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

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Given your posts, I'm not sure you're qualified to know what makes everyone happy at the table.

The only real disagreement we should have is you think a sidebar is a waste of space, which I can respect. But the rest of your forceful cosmological and playable options at every table is a bit massively over the top.

Seriously, what is the issue that I'm not seeing here? In Theros, if someone wants to play a Dwarf, they could be a Planeswalker from another M:tG world, or be the Nyxborn creation of a god, or the mechanical experiment of Purphoros. In Eberron, if someone wants to play a Plasmoid, they could be a magewarped ooze created by Mordain the Fleshweaver or a Daelkyr, or maybe they were a Cyran alchemist whose body was transformed into a sentient ooze due to an arcane fluctuation causes by the Mourning. The rare races don't need to be confirmed to exist or not exist on any world until the DM and players work together to figure out how their character concept fits into the world and campaign.

What is the downside to leaving it open ended? If it's already up to the DM, why not make that clear?

 

[Maxperson]

Given the various catastrophic events Krynn has faced after the War of the Lance including the Chaos War, the Dragon Overlords (reshaped the world almost as drastically as the Cataclysm did imo), and the War of Souls, it's not much of a stretch to suggest civilization and technology didn't advance much because in some cases people were just clinging to whatever they had to survive.

Sure, but no other setting that I know of advances in tech, either, and they don't have the same setbacks that Krynn had. We play D&D as a fantasy game. Advancing tech is sort of counter to that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Spelljammer is not the only way to reach Krynn. In 1e orcs, halflings, druids, monks, etc. could travel to Krynn. Planar travel had to be possible in order for that to be true. So it doesn't make sense to completely disallow orcs in the setting and the 5e version should have similar language as the 1e setting.

This is correct, there was an assumption in those days that people would simply transfer characters from one game to another, so those things where never outright banned, it was just stated that they were not normally native to Krynn and left it up to the DM to rule.

 

[Velderan]

Sure, but no other setting that I know of advances in tech, either, and they don't have the same setbacks that Krynn had. We play D&D as a fantasy game. Advancing tech is sort of counter to that.

Yep, which brings me back to my original criticism of Schneider making DL lore out to be some hurdle that's just impossible to overcome with a couple pages of high level summary that the DM can pass on as needed. They certainly had no issues releasing Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat an entire year before the Sword Coast's Adventurers Guide was available to provide 5E approved lore.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I feel like the truth is somewhere in the middle of what the 2 of you are going back and forth about. Saying orcs are not known to exist and would be considered alien to Ansalon doesn't remove the ability of a DM to let a player create one and decide what exactly that means (e.g. people in every town panicking at the sight of this unknown creature walking into their town). A DM allowing that exception and fitting it into their world also doesn't break the setting.

But this isn't just about Orcs. It's about all of the races. You can't spend pages of a book explaining how the races that aren't native to the world interact with it. Which is why I feel it's better just to leave up to the DM without setting hard restrictions in the book.

Then find your justification. I'm not going to change a setting I'm running in a way I don't care for because a player insists on playing their favorite heritage in a campaign that doesn't allow for it.

You control the campaign. Whether or not it "allows for it" is entirely up to you. Whether you play in Middle Earth only using the monsters and races of Tolkien and not your own imagination is your choice. But there are ways of incorporating your example of a Tiefling in Middle Earth with canon justifications for the evil monsters.

A simple sentence like 1e included is sufficient. "Orcs don't exist on Krynn, but they can travel there." That lets DMs and players alike know that 1) Orcs aren't on Krynn unless they travel there, and 2) they exist as a PC option if the DM okays the character having travelled to Krynn.

But, again, this discussion isn't just about Orcs. It's about whether or not the book should make clear the setting's original racial restrictions at all, because that's what you folks started freaking out about. And if you're going to explain that Orcs don't exist in the world . . . where do you stop? There's several dozen player races in 5e. Which ones do you do this for? Because doing it for all of them could take quite a lot more page space than the Theros way of just listing the major races that exist on Taladas and then saying "the other races could be from distant places on Krynn or rare people corrupted by the Graygem".

 

[Ixal]

So just say: Those races exist on Krynn x,y,z,..., if the DM wants to include other races he is free to do so (although that is already covered under rule 0 anyway).

 

[Demetrios1453]

But this isn't just about Orcs. It's about all of the races. You can't spend pages of a book explaining how the races that aren't native to the world interact with it. Which is why I feel it's better just to leave up to the DM without setting hard restrictions in the book.

You control the campaign. Whether or not it "allows for it" is entirely up to you. Whether you play in Middle Earth only using the monsters and races of Tolkien and not your own imagination is your choice. But there are ways of incorporating your example of a Tiefling in Middle Earth with canon justifications for the evil monsters.

But, again, this discussion isn't just about Orcs. It's about whether or not the book should make clear the setting's original racial restrictions at all, because that's what you folks started freaking out about. And if you're going to explain that Orcs don't exist in the world . . . where do you stop? There's several dozen player races in 5e. Which ones do you do this for? Because doing it for all of them could take quite a lot more page space than the Theros way of just listing the major races that exist on Taladas and then saying "the other races could be from distant places on Krynn or rare people corrupted by the Graygem".

So... just say what races are traditionally in the setting instead of what races aren't. That will take up about two lines of text.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Oh look who decided lore was important all of a sudden.

Using the lore to support the argument that Orcs have been theoretically able to travel to Krynn for decades does not contradict my stance that the setting can and should change to fit a more modern audience.

Yes, you've made your preferences clear.

It's not just a "preference" if it's proven that it can be done well.

Seems a little unfair on the sentient draconians.

I purposely didn't mention the "can sentient creatures be restricted in alignment by race" debate on purpose to avoid further derailment of the thread. To be clear, I do have a problem with Draconians being sentient if they're meant to be hoards of always hostile monsters, but I was pointing out that the primary role of the Orcs of Lord of the Rings and early D&D was filled with Draconians. I wasn't remarking on the ethics of that decision.

And yet, so much pathos for Orcs. Why?
What about Giff, Aaracrocka, Aasimar, Genasi, Gith, Yuanti Purebloods? You have no opinions on them?

I don't know I wasn't the one that started the specific tangent about Orcs.

Almost all of those depend on the Cosmology. If they're using the 5e Great Wheel, I see no reason why Genasi, Tiefling, Aasimar, Gith and possibly Aarakocra wouldn't exist (but still be very rare). Yuan-Ti need snake gods/cults to exist, which I don't think exist on Taladas. Giff can get there through the Astral Sea.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

So... just say what races are traditionally in the setting instead of what races aren't. That will take up about two lines of text.

The Theros approach. Which is exactly what I've been advocating for, but there are people insisting that the book needs to say that Orcs are banned.

 

[Velderan]

But this isn't just about Orcs. It's about all of the races. You can't spend pages of a book explaining how the races that aren't native to the world interact with it. Which is why I feel it's better just to leave up to the DM without setting hard restrictions in the book.

I'd agree that doesn't make much sense in a 224 page 5E book just because there's so much more to cover. Back in 1E, it was much more concise to have 2 sentences explaining the PHB stuff that isn't known.

So... just say what races are traditionally in the setting instead of what races aren't. That will take up about two lines of text.

That probably makes more sense to at least give DMs an idea of what is typcal in the region SotDQ takes place in. Schneider mentions an optional scenario where the party encounters draconians for the first time and people might not believe them until it's too late. If dragonmen are strange and unbelievable, why wouldn't the same logic apply to tabaxi, tiefling, or orcs?