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

 

[mamba]

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.

semantics (and I agree with your portrayal), ultimately you ended up not playing an orc at this DMs table, because he said you couldn’t

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

Right?

It's a bizarre concept. The bulk of D&D players are like 17-29. The main media they consume is chock-full of heavy-duty lore that you're expected to internalize extremely quickly. Every show aimed at that age group is just full of piles of lore. And 30-45 is mostly watching and reading the same stuff.

EDIT - As an aside, like, I have a significantly younger sister, and she's never been into nerdy stuff much, but she has been into the MCU since it existed, and really enjoyed the Watchmen TV show too, and I was absolutely blown away by how she and her friends absolutely knew like Watchmen (the comics) minutiae, stuff I'd forgotten despite having read it several times back in the day, and understood like what seemed to be pretty obscure points about Watchmen comics and the TV show interrelated and stuff. Like younger people? They're good at this stuff. They're at least as good at absorbing lore as we were, maybe better.

It's like how, in the 1990s and earlier 2000s, a lot of TV execs didn't like any kind of fancy SF or fantasy show, because they thought people couldn't and wouldn't keep track of what was going on, they wanted everything introduced incredibly slowly and simplified as much as possible as a result (or just refused to do SF/fantasy shows). And like, maybe if you're talking about people who are over 65 now, and were in their later 40s and 50s then (like the execs!), that was true. But it very soon wasn't true, as things like GoT absolutely proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Now WotC is acting like TV execs from the 1990s. Why? God knows. They're not really that old, even if they are mostly in their early 50s.

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

Same. If they go with that it'll be fine.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

Oh if it wasn't Dragonlance, but say, Dark Sun, a load of people wouldn't be making the same arguments. @GMforPowergamers for example specifically said he supports keeping orcs out of Dark Sun.

The distinction is pretty clear to me:

1) You can make mechanics theoretically portable by not hard-linking them to a strictly setting-specific element. So with the moons of Krynn for Lunar sorcery, you just make so they don't actually track the moon phases, therefore it's no longer hard-linked to Krynn.

vs.

2) The idea that every setting has to be designed a kitchen sink, essentially incorporating all races and classes.

They're pretty separate concepts.

 

[Velderan]

Right?

It's a bizarre concept. The bulk of D&D players are like 17-29. The main media they consume is chock-full of heavy-duty lore that you're expected to internalize extremely quickly. Every show aimed at that age group is just full of piles of lore. And 30-45 is mostly watching and reading the same stuff.

It's like how, in the 1990s and earlier 2000s, a lot of TV execs didn't like any kind of fancy SF or fantasy show, because they thought people couldn't and wouldn't keep track of what was going on, they wanted everything introduced incredibly slowly and simplified as much as possible as a result (or just refused to do SF/fantasy shows). And like, maybe if you're talking about people who are over 65 now, and were in their later 40s and 50s then (like the execs!), that was true. But it very soon wasn't true, as things like GoT absolutely proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

Now WotC is acting like TV execs from the 1990s. Why? God knows. They're not really that old, even if they are mostly in their early 50s.

Same. If they go with that it'll be fine.

The success of GoT breaks so many ideas people seem to have about what D&D can be. I really wish WotC saw that and realized that D&D is much bigger than what they seem to see it as. It certainly would help them reach that billion dollar brand goal a lot quicker.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The success of GoT breaks so many ideas people seem to have about what D&D can be. I really wish WotC saw that and realized that D&D is much bigger than what they seem to see it as. It certainly would help them reach that billion dollar brand goal a lot quicker.

Honestly if I was WotC I'd be working on a retooled (like seriously retooled) Birthright for 1D&D, with more rules on social stuff, manipulation and so on (actual mechanical rules you could rely on), because as much as people tried to say the end of GoT was the end of that kind of thing, the massive success of HotD and so on shows there's still a ton of interest in that kind of thing. D&D isn't the ideal system for it, but it could easily add rules to make it "just about good enough".

 

[Maxperson]

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.

Yep. At this point I have no plans to buy any additional kitchen sink settings. There's just no point.

 

[Maxperson]

they don’t, they can however make you not play an orc, and if this is so important to you that you rather not play, that is your choice (as is which one of the allowed races you pick instead)

No they can't. The DM can say I can't be an orc, but he cannot make me play anything else. I can always opt to leave the game if I'm unhappy with that decision. I have to opt into something other than orc in that campaign.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yep. At this point I have no plans to buy any additional kitchen sink settings. There's just no point.

That's a genuine issue. You only need so many. The value of settings beyond a couple of kitchen sinks really comes from specificity

I think what WotC are maybe trying to do is sell more mechanics-packages that are associated with settings, and adventures which have an attached setting, at least right now, which is distinct from their previous strategy of primarily selling settings which also had some transferrable mechanics etc.

The trouble is, I don't think that's going to work as well as they think, because I don't people are as keen to take mechanics-packages out of settings as they think, and because the recent settings have been very bland and under-detailed, they have very little value as settings, per se. Even Spelljammer has very little in the way of setting details, you're basically buying it for the spaceship combat rules, which are not as transferrable as one might hope.

I mean, Planescape could go either way because of this. Planescape doesn't, inherently, have any real "transferrable mechanics", and it is being presented as a setting, not an adventure with setting elements. Plus most of the Planescape races exist already in 5E (not that they won't be repeated but they won't be a big draw). So maybe they'll actually be accidentally forced to make it an actual setting book with some actual details this time? We can hope. But they might just compress the setting down, and make it mostly bestiary (even thought there aren't that many vital PS monsters not yet covered) and adventure again, which would be hugely disappointing and sadly seems quite likely.

 

[Maxperson]

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.

While there is nothing wrong with holding that view, it is in direct contradiction to 5e's default stance on clerics.

"Clerics are intermediaries between the mortal world and the distant planes of the gods. As varied as the gods they serve, clerics strive to embody the handiwork of their deities. No ordinary priest, a cleric is imbued with divine magic."

"Divine magic, as the name suggests, is the power of the gods, flowing from them into the world. Clerics are conduits for that power, manifesting it as miraculous effects. The gods don't grant this power to everyone who seeks it, but only to those chosen to fulfill a high calling."

"When a cleric takes up an adventuring life, it is usually because his or her god demands it. Pursuing the goals of the gods often involves braving dangers beyond the walls of civilization, smiting evil or seeking holy relics in ancient tombs."

Rightly or wrongly(and I think wrongly), 5e has gone back to divine power coming from the gods and clerics specifically serving a god to get that power.

 

[Maxperson]

semantics (and I agree with your portrayal), ultimately you ended up not playing an orc at this DMs table, because he said you couldn’t

It's not semantics, because forced vs. not forced is literally the difference between night and day. If you say day and I say it's night, it's not a semantical disagreement.