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

 

[Velderan]

There are a lot of problems with this argument, I mean, it's really full of holes, but let me say, you may well be right about what they're doing, but it doesn't make it a smart move. One of the USPs of D&D as a brand, is that it has this large range of genuinely diverse/unique settings that people talk about. What you're saying they're doing, is, as they certainly have with Spelljammer, and arguably have with VRGtR (I wouldn't really agree with the argument), is putting out extremely shallow (to the point of missing basic setting information), bland, kitchen-sink versions of settings, which are all essentially the same setting.

It's just that does not seem like a long-term good idea given the D&D brand and its USPs. The response to this is usually an appeal to authority of the marketers and the magical "data" they have, but that's not a rational argument, and history shows it's obviously nonsensical - countless companies have done incredibly boneheaded things despite/because of "data".

Also, no I wasn't going to say "that doesn't matter to me", you're confusing me with someone else (I know who, but that's not me). I'm saying "This is a bad strategy that will damage the D&D brand longer-term".

Re: Theros/Ravnica, obviously the Kalamar/Rokugan comparison is beyond ludicrous. That's so laughable as to not be worth responding to. But in your haste to dismiss them, you missed what was actually going on, which is that they're essentially relics of an earlier marketing strategy, which was cross-selling MtG and D&D via setting books as a major goal. But what that also shows is all marketing approaches are transient. Right now we're in an era of incredibly low page-count, ultra-shallow, very bland/flavourless tales on various settings. Will that persist? I think it'll persist long enough to make sure Planescape 2023 is absolute junk, the odds are very good on that. It's a hard setting to do right, and easy to potentially make bland and dull, and I think they'll manage it (esp. based on the godawful Feats we saw).

Will it persist into 1D&D? I guess we shall see. There are merits to people having settings which conflict with each other, having distinct opinions and so on. Especially if you're moving people on to a subscription.

From the recent video where Jeremy Crawford discussed Lunar Sorcery, he said the goal in designing them was to mechanically make something you could pluck out of Krynn and use anywhere, so that's one of the reasons for removing the specifics of tying powers to the Krynnish moon phases. There's also the aspect of simplicity, because I don't know of many tables that actually kept track of the moon in 1E/2E DL games. In my opinion, that does explain the removal of things like what made 2E Ravenloft unique as a setting mechanically because it would be harder to pluck stuff out of VRGtR if you need to do extra work to explain the Dark Powers in Eberron for example. I'm not very knowledgeable about Ravenloft, so apologies for not providing a specific example to help explain. Hopefully what I wrote made sense.

Now we can can go on for another 82 pages on if that's good or bad game design, but people seem to be twisting Crawford's intent to mechanically make every setting the same into insisting he wants everything on the table always for every setting.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

From the recent video where Jeremy Crawford discussed Lunar Sorcery, he said the goal in designing them was to mechanically make something you could pluck out of Krynn and use anywhere, so that's one of the reasons for removing the specifics of tying powers to the Krynnish moon phases. There's also the aspect of simplicity, because I don't know of many tables that actually kept track of the moon in 1E/2E DL games. In my opinion, that does explain the removal of things like what made 2E Ravenloft unique as a setting mechanically because it would be harder to pluck stuff out of VRGtR if you need to do extra work to explain the Dark Powers in Eberron for example. I'm not very knowledgeable about Ravenloft, so apologies for not providing a specific example to help explain. Hopefully what I wrote made sense.

Now we can can go on for another 82 pages on if that's good or bad game design, but people seem to be twisting Crawford's intent to mechanically make every setting the same into insisting he wants everything on the table always for every setting.

I think trying to make mechanics portable is different, yes, from trying to make it so every setting is a bland kitchen-sink by default. But that argument has been made that the latter is both intentional and smart. I think it might be intentional but I think it's a bad idea that won't last.

I largely agree re: moon phase, it wasn't something a lot of people liked to track, though the way it's handled now is slightly bizarre.

 

[Pentallion]

Could you imagine? Player sits at table: what are you playing?
DM: Dragonlance.
Player: cool! I want to play a cleric.
DM: you can, but we are playing in the days there was no magical healing and clerics had no spells.
Player: well, I want to play a cleric who has magic healing spells.
DM: we are not allowing that here. Sorry.
Player: You can't force ne to play something else. (Proceeds to take out his cleric).
DM: please leave this table.
Player: My cleric worships the Klingon god ...
DM: Security. Can you escort this person away from here?

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

The 3e Eberron did not have tieflings or dragonborn. Those were added to the 5e version because of new designer philosophy, not system.

3e Eberron had Tieflings, but they weren't a core race back then, so they remained the traditional one-off individual or family with fiendish ancestry tied to the planes, as mentioned in the Planes of Existence section of 3e's "Player's Guide to Eberron". There was also technically a "Dragonborn in Eberron" sidebar in 3.5e's "Races of the Dragon", but the Dragonborn in that book were somewhat different than how 4e and onward developed the concept.

4e introduced Tieflings, Dragonborn, and the Eladrin elven subrace as core racial options, so 4e Eberron made more explicit places for them in the form of the Tiefling-ruled Venomous Demesne city-state in Droaam, the Dragonborn Clanholds of Q'barra and similar holdings in Argonessen, and the seven Fey Spires respectively.

5e just carried the Tiefling and Dragonborn locales forward and made the Fey Spires an optional element, since Eladrin are/were not core options in 5e.

EDIT: @Remathilis got to it first - I type too slow...

As to the overarching "Orcs? In MY Dragonlance!?" question, I'm not especially invested in it one way or the other, except from the point that I don't find "this setting restricts X race and Y class" to be a particularly compelling means of worldbuilding. I don't particularly care if 5e officially introduces Orcs into Krynn, but the idea that doing so would somehow distort and dilute Dragonlance's uniqueness as a setting is frankly overblown, as I see it.

Take the Eberron methodology, find a region where you can fit them in without too much disruption (or where that disruption could make the area in question more interesting), give them a twist that makes these Orcs of Krynn distinct from the Orcs of other settings, and go from there. Or just say that Orcs still aren't native to Krynn, but a few generations ago an Orc tribe or two stumbled through a portal from elsewhere in the multiverse and/or crashed a Spelljammer in some remote part of the world and have put down roots.

Do Orcs NEED to be introduced into Dragonlance? No. But I don't see why it's all that big of an issue if WotC chose to do so.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Pretty much everything in Eberron has the "Our [things] are different" trope attached.

 

[Pentallion]

3e Eberron had Tieflings, but they weren't a core race back then, so they remained the traditional one-off individual or family with fiendish ancestry tied to the planes, as mentioned in the Planes of Existence section of 3e's "Player's Guide to Eberron". There was also technically a "Dragonborn in Eberron" sidebar in 3.5e's "Races of the Dragon", but the Dragonborn in that book were somewhat different than how 4e and onward developed the concept.

4e introduced Tieflings, Dragonborn, and the Eladrin elven subrace as core racial options, so 4e Eberron made places for them in the form of the Tiefling-ruled Venomous Demesne city-state in Droaam, the Dragonborn Clanholds of Q'barra and similar holdings in Argonessen, and the seven Fey Spires respectively.

5e just carried the Tiefling and Dragonborn locales forward and made the Fey Spires an optional element, since Eladrin are/were not core options in 5e.

EDIT: @Remathilis got to it first - I type too slow...

As to the overarching "Orcs? In MY Dragonlance!?" question, I'm not especially invested in it one way or the other, except from the point that I don't find "this setting restricts X race and Y class" to be a particularly compelling means of worldbuilding. I don't particularly care if 5e officially introduces Orcs into Krynn, but the idea that doing so would somehow distort and dilute Dragonlance's uniqueness as a setting is frankly overblown, as I see it.

Take the Eberron methodology, find a region where you can fit them in without too much disruption (or where that disruption could make the area in question more interesting), give them a twist that makes these Orcs of Krynn distinct from the Orcs of other settings, and go from there. Or just say that Orcs still aren't native to Krynn, but a few generations ago an Orc tribe or two stumbled through a portal from elsewhere in the multiverse and/or crashed a Spelljammer in some remote part of the world and have put down roots.

Do Orcs NEED to be introduced into Dragonlance, no. But I don't see why it's all that big of an issue if WotC chose to do so.

But "Orcs" is just a placeholder for any race or class. When you realize it's actually a wedge issue that changes everything.
Change the word orc to cleric with healing spells and the setting to DL before clerics got back their healing spells and the DM can rightfully say "No."
And by extension, if WOTC wants to change DL so players can play magic using clerics in an era when the canon says they didn't exist, a customer can rightfully say "I'll pass on that product" then hope one day WOTC fires people for idiocy.

 

[ersatzphil]

I think trying to make mechanics portable is different, yes, from trying to make it so every setting is a bland kitchen-sink by default. But that argument has been made that the latter is both intentional and smart. I think it might be intentional but I think it's a bad idea that won't last.

I suppose I'm not sure how those two are really all that distinct from each other, if I'm honest. Then again, I suspect the debate would be far different if the frame of the argument was "there's no psionics in Birthright", or whatever.

 

[mamba]

I suppose I'm not sure how those two are really all that distinct from each other, if I'm honest.

rules and setting? they definitely are, otherwise we couldn’t have different settings in 5e or the same world in different rulesets (Middle Earth, Midgard, but even DL or FR have been in rather different D&D versions)

One is the mechanics, the other the lore (with a bit of overlap with races/classes)

 

[Velderan]

I think trying to make mechanics portable is different, yes, from trying to make it so every setting is a bland kitchen-sink by default. But that argument has been made that the latter is both intentional and smart. I think it might be intentional but I think it's a bad idea that won't last.

At the risk of making people think this is Jeremy Crawford's burner account, I do think one of the brilliant things about 5E for purposes of growth of the game is mechanically how easy it is to teach a new player to play and settings should reflect that philosophy. I just wish they didn't seem to also have the idea that lore was also a barrier to getting a new player to play. Schneider's comments on DL lore like it's somehow a barrier to getting someone to sit down to play SotDQ seems silly to me.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

But "Orcs" is just a placeholder for any race or class. When you realize it's actually a wedge issue that changes everything.
Change the word orc to cleric with healing spells and the setting to DL before clerics got back their healing spells and the DM can rightfully say "No."

I am fully aware that "Orcs" is a placeholder for any option that is traditionally restricted in Dragonlance. That doesn't change my stance on the matter.

With 5e, you don't explicitly need clerics to gain access to healing magic, so if you still want to do the big "return of the gods" plotline for clerics, that's fine. But personally, I prefer the view that divine magic is powered, at least in part, by the faith of the caster rather than granted or revoked solely by the will of the god they worship, so the idea that there may be scattered individuals whose faith was strong enough to enable them access to clerical magic even as organized religion had more or less collapsed isn't much of an issue for me.