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

 

[pemerton]

Sigh.

<snip>

Understand now?

You seem to think I've having trouble understanding. I'm not. I'm just not agreeing with you.

D&D uses alignments. Back when Dragonlance was first published, in 1e, alignment was pretty important. A paladin could fall if he spent too much time hanging around the thief. Changing alignment was a bad thing that docked XP.

Yes. I bought my copies of the AD&D PHB and DMG in the first half of the 1980s. One of the interesting features of the way that Gygax defines good is that it encompasses the full range of values - life, wellbeing, freedom, truth, beauty are the main ones he mentions - and the full range of moral conceptions - Benthamism (greatest good of the greatest number), human rights, virtue, wellbeing. He doesn't use alignment to distinguish between modernist, rights-based conceptions of good and more theological conceptions that emphasise humility before and obedience to the divine.

This is relevant to understanding the place of paladins in the alignment system: they must be LG, and they seek to "take service or form an alliance with lawful good characters, whether players or not, who are clerics or fighters (of noble status)" (PHB p 24). Thus, while the DMG (p 23) tells us that LG holds that "good is best defined as whatever brings the most benefit to the greater number of decent, thinking creatures and the least woe to the rest" - Benthamism, which is hostile to all theological and aristocratic obscurantism - the PHB also assures us that being a knight of the round table, serving a divinely-anointed king and upholding the feudal order.

Alignment - at least in its good vs evil dimension - doesn't purport to draw the distinctions that, in the real world, are fundamental to political argument and conflict. It doesn't purport to settle the dispute between the ancien regime and the French revolutionaries.

If the gods of Dragonlance claim to be Good (upper-case Good) but perform Evil acts (upper-case Evil), such as genocide, then either the setting has a screwed-up morality or the writers are trying to claim that genocide is a good act.

Nonsense.

The authors of the setting are not presenting the gods as committing genocide. They're presenting the gods as imposing retribution - collective punishment for the sin of pride.

This is a well-known moral conception, consistent with the paladin-esque approach to LG set out in the AD&D PHB.

 

[pemerton]

The fall of Numenor isn't exactly the same, though. It was the Morgoth worshippers that died when Numenor sank, not the innocents. The faithful made it off the island on ships and survived.

Some did - those who sailed with Elendil et al. I don't think we can be confident that everyone who died was an evil person. Eg children born to wicked people who had not yet reached their own moral maturity.

 

[AnotherGuy]

No, I believe that selecting someone by random chance at least has a chance of coming up with someone decent, honest and wise.

Whereas a popularity contest stacks the deck against someone with those characteristics becoming ruler.

Okay, so in essence Aragorn being selected by chance if I'm reading you right.
But surely you do not see that (the former option) as something sustainable. I mean who would select the next "king"?

 

[pemerton]

More to the point, the Valar do not claim to be objectively "good".

They are angels. They bring to life the vision of Eru.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Okay, so in essence Aragorn being selected by chance if I'm reading you right.
But surely you do not see that (the former option) as something sustainable. I mean who would select the next "king"?

My point is, I have no moral objection to hereditary monarchy as a form of government. The ruler is selected by accident of birth, and has just as much chance of being good or bad as anyone else. I do not believe democracy is morally superior.

Most of the time, you get bad rulers either way.

 

[mamba]

The people supported the Kingpriest. It's not like he was some fascist dictator that held the people under his thumb. The people loved him.

what difference does being loved make to whether he was a fascist dictator - because that is exactly what he was

Loved him so much that they committed numerous atrocities and genocides (attempting to kill all non-humans, all wizards) over the decades and no one so much as batted an eye.

reintroduce slavery, invented mind-crime (think noncompliant thoughts, get punished)

Yeah, doesn’t sound fascist at all

These are the people that you're saying are innocent.

At any point in that century, they could have walked away. They could have stopped. Someone could have stepped up and said, "Hey, y'know what? We're the baddies." But no one did. Everyone deliberately, intentionally and with free will followed the Kingpriest. And not just a few people in a single city. No... the entire population of Ansalon supported the Kingpriest. At least the human population anyway.

others too, just less enthusiastic, but they cannot afford not to in their eyes - but then not standing up to Hitler does not really make you all that good either, even if it was the ‘smart’ thing to do

 

[mamba]

My point is, I have no moral objection to hereditary monarchy as a form of government. The ruler is selected by accident of birth, and has just as much chance of being good or bad as anyone else. I do not believe democracy is morally superior.

Most of the time, you get bad rulers either way.

in one of the two that is your fault, and you can fix it in a few years. If you think democracy is not morally superior to what Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Iran or North Korea have, I hope you do not vote.

 

[mamba]

Did Fizban need the permission of the other gods to cast the spells he did during the War of the Lance?

did they kill all bad people?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

in one of the two that is your fault, and if you think democracy is not morally superior to what Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Iran or North Korea have, I hope you do not vote.

They are terrible. I could give you a list of democratically elected leaders who were/are just as terrible, but that would probably go against the no-politics rule of the forum.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

did they kill all bad people?

In a way. He helped the good guys beat the bad guys.