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]

Shades of grey. Just shades of grey.

I recall in another thread someone said “Could you just replace the Solomnic Knights with Purple Dragon Knights.” Seems that’s getting easier and easier to do.

Once Krynn is fully de-uniqued we can just make it a landmass somewhere in Faerun.

If the only thing that the Knights of Solamnia have to differentiate themselves from the Purple Dragon Knights are mustaches and sexism, it sounds like they didn't have much unique in the first place.

 

[Faolyn]

Can people in your fantasy make believe world not grow mostaches?

Maybe this is just a game and every male Knight can grow facial hair with no issues.

Again it’s a unique staple of the world that has to be ruined because “Well what if my pretend power fantasy can’t grow a beard?”

Now wonder games are getting more shades of grey.

I tend to not think about NPC's facial hair unless I need to when making a character. But if I were making a Solamnia knight and saw that restriction, I would be sorely tempted to make a character who was male and couldn't grow a mustache to save his life. Or a female character. Ooh, or a female character with a beard.

On the other hand, it's also one of those bits of world lore that, to me, is so completely inane that I would gladly toss it away without a second thought, except perhaps to wonder what the hell was going through Weiss and Hickman's heads when they came up with it.

 

[Faolyn]

Everything must be reborn into generic bland goop. There is no other option, otherwise we will turn off new players it seems.

So, it's OK to turn off new players, but not OK to turn off old players?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Seriously, what is with these Dragonlance fans getting up in arms when it comes to the slightest changes to the world? Didn't the setting already ruin itself decades ago through the metaplot? Why are you complaining about mustaches and the possibility of Orcs not being outright banned when you could be complaining about all of the terrible things that happened to the setting under TSR?

There was a bit of discussion/debate about Spelljammer and whether or not it was going to remove the Phlogiston and Crystal Spheres in 5e, which were huge changes, and there were just a handful of people that were actually upset about that. But now the Knights of Solamnia don't have to have mustaches, one version of the UA Kender had their magical origin switched to a different magical origin, and Orcs aren't outright banned and they're acting like the setting is ruined forever? Ravenloft had some big changes that I think were large enough that the backlash for some of those was at least understandable. But these tiny "changes" (which aren't even confirmed to have happened yet) are made to the setting and people are acting like WotC are Takhisis for changing anything about the setting.

My guess is that people just want something to complain about and are choosing the slightest differences from the original setting to make a fuss about. If the biggest things to get upset about in the Dragonlance book are that Orcs aren't banned and the Knights of Solamnia don't have mustaches, then this will be a pretty damn good Dragonlance book.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So, it's OK to turn off new players, but not OK to turn off old players?

It would be great if we could find a way to not turn off either.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

It would be great if we could find a way to not turn off either.

It's impossible to please everyone. The goal is to please the newer players, because they're the biggest portion of the player base. But they also don't want to actively offend older players. Apparently that's impossible because some older players seem to think mustaches are core to the identity of Dragonlance.

 

[Vaalingrade]

If the only thing that the Knights of Solamnia have to differentiate themselves from the Purple Dragon Knights are mustaches and sexism, it sounds like they didn't have much unique in the first place.

It really doesn't paint a welcoming picture of the setting when these the the important things that Cannot Be Changed.

It'd be like saying having Xendrik drow worship spiders instead of scorpions, the leader of the Sliver Flame was aged up to her 20's, and the Undying court being undead instead of some stupid undead lite thing from the worst book in D&D (... wait, that second one did happen. Neat.) made Eberron non-unique. And I love scorpions. Mack Gargan is my spirit animal.

Edit: This reminds me of that Greyhawk thread where everyone was talking about how it was a classic without ever explaining why and then it turned out that there was this awesome magic desert that no one talks about. People need to learn how to sell their faves better.

 

[mamba]

It seems that WOTC is now finishing what Lorraine Williams started. At least Weis and Hickman get to close out their run with a full trilogy this time instead of just Dragons of Summer Flame.

I don't know, it certainly is the first one since the original campaign that I am interested in.

 

[Micah Sweet]

"I don't like it." "It doesn't fit my playing style." "I preferred the way they did X in the 2e/3x books rather than the way they handled it in 5r."

As opposed to "WotC ruined the setting" or "WotC is only putting this out for money and doesn't care about us older gamers" or "WotC shouldn't have put out a different version because it goes against what I personally like."

Or better yet, "I preferred the way they did X in the 2e/3x books. Let me think about what I can use from the 5e books to make X even more interesting for me."

Fair enough. In that case, let me say that I don't like it, it doesn't fit my vision of what Ravenloft should be, and I preferred the old version for the most part. While there are some interesting and useful bits in the book, at the end of the day it wasn't worth what I paid for it to me and I regret the purchase. That's ok; I should have done more research.

Spelljammer is a weird case. I like the Astral Sea, but I don't care for the massive change adding it represents. I thought about it a while and came up with a lore work-around that allows both the Astral Sea and the Phlogiston to co-exist, and even explains why the Flow has become less popular since a way to access the Astral Sea has been discovered. It also helps that I learned of the product's shortcomings and found a 3pp supplement I prefer before I spent $70 on it. I did buy the monsters on D&D Beyond (the first time I've ever done so) and save them offline.

Dragonlance may end up the same way as Ravenloft; I don't know for sure and will try to keep an open mind, but the experience with Ravenloft scarred me a bit.. we'll just have to wait and see.

Sorry I got hot. 90s TSR settings are apparently a berserk button for me.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

It really doesn't paint a welcoming picture of the setting when these the the important things that Cannot Be Changed.

It'd be like saying having Xendrik drow worship spiders instead of scorpions, the leader of the Sliver Flame was aged up to her 20's, and the Undying court being undead instead of some stupid undead lite thing from the worst book in D&D (... wait, that second one did happen. Neat.) made Eberron non-unique. And I love scorpions. Mack Gargan is my spirit animal.

Edit: This reminds me of that Greyhawk thread where everyone was talking about how it was a classic without ever explaining why and then it turned out that there was this awesome magic desert that no one talks about. People need to learn how to sell their faves better.

Imagine if Keith Baker said that, kanonically, no one in Eberron has a mustache. That that kind of facial hair just never evolved on Eberron. It wouldn't somehow ruin the setting. It would be silly, but I can't imagine anyone complaining about it besides saying that it serves no purpose.