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

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I think it is unfair to say that it is solely money that drives Wizards. In every interview I've seen, it's clear that Chris Perkins, Jeremy Crawford, F. Wesley Schneider, Ray Winninger (until recently), and many other people at Wizards are folks that care deeply about Dungeons & Dragons. That love what they do for a living.

Again, they're doing what they're doing because they think it will make them the most money. I've seen nothing that indicates otherwise.

 

[Xamnam]

No. No one's vision is more correct than others. Period.

Some are more important. The most important one is the view that will appeal to the most people. And that's the one WotC will and should go for.

Look, I can understand a context in which this is accurate, but I think this will be a very uphill battle to sell this argument as you have currently phrased it, especially to people who have prior experience or an emotional connection to a setting. One of the reasons to play in a specific setting is so that the table agrees upon assumptions, and in that case, fidelity to the vision and ideas of the creator can be very important. That's a huge part of why people might be excited to revisit these settings in a modern system. At that table, generally, the author's vision is correct.

Now, that won't matter at other tables. But if you're telling people there is no case to want to respect the original perspective the setting originated from, well, good luck.

And, as demonstrated, not all changes to "established facts" in settings are bad and not all of them are equal. This is a tiny change.

Likewise, I agree with the general sentiment here, but each individual change is so personal and subjective. You can't tell someone else how meaningful a change is, there's no objective measure. I actively have not played the remasters of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls because of factually small changes that are large in importance to me.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

You think the changes are tiny, and you think playability for people unfamiliar to the setting is more important than narrative fidelity. I disagree.

They are. Removing the restriction of not being able to play Orcs is objectively a tiny change compared to removing the Core from Ravenloft or Phlogiston from Spelljammer. Adding a whole history for Dragonborn in Eberron was an objectively bigger change than adding the possibility of playing an Orc/Half-Orc. Those are bigger, more important changes that will impact those entire settings, not just individual tables that decide to play with Orcs/Half-Orcs. Removing the restriction of not being able to play Orcs/Half-Orcs is a tiny change in comparison.

And playability is always, always more important than whatever nonsense "narrative fidelity" is. This is a game. It's meant to be playable. The canon of a 40-year-old YA trilogy should never take precedence over making sure that people enjoy playing in the setting.

Through my conversations with you, it doesn't seem like you want a game. You want worlds. You want canonical stories, metaplots, and convoluted timelines with characters that you do not play taking the forefront (Raistlin, Tanis, Goldmoon, etc). And there's nothing wrong with liking canonical stories and convoluted timelines. I like a ton of Star Wars and MCU movies/shows because of that. It works in settings where you're getting the story told to you. It doesn't work in roleplaying games like D&D. The players and their campaign should never be second fiddle to the main story. They should be the main story.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Less harshly, I agree. If this is a 5e product, it needs to reflect what D&D in 2022 is, not what D&D in 1984 was. That's not too say that what was then was bad, but the game has moved on. It's like wanting a Greyhawk book with level limits and race/class restrictions since that's what Gary intended; the settings need to be updated to what the game is now or left in the past.

If those are our only options, I honestly vote for left in the past. At least this will open up DMsguild.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They are. Removing the restriction of not being able to play Orcs is objectively a tiny change compared to removing the Core from Dragonlance or Phlogiston from Spelljammer. Adding a whole history for Dragonborn in Eberron was an objectively bigger change than adding the possibility of playing an Orc/Half-Orc. Those are bigger, more important changes that will impact those entire settings, not just individual tables that decide to play with Orcs/Half-Orcs. Removing the restriction of not being able to play Orcs/Half-Orcs is a tiny change in comparison.

And playability is always, always more important than whatever nonsense "narrative fidelity" is. This is a game. It's meant to be playable. The canon of a 40-year-old YA trilogy should never take precedence over making sure that people enjoy playing in the setting.

Through my conversations with you, it doesn't seem like you want a game. You want worlds. You want canonical stories, metaplots, and convoluted timelines with characters that you do not play taking the forefront (Raistlin, Tanis, Goldmoon, etc). And there's nothing wrong with liking canonical stories and convoluted timelines. I like a ton of Star Wars and MCU movies/shows because of that. It works in settings where you're getting the story told to you. It doesn't work in roleplaying games like D&D. The players and their campaign should never be second fiddle to the main story. They should be the main story.

I cut my teeth on 2e settings, which are pretty much as you described. That is what I want, from settings. A coherent story that doesn't get re-written based on the weather vane of what's hot right now. Clearly they were popular enough that WotC is trading on their nostalgia now.

If I want to play D&D and don't think a setting is going to work for my table, I can (and almost always do) play homebrew.

I'll also note that there are plenty of licensed games out there that people enjoy without feeling they need to re-write the setting. No one (including Paramount) is demanding that the writers of Star Trek Adventures re-write the history of the franchise to conform to some new "standard".

 

[Stormonu]

I cut my teeth on 2e settings, which are pretty much as you described. That is what I want, from settings. A coherent story that doesn't get re-written based on the weather vane of what's hot right now. Clearly they were popular enough that WotC is trading on their nostalgia now.

If I want to play D&D and don't think a setting is going to work for my table, I can (and almost always do) play homebrew.

I'll also note that there are plenty of licensed games out there that people enjoy without feeling they need to re-write the setting. No one (including Paramount) is demanding that the writers of Star Trek Adventures re-write the history of the franchise to conform to some new "standard".

As an aside, I can't think of any D&D setting that hasn't gone through some major upheaval since it was published (well, maybe not Birthright) - FR (Time of Troubles, Spellplague), Dragonlance (War of Souls, whatever SAGA was inspired by), Dark Sun (death of the Dragon), Ravenloft (Grand Conjuction), Greyhawk (Greyhawk Wars).

Star Trek is also a very bad example considering the "Kelvin universe". And they're about to release a Discovery supplement, which is very controversial with its retcons among Star Trek fans (yeah, I'm one).

 

[Jaeger]

Good. A lot of past canon was either completely useless and a waste of space or absolute garbage and a waste of space. Revising the canon to try and improve the ideas introduced in older products is a good thing.

All things being equal, yes.

But the devil is in the details, and the amount of older lore that actually did need to change is, and was, much, much smaller than the wholesale lore changes WotC ultimately did make.

That is their prerogative. They own the IP.

I just don't think that WotC is adding any new lifelong fans for these settings by doing so.

 

[mamba]

Good. A lot of past canon was either completely useless and a waste of space or absolute garbage and a waste of space. Revising the canon to try and improve the ideas introduced in older products is a good thing.

amen to that, there is a lot I would happily throw out

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Look, I can understand a context in which this is accurate, but I think this will be a very uphill battle to sell this argument as you have currently phrased it, especially to people who have prior experience or an emotional connection to a setting. One of the reasons to play in a specific setting is so that the table agrees upon assumptions, and in that case, fidelity to the vision and ideas of the creator can be very important. That's a huge part of why people might be excited to revisit these settings in a modern system. At that table, generally, the author's vision is correct.

Now, that won't matter at other tables. But if you're telling people there is no case to want to respect the original perspective the setting originated from, well, good luck.

It's not that I think "there is no case to want to respect the original perspective the setting originated from". It's that I think whether or not Orcs are available in the adventure is such a small issue that throwing a fit about it before the book even comes out to verify if they're in it is immature and shows the worst signs of grognardism (the gut reaction attack to anything possibly different because of nostalgia, even when the change won't affect them and it might be good at making the setting welcoming to more people). I think that having such a narrow mindset of what a setting is is bad for both the setting and the game as a whole.

I liked Spelljammer ever since I first heard about the setting, but I'm also glad that the Phlogiston was replaced by the Astral Sea. A lot of grognards complained about it, but I always thought that the Phlogiston was a poorly executed concept and that the Astral Plane, which literally means "the Plane of Stars", should have something to do with space travel in D&D.

I understand having an emotional connection to the things you grew up with. I really do. But being too attached to it is unhealthy. It's what causes Star Wars fans to harass George Lucas and Jake Matthew Lloyd and Percy Jackson fans to bully a teenage actress off of social media for being black. And I'm not saying that older Dragonlance fans are doing that . . . I'm just saying that the gut reaction comes from the same source. Liking a piece of media is fine. Becoming so connected to it that the hint of possible changes to it makes you freak out is not. Especially in a TTRPG environment where the DM can way more easily alter the setting than a Star Wars fan can alter the Prequel/Sequel Movies.

Likewise, I agree with the general sentiment here, but each individual change is so personal and subjective. You can't tell someone else how meaningful a change is, there's no objective measure. I actively have not played the remasters of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls because of factually small changes that are large in importance to me.

I've never played any of the Soulsborne games, so I don't have a good point of reference for how significant those changes are in regard to "Orcs might not be explicitly stated to be banned". And, as I mentioned earlier, whether or not Orcs are banned would be way less significant than changes to a video game, because changing a video game actually takes effort. Removing the option of playing Orcs doesn't.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As an aside, I can't think of any D&D setting that hasn't gone through some major upheaval since it was published (well, maybe not Birthright) - FR (Time of Troubles, Spellplague), Dragonlance (War of Souls, whatever SAGA was inspired by), Dark Sun (death of the Dragon), Ravenloft (Grand Conjuction), Greyhawk (Greyhawk Wars).

Star Trek is also a very bad example considering the "Kelvin universe". And they're about to release a Discovery supplement, which is very controversial with its retcons among Star Trek fans (yeah, I'm one).

None of those changes, as big as they were, actually changed the history of the setting. Whatever happened, happened. Granted, sometimes events are "broad stroked", but generally history is history.

As an aside, yes, Discovery is messy, and I'm not completely happy with it either, but it can be made to work. The Discovery book from STA you mentioned did just that excellently, IMO.