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

 

[QuentinGeorge]

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.

Krynn has a bard god, Branchala.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Krynn is full of music so bards existed

Krynn was created with 1st edition rules. And under those rules in order to be a bard you first had to gain dual class levels as a fighter and thief. Thus, bards were forced to be incredibly rare by the game mechanics.

But you don't have to be a bard in order to make music. The existence of music in no way implies the existence of bards.

 

[humble minion]

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.

You know, that's a very good point and it can even be extended more broadly.

Dragonlance heroes are exceptional. More than most other settings, they're these larger-than-life personalities with big, melodramatic backstories. FR cops a lot of stick for being stuffed full of powerful NPCs who do all the moving and shaking, but right from the start, DL wanted you to play the heroes who were the movers and shakers. And because they're these epic exceptional heroes, it's less of a surprise when they're unusual.

Riverwind is a ranger. Rangers were RARE back then.

Goldmoon is, for several levels, literally the only cleric in the world.

Tanis is a half-elf, in a world where half-elves are so rare that his surname is literally 'Half-elven' because that was specific enough. Laurana is royalty. Gilthanas is dating a dragon.

And that's before getting to their published stats. At a time before points buy and ASIs, when a GENEROUS DM would maybe allow stat generation using 4d6 drop lowest while someone more hardcore would insist on 3d6 in order, the Heroes of the Lance have a frankly statistically improbable array of 16s, 17s, 18s etc in their stat blocks. There's even two warriors with 18/xx strength, out of a core group of what, eight or 10 pcs?

FR is (increasingly) a world where everything in D&D exists and therefore very little is unique or noteworthy. But if there's ever a campaign setting where it is entirely in-genre for your PC to be a very special unique snowflake, heir to a lost throne, last of their race, practitioner of an otherwise-unknown form of magic, etc etc - then Dragonlance is it.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If there are sorcerers and warlocks in the 5Ed then the coherence with the retcon demmands also bards to be possible. And later if cavalier/knight, crusader, totemist shaman and dracolyte(primal defender with a touch of dragon shaman) are new classes, these could be added to your game if you want. In my game the order of the seekers created the "ardents" (the psionic version of clerics, from the complete psionic handbook).

And if Hasbro CEOs ordered it, then the canon tells there is parallel Krynnspaces, one based in Paramount+ production, and other based in a crossover with a Disney franchise, for example. Or they hire a desinger to create a spider-dragon to sell figures, and then the spider-dragons from the sourcebook "Wild Elves" return to Dragonlance. Or somebody publishes in DMGuild and the idea is too good, WotC loves it, and then it is added officially to Dragonlance lore, for example the heroes of the lance in the afterlife become demigods and ruling their own domains of delight as lord feys.

There aren't theriantropes/werebeasts in Krynn, but if your DM wants, then the PCs have to protect the peasants against the attacks of werebadgers for the next night. Or the elemental elder eye could be a Lovecraftian secret cult with a hidden temple in Istar.

Or spellcaster PCs could summon a variant kodragon as familiar because Hasbro wants to sell toys with pokemon-look.

We have to accept 5Ed will be a re-imagining of the classic setting, with some changes can't be avoided because WotC has to adapt to the new generations, or necessary sacrifices in the name of a better gameplay. I only ask about the changes enough coherence with the spirit or essence of the old edition.

* Maybe the age of dispair was longer because Takhisis' agents from the future travelled to the past to terminate the parents of the heroes of the lance, but then the chronomancers to fix the timeine create "cosmic clones", something like "twin souls" or identical character like Tom Canty and Henry VIII in Mark Twain's "the prince and the pauper", and here Raistlin may be worse than Ariakas because in his life he didn't enjoy the true love of a family.

 

[mamba]

But a valid point when the discussion of an upcoming book devolves to people arguing about whether or not mustaches are necessary to include in the book's art.

My objection was to you making it sound like this is true for all ‘dragonlance fans’ when we are really talking about not even a handful of people

 

[Velderan]

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."

I'm about 20 pages behind on whatever this thread has become (mustaches..? lol), but the bolded part is how I've looked at every single product ever released. My home game is my home game and I don't have to use everything in a published product and no one else should feel compelled to either. Heck, I remember an old interview with either Weis or Hickman about how people loved their characters so much they brought them into other campaign settings. That certainly isn't canon and who cares if it is.

 

[mamba]

You don't know the reasoning behind the change. You don't even know if it's an intentional change.

hence the ‘what is up with’ or whatever it was, ie asking for the reason, which I assume no one currently has (and likely no one will get in the book either…), so we instead get ‘mustache silly’ and ‘what if you cannot grow one’

You're jumping to conclusions and overreacting to the lack of mustaches in a piece of artwrok.

It’s a valid observation that none have them when 95% used to have them (did not personally check, am relying on him here)

 

[DarkCrisis]

Krynn was created with 1st edition rules. And under those rules in order to be a bard you first had to gain dual class levels as a fighter and thief. Thus, bards were forced to be incredibly rare by the game mechanics.

But you don't have to be a bard in order to make music. The existence of music in no way implies the existence of bards.

In 1E it was even harder than that. You had to take a certain amount of levels in Fighter, Thief, and Druid.

Keeping in mind for the younger crowd, it was harder to multi class back then.

 

[Velderan]

That's a bit hyperbolic. They certainly don't all need to have them, but one or two in a big picture of Knights of Solamnia would be nice.

As an aside, if I recall correctly, there is an exchange in one of the Chronicles novels between Laurana the elf princess, a knight, and Astinus, loremaster of Krynn, about women in the order. The knight claims its never been done, but Astinus corrects him and provides a historical example. So they're not entirely unheard of. Still better to let that go for the game though.

Yeah, I'm not sure where this knights are all sexist bit came from. Some of the novels have used the rights of women in Solamnic society as a plot point which is fine for a story; it works fine in House of the Dragon for instance. But I sincerely hope people aren't using all 200+ novels as game rules considering the amount of contradictions between the different authors involved in those products.

Where in the game books does it make any reference to gender for creating a knight? The 2E book shows a portrait of a female for the Knights of the Sword and that's the closest the books come to refencing gender that I'm aware of. @Levistus's_Leviathan where are you getting any hint of sexism in the game books from?

 

[Dire Bare]

Well, the Star Wars equivalent is the padawan braid. Then's there's the samurai and their chonmage (topknot). Wouldn't call the Solomnia mustache "dumb world-building" when there's several such stylistic themes in fantasy and the real world.

Having the super-stache as a Solamnic tradition for male knights and nobility isn't stupid world-building, it can be excellent world-building. Having super-staches as a requirement, hard or soft, for belonging to the Order of Solamnic Knights IS stupid world-building, for a D&D setting (perhaps not for a non-game setting). And, pretty sure that's not canon anyway.

To complain that a few pieces of teaser art show male Solamnic knights sans stache is beyond pedantic. To claim this as an example of WotC ruining the setting is histrionic.

It’s not and hardly universal. But it is troubling they don’t even use it in the art. It’s like the image of the “mages of high sorcery”. None of them look remotely like Krynnish wizards to me and I haven’t said that about any of the depictions from 1e to 3e, novels or gaming materials.

Being a fan of Dragonlance from the beginning, I find the new art exciting, and far from troubling. The mages look both traditionally like Wizards of High Sorcery (to me) and also like modern depictions of D&D wizards. I am not troubled a whit with the absence of mustaches.

Now, if we get a portrait of Sturm Brightblade himself without his super-stache, that would bother me . . . .