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

 

[mamba]

Always seemed an odd order to release those books, probably just poor foresight.

Not if you consider that BX was out already, so the first two books essentially give the DM new options

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Not sure what a mix of Harry Potter and Dune even means, and given that the test was always custom the the PC taking it, I see no harm in having a discussion

They said it's one part sorting hat and one part don ja bar

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Nah. I'll just leave you believing that Tolkien's elves had +1 dex, -1 con, infravision, 90% resistance to sleep and charm spells and the ability to notice secret doors 33% of the time while walking past one.

since it only matters that you seem to be ignoreing all the Middle earth games, I will leave you with: 5e HAS tolkien elves and no one minded

 

[Maxperson]

since it only matters that you seem to be ignoreing all the Middle earth games

Not all. The original MERP elves were flat out better than the other races. They made a decent attempt at modeling how much better elves were than humans. Not perfect, but decent. I'm only ignoring the Middle Earth games that pay attention to balance, since you can't do that and accurately model the Middle Earth races.

 

[Remathilis]

Not all. The original MERP elves were flat out better than the other races. They made a decent attempt at modeling how much better elves were than humans. Not perfect, but decent. I'm only ignoring the Middle Earth games that pay attention to balance, since you can't do that and accurately model the Middle Earth races.

Sounds like the Jedi problem: you cannot accurately represent everything a Jedi can do and have it remotely balanced with nonjedi.

 

[Maxperson]

Sounds like the Jedi problem: you cannot accurately represent everything a Jedi can do and have it remotely balanced with nonjedi.

Yes. I agree. So what you do is either have an unbalanced game where the elves, casters or whatever are just better(like Ars Magica), or you balance things and pretend that you are using Tolkien elves when you really aren't.

 

[Micah Sweet]

since it only matters that you seem to be ignoreing all the Middle earth games, I will leave you with: 5e HAS tolkien elves and no one minded

Adventures in Middle Earth is limited by needing to be compatible with 5e. The One Ring is much better at translating the Lengendarium to an RPG.

 

[Alzrius]

Sounds like the Jedi problem: you cannot accurately represent everything a Jedi can do and have it remotely balanced with nonjedi.

I remember a post in Gary M. Sarli's old "Jedi Counseling" article series on WotC's website for their Star Wars d20 RPG where he answered this very complaint. His way of dealing with that was to cite several optional rules that previous articles in that series had introduced to grant greater powers to Force-users, saying that if you implemented all of them, it would be a lot more like the movies...but would likely leave characters that weren't Force-sensitive behind.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I remember a post in Gary M. Sarli's old "Jedi Counseling" article series on WotC's website for their Star Wars d20 RPG where he answered this very complaint. His way of dealing with that was to cite several optional rules that previous articles in that series had introduced to grant greater powers to Force-users, saying that if you implemented all of them, it would be a lot more like the movies...but would likely leave characters that weren't Force-sensitive behind.

I really wish this philosophy was still around. Nowadays, game designers are too frightened of imbalance for my tastes.

 

[Faolyn]

I will turn to my copy of the middle earth 5e book and see very similar to 5e elves

Actually, it might be better to look at the original Middle-Earth RPG. But I don't have a copy of it and there don't seem to be any wikis dedicated to it. Anyone hear have a copy?