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

 

[Dire Bare]

Last thing: all I ever wanted was for the setting's history to not be re-written. Plenty of franchises make an effort to maintain continuity, even over decades of content. Why is it so hard to understand (and apparently anathema) that I want that for D&D too?

I'm sure there are some long-running franchises that make an effort to maintain continuity, but . . . . plenty that don't. And the ones that do, are often riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions, not to mention widely varying quality of content. And it's not black-or-white, consistency-or-chaos . . . . how rigidly the stewards of any given franchise work to maintain consistent canon varies wildly.

Every D&D setting is like that, especially Dragonlance. When you ask WotC to "not rewrite the setting" . . . then we get an inconsistent mess of a setting.

And, so far, all of the changes we've been teased are minor changes that have little impact on the history, feel, and tone of the setting. Changes not much different in scope than the many inconsistencies already existing in "canon".

Like orcs . . . NOT being added to the setting, just not being "restricted" at your table.

Canon and continuity aren't a bad thing, and they can bring enjoyment to a franchise. I love how all the Marvel movies and TV shows interlock and fit together. I love the transmedia continuity of Disney's stewardship over Star Wars. But the MCU took major liberties with the source material, and Disney jettisoned the older "expanded universe" of Star Wars. And both franchises have plenty of small errors, inconsistencies, and outright retcons . . . . none of that bothers me. Tell me good stories. If the canon of a setting or franchise becomes a burden, start over. Prioritize good storytelling over rigid adherence to canon, especially when the canon was never all that tight in the first place.

Stories and entire franchises get rebooted all the time. Sometimes that results in terrible, terrible art. Sometime the reboot improves upon the original. Sometimes it's just different. It's all good.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

History repeating needs no ridiculous excuse.

And my preference that I’ve proposed many times before is to be far enough in the future that the war of the Lance and the events that follow from it are just as much setting history as the cataclysm was originally.

 

[vecna00]

View attachment 264491

I specifically approve of this in particular!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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.

What would the point of that be? You have already made up your mind, and everyone else knows it's not true.

For a start, this is not a "new telling" of the story, since this adventure takes place at a different time in a different place and does not cross over with the original novels or modules. It's a completely different story.

And any D&D adventure in any setting can include things that "where not in the original". Adapting adventures and settings to suit the table is part of the DM's job. If a DM decided to allow a half orc character in DL1 in 1982 they could do that.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

In my game there is a reason because the D&D multiverse suffered a serious "reboot". BLAME VECNA! Let's remember the lot of troubles caused in "Die, Vecna, Die", one of the last modules from 2nd Ed, and then he wasn't ever a deity. We can't guess the level of cosmic conspirancies by the deity of the secrets. I would bet WotC is working about a secret metaplot where Vecna is involved and this will cause the reboot of the complete multiverse.

I hope the return or update of the chronomancers, for the potential to create new stories. Then something like the dark domains from Ravenloft could be created, but here they would be "time spheres", alternate timelines, and even opening doors for weirdest crossovers, for example M.A.S.K.-Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, or Robocop-Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty! (If this is your face when you have read it ... that was my intention hehehehe). Maybe Hasbro talks with Disney for a new partnership and then we may have got a mash-up of Disney cartoon's villains invading the Krynnspace (in an alternate timeline, of course).

Maybe there aren't orcs in Krynn because oficially those aren't wellcome at Krynnspace, and it is because Gruumsh's fault when this caused serious troubles in the past, worse than the soul war by Takishis, and he was expelled. Even evil deities from Krynn don't want anything with him. If orcs from other wildspaces visit the Krynnspace they suffer a penalty by a divine curse. This can be stopped with a special divine talisman, working like a "greenpass" showing they aren't Gruumsh's wordshippers. And even with this orcs can't be born in the Krynnspace, because or orc parents are cursed with the sterility, or the children are born as half-ogres, hobgoblings or humans.

If we are talking about coherence with the continuity, then I don't want to imagine if Dragonlance is adapted into movie or teleserie for a streaming service. If there is an action-live or animated adaptation (I would be for the second option) any changed can't be avoided. And if the production is successful then the new part of the fandom will would rather the cinematic version, and they will miss things there are in the serie but not appeared in the old novels. Or the future videogame where there may be more creative freedom, for example one of the heroes of the lance would be an artificer gnome, goldmoon would be a druid instead a cleric or Sturm would be samurai-like

* Maybe an odd variant of "isekai" stories set in Dragonlance can be written: A group of teenagers or young adults from Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty are playing their favorite videogame (a mixture of virtual reality and virtual tabletop) based in the legends of Dragonlance (they don't know the war of the lance really happened in other place of the multiverse). Then something happens, and their minds are reincarnated in other world, in Krynn. Really they aren't in the original Krynn but a "clone-demiplane". Sometimes the collective memories, and the fictional worlds shared by the imagination by the masses can create "demiplanes" imitating a fictional work, or the past. These demiplanes can be visited and explored by the chronomancers, and some rogue factions may try to conquer them. Sorry, let's return to these characters. These group of characters are reincarnated in Krynn, remembering most of their past lives (maybe forgetting some too advanced scientific knowledge) and they notice they are in the begining of their favorite videogame/virtual simulation, but there are some changes, for example one of the characters are reincarnated as a female version of Tas(because the player was a girl who wanted to play a female Tas), or Raistlin shows tribal tatoos on the face. Later they discover Kitiara is other isekai (and darkskinned) who doesn't want to fight in the side of the bad guys. The fact is this no-evi Kitiara killed Ariakas, but this was reincarnated by Takishis into a chromatic dragonborn.

 

[Alzrius]

Compare the ratio of adventures to campaign setting accessory books in FR to the same ratio in DL. They're not remotely similar.

Which is a very far cry from characterizing TSR's take on Realms as "we're not going to bother actually writing any modules for the setting."

 

[Velderan]

Which is a very far cry from characterizing TSR's take on Realms as "we're not going to bother actually writing any modules for the setting."

Or saying "Forgotten Realms was largely the start of the whole "Here's a fun setting for DM's to read about but, we're not going to bother actually writing any modules for the setting, so, good luck in having adventures there" approach to settings" when that certainly didn't happen with future settings either. If anything, they released too much material for each campaign setting which wasn't financially a good idea given how far they split up their audience between the different settings without managing to actually grow their overall audience.

 

[Hussar]

Which is a very far cry from characterizing TSR's take on Realms as "we're not going to bother actually writing any modules for the setting."

Which is very true.

Also, very much not what I said, or at least, not what I meant.

So, just to be absolutely, pedantically clear so we don't have to spend the next five pages with people fisking posts to try to clarify:

I AM NOT SAYING THAT THERE ARE NO MODULES FOR FORGOTTEN REALMS.

Is that clear? Can I say that more clearly? Is there any part of that that isn't understandable?

I AM SAYING THAT IN THE FORGOTTEN REALMS UNLIKE SETTINGS THAT CAME BEFORE IT, THE SETTING GUIDE WAS RELEASED FIRST (OR AT LEAST VERY, VERY EARLY IN THE RUN) WHICH BEGAN THE BIG CHANGE FOR HOW SETTINGS WERE PRESENTED BY TSR.

In the past, settings were presented through modules, then setting guides came out some time later, sometimes several years later, in order to clarify and collect all the material that had been spread out through many modules. After Forgotten Realms, we see a big shift where the setting guides are presented first and then modules as well as further setting guides are added. This is generally how 2e settings were presented.

Now, is any of that unclear? Do I need to restate anything?

 

[Weiley31]

Also, if anybody want your Ursoi for your 5E Dragonlance games, you can pretty much just use Midgard Press' Bearfolk and there ya go!

Still trying to figure out how to do the Walrusfolk/Thanoi though.

Patheons are refluffed Half-Elves with like one or two features jacked from the Assimar. And the Kyrie are refluffed Aarakocra.

 

[Hussar]

There is another element that people are really missing here too. DM's Guild. WotC has been pretty clear that if you want an expanded setting, you need to hit up the DM's Guild, because WotC isn't going to do it.

And, it's worked really, really well. I just perused this thread: D&D 5E - [Let's Read] DM's Guild Ravenloft Sourcebooks - and there are a ton of high quality, as in first rate quality, setting guides and material for Ravenloft.

Does anyone think that there won't be the same thing for Dragonlance within a year of it's release? Sure, the WotC module might only be 10 levels (something I'm not really happy about) but, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that within months of release there will be dozens of high production value, high quality books adding onto Dragonlance. For example, Strixhaven has been out for a bit less than one year and there are already SEVENTY-SEVEN titles on DM's Guild linked to the module and setting.

Sure, not all of them are great, but, a lot of them really are good.

WotC has made it abundantly clear that they are not going to be the ones expanding settings. They give us the starting point, and that's where it snowballs from.