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

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, older gamers need to understand that things are different now. Those of us who gamed in the 80s and 90s can't expect the world to stop just for us. And more importantly, older gamers need to learn that different doesn't mean bad.

No different just means different. Good and bad are subjective. I find some things in gaming recently good, and others bad. The main good thing I see is Level Up, but people seem to be tired of me extolling its many virtues.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

What I said was it was an odd change. A change made just to change something. Someone had to look at that and say “Despite t he lore behind it, We should take out the facial hair because reasons.”

You don't know the reasoning behind the change. You don't even know if it's an intentional change. We haven't seen all of the art for the book, they could have mustaches in other pieces of artwork. The 5e PHB doesn't say anything about Tieflings being purple, but has art of a purple Tiefling. This could be another one of those situations. Or if they do have a specific reason for it, then it's not "change for the sake of change". Just because you don't have the explanation for a change doesn't mean it's "made just to change something".

You're jumping to conclusions and overreacting to the lack of mustaches in a piece of artwrok. The lack of mustaches doesn't indicate anything else about how WotC updated the setting. I'm simply asking for a bit of patience and to reserve the freaking out about the quality of the book until after it comes out. As the ancient proverb goes, "Don't judge a book by its lack of mustaches".

And you may have missed whee I said Orcs can come from other worlds. I do stand by that Orcs shouldn’t naturally come from Krynn.

Then they should be playable in this adventure.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You don't know the reasoning behind the change. You don't even know if it's an intentional change. We haven't seen all of the art for the book, they could have mustaches in other pieces of artwork. The 5e PHB doesn't say anything about Tieflings being purple, but has art of a purple Tiefling. This could be another one of those situations. Or if they do have a specific reason for it, then it's not "change for the sake of change". Just because you don't have the explanation for a change doesn't mean it's "made just to change something".

You're jumping to conclusions and overreacting to the lack of mustaches in a piece of artwrok. The lack of mustaches doesn't indicate anything else about how WotC updated the setting. I'm simply asking for a bit of patience and to reserve the freaking out about the quality of the book until after it comes out. As the ancient proverb goes, "Don't judge a book by its lack of mustaches".

Then they should be playable in this adventure.

They can be, I've actually said that before. They just have to deal with the social issues of being one-of-a-kind oddities.

 

[JEB]

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.

I suspect @Reynard's post in another Dragonlance thread captures the mood pretty well. Small changes are seen as warning signs of extensive reboots to come, just like with Ravenloft and Spelljammer.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I suspect @Reynard's post in another Dragonlance thread captures the mood pretty well. Small changes are seen as warning signs of extensive reboots to come, just like with Ravenloft and Spelljammer.

But they aren't. Slight changes are signs of slight changes. Eberron had slight changes, and the setting didn't have an extensive reboot in 5e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

But they aren't. Slight changes are signs of slight changes. Eberron had slight changes, and the setting didn't have an extensive reboot in 5e.

To be fair, 5e Eberron also came out prior to Tasha's, which seems in hindsight to have been a watershed moment for the edition.

 

[JEB]

To be fair, 5e Eberron also came out prior to Tasha's, which seems in hindsight to have been a watershed moment for the edition.

They definitely handled the Realms and Eberron differently than they did Ravenloft and Spelljammer. (I also wonder if they'll use 2024 as an opportunity to do similar reboots to the former two settings.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Those are Klingons!

Technically, they are ogrons.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

It is curious, because I don't see any complain or comments about tielflings, or aasimar, in Krynn.

We need a right balance between flexibility to can add new changes and the coherence with the old lore.

If your want there is some orc in Krynn because this was abducted from his homeworld by the Dark Powers(Ravenloft) and after a "weekend in the hell" he could escape from "Sithicus".

Are kodragons to be sold as toys?

What if a group of bad guys from Krynn are sent to an alternate Krynnspace (in the past) to stop time-traveler cultists of elder elemental eye to destroy the Graygem to start the "chaos summer"?

 

[Pentallion]

Curious how they'll handle adding in classes to the setting that didn't exist before, at least as far as I'm aware:

Artificer
Bard
Druid
Monk
Paladin
Ranger
Sorcerer
Warlock

Far as I know, none of these classes had a prominent NPC that I can recall. Friend of mine said one of the novels did have a Monk from a far off land. I can see these classes coming from "Beyond Ansalon" continent. It was always "Wizard" when it came to magic, not sure where Sorcerers fit in. Are they just treated the same albeit different methods of using arcane magic? Same with Warlock, which I'm guessing would probably be those outcast kind of magic users.

Were there any Druids? I can't recall. I've read a lot of Dragonlance novels back then and the only classes I ever saw represented were Barbarian, Fighter, Cleric, Thief (Rogue), and Wizard. Heck I don't even know if Psionics exist in Krynn.

Gilthanis was hit on the head and rescued by druids.
Riverwind was a Ranger.
A druid was a major NPC in DL 10 and onward. Forgot the name
Krynn is full of music so bards existed, they just didn't have a npc bard in the adventures. I recall several historical bards being named.