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

 

[Faolyn]

Why tell them something that they already know? The D&D Theros setting has things in it that are not in the card setting and vise versa. They are not the same setting.

"The world’s most popular roleplaying game meets the world’s most popular trading card game in this campaign sourcebook, detailing the Magic: The Gathering world of Theros for use in Dungeons & Dragons."

Mythic Odysseys of Theros | Dungeons & Dragons

Learn more about Mythic Odysseys of Theros from Dungeons & Dragons.

dnd.wizards.com

Of course, you are the guy who kept insisting that just because 15 demigods in previous editions had been made into full-fledged gods in 5e, it didn't mean that any demigods had been made into full-fledged gods.

You know, your brain won't actually explode and kill you if you admit you were wrong about something.

No. No they were not dead serious with serious consequences. This is a fact. There were serious real world issues that he was getting across to the readers in a silly, humorous way, but Discworld itself was not serious.

And you know that they didn't memorize the spell more than once how?

And you know they did how?

Not so much.

Fine. Prove it. Create D&Discworld. Make it work. Prove us all wrong.

 

[Maxperson]

"The world’s most popular roleplaying game meets the world’s most popular trading card game in this campaign sourcebook, detailing the Magic: The Gathering world of Theros for use in Dungeons & Dragons."

The bold part says that it's made for D&D and anyone who has looked at the card set(the MtG setting) and the D&D book, knows that there are major differences between the two.

You know, your brain won't actually explode and kill you if you admit you were wrong about something.

When I'm wrong I do.

And you know they did how?

That's how magic works as you've admitted. Later on if they do something like cast spells more than once with no further explanation, we must use what we do know to explain it. Occam's Razor says that I am correct here as the simplest explanation is the ability to memorize a spell more than once.

Fine. Prove it. Create D&Discworld. Make it work. Prove us all wrong.

I've already explained how easily it could be done here in this thread.

 

[Micah Sweet]

not to most of us... I would not accept it.

You can't claim "most of us". Only you and people you have personally received this perspective from. I guess you could have conducted a poll, but "most" is still an unacceptable stretch.

 

[Micah Sweet]

As far as I can see, the argument is over whether WotC will state that a campaign can only run with classic DL rules, or whether they don't mention those at all and everything is up for grabs. There's very little discussion at all concerning the sane middle ground, of mentioning the classic rules, but stating that it can be run either that way or not, depending on what those playing the adventure want.

I would be happy with your sane middle ground.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's a different system, to be sure, but it's the same sort of aesthetics.

I mean, somewhat? But I'd say that this very discussion is an example of how the aesthetics are significantly different enough that it's not that different to adapting an MtG setting or the like. Sure, you could choose to do X or Y, but there's nothing about being a D&D setting that inherently means you "must" or that automatically makes huge sense to make it into a kitchen sink if it was previously less broad.

Nothing competes harder against itself than a whole of bunch of kitchen sinks. There's some truth that people want to be able to use most of their books with something, but at least in my experience, which I don't think is so crappy as to be worth be completely dismissing, most people are fine if there are certain bits from those books they can't use in a specific setting. It doesn't cause a huge upset. It doesn't shock people. It's taken as read, taken for granted.

I'm not saying every setting should be restrictive, but I do think if you make all or most settings kitchen-sink anything-goes settings, that's absolutely the best way to "compete against yourself".


On a slightly different note, the expectations players come with to a setting are important. If people know X setting means Y subset of races or classes, and you say "I'm running X setting", you don't create a problem, because every good-faith person coming to join that group knows it means Y subset, and they're not going to be put out if you don't increase Y.

Whereas if you have no restrictions on settings by default, it becomes much harder for the DM to say "I'm running X setting, but I'm only allowing Y subset of races or classes". People are drastically more likely to come in semi-bad-faith, i.e. intending to argue with it, or in good faith just be surprised or not really understand, and maybe want to "debate you" on it, which when you're putting as much effort into a game as you have to in 5E D&D - one of the highest DM-side effort RPGs currently in the mainstream - doesn't feel great at all.

It's much easier to go broad from a narrow base, than narrow from a broad base, in this sense. You also don't need the language to be very strong. Just a suggested default with no particular reason not to go beyond that is still helpful.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Really, it's a nothingburger except to point out a campaign with "no clerics/magic healing" effectively neuters a good 70% of the game, and such restrictions (without something to compensate for the loss) tend to cause massive problems over the life of the campaign.

I wonder, would a 4e game set before the Return of the Gods still allow a Warlord's martial healing? If not, why not?

Clerics and magical healing are 70% of the game? I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There's very little discussion at all concerning the sane middle ground, of mentioning the classic rules, but stating that it can be run either that way or not, depending on what those playing the adventure want.

Well I suggested pretty much exactly that earlier, that you have a "this is the how the classic way is" approach suggested, and then you say "but you can just ignore this if you like", and apparently that was too extreme?

 

[Micah Sweet]

If it was 4e, sure. There's no warlord in 5e yet. Some day hopefully. Along with my psion.

Level Up's marshal would actually work great in a Dragonlance game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Really, it's a nothingburger except to point out a campaign with "no clerics/magic healing" effectively neuters a good 70% of the game, and such restrictions (without something to compensate for the loss) tend to cause massive problems over the life of the campaign.

I don't think that's even a remotely justifiable claim in 5E.

There are people out there running all-martial campaigns, and they're not having big problems because of HD-based healing and Short Rests. Hell, there are groups in other campaigns who access to magical healing, but use it very little, because of HD-based healing. Healing inside combat, aside from to "yo-yo" people is extremely ineffective in 5E until you get to the point where you can cast Heal, because it's very difficult to deliver enough healing to a PC to "keep them up" in 5E, as monsters do extremely large amounts of damage relative to HP - most "appropriate-level" heals before Heal only give back enough to add 1 hit from a typical level-appropriate monster (which often has multiple attacks), which is often worse, tactically, than just attacking or using the same spell slot to debuff, summon, nuke, etc. This has been discussed and math'd out at some length previous.

As a result most magical healing in 5E (specifically) is post-combat (again until you get Heal).

I'm not saying "Dragonlance needs to not have Clerics!" or the like, I think Clerics are fine, just come up with some excuse, but that's a really strange and extreme claim.

 

[Maxperson]

Level Up's marshal would actually work great in a Dragonlance game.

I don't know it. I tried to get my group to be open to Level Up, but the most influential(stubborn(other than me)) member of the group likes 5e's simplicity. All I have is the Monstrous Menagerie, since monsters are what I control.