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

 

[AnotherGuy]

Either you have a lot less RPG-life-experience than you think, or you definitely weren't around in the '90s, like 100%, or you're just not thinking about this very hard.

Because loads of people said stuff like that.

You yourself were JUST TALKING about and praising Dark Sun for god's sake! Loads of people loved it that Paladins were banned, that Clerics were drastically changed and basically turned into a whole different class, that Druids were essentially gone, and so on. Loads of people loved it that the PHB races were entirely deleted and replaced by other races! They were GENUINELY PLEASED. It was exciting. How are you missing that?

And you're saying that never happened? You are I'm afraid, very wrong.

Honestly, I had forgotten this. This is so true. People rejoiced in the differences between settings, particularly when they went against the core. Thank you for the reminder!

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Define recent. Does Theros count as recent? Is this a before or after Tasha's situation, because that definitely seems to be an era shift.

By recent, I was referring to the 3 most recent (Strixhaven, Ravenloft, Spelljammer).

 

[Maxperson]

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.

False Equivalences are false. The Harengon aren't the same as orcs at all. They are not equivalent and while DMs won't assume. Harengon are silly rabbit people from another plane and in an optional book. Orcs are part of pretty much every setting and in the core books.

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

Starting with the information to the DM that they don't exist in the setting other than as visitors.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

By recent, I was referring to the 3 most recent (Strixhaven, Ravenloft, Spelljammer).

The issue here is that all three of those are explicitly kitchen-sinks (in terms of intake of PCs). So none of them would have race-limits by simple logic. Hence they don't even suggest such a thing.

 

[Velderan]

By recent, I was referring to the 3 most recent (Strixhaven, Ravenloft, Spelljammer).

That's some pretty selective cherry picking though. It's one thing if you wanted to omit VGtM or MToF because they've been delisted for sale on D&D Beyond so it's pretty safe to say WotC wants to deemphasize the material they present in favor of newer material, but Theros and Ravnica are both very much so relevant as examples of how WotC approaches design and setting building. Heck, surprisingly the D&D Beyond preview for SotDQ feats and backgrounds has the Feats listed as being campaign specific so they don't seem to be shy about tossing in things to make this unique. Part of me wonders if that's a mistake that won't make it into the book, but we'll find out I guess.

 

[Maxperson]

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

It's not. It's a bad thing to take a world without orcs and make the default for it to have orcs unless the DM removes them, which is what staying silent does. For orcs the default assumption by DMs is that they are present. To make it otherwise it needs to be called out with the language of Theros.

"Aside from humans, the races in the Player's Handbook are unknown on Theros, unless they're visiting from other worlds."

Becomes...

"Orcs are unknown on Krynn, unless they're visiting from other worlds or the DM adds them to Krynn yourself."

 

[ersatzphil]

Honestly, I had forgotten this. This is so true. People rejoiced in the differences between settings, particularly when they went against the core. Thank you for the reminder!

It's kind of wild to me that "there aren't any orcs in Krynn" is the bigger deal than "you get to be a knight of Solamnia" or "you get to be a wizard of High Sorcery".

 

[Velderan]

It's kind of wild to me that "there aren't any orcs in Krynn" is the bigger deal than "you get to be a knight of Solamnia" or "you get to be a wizard of High Sorcery".

It wasn't so much a one or the other thing. It's all of them put together. The people I played 2E Dragonlance with were big Tolkien fans, so removing orcs immediately made it something different to them along with all of the other things DL has.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's kind of wild to me that "there aren't any orcs in Krynn" is the bigger deal than "you get to be a knight of Solamnia" or "you get to be a wizard of High Sorcery".

I mean, I'm not trying to cast aspersions here, but it feels to me like no-one who is keen on Dragonlance at all is complaining about the lack of orcs.

Thus the venn diagram between "people who are complaining about a theoretical lack of orcs on behalf of theoretical players who may or may not theoretically want to play these orcs" and "people who think Knights of Solamnia and/or Wizards of High Sorcery are cool" is just about non-existent.

If this isn't true, please correct me, people.

Also I think Dragonlance is getting treated here with less friendliness than a more respected setting, like say Dark Sun.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

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

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.

Yeah, and in my opinion players ought not to assume they can do whatever they want in every game. A little language expressing what is intended would go a long way.