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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[Scribe]

More generally, the question of whether humans flourish under conditions of order, or of individuality; and whether the proper unit of analysis for flourishing is the society or the individual (and how those two are connected), does not have a non-controversial answer.

And that is a question that could be explored via an RPG, in which Alignment is a meaningful mechanical portion.

I'll now enter the waiting period for 5e Planescape...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'm not sure I can agree, regarding animalistic.

These are D&D Dragons. They have been highly intelligent for as long as I can remember. Shape shifting, is simply part of their tool kit?

Dragons are not simple beasts, at least in my games.

yes but yiu said popular out oD&D... i dont see spell casting masterminds alot outside of D&D

 

[Scribe]

yes but yiu said popular out oD&D... i dont see spell casting masterminds alot outside of D&D

OK, I think I follow you now.

If you assumption stands, then keeping alignment in wont matter anyway in this scenario, as the players are not even thinking of "D&D Dragons" they are thinking of bestial creatures only fit for killing.

Which is certainly "A" way to play the game, and "A" way for players to frame a Dragon in their minds, but its certainly not an accurate reflection of "D&D Dragons" by default as per the MM of Fizbans, and certainly not how I would run my game, or world.

Long story short however, this again is not a failure of Alignment, but I dont want to go pointing fingers.

 

[Faolyn]

That is completely up to the DM and Players though. As it should be. Sure you can have expectation, but you can then subvert that expectation, lean into it, use those expectations to ones advantage or anything in between.

I suppose I must ask why there should be an expectations to begin with. Why should "goblins are evil" be the norm and "goblins aren't always evil" be an unexpected subversion?

How does this make anyone's game better? The only explanation I can see is, it's easier for people to write "you're attacked by goblins" rather than "you're attacked by murderous bandits, who happen to be goblins."

Granted, I do not expect either of you to give any quarter on this, and as you both know, I'll never agree with the desire to remove Alignment from the game, but there is no flaw here, no problem.

The DM can set expectations, you have your Session 0 I assume to do just that.

Sure, of course one can do that. At my table, it's by default assumed there are no Always Evil races, because we all find such things incredibly boring.

But the books have that as the default, and writes each creature's entry as if it were true. It is literally a ton of work to try to make an Evil creature not-evil because it basically involves rewriting the creature's entire entry.

Seriously. Go read the entries for chromatic dragons, for harpies, for goblins, for ogres. Now imagine you are a new or inexperienced DM. What, in those entries, suggests that those creatures can be used as anything other than evil monsters?

Yet, I have to be denied what I want, or go through and update everything, and then provide "this is X, that is Y, this is Z, that is A" in MY Session 0.

That is literally what you want everyone else to do, though. You say so above. You want the rest of us go through the effort of having to completely rewrite monsters and subvert tropes just so you can say "you're attacked by goblins" and have that be enough.

So why is it fair for us to have to do the work but not fair for you to have to do the work?

 

[HotUser777]

So like that girl..

 

[Scribe]

I suppose I must ask why there should be an expectations to begin with. Why should "goblins are evil" be the norm and "goblins aren't always evil" be an unexpected subversion?

I mean its been about a year since we have discussed this maybe? Do we need to hash it out again?

That is literally what you want everyone else to do, though.

No, it isnt.

"This is a game in Eberron. Leave your expectations at the door. You may encounter a friendly Mind Flayer, a bloodthirsty Halfling, and a noble benefactor who happens to be a Black Dragon! Come in with no assumptions!"

Contrast that, with me adding back alignment to every piece of work Wizard's releases, across every stat block.

Seems comparable...

 

[Faolyn]

Or, if thats not the type of game you want to play, set expectation appropriately at the Session 0 or, maybe you know, DM the game in a way that they do not default to certain expectations?

That said, yes, what 60+ years of literature, tv, cartoons, comics, whatever, have without a doubt set a cultural expectation in NA, that Black Dragons, are evil.

But, I'm just crazy I guess. 1959...

Oh?

(Although I will admit that I've never seen the movies, but everything I've read about them suggests that Toothless is not evil.)

 

[Scribe]

Oh?

View attachment 267686
(Although I will admit that I've never seen the movies, but everything I've read about them suggests that Toothless is not evil.)

Do we want to stack up references and see which is more common? Since apparently the default for some random group is 'kill that black dragon on sight.'

 

[Aldarc]

Tnother reason is that "law" doesn't, or at least need not, entail stasis. Similarly, freedom and individuality need not entail entropy.

More generally, the question of whether humans flourish under conditions of order, or of individuality; and whether the proper unit of analysis for flourishing is the society or the individual (and how those two are connected), does not have a non-controversial answer.

I admit that I tend to come at Law vs. Chaos from the perspective of ancient mythology, religion, and cultures. In these ancient frameworks, Order was not perceived as stagnancy; instead, Chaos was perceived as stagnancy! Chaos was the primordial nothingness. In many mythological frameworks, establishing Order/Law is what creates the conditions for life to flourish. Chaos was perceived as a cosmic danger because the threat it poses to dragging human civilization and the cosmic order back into that state of primordial nothingness.

 

[Faolyn]

I mean its been about a year since we have discussed this maybe? Do we need to hash it out again?

Way to not actually answer any of my questions!

No, it isnt.

"This is a game in Eberron. Leave your expectations at the door. You may encounter a friendly Mind Flayer, a bloodthirsty Halfling, and a noble benefactor who happens to be a Black Dragon! Come in with no assumptions!"

Contrast that, with me adding back alignment to every piece of work Wizard's releases, across every stat block.

You: have to spend a few minutes writing in two letters to a bunch of monsters, because for whatever reason, you need those two letters to be able to run the monster.

Me: have to completely re-write every single monster entry from the ground up so they actually can be run in good, neutral, and evil ways.

Oh yeah, that's totally comparable.

And you say Eberron. Now go and say the same thing about the Realms or any of the other non-Eberron settings where you not only would have to rewrite the monsters but the entire world to accommodate non-evil monster races. You want orcs to have the same range of alignments as humans, then you also need to rewrite their gods (unless you have a very good reason why orcs would be good or neutral and still only have evil gods), their place in society, their homelands, the way they deal with other races, the way other races deal with them, etc.

It's slightly less of a problem for people who make their own settings--but again, that doesn't help DMs who can't or don't want to worldbuild, and who have nothing but established settings filled with Always Evil monsters as a guideline.

Seriously, why is monster alignment so important to you?