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

 

[Maxperson]

Why? Why does that need to be clear? That's not necessary. It just doesn't need to mention them. None of the recent setting/adventure books mention any of the races and their roles in the setting. The book doesn't need to say anything about them.

I disagree. A failure to mention usually(if typical behavior from these boards is any indication) an assumption of existence. Not mentioning will automatically cause most tables to include them because they don't know any better about the world. The language of Theros should be used for the races that aren't present on the default Krynn. And it's language that they've used before and not just with MtG Settings. The Monster Manual makes use of it with regard to monster alignments.

"The alignment specified in a monster's stat block is the default. Feel free to depart from it and change a monster' s alignment to suit the needs of your campaign."

 

[Remathilis]

What I'm getting here is that WotC's best play is for Schrodinger's Dragonlance; if the 5e book doesn't outright say if orcs* are or aren't on Krynn, then the DM can make that call. A traditionalist DM can hard ban the race. An allowing DM can offer it either as a revised native race or as a planar traveler. As long as the module doesn't confirm or deny the existence of orcs (such as by having orc NPCs) both sides can view themselves as right and have the text support them.

The only losers then would be the ones that want the text to explicitly rule on the debate one way or another.

* Orc here can also stand in for warlocks, drow, lycanthropes, or any other part of the core game that hasn't been traditionally associated with Dragonlance.

 

[Maxperson]

Exactly. I've referenced those books multiple times in this thread as an example of the type of setting building that I'd prefer to see. But there were setting-purists insisting that it needs to mention that the races aren't native to Krynn, for some reason.

Not "for some reason," but because a failure to mention means that the inclusion of those races is assumed. By not using Theros language you are denying the new players, many of whom probably won't think of not including those races, the chance of saying, "Wow! That's cool! Let's not have those races in this setting." Most D&D players started with 5e and probably don't know the limitations of the older Krynn setting.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

had unique mechanics(high sorcery mechanics)

Most of the rest I will let stand as opinion, but Dragonlance was already successful and popular before the setting book was released three years into the product line, after the original novel and module sequence. Prior to that it had used the core rules without unique mechanics.

revolved around finding and using awesome lances that could beat dragons!

I can't remember exactly which module the first dragonlance appeared in, but it was a long way into the 14 module story arc.

 

[Maxperson]

What I'm getting here is that WotC's best play is for Schrodinger's Dragonlance; if the 5e book doesn't outright say if orcs* are or aren't on Krynn, then the DM can make that call.

That's not what will happen though. You aren't going to have most DMs sit down and say to themselves, "It doesn't mention orcs. Does that mean that they are here or not here. Let me decide." Instead most DMs are going to sit down and say, "It doesn't mention orcs and that's probably an oversight, because orcs are everywhere and then they will use them." It's not going to be an informed decision.

The only way you are going to get informed decisions across the board is with language like the MM and Theros. "X is not here by default, but can be there if the DM wants them to be."

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I very much doubt that Dragonlance is successful because of it's limitations. It's not like settings that don't set hard limits are any less popular (FR, Eberron, Planescape).

I'd expect that the main reason that Dragonlance is popular is because of the novels.

True (although personally I didn't like the novels but did like the modules).

But an important feature of the novels was a grounded world that was not stuffed to the gunnels with every kind of monster imageable. That is something it did have in common with Lord of the Rings.

 

[Maxperson]

Most of the rest I will let stand as opinion, but Dragonlance was already successful and popular before the setting book was released three years into the product line, after the original module sequence. Prior to that it had used the core rules without unique mechanics.

I can't remember exactly which module the first dragonlance appeared in, but it was a long way into the 14 module story arc.

The modules aren't all that relevant. Many, if not most people didn't buy them and discover the setting that way. They bought the setting book when it came out and dragonlances were in the book.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I disagree. A failure to mention usually(if typical behavior from these boards is any indication) an assumption of existence.

No, it isn't. There's no reason to assume that Harengon would exist on Dark Sun, but that wouldn't need to be explicitly made clear to be obviously not fitting of Dark Sun's themes.

Not mentioning will automatically cause most tables to include them because they don't know any better about the world. The language of Theros should be used for the races that aren't present on the default Krynn. And it's language that they've used before and not just with MtG Settings.

And Theros also mentions different ways to include other races in the campaign.

The Monster Manual makes use of it with regard to monster alignments.

"The alignment specified in a monster's stat block is the default. Feel free to depart from it and change a monster' s alignment to suit the needs of your campaign."

Which they recently changed to add "usually" before the listed alignments because not enough people actually realized that they were always meant to be flexible.

Not "for some reason," but because a failure to mention means that the inclusion of those races is assumed. By not using Theros language you are denying the new players, many of whom probably won't think of not including those races, the chance of saying, "Wow! That's cool! Let's not have those races in this setting." Most D&D players started with 5e and probably don't know the limitations of the older Krynn setting.

I have never, not once in my life heard anyone say anything remotely similar to "wow! It's cool that X setting goes out of its way to ban Y part of the game! That's awesome!"

But, I have seen the opposite happen several times. I've seen players disappointed that a setting doesn't support a race that they wanted to use for a character idea. I've seen people upset that a DM strongly restricted player options without a good reason.

From my experience, players are way less appreciative of things that restrict their agency than they are of settings that encourage creativity.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The modules aren't all that relevant. Many, if not most people didn't buy them and discover the setting that way.

Unlike you, I am not qualified to speak for "many" people, but I know I discovered the setting first through the modules, then the novels, then the setting book.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Instead most DMs are going to sit down and say, "It doesn't mention orcs and that's probably an oversight, because orcs are everywhere and then they will use them."

. . . How in the world is it a bad thing that DMs would add a race/monster that they like to the world?