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]

It had however many Greek gods were in the deities and demigods. Theros' reason isn't relevant by the way. D&D functions perfectly as D&D with 1, 2, 3, 4.......15.....19......25....190 gods. That's why the DMG give you suggestions on how to run everything from a monotheism to as many gods as you want.

The point is that the setting is designed in a specific way because it was originally made for M:tG and not D&D. I'm not saying that having just 15 gods is worse than the dozens/hundreds that some other worlds have, I'm saying that the reason it just has those 15 gods is because of a fundamental difference between the WotC's design philosophies for M:tG and D&D.

"Settings are settings are settings" is complete BS, because a setting designed for M:tG has to take the 5 colors of M:tG into account. D&D doesn't. Thus, D&D settings are objectively designed in a fundamentally different way from M:tG settings.

 

[mamba]

How many gods are there? Because Theros has 15 for a reason.

I assume there is some MtG reason for this, but here is the thing: the number of gods in a setting has no impact on how suitable it is as a D&D setting

 

[mamba]

"Settings are settings are settings" is complete BS, because a setting designed for M:tG has to take the 5 colors of M:tG into account. D&D doesn't. Thus, D&D settings are objectively designed in a fundamentally different way from M:tG settings.

not sure I would call that fundamental. So MtG settings have some design patterns that other D&D settings might not have, that does not make them any less suitable as a D&D setting.

Heck, I could even equate them to the 5 chromatic dragon colors of D&D, there are several settings that use those.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I assume there is some MtG reason for this, but here is the thing: the number of gods in a setting has no impact on how suitable it is as a D&D setting

Not. The. Point. And I said so already.

@Maxperson was and is saying that world building is not different based on the medium it is made for. "Settings are settings are settings", in his words.

Which is absolutely not true. That's not how world building works.

My point is that saying "Theros is a D&D setting, and it tells you not to use any of the PHB races except Humans" is wrong because it was originally intended to just be a setting for M:tG and so it wasn't designed with the usual assumptions that a D&D world is. The Theros book is an adaption of a setting designed for a different medium. I'm not saying that it's a bad setting, I think it's quite well designed, I'm just saying that you cannot directly compare Theros and Dragonlance this way when they were designed under different assumptions.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

not sure I would call that fundamental. So MtG settings have some design patterns that other D&D settings might not have, that does not make them any less suitable as a D&D setting.

Again, I'm not saying that you can't run games in Theros. I'm saying that the design assumptions of Theros and Dragonlance are very different.

Heck, I could even equate them to the 5 chromatic dragon colors of D&D, there are several settings that use those.

Not in good faith or correct understanding of the concepts, you couldn't.

The dragons are different types of dragons. They have different behaviors, but are just different variations of dragons that don't influence fundamental aspects of worlds that aren't related to chromatic dragons.

The colors of magic are fundamental to M:tG and it's worlds. There are 15 gods of Theros and 10 Guilds of Ravnica solely because of the colors. They are a unifying aspect of the game that stays consistent across worlds and are built into the mechanics of the vast majority of cards in M:tG. The dragon types are just some types of dragons that exist on multiple worlds and are fan favorites. Not a fundamental aspects of how 90% of the game functions.

 

[mamba]

Not. The. Point. And I said so already.
@Maxperson was and is saying that world building is not different based on the medium it is made for. "Settings are settings are settings", in his words.

yes, and needing multiples of X in one game is not a major hurdle for adopting it to any other ruleset, esp. if that other ruleset has no such limitation.

I grant you that given the quirks of the intended ruleset, there might be some minor adjustments needed when porting it from one to the other, but we are not talking about fundamentally different ways to create settings here

My point is that saying "Theros is a D&D setting, and it tells you not to use any of the PHB races except Humans" is wrong because it was originally intended to just be a setting for M:tG and so it wasn't designed with the usual assumptions that a D&D world is.

Is there anything in Theros that makes it incompatible with D&D ?

If I wanted a human centric greek mythology setting for D&D, is there any reason I could not have restricted races very similarly because of that goal?

I guess this boils down to: how important is it for me while designing the setting that it supports everything from the PHB, and I am absolutely free to answer that with ‘not all that much’. We have LotR settings with a 5e ruleset, I doubt those cared

 

[mamba]

Again, I'm not saying that you can't run games in Theros. I'm saying that the design assumptions of Theros and Dragonlance are very different.

Not in good faith or correct understanding of the concepts, you couldn't.

I know nothing about MtG or Theros, I went with the chromatic dragons because of the multiples of 5.

Just googled it and funnily enough it is even the exact same colors, and yes, that is just a superficial similarity.

 

[Maxperson]

My point is that saying "Theros is a D&D setting, and it tells you not to use any of the PHB races except Humans" is wrong because it was originally intended to just be a setting for M:tG and so it wasn't designed with the usual assumptions that a D&D world is. The Theros book is an adaption of a setting designed for a different medium. I'm not saying that it's a bad setting, I think it's quite well designed, I'm just saying that you cannot directly compare Theros and Dragonlance this way when they were designed under different assumptions.

First, Theros has non-human races. Second, the limitations on race isn't any different from the limitations on race for Dark Sun, which was designed for D&D. Nor is it different from the limitations in the Council of Wyrms D&D setting. And a number of others.

Why is a limitation on the number of gods for Theros different from limitations on the number of gods for a D&D setting? Why is the limitation on races in Theros different from limitations on race for D&D settings?

You keep saying that you design these settings differently, but have provided nothing that is actually done differently. What is done for Theros the MtG setting that is not also done for some D&D setting either official or homebrewed?

 

[Maxperson]

The point is that the setting is designed in a specific way because it was originally made for M:tG and not D&D. I'm not saying that having just 15 gods is worse than the dozens/hundreds that some other worlds have, I'm saying that the reason it just has those 15 gods is because of a fundamental difference between the WotC's design philosophies for M:tG and D&D.

I get that. And my point is that picking exactly 15 gods for an MtG setting isn't any different than picking exactly 15 gods for a D&D setting. The reasons aren't relevant, because ultimately it's all the same. 15 gods in a setting.

"Settings are settings are settings" is complete BS, because a setting designed for M:tG has to take the 5 colors of M:tG into account. D&D doesn't. Thus, D&D settings are objectively designed in a fundamentally different way from M:tG settings.

The MtG settings aren't designed with 5 colors in mind. They're simply designed and 5 colors(and multi-color) are pulled out of various aspects of the setting and turned into cards, because those colors represent elements found in every setting. All of them. Life, Death, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Illusion, Mind, and so on are found in every D&D setting. That's how we ended up with a coherent Forgotten Realms MtG set.

Designing for MtG IS designing for D&D, and for GURPS, and for Middle Earth, and... Because settings are settings.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I get that. And my point is that picking exactly 15 gods for an MtG setting isn't any different than picking exactly 15 gods for a D&D setting. The reasons aren't relevant, because ultimately it's all the same. 15 gods in a setting.

And my point is that the reasoning behind building the system with specifically 15 gods shows a fundamental difference between the worldbuilding of M:tG and D&D settings.

A D&D world can choose to just have 15 gods. That's fine. My homebrew setting has just 15 gods. But that's because I think worlds where the players can't remember all of the gods because there are several dozen/hundreds of them is bad for TTRPGs (cough, Toril, cough).

I'm obviously not saying that a D&D world can't choose to have 15 or 10 or 5 or 0 gods in it. I'm saying that M:tG settings are required to have multiples of 5 tied to the different colors built into fundamental aspects of the world (the monsters, gods, factions, races, etc).

The MtG settings aren't designed with 5 colors in mind. They're simply designed and 5 colors(and multi-color) are pulled out of various aspects of the setting and turned into cards, because those colors represent elements found in every setting. All of them. Life, Death, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Illusion, Mind, and so on are found in every D&D setting. That's how we ended up with a coherent Forgotten Realms MtG set.

Designing for MtG IS designing for D&D, and for GURPS, and for Middle Earth, and... Because settings are settings.

You are totally incorrect. The settings are definitely built with the colors of M:tG in mind. Ravnica wouldn't exist otherwise. The Factions were literally designed by taking 2 different colors and merging them into a faction concept. There may be aspects of the setting that were designed before their colors were assigned to them, but major aspects of the worlds are absolutely designed with the colors of Magic in mind.