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]

Most of the time, the bad guys are actively being evil and the PCs are trying to stop them.

The game still condones it, because it happens all the time in pretty much every game.

In D&D, at least, people who have a Good alignment aren't supposed to be committing murder, theft, kidnapping, etc. They're supposed to fight against evil beings who are being actively evil and to find non-evil ways to deal with beings who can be redeemed, and they're supposed to show mercy. Going by the actual alignment rules, a whole lotta PCs really should have their alignments changed to neutral or evil--its just that most tables don't bother.

The problem is that theft and murder are legal terms, not moral ones. Not all kinds of killing are morally wrong or evil, and in D&D where morality is objective, killing evil creatures who are going to hurt others in the future and taking what's there can be both moral and good.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I don't care. If you remember so little about a setting, then maybe do not start arguing about stuff you have no idea of, never knew or misremember. Yet here you are.

how is this not a rules infraction for "making it personal"

 

[mamba]

how is this not a rules infraction for "making it personal"

I guess we will find out. Saying you know little seems not all that personal to me. Not more than saying 'you are ignoring X', it's just a whole lot of X.

By all means, continue your discussion, didn't want to derail it

 

[Faolyn]

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

You said, and I quote:

I don't understand these posts.

So excuse me for taking that to mean that you don't understand these posts.

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.

I literally don't care about how 1e alignments mesh with real world philosophies. I care about having an alignment system that doesn't claim genocide is not an evil 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.

They "imposed retribution" via genocide. Unless you think that mountain just spanked everyone and sent them to bed without supper?

It does not matter if the gods are claiming it as retribution. They dropped a mountain on a country and it not only killed everyone in that country, it seriously and irreparably harmed people across the world. And no amount of pride--which is a thoughtcrime--is worth genocide.

Because you're saying that the gods did all this because the kingpriest was prideful. Not because he committed murder. Not because he was bigoted. Not for any other reason. But because he demanded that the gods let him destroy evil.

From the DL wiki:

Beldinas invoked the gods to allow him to destroy all evil by allowing him to become a god. He was very driven by pride, wrath, envy, and even fear into doing this. The gods were furious with his demand, and hurled the fiery mountain down upon the city of Istar. The Cataclysm destroyed all traces of the once-mighty empire, and Beldinas was killed in the gods' awesome power.

Words cannot describe how horrified I am at those gods.

And this "good and evil need to be in perfect balance" is a stupid trope that needs to die in a fiery mountain.

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

If I were to run an AD&D game and the paladin tried to kill someone for being prideful, that paladin would fall so fast as to burn up in the atmosphere.

 

[Stormonu]

Side note: in DL12 - Dragons of Faith, the end boss known as the King of the Deep is created from the soul fragments of former Istar priests, and located in the undersea ruins of Istar. Considering their petrified death statue forms are Chaotic evil and the King of the Deep is Chaotic Evil, I think it's safe to say that some point along the line the Kingpriest and his inner circle devolved into evil.

 

[Maxperson]

I literally don't care about how 1e alignments mesh with real world philosophies. I care about having an alignment system that doesn't claim genocide is not an evil act.

And there isn't one in D&D that does. That was easy.

They "imposed retribution" via genocide. Unless you think that mountain just spanked everyone and sent them to bed without supper?

Show me where anything in Dragonlance claimed that the Cataclysm was a good act.

 

[Maxperson]

Side note: in DL12 - Dragons of Faith, the end boss known as the King of the Deep is created from the soul fragments of former Istar priests, and located in the undersea ruins of Istar. Considering their petrified death statue forms are Chaotic evil and the King of the Deep is Chaotic Evil, I think it's safe to say that some point along the line the Kingpriest and his inner circle devolved into evil.

Yeah. This idea that he was somehow good is a silly one in my opinion.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The problem is that theft and murder are legal terms, not moral ones.

these arent 'moral words' or 'legal words' these are words.

my buddy has this magic ore that interacs in weird magic ways (in game we the players don't fully understand it) one way we have seen is that when I cast a spell near it, it absorbed the magic, radiated it and as such caused a minor chain reaction and a cave in...

in theory (since we don't know how to detect it yet) I could throw a burning hands at a wight attacking me and cause a chain reaction destroying a town (I assume it would need to be a lot of the stuff)...

now since my intent was good, my act was good/neutral depending on view point (defense of self and/or other) and I killed a whole bunch of people... you can argue that i didn't MURDER anyone but I KILLED them etheir way...

so is your argument that the gods did not intent to kill innocents and it was a mistake?


earlier you put up an idea that you were in a dungeon for no reason, sneaking around found some creatures, killed them before they could act (surprise) and they turned out to be a vampire or ghoul... You were not protecting self or other was THAT murder? DOes it matter they were undead if you were not aware of that fact? NOW that is worth discussing.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Yeah. This idea that he was somehow good is a silly one in my opinion.

escept when the god dragon said HE WAS GOOD... in his example of TOO MUCH GOOD

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

okay, so the king priest was super evil (in the end) and the good gods balance those scales by doing an evil act then leaving?

I think the point we're missing here is that Good and Evil are like positive and negative numbers respectively, and the acts of the gods are multiplication rather than addition. Paying Good unto Good only results in more Good, whereas paying Evil unto Evil conveniently also results in more Good.

It's a Win Win. That's how Balance works, right?