Dragonlance Dragonlance Adventure & Prelude Details Revealed

Over on DND Beyond Amy Dallen and Eugenio Vargas discuss the beginning of Shadow of ther Dragon Queen and provide some advice on running it.

Running a Session Zero for Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen

When starting a new adventure, it's a good idea to get on the same page as your party. Here's how to run a session zero for the upcoming Dragonlance adv...

www.dndbeyond.com

This epic war story begins with an invitation to a friend's funeral and three optional prelude encounters that guide you into the world of Krynn. Amy Dallen is joined by Eugenio Vargas to share some details about how these opening preludes work and some advice on using them in your own D&D games.

There is also information on the three short 'prelude' adventures which introduce players to the world of Krynn:

• Eye in the Sky -- ideal for sorcerers, warlocks, wizards, or others seeking to become members of the Mages of High Sorcery.
• Broken Silence -- ideal for clerics, druids, paladins, and other characters with god-given powers.
• Scales of War -- ideal for any character and reveals the mysterious draconians.

The article discusses Session Zero for the campaign and outlines what to expect in a Dragonlance game -- war, death, refugees, and so on.

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[Arnie_Wan_Kenobi]

I have never met anyone who even owned any Taladas materials.

Time of the Dragon was the first boxed set I owned, so yeah, Taladas IS "the D&D world" as far as pre-teen-me was concerned. I STILL pull inspiration from characters from that worldbook.

 

[Micah Sweet]

just some flavor text change to show there are GOOD or at least neutral groups of them in default MM would help

That is an idea I would support.

 

[Faolyn]

That sounds good, but there are a multitude of creatures who could be any alignment but are traditionally depicted as evil, and only a very few official WotC releases in which such a creature can be reasonably included. It is going to be a long, long time before all of them get a turn, and every time you do, you have to make a point of it. It's a nice goal, but not practical in any reasonable amount of time.

I don't think it needs a "reasonable amount of time." All it needs is for some of the races to get switched around.

Adventure location has a general store? It's run by hobgoblins who charge reasonable prices for quality goods. Does the adventure have a side plot with monsters terrorizing a farm? The farmers are orcs. Does the adventure's kingdom have an air force? It's a mixture of aarakocra and harpies who are both equally loyal to the crown. And when they get statted out, they're given Good alignments.

And you can do the same thing in reverse. Ravenloft already has a metallic dragon darklord (and has always had an evil unicorn, Addar). If the adventure has ruthless and cruel bandits or pirates, make them elves or halflings. Make the cheating con-man a dwarf or a gnome.

 

[Reynard]

Time of the Dragon was the first boxed set I owned, so yeah, Taladas IS "the D&D world" as far as pre-teen-me was concerned. I STILL pull inspiration from characters from that worldbook.

That's lovely. To me it is literally throw away death spiral TSR cash grab nonsense. The very last thing DL needed was a subsetting completely disconnected from the story that made the settwhat it was.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think it needs a "reasonable amount of time." All it needs is for some of the races to get switched around.

Adventure location has a general store? It's run by hobgoblins who charge reasonable prices for quality goods. Does the adventure have a side plot with monsters terrorizing a farm? The farmers are orcs. Does the adventure's kingdom have an air force? It's a mixture of aarakocra and harpies who are both equally loyal to the crown. And when they get statted out, they're given Good alignments.

And you can do the same thing in reverse. Ravenloft already has a metallic dragon darklord (and has always had an evil unicorn, Addar). If the adventure has ruthless and cruel bandits or pirates, make them elves or halflings. Make the cheating con-man a dwarf or a gnome.

My point is, there are only a few products WotC puts out where this sort of thing can happen, and they're not going to switch around the heritages for all of them. People have expectations in a fantasy story, and to some degree those need to be met.

I do, however, really like @GMforPowergamers 's idea of providing flavor text to a similar effect in the monster books themselves. Level Up basically did this and it worked swimmingly IMO.

 

[Weiley31]

I mean we have Good black robes right?

i hope so

Do we. Where is that shown?

Last UA I thought.

The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend.

 

[Weiley31]

They were literally a set of platinum disks bound by a golden ring (though the animated movie showed them as weird CD-ROMs on a spindle).

I like to view them as Gold/Platinum LP Vinyl Records.

 

[Weiley31]

I mean you can do that, but can you punch out a meteor?

In One Piece? Without question.

googles...

Ah, I see. A good reminder for why I am against multiverse crossover shenanigans and support canon.

It's Shonen.

If you're not punching out Meteors and gods after a certain Arc, are you even Shonen Protaging correctly?

 

[Weiley31]

In before The One Piece is Real.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

My biggest gripe with DL has always been its ridiculous interpretation of alignment. It's basically trying to shoehorn Moorcock's Law and Chaos into D&D's Good and Evil. Hearing Paladine, the chief God of Good, who lives on a cosmic plane of Goodness, inhabited by good celestials, escorted by good dragons, and surrounded by the souls of his good followers, say that having too much good around is really bad, is seriously dumb stuff.

Warning: Beige Alert!

I hate storylines that profess "Good and Evil must come to a balance, it's healthy for the world". I dislike the fact that Star Wars uses this, I think Dragonlance shouldn't have it, and don't enjoy this trope in the slightest. I think it's a bad moral for all stories to have, especially in interactive mediums (TTRPGs and video games). It reeks of "you must be tolerant of the intolerant" and is similar to real world excuses for why the status quo can't get any better and why bigots must be catered to in pop culture. People that profess "Good and Evil are equally valid moral opinions and must be balanced" aren't a force for good in the setting. They're not even neutral. They're actively taking the side of evil and enabling them. Dragonlance's "Neutral" gods are evil. They're complicit in an apocalypse that caused probably millions of innocents to die and they actively take the side of evil if good is trying to stop them. They're just slightly less evil than the "conquer the world" gods. The Lady of Pain is Lawful Evil, not Lawful Neutral, regardless of what the books say. She murders people just for worshipping her. People that think that "the force must be balanced" are bad and wrong in the context of the world.

However, I will admit that it has a very handy use in the world. Saying "Good and Evil must be balanced" is a really easy excuse for why things never get better in the world and to always have plot hooks for the PCs to come along as "restore the balance". It's a quick justification for why things are messed up in the world and why the story needs to happen.

That doesn't mean that I like it. I think it's an outdated trope of questionable morals at best, and that media in general would be better without it. There are better ways to justify why there's always conflict in the setting. "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom" is just one example. You can provide infinite story hooks without compromising the morals of the so called "neutral" characters in the setting. Or, if you want to have the focus be on a balance between two different metaphysical concepts, Law and Chaos are way better. And there are tons of examples in support of this (the Blood War, Mistborn, etc). Those actually make sense in needing "balance" and it isn't morally reprehensible to want a balance between those two extremes.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. Filthy neutrals.