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]

Without there being a defined "pure" core there can't be a setting. To have one you must have a list of "this happened" and "this exist". What you argue is that this is bad because it excludes things in order to stay "pure".
You can't have it both. Either you have settings which also means having defined what exists or doesn't exist in that setting or you have no setting as nothing is fixed and everything is arbitrary.

Eberron has huge parts of the setting be mysteries for the DM to decide answers to. The cause of the Mourning, the origin of Warforged souls, the location of Erandis Vol's phylactery (which even she doesn't know), the Draconic Prophecy, whether or not the gods are real, whether or not the Progenitor Dragons are real, the full plans of the Daelkyr, how Docents are made, what Mordain the Fleshweaver is up to, and much more are purposefully unsolved mysteries left for the DM to find answers to. There is no "pure" Eberron because the creator of the setting has refused to give canonical answers to these parts of the setting in order to encourage the DM to make the world tailored to their table. And Eberron is awesome. And Eberron is just as awesome now as when it came out.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Here in CT you can order pizza by the topping OR specialties but not all pizzarias have specilities...

a place we used to order way back when had a "meat supreme" pizza that was Peperoni, Hamburg, Sausage, Ham, and Bacon. The pizza place down the street from my house didn't have a meat special pizza, and the one that is cheap a bit father away doesn't either... but I can order a pizza with Peperoni, Hamburg, Sausage, Ham, and Bacon. when I went to visit my dad 5ish years ago he ordered a meat lover pizza from a place near him and it was just peperoni sausage and bacon.

At any point I can order Peperoni, Hamburg, Sausage, Ham, and Bacon... in fact I bet I could go to any pizza place in America and order that.

Hamburg. I did not know you guys called it a Hamburg. We call it a patty - beef, chicken or whatever other flavour.
Also, I do not think I have ever seen a Hamburg on a pizza, never mind taste it.

 

[Maxperson]

Eberron has huge parts of the setting be mysteries for the DM to decide answers to. The cause of the Mourning, the origin of Warforged souls, the location of Erandis Vol's phylactery (which even she doesn't know), the Draconic Prophecy, whether or not the gods are real, whether or not the Progenitor Dragons are real, the full plans of the Daelkyr, how Docents are made, what Mordain the Fleshweaver is up to, and much more are purposefully unsolved mysteries left for the DM to find answers to. There is no "pure" Eberron because the creator of the setting has refused to give canonical answers to these parts of the setting in order to encourage the DM to make the world tailored to their table. And Eberron is awesome. And Eberron is just as awesome now as when it came out.

There's no pure Ebberon, but there is a core Ebberon. The core would include existence of the gods is unknowable, cosmic isolation, Dragonmarks, etc. It has a core that is going to be present at virtually all tables.

 

[Velderan]

Oh that is interesting. So are the rights of the setting owned by WotC and does that mean WotC makes revenue off each book sold?

Anything developed during the TSR days was owned by TSR, with the creators usually being paid a royalty based on units sold. Since WotC gained everything TSR owned, Weis and Hickman need to go through them to do anything DL related. No idea if they just paid a fee, a % of each book sold, or some combination though.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm struggling to even find a core for Dragonlance at all. It's not dragons, because pretty much every setting has those. It's not a great war, because pretty much every setting has those, too. It's not a cataclysm, since again, every setting has had some major disaster in its past. It might have been the absence of the gods, but those came back a very short time after the war. Before, really, since clerics of Takhisis were around before Goldmoon brought back the others. So absence of gods isn't a core aspect. Draconians? These days most settings have Dragonborn.

What's the core of Dragonlance? What really makes it special?

 

[AnotherGuy]

I'm struggling to even find a core for Dragonlance at all. It's not dragons, because pretty much every setting has those. It's not a great war, because pretty much every setting has those, too. It's not a cataclysm, since again, every setting has had some major disaster in its past. It might have been the absence of the gods, but those came back a very short time after the war. Before, really, since clerics of Takhisis were around before Goldmoon brought back the others. So absence of gods isn't a core aspect. Draconians? These days most settings have Dragonborn.

What's the core of Dragonlance? What really makes it special?

I suppose the story of the Companions and the Companions themselves, the Moons & Magic, Dragonlances, the Solamnic Knights, Lord Soth, the Towers of High Sorcery, the Minotaurs, the King Priest of Istar, the names Silvanesti Qualinesti Kagonesti Dimernesti and Dargonesti, The Dragon Orbs, the Irda, Tinker Gnomes, Gully Dwarves, Kender

 

[Maxperson]

I suppose the story of the Companions and the Companions themselves, the Moons & Magic, Dragonlances, the Solamnic Knights, Lord Soth, the Towers of High Sorcery, the Minotaurs, the King Priest of Istar, the names Silvanesti Qualinesti Kagonesti Dimernesti and Dargonesti, The Dragon Orbs, the Irda, Tinker Gnomes, Gully Dwarves, Kender

Adventurers are in every setting, as are magic of some sort, magical artifacts, knightly orders, death knights, sorcerous/wizardly orders, minotaurs, high priests, elves, dragon orbs, ogres, gnomes, dwarvs, and halflings. Slight variations on those themes doesn't really present a core for a setting. I can tell you the cores for Eberron, Dark Sun, Birthright, Al-Qadim and Ravenloft, but not for Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, and Greyhawk.

What's unique about Dragonlance that could serve as the core?

 

[Alzrius]

I'm struggling to even find a core for Dragonlance at all. It's not dragons, because pretty much every setting has those. It's not a great war, because pretty much every setting has those, too.

Well, the original story behind Dragonlance is that Tracy and Laura Hickman came up with the idea while driving to TSR to start working for them. The basic premise was "for a game called 'Dungeons & Dragons,' it doesn't really seem to have many dragons in it." Which, if you look at the published adventures circa 1982, wasn't exactly wrong.

The other major "core" of it was that the Hickmans had, prior to that, started their own RPG company (Daystar West Media) because they wanted stronger character development and narrative focus in adventures. They'd seen the vampire encounter in S2 White Plume Mountain and didn't like how it was just a random monster; to their thinking, vampires were all unique characters with notable backstories (my guess is that there was some Anne Rice influence, there) and they even wrote a module called Vampyr, which later became the original I6 Ravenloft. There's a reason why this shift, which caught on wildly, has been called the "Hickman Revolution" in so many circles (often by fans who don't care for the shift in focus).

So in a real way, the "core" of Dragonlance can indeed be boiled down to "dragons" and "an epic character/story arc." The problem is that pretty much everything in D&D does that now, so it's no longer unique to that setting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Eberron has huge parts of the setting be mysteries for the DM to decide answers to. The cause of the Mourning, the origin of Warforged souls, the location of Erandis Vol's phylactery (which even she doesn't know), the Draconic Prophecy, whether or not the gods are real, whether or not the Progenitor Dragons are real, the full plans of the Daelkyr, how Docents are made, what Mordain the Fleshweaver is up to, and much more are purposefully unsolved mysteries left for the DM to find answers to. There is no "pure" Eberron because the creator of the setting has refused to give canonical answers to these parts of the setting in order to encourage the DM to make the world tailored to their table. And Eberron is awesome. And Eberron is just as awesome now as when it came out.

Certainly everything doesn't have to defined for a setting to be coherent. But in my opinion, those things that have been defined should stay that way.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, the original story behind Dragonlance is that Tracy and Laura Hickman came up with the idea while driving to TSR to start working for them. The basic premise was "for a game called 'Dungeons & Dragons,' it doesn't really seem to have many dragons in it." Which, if you look at the published adventures circa 1982, wasn't exactly wrong.

The other major "core" of it was that the Hickmans had, prior to that, started their own RPG company (Daystar West Media) because they wanted stronger character development and narrative focus in adventures. They'd seen the vampire encounter in S2 White Plume Mountain and didn't like how it was just a random monster; to their thinking, vampires were all unique characters with notable backstories (my guess is that there was some Anne Rice influence, there) and they even wrote a module called Vampyr, which later became the original I6 Ravenloft. There's a reason why this shift, which caught on wildly has been called the "Hickman Revolution" in so many circles (often by fans who don't care for the shift in focus).

So in a real way, the "core" of Dragonlance can indeed be boiled down to "dragons" and "an epic character/story arc." The problem is that pretty much everything in D&D does that now, so it's no longer unique to that setting.

From a gameplay perspective I think there's very little that would serve as a unique "core" for Dragonlance. Instead, the core is the worldbuilding that created Krynn and the story of the characters. That's why people have said that the setting reads better than it plays. In that way, it is much more like Star Wars than the Forgotten Realms, or God forbid Eberron.