer just left all of the lore out.

Which really puts forth the question: you don't like it when they change lore. You don't like it when they keep lore out. You clearly want everything to be the same all the time, everyone else's desires be darned. Why bother even complaining about the new books, since you can just stick with the old books?

 

[Faolyn]

Except that is not when the experimentation if AD&D settings took place. It happened when TSR was under siege by competitors like White Wolf and Magic: the Gathering, when they were in desperate need of cash -- which they got by shipping product they never really expected to sell. When Lorraine Williams wanted to see books sent to the warehouse so she could get loans against (nonexistent) future sales, she didn't really car what was shipped so designers were allowed to go crazy. That is when all the interesting settings came out with TONS of support (that no one asked for). All this is recently very well documented.

I wasn't talking about the downfall of TSR. I was talking about what settings became popular and what didn't.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

It reminds me of when my friends and I went to go see the opening day, midnight showing of Phantom Menace and the theater's manager came on stage--it was a very old, one-screen theater--and said something like "hate to spoil it for you, but the ship sank." Because we all knew that no matter what, Anakin would become Darth Vader.

But seriously, this is both a reason to not have game books dependent on the novels and a creates a fun possibility: a collection of "alternate Krynns." Specifically, what could happen if your group's actions go against what's in the books. Your players do X instead of Y? Here's some thoughts/plot hooks as to what could happen.

To go back to Star Wars, what if your group manages to stop or seriously delay the construction of the Death Star? This wouldn't stop Luke from becoming a Jedi, so he's still out there doing his Jedi stuff, but it would keep Alderaan around and may keep the Senate going, etc. Plenty of room to adventure heroically in that setting. A friend of mine and I were blue-skying an idea for a campaign (that never happened) based on "what if Qui-Gon had decided to go to head to the Intergalactic House of Ship Parts and Repair While-U-Wait that was set up to take money from all over the place and therefore never got to meet young Anakin."

"Alternate Krynns" could actually be a fun DM's Guild project for someone who knows Dragonlance history very well and enjoys speculating about alternate worlds.