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

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'm pretty sure his argument was that allowing everything makes a setting a kitchen sink and that all kitchen sink settings are virtually indistinguishable from the Forgotten Realms. Ie Golarion, Exandria, Oerth, Eberron, all exactly the same as Faerun. And all that is saving Krynn from being the Forgotten Realms is that it doesn't have orcs.

yeah I wonder how the reverse goes... "If I take 5 races and say in MY FR game those don't exsist" does that make it Dragon Lance?

 

[Remathilis]

yeah I wonder how the reverse goes... "If I take 5 races and say in MY FR game those don't exsist" does that make it Dragon Lance?

I'm pretty sure that five races makes it Dark Sun.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'm pretty sure that five races makes it Dark Sun.

I still think there might be a slight difference between those two but good one.

 

[Maxperson]

didn't you argue that greyhawk and Forgotten Realms and even Darksun would all be the same if we let players play any race they want? I mean didn't you skip A LOT of detail to do that...

No. I didn't include dark sun. Greyhawk and the Realms just have fluff differences. Different magical disasters in the past from magical warring kingdoms. Yada yada. Not that you can't prefer one over the other, but there's nothing that's unique or even semi-unique about either one.

Tolken elves are beutiful and graceful and good at magic and good in the woods and can precive well. They are long lived and can reproduce with humans making half elves.

D&D elves are beautiful and graceful and good at magic and good in the woods and perceive well. They are long lived and can reproduce with humans making half elves.

I already listed the myriad of differences between the two. Other than pointy ears and the name, there's next to nothing that Tolkien elves have in common with D&D elves. Your absurd reduction to the above and the laugh at the list I laid out in that post are pretty disingenuous.

 

[Maxperson]

Given this question, are you saying that playing in FR is similar to playing in DL? There are no distinct features that allow you to immerse within the DL setting. And if not as a player, then is it fair to say as a DM you would struggle to make DL stand out differently to other settings?

It's that things are pretty interchangeable. I could plunk a large island down in the middle of Al-Quadim, Maztica, Kara-tur and the Realms proper and call it Ansalon and give it all the Ansalon traits and it wouldn't be out of place. I could rip out Solomnia and put in Cormyr with its Purple Dragon Knights, make Sturm a stiff necked, honorable Purple Dragon Knight and the Dragonlance story really wouldn't change. Someone who had never read the original would leave reading the books with that change with the same exact opinion and feeling about the series as if no change had been made.

The differences are just cosmetic fluff. Not that you can't prefer one over the other, but there's no real core to Dragonlance that makes it different from the Realms and vice versa.

If I change the cosmetics of Dark Sun, there's a core to Dark Sun that would not allow me to do the same thing. I could rip out Tyr and put in Cormyr, but you'd still have Kalak as the ruler, or you could rename him Azoun and he'd still be a sorcerer-king on the path to becoming a Dragon. The Purple Dragon Knights would be Dark Sun Templars of Azoun(Kalak). The Dark Sun core doesn't allow for transitions to be fully interchangeable the way the generic settings do.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

From my perspective, I don't know that it's what they did so much as the flavor they impart (cue reference to the Gnomish Chicken recipe in Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home...). That is to say, their ornate technological creations are a part of the weave and weft of the world. While the concept of gnomes as technological beings has since spread to other settings, I believe it did originate in Dragonlance.

Remind me again why the Tinker Gnomes changed the world dramatically? It has been over 20 years since I read the old DL novels and besides the prelude Light and Darkness I cannot recall a significant thing they did.

I would further add that one of the defining elements of the Cataclysm is that it is so relatively recent. The Sea of Dust and the Anuaroch were created roughly a thousand years ago. The Cataclysm, only about 300 years ago. And its impact is still being felt across Krynn. Most people forsook the gods as a result of it. People are isolated and distrusting of each other. Ports are now landlocked. The legacy of the Cataclysm is a huge part of the reason the forces of the Dragonarmy are able to sweep across Krynn in the beginning.

It's a magical catastrophe, like the ones that created the Anauroch(Realms), The Dust Desert(Realms), the Sea of Silt(Dark Sun) and the Sea of Dust(Greyhawk). Phenomenal cosmic power wreaking destruction on the world!!!

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Elves created by Tolkien weren't designed to be a lineage for a TTRPG, and we can say the same about lots of aliens from sci-fi and fantasy.

Dragonlance drinks from the spirit and the essence of the 80's, and the 5Ed drinks from different sources, not only fantasy literature.

And some DMs would rather to alter the lore to avoid players who have read the books knew too much. Maybe it is an alternate timeline where lord Soth saved the day killing the king-priest of Istar but agents of the cult from the older eye broke the graygem to start the "chaos summer". Or the deities of Krynn had to accept a deal with Vecna, and now the Krynnspace is in other place in the space-time continium, among other reasons the Vodoni empire wanted to destroy the world of Krynn because they suspected the secret base of the order of the chronomancers was there...(really this was in the mirror-plane within the Krynnspace).

If there is a future videogame of Dragonlance, I guess a complete team of screenwritters will be working in the retelling, adding a lot of details about the war of the lance.

Maybe a time-traveler avoided the chaos summer and the age of the mortals didn't start, but there is an alternate future where the overlord dragons become quasigods, creating their own demiplanes or domains, something like their own version of "Council of Wyrms", and suffering as "visitors" the unwellcome spider-dragons.

 

[Remathilis]

It's that things are pretty interchangeable. I could plunk a large island down in the middle of Al-Quadim, Maztica, Kara-tur and the Realms proper and call it Ansalon and give it all the Ansalon traits and it wouldn't be out of place. I could rip out Solomnia and put in Cormyr with its Purple Dragon Knights, make Sturm a stiff necked, honorable Purple Dragon Knight and the Dragonlance story really wouldn't change. Someone who had never read the original would leave reading the books with that change with the same exact opinion and feeling about the series as if no change had been made.

The differences are just cosmetic fluff. Not that you can't prefer one over the other, but there's no real core to Dragonlance that makes it different from the Realms and vice versa.

If I change the cosmetics of Dark Sun, there's a core to Dark Sun that would not allow me to do the same thing. I could rip out Tyr and put in Cormyr, but you'd still have Kalak as the ruler, or you could rename him Azoun and he'd still be a sorcerer-king on the path to becoming a Dragon. The Purple Dragon Knights would be Dark Sun Templars of Azoun(Kalak). The Dark Sun core doesn't allow for transitions to be fully interchangeable the way the generic settings do.

I'm going to wager you're not a fan of Joseph Campbell's Monomyth?

 

[Maxperson]

I'm going to wager you're not a fan of Joseph Campbell's Monomyth?

There's nothing wrong with traditional/classic play in a generic setting. I've been running the Realms for the last 30 years and enjoy it. There's just not anything truly unique about it(or Greyhawk and Dragonlance) like there is in Birthright, Dark Sun and Eberron.

 

[Faolyn]

::sigh::

A pebble is a rock and a mountain is a rock. The details don't matter!

The differences you're talking about are not pebble-rock differences.