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]

Personal preferences have absolutely nothing to do with whether they have been "proven that they can done well".

Unless I misinterpreted what they were saying, @AnotherGuy was saying "That's just your opinion" to discredit my post and my response meant to indicate that there is evidence that supports my viewpoint.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Theros.

While I agree, that didn't start out as a D&D setting and thus was not designed under the usual assumptions of D&D worldbuilding.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I don't see a problem with any of that in an optional expansion. You're going to have to be hyperbolic than that.

 

[Velderan]

Yes, but none of them remove characters already in the game just because you bought an expansion. It's not like you buy a 20 character base roster and the expansion removes characters you already own.

And if you're talking game to game (SF3 to SF4) that's closer to an edition change than an expansion. Not all things make it from edition to edition, and many of them change to match the new mechanics of each new game. SF2 Ryu isn't like SF6 Ryu, despite both having the iconic shoto moves. Editions change the game and nobody expects Ryu to be the same as he was in SF1.

You know what WotC learned about campaign settings during the their purchase of TSR and subsequent review of their sales data?

People became fans of settings, not D&D. TSR kept pumping out settings in the hope it would sell more copies of the PHB and all it did was fragment their audience because surprise existing people became attached to the settings they played in and didn't really care for stuff outside of that setting for the most part. I'd argue based on that attachment, going from playing a Forgotten Realms game to a Dragonlance game was much closer to going from Mortal Kombat to Street Fighter. The general concept is similar, but the approach to how it's handled is pretty different. You obviously see it differently, so it's clearly an agree to disagree situation.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

No one is required to respect the past, but you're not required to disrespect it either.

Nothing that @Remathilis said was "disrespecting the past" and it's wrong for you to mischaracterize their post as that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Would you want them to do that? If any setting supports the subtraction theory of worldbuilding, it's Dark Sun.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Would you want them to do that? If any setting supports the subtraction theory of worldbuilding, it's Dark Sun.

Dark Sun is the exception because it actually does something with "worldbuilding by subtraction". It shows the effects of fascism by having Orcs, Pixies, Gnomes, and all of the other "missing" creatures be extinct because they were killed in genocide. Dragonlance does nothing with its lack of Orcs besides replacing them with draconic versions. Dark Sun shows the consequences of genocidal monsters gaining power.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Then the DM has to put on their big boy/big girl pants and tell the player "no" rather than hide behind WotC's skirt and say "according to the sidebar on page 229, no orcs, aarakroca or tabaxi in Krynn. Not my fault, blame WotC."

That's a little insulting. If you don't want the developers to do some of the heavy lifting for you, why are you buying this stuff at all?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, ideally the player would have chosen to make a character geared towards the setting the table agreed on playing. But if that doesn't happen, then you compromise. You meet in the middle. One of my players wanted to play a Strength-based Sumo-Wrestler Firbolg Monk in my Eberron campaign, which doesn't really fit the setting (Firbolg have no canon origin, there's not really an Eberron equivalent of Sumo-Wrestling, Monks are practically forced into focusing on Dexterity), but we eventually found a middle-ground that fit the world better and was mechanically feasible for a monk.

So, you're not fine with it, based on that all-caps "NOT" there.

So, Theros. Do you own Mythic Odysseys of Theros? Because that's basically how they do it.

I don't like it, but it wouldn't be a deal-breaker for me, as long as the player is willing to accept the social aspects of being a one-of-a-kind oddity.

Theros did handle the situation correctly. Based on their treatment of non-Magic settings, I have no expectation they will do the same for Dragonlance.

 

[Ixal]

Dark Sun is the exception because it actually does something with "worldbuilding by subtraction". It shows the effects of fascism by having Orcs, Pixies, Gnomes, and all of the other "missing" creatures be extinct because they were killed in genocide. Dragonlance does nothing with its lack of Orcs besides replacing them with draconic versions. Dark Sun shows the consequences of genocidal monsters gaining power.

Dark Sun doesn't do anything more or less with "substraction" than Dragonlance does.