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]

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.

If you look to the novels for story examples, the recent Dragons of Deceit had a character who would see omens of things that later she realized it was the goddess Chislev sending her signs all along. It's not a huge stretch to use something like that to allow a cleric to exist.

 

[Pentallion]

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.

I didn't realize your issues trumped the conversation about peoples concern that WOTC might bungle something that's "not an issue" to you despite your need to comment so much on it.

 

[Pentallion]

If you look to the novels for story examples, the recent Dragons of Deceit had a character who would see omens of things that later she realized it was the goddess Chislev sending her signs all along. It's not a huge stretch to use something like that to allow a cleric to exist.

If you look at the Chronicles you realize it is a magnificently huge stretch.

 

[Velderan]

If you look at the Chronicles you realize it is a magnificently huge stretch.

shrug Weis and Hickman have written more material. It'll be ok.

 

[mamba]

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.

Because ‘play any of these 9 races that do not include orcs’ is such a big hurdle to overcome compared to ‘play any of these 10 races including orcs’ is

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

I didn't realize your issues trumped the conversation about peoples concern that WOTC might bungle something that's "not an issue" to you despite your need to comment so much on it.

My view is simply that I feel these concerns about what WotC might do with Dragonlance are unwarranted, or at the very least overblown, especially given the fact that if WotC does choose to do something with the setting that setting purists do not care for, they are fully empowered to reverse that decision at their table.

 

[Maxperson]

Actually...

Tieflings are discussed in the 3e Players Guide to Eberron. Half dragons are too, but the dragon born of Bahamut came late in the 3e line. Both are given a place in Eberron (along with every supplemental race and class that read in 3.5 at the time). Both tieflings and half dragons were in the 3.5 Monster Manual prior to that, and if it exists in D&D... (You know the rest).

Additionally, tieflings, dragonborn and eladrin are in the 4e Eberron Players Guide.

So it has nothing to do with 5e. 3e Eberron had room for those races and 4e Eberron gave them prominent roles. 5e is carrying on the Tradition.

I didn't look at the players guide. In the campaign setting it talks about the races of Eberron and those two are not among them. The player's guide also came out 2 years later so it's essentially a retcon of Eberron and allows races not allowed previously.

 

[Maxperson]

From Ravnica:

Then the options are all there and not even the MtG settings truly restrict races. The DM has to decide not to allow a race for it to be restricted in any 5e setting.

 

[Maxperson]

You dont have to play at his table. Go away and play your orc with a DM who allows it.

Sure. I can. The DM didn't force me to do anything, though, because at the end of the day, neither DM nor players have any power to force the others to do anything. Both are impotent in that way. The DM can set the rules of his game, but the players have to opt(they aren't forced) into those rules or they go opt(are not forced) play somewhere else.

 

[Velderan]

Then the options are all there and not even the MtG settings truly restrict races. The DM has to decide not to allow a race for it to be restricted in any 5e setting.

The wording is a bit different, but it's the same way they handed half-orcs in 1E DLA; they're not known to exist here. There's recent precedent for WotC doing it, so I don't see what the problem would be with them putting in something similar to the Ravnica and Theros D&D setting books in SotDQ.

To be clear, I doubt they will and I think they'll just leave it wide open by not saying anything at all.