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]

For them not wanting orcs is uninclusive and racist for some reason.

No one has said anything even remotely like that.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

You're not wrong, but at the same time there are plenty of newer D&D players who are unfamiliar with MtG and it didn't stop WotC from protecting the lore with a couple lines of text suggesting a baseline to approach running a Theros or Ravnica campaign. Heck, I legitimately didn't know MtG had lore and thought the different themes released were more of an art direction type of concept. The MtG gift sets I've bought haven't ever come with a book or handout to explain "so this year's Kamigawa release is about..".

2/3rds of the M:tG settings that were given official 5e books are pretty new. Theros was first released in 2013 and Strixhaven came out for M:tG the same year it did for D&D. Older settings tend to need more changes when being updated. And, since the M:tG settings are being published for the first time in a different medium, the changes necessary to convert them are quite different from those required to update Dragonlance and other older settings to 5e.

 

[Velderan]

2/3rds of the M:tG settings that were given official 5e books are pretty new. Theros was first released in 2013 and Strixhaven came out for M:tG the same year it did for D&D. Older settings tend to need more changes when being updated.

I'm not sure how their age relates to them making a few lines of text to protect their lore. Could you expand on that please? I want to make sure I'm not missing an important point you're making.

And, since the M:tG settings are being published for the first time in a different medium, the changes necessary to convert them are quite different from those required to update Dragonlance and other older settings to 5e.

Ultimately, 5E D&D design philosophy makes those conversions pretty easy (relatively speaking) because they just need to ensure mechanically everything in Theros could be used in the Realms, Dragonlance, or Ravenloft without a ton of extra work on the DM's part to shoehorn them in. There is no 1E/2E Dragonlance moon phase system to create and implement for example. They're not forcing spellcasters to track a mana resource system even though it would be more faithful to the source material. That's the 5E design philosophy.

 

[FrozenNorth]

The rule is simple. Divine magic and healing magic is not present in the campaign world until the gods return. If you want to use it, you will need to be patient. Nothing is being "trashed."

I do think it is a perfectly cromulent point that a lot of healing magic in 5e isn’t divine in origin, such as bardic magic, ranger magic and druid magic.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Like always when a former niche product is being marketed to the mass market quality suffers as instead of detailed products you get generic mass produced stuff designed to appeal to the maximum amount of people with only shallow interests.

Yeah, 5e was a total mistake, attempting to reach out both to traditional players and new players. The game certainly suffered from it being easily to find games and from getting new blood and new perspectives in the gsme.

/s.

 

[Ixal]

No one has said anything even remotely like that.

Says the guy who says banning orcs is outdated, including them is part of making Dragonlance for a modern audience and is only ok with banning orcs when it supports a political message you like.

 

[Remathilis]

Ultimately, 5E D&D design philosophy makes those conversions pretty easy (relatively speaking) because they just need to ensure mechanically everything in Theros could be used in the Realms, Dragonlance, or Ravenloft without a ton of extra work on the DM's part to shoehorn them in. There is no 1E/2E Dragonlance moon phase system to create and implement for example. They're not forcing spellcasters to track a mana resource system even though it would be more faithful to the source material. That's the 5E design philosophy.

It fosters continuity of play.

Truth be told, the only thing I'm really interested in is the lunar sorcerer, and not for Krynn but for Spelljammer. If the lunar sorcerer has been explicitly tied to Krynn's moons and some complex moon tracking system, I would have been extremely disappointed and probably not bothered with ordering. The fact that it is completely able to be used alongside a glory paladin, order cleric, and spirit bard is important.

Likewise, running Ravenloft has been a breeze. I told my players the usual books are on the table, along with the dark gifts and PC options from VRGR. And everyone played cool with it. No artificially limited classes or races, no modified spells to track, etc. And none of the flavor from 2e is missing from my 5e game, which really surprised me. It's as if those dozens of modifications didn't add a lot beyond bookkeeping...

 

[Velderan]

It fosters continuity of play.

Truth be told, the only thing I'm really interested in is the lunar sorcerer, and not for Krynn but for Spelljammer. If the lunar sorcerer has been explicitly tied to Krynn's moons and some complex moon tracking system, I would have been extremely disappointed and probably not bothered with ordering. The fact that it is completely able to be used alongside a glory paladin, order cleric, and spirit bard is important.

Likewise, running Ravenloft has been a breeze. I told my players the usual books are on the table, along with the dark gifts and PC options from VRGR. And everyone played cool with it. No artificially limited classes or races, no modified spells to track, etc. And none of the flavor from 2e is missing from my 5e game, which really surprised me. It's as if those dozens of modifications didn't add a lot beyond bookkeeping...

I preordered the D&D Beyond book to have the stat blocks available, I kinda forgot you could buy just sections of a book though. Oops.

On the plus side, I'll skim through the adventure and see if it sounds fun. Schneider has me interested in the mini-scenarios to see how they handle those, makes me wonder if they're similar to the Death House scenario in Curse of Strahd to get players to level 3 where the actual adventure starts. We'll see, if I like it I'll wander down to my local shop and buy the Soth alt cover version because I like the art.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It fosters continuity of play.

Truth be told, the only thing I'm really interested in is the lunar sorcerer, and not for Krynn but for Spelljammer. If the lunar sorcerer has been explicitly tied to Krynn's moons and some complex moon tracking system, I would have been extremely disappointed and probably not bothered with ordering. The fact that it is completely able to be used alongside a glory paladin, order cleric, and spirit bard is important.

Likewise, running Ravenloft has been a breeze. I told my players the usual books are on the table, along with the dark gifts and PC options from VRGR. And everyone played cool with it. No artificially limited classes or races, no modified spells to track, etc. And none of the flavor from 2e is missing from my 5e game, which really surprised me. It's as if those dozens of modifications didn't add a lot beyond bookkeeping...

You're going to buy a $50 book for one subclass? Wouldn't it be better to just buy that subclass on D&D Beyond?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Says the guy who says banning orcs is outdated, including them is part of making Dragonlance for a modern audience and is only ok with banning orcs when it supports a political message you like.

I never brought up political messages and Orcs in this thread, that's all you. And I think the propsed reasons why Dragonlance doesn't have Orcs are either outdated (because Draconians) or nonsensical (because Goblinoids).

And I have never said that this book should include or even mention Orcs. In fact, my argument from the beginning was that mentioning them is a waste of space. I'm not asking WotC to add them in the adventure or anything, I'm just pushing back on the knee-jerk response that people are having to the idea that 5e Dragonlance games can include races that weren't originally intended to exist there.