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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[pemerton]

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.

I tend to find Law vs Chaos ill-defined in the D&D corpus. Your approach is certainly one that makes sense. In my 4e play, the players tended to see Law in terms of form - essential for life etc - but also (in excess) stasis, as might be implicit in a certain Platonic conception of form(s). Chaos was taken by them as encompassing both entropy and formless transformation (like the Elemental Chaos).

I didn't see it to be my job as GM to tell them whether they were right or wrong, nor to adjudicate disagreements where one PC was more committed than another to order as necessary for wellbeing.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I tend to find Law vs Chaos ill-defined in the D&D corpus.

back in 2e and 3e I a few times tried to do lords of order vs lords of chaos and had themes based on a mix of the vorlon/shadow thing from Babylon 5 and the LoO and LoC from DC comics... so I tried to play with it. I much prefer it to a good/evil for balance but I have done both.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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."


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?


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?

Its clear to me that  someone is going to have to do the work. For me, the Level Up Monstrous Menagerie is written the way I want,, so there's no problem.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In an extreme form, yes. For non-extreme characters in the game, no.

Yes. I did. I specifically mentioned that Chromatic Dragons are as likely to be good as they are evil and that the same applies to Metallic Dragons when introducing the world for the first time. Either they forgot or, like I said earlier, old habits die hard. They saw a dragon and their gut reaction was to kill it.

Why can't you believe me when I've said that alignment has negatively affected my campaigns? It has made me do more work than I normally would have and the assumptions that come with alignment have caused several arguments between PCs that have ruined the fun for entire sessions.

In the case you're describing, since you explained things to your players beforehand, if they still act out of old belief systems, I have to say at that point it's on them.

I absolutely believe that D&D alignment is a problem for you. The main issue it seems to me, however, is that your players might have a different take on alignment than you have. That's not a problem the books will solve.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Dude, knock it off. This is the dumbest and most obvious strawman I've seen on this site in a while. You know exactly what I'm talking about, and this is not it. This is not "won't someone think of the wellfare of the imaginary creatures". It's "the game's stupid alignment assumptions made me do more work in an Eberron campaign than I should have".

I don't care about that NPC that they killed. I wasn't attached to the character in any way. I was just annoyed that the plot hook that I thought was cool was ruined because my players' gut reaction to "black dragon" was "MURDER IT!"

No one is judging anyone else's morality for killing black dragons. I'm not offended that my PCs killed it. Just annoyed that I had to do more work to include that part of the campaign.

Do you expect the books to fix your player's gut reactions, when your own request for them to be more open-minded didn't do the job?

 

[Micah Sweet]

back in 2e and 3e I a few times tried to do lords of order vs lords of chaos and had themes based on a mix of the vorlon/shadow thing from Babylon 5 and the LoO and LoC from DC comics... so I tried to play with it. I much prefer it to a good/evil for balance but I have done both.

I support anyone making good use of Babylon 5.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I support anyone making good use of Babylon 5.

my greatest strength as a DM of 20 somethings, and my greatest weakness DMing 40 somethings is my ability to take the best parts of 80s and 90s shows and use them as my plots

 

[Pentallion]

seems like "In my game I have always evil creatures" is easier to get players around then "In my game I don't have evil alignment races and here is my list of changes"

In Runequest, there are no alignments, who is evil depends on who you talk to and everyone games in Glorantha just fine. It wouldn't be a bad thing if D&D got rid of alignments.

 

[Faolyn]

In Runequest, there are no alignments, who is evil depends on who you talk to and everyone games in Glorantha just fine. It wouldn't be a bad thing if D&D got rid of alignments.

In most games, there are no alignments.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

In the case you're describing, since you explained things to your players beforehand, if they still act out of old belief systems, I have to say at that point it's on them.

It is on them. But the alignment system is to blame, too. This problem would almost definitely not have happened if D&D didn't have the "chromatic dragons are evil, metallic dragons are good" nonsense.

I absolutely believe that D&D alignment is a problem for you. The main issue it seems to me, however, is that your players might have a different take on alignment than you have. That's not a problem the books will solve.

Yes, it will. If the books got rid of alignment, then debates about what each alignment means would stop at most tables. Tons of games don't have anything remotely like an alignment system, and they work perfectly well. Alignment can, and has, ruined entire sessions with absolutely no benefit in my experience.

Do you expect the books to fix your player's gut reactions, when your own request for them to be more open-minded didn't do the job?

I expect the books to make my job as a DM easier. Not harder. Alignment makes it harder for my table, and based on my discussions online, many others'.