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

 

[Remathilis]

Or if they have shotguns, trains, computers,...
So there shouldn't be any problem adding those things to DL or FR as it has no effect on the setting.

In D&D, settings are additive. They take the base vanilla game and add options and themes. Eberron adds magi-tek and dragonmarks. Ravenloft adds dark fantasy and horror options. Etc.

Subtractive design, where things are defined by what is removed from the base game, is a style that has gone out of fashion. And that makes sense; would you buy a video game that removes characters from the game? Would you buy a board game that explicitly forbids you to use other expansions with it? No. That's silly. And to prove it, ask anyone to describe what makes Dragonlance what it is, and I guarantee that "no orcs or drow" won't be in the top 10.

Settings support the core game, not vice versa.

 

[Ixal]

In D&D, settings are additive. They take the base vanilla game and add options and themes. Eberron adds magi-tek and dragonmarks. Ravenloft adds dark fantasy and horror options. Etc.

Subtractive design, where things are defined by what is removed from the base game, is a style that has gone out of fashion. And that makes sense; would you buy a video game that removes characters from the game? Would you buy a board game that explicitly forbids you to use other expansions with it? No. That's silly. And to prove it, ask anyone to describe what makes Dragonlance what it is, and I guarantee that "no orcs or drow" won't be in the top 10.

Settings support the core game, not vice versa.

Yes I would. No need for anti-fey classes from Kingmaker in Path of the Righteous and I happily play CK3 despite not having all the options from CK2. Also I had no problem with the Krynn gold box games removing some options from Pool of Radiance, ect.

Dragonlance has its own identity which does not include orcs. Making dragonborn into draconians is already bad enough.

 

[Maxperson]

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".

How hard is it to say, "Other than humans, half-elves, elves, dwarves, gnomes and Kender, no PC race is native to Krynn. Talk to your DM to see if it is okay to play one."? Similar language for orcs can be in the monster section, and again in the class section(though I don't really see any classes being forbidden once the gods return).

 

[Remathilis]

What is and isn't there is  part of the theme.

Theme is a combination of genre and style. Horror is a theme. War is a theme. Noir is a theme. "No orcs" isn't a theme. It's not even part of a theme. What theme has a cornerstone of "no orcs?" What genre can't support them by definition?

There is no reason orcs couldn't exist on Dragonlance thematically. The only reason they don't is someone thought they were "too Tolkien" and excluded them. It's a silly artifact from when D&D settings were ashamed of being D&D and did everything in their power to distance themselves from the base game.

 

[Alzrius]

In D&D, settings are additive. They take the base vanilla game and add options and themes. Eberron adds magi-tek and dragonmarks. Ravenloft adds dark fantasy and horror options. Etc.

Doesn't Dark Sun fly in the face of that? Or is that why there hasn't been (and won't be) a 5E version of Dark Sun?

 

[Remathilis]

Yes I would. No need for anti-fey classes from Kingmaker in Path of the Righteous and I happily play CK3 despite not having all the options from CK2. Also I had no problem with the Krynn gold box games removing some options from Pool of Radiance, ect.

Dragonlance has its own identity which does not include orcs. Making dragonborn into draconians is already bad enough.

Player 1: Here is the latest expansion for Street Fighter!
P2: sweet! What new characters are in it?
P1: The "Final Fight" expansion adds Cody, Guy, Poison and Hugo back, but to fit the tone it removes your ability to play as Ryu, Guile, M. Bison and Blanka. Also, it changes all of Chun-Li's attacks to punches.
P2: wait, why? Ryu is my main! Why would they do that!? I just wanted to play Guy!
P1: sorry. Capcom decided 20 years ago those characters are "too Street-fightery" for Final Fight so you lose access to them if you buy the new expansion.

 

[Remathilis]

Doesn't Dark Sun fly in the face of that? Or is that why there hasn't been (and won't be) a 5E version of Dark Sun?

Possibly. 3e and 4e versions of DS did a lot to change the nature of DS from subtraction to addition. It's completely possible to do it with flavor changes and additional rules, but I don't know if WotC is willing.

 

[Ixal]

Player 1: Here is the latest expansion for Street Fighter!
P2: sweet! What new characters are in it?
P1: The "Final Fight" expansion adds Cody, Guy, Poison and Hugo back, but to fit the tone it removes your ability to play as Ryu, Guile, M. Bison and Blanka. Also, it changes all of Chun-Li's attacks to punches.
P2: wait, why? Ryu is my main! Why would they do that!? I just wanted to play Guy!
P1: sorry. Capcom decided 20 years ago those characters are "too Street-fightery" for Final Fight so you lose access to them if you buy the new expansion.

Good that you mention it.
Not all Street Fighter games had all characters from the previous ones. SF 3 for example.
Neither did Mortal Kombat or Smash Brothers.

Sequels regularily kack some content from the precedessor for some reason. D&D is a good example of this. Just look what got removed over time.

And it never having been part of the setting and even specifically have been left out is a very good reason, as is setting consistency.

 

[Faolyn]

I dunno. I'm not really seeing that much of a problem here. The search engines on the site seem pretty decent for narrowing down finding related stuff. You generally get a 4-10 page preview of the product before you buy it and there's very often reviews of the better selling stuff out and about somewhere.

I'd say that pretty much anything other than free stuff that I've gotten from DM's Guild has easily been on par with the quality of Dungeon or Dragon magazine. And there's lots of stuff out there that is considerably higher quality.

I also can't imagine it would be difficult to go one of the D&D subs on Reddit or someplace similar and say "I'm looking for DM's Guild stuff on this topic; any recommendations?"

 

[Faolyn]

Who's he? Baker? It's his world (creatively, if not legally), and whatever he puts into it is part of Eberron as far as I'm concerned.

Baker is very clear that there's a difference between his canon and the game's canon and your own table's canon.