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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[Faolyn]

We will just have to disagree. No harm, no foul.

And to be clear, they are not my real-world beliefs. They are the beliefs of the creators of the setting and the novel series which formed the bedrock of the settings canon for decades.

Doesn't matter. You still need to ignore them when discussing fantasy religions.

I dont care about the morality of today's PHB. It says very (depressingly) little.

I was talking about the 1e PHB. Or, quite frankly, any PHB's definition.

I'm simply trying to make clear the morality upon which the setting SEEMS to be based to me, has its roots in a few people who were seemingly devout, members of a religion where the Cataclysm is the act of a Pantheon that had Good Gods (and I do disagree that Paladine is a "little g god", he was the head of the Good gods).

He's not a creator god or a nebulous unnamed god-concept. Therefore, he's not a big-G god.

Its a parallel to the Flood, simple as.

Doesn't matter. You still need to ignore the parallel when talking about fictional religions.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Were you raised Mormon? Because I was, in the 80s.

I think this is the thing. I was never a Mormon, but I did used to be a Baptist. For those who have never seen it from the inside, they just can't accept that there are decent rational people (including our parents) for whom the Flood is as real as gravity, and simply cannot be separated out of anything they create.

Really, it's the idea that you can have two boxes, one labelled "religion" and the other labelled "reality" which can be separated, that requires a degree of agnostic double-think. For the person of faith, religion is their reality, just as for the atheist reality is their religion.

Sorry moderators if this is getting too close to discussion religion. Happy to delete this if you think it for the best.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Were you raised Mormon? Because I was, in the 80s.

I was. That doesn't alter the fact that I think the gods of Dragonlance committed an extremely morally reprehensible act and none of them deserve worship or the label "Good".

 

[GMforPowergamers]

My main interest is that I'm an academic political philosopher and, as far as I know, the only participant in this thread who has actual published scholarly work on the morality of violence.

that's great, and if I want a real world view of the philosophy of violence you are the expert... but D&D good and evil are game terms (I don't care if you call them a toothless fluff term or a hard mechanic term they are a term.

My second interest is that I think RPGing benefits from good literary criticism, and the criticism you level at DL is shallow.

okay so now you think an academic level in philosophy makes you a literary expert too... that's interesting that you just threw out a personal (unable to be verified but I will trust you) level of expertise and right away pivoted away from it...

Good criticism might ask about the merits or demerits of a work that embraces the notion of collective divine punishment.

That would be a GREAT literary critic of the novels... but the game doesn't have any riders or special deific carve outs for divine punishment. What we have are game terms of good and evil under alignment and my criticism is about the use misuses and apparent misunderstanding of the idea and concept of there being an objective good in Dungeons and Dragons the game (at least going back to 2e I will not speak of editions before I joined in 1995)

But criticism that disregards the actual content and framing of the work and simply asserts that the work endorses genocide is shallow.

except it does. Now people lob the same critisims at real world holy books. This isn;t that. This isn't some book meant to lead people, or scare people into a morality tail it isn't even a novel (it is BASED on a set of novels that was BASED on a set of adventures in a game/novel version of the snake eating it's own tail)

No one in this thread endorses genocide. Tracy Hickman does not endorse genocide. Nor does he lack the ability to use "good" and "evil" as adjectives of English.

I didn't say Tracy Hickman endorse genocide (although I don't know why we single him out and not Margret Wiess). I thought they made a fun story without thinking threw the cause and effect and did so working backwards (This needs to happen to make that happen so we can have this thing we want in the story) and I am sure the real world notion of

collective divine punishment.

was somewhere either in the back or front of there minds.
Now for a novel that is great. As I have said before I read the first two trilogies with no idea what dungeons and dragons was.
However the problem comes when you put alignments out of game in the rules text and reference them in the grouping. By D&D standards of 5e (I am not going back through minor changes in each edition) a deity of good alignment should not be advocating for or okay with

collective divine punishment.

now, if you want to discus what would happen if any other (because again unless the book calls out an exception for deities there is not one) creature that blows up a town to stop an evil burgermeister being called good, then you and I are pretty done.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

In the world view of older religion, no mortal, is on par with a God, it's an invalid comparison within the context.

now show that in D&D... where is there a carve out where God (or any) listed alignment gets an exception like that.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I don't know how well read you are in political theory. But you might know that in your country there are millions of people locked up by the state. The state asserts, and most of your fellow citizens appear to accept, that this is not kidnapping or torture but justified punishment.

A lot of ink has been spilled in arguments about if, and under what circumstances, an institution like the state gains the authority to punish, and thus becomes different from a private person engaging in kidnap or torture. Similar discussions address things like the difference between police and vigilantes, or soldiers and terrorist militias.

Opinions in these arguments vary widely. But no one who contributes to them seriously thinks that you can just ignore the notion that the state enjoys authority that ordinary citizens do not.

and in a real world philosophy class or political history class or even in a fun debate about these things that is great... D&D is none of these things. D&D has 9 little boxes and 3 of them are good. they are defined and no organization NEEDs one, but if they are listed to have one they are expected to fit the box. If you can find me a carve out for this in any 5e book let me know.

There are also parallel, and sometimes even overlapping, arguments about the nature of divine authority.

not in any D&D book I own... and where there may be a 1e or 2e one I don't own/remember and I am MORE then willing to hear you out on them... I am 98% sure there just IS NOT SUCH ARGUEMNT IN D&D ALIGNMENT.

As I posted just upthread, I have published work that contributes to some of these arguments. While I'm proud of much of it, I don't feel any great need to point you to it: a good first year textbook, or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, will introduce you to the basics if you're interested but unfamiliar.

and no one should read philosophy books to understand things written in a game about makeing believe you are an elf

Nor, in an anonymous internet post, do I intend to tell you whether or not I agree with the moral, political and theological framework within which DL is framed. (My state -Victoria - has an election on today, and I'm not going to tell you how I voted, either.) My point is that the moral, political and theological framework of DL is absolutely transparent and utterly commonplace - especially in your country. And it obviously is one that rests on a theory of punishment that does not equate collective divine punishment to genocide. And it puzzles me that you, @GMforPowergamers and @Levistus's_Leviathan, seem incapable of even recognising that.

BECUSE THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GAME I AM BUYING!!! game. game. game.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The American judicial system is (a) really crappy, and nearly every American knows and understands that (the most recent polls I've seen show that over 90% of Americans believe there should be prison reform), (b) has nothing to do with the argument at hand, and (c) is not controlled by a greater god with the power of a 40th-level cleric/40th-level magic-user who rules over Goodness. So I fail to see what your point is, other than to perhaps say "Americans suck, so it's OK that this fantasy religion also sucks." Which is the definition of whataboutism and is a really bad argument.

it also (and this just occured to me) is a breach of the website rules... we don't talk politics or religon and the only reason for @pemerton to bring it up is to break the rules and maybe get the thread locked.

Now, would you care to answer my question? The one about what it would be called if a mortal wizard spammed meteor strike and killed off everyone in a country and also irreparably damaged the rest of the world in the process.

Anyway, can it be considered just (divine or not) to commit genocide over a thought crime? Because the gods didn't do anything to stop the kingpriest during those many decades he spent gathering his power and killing people in their name, one god made an incredibly half-tuchised attempt to stop him at the very end by sending one emotionally unstable familicide who barely even got halfway there before he turned back, and then the gods only smote the kingpriest after he demanded power--power which, AFAICT, he had no actual way to get.

Also? I am talking about fantasy religions here. I am not talking about how they compare to real-world religions.

he seems to have a problem seperating real world from the frame work of a game for a fantasy one

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Now in terms of dodging with the answer? No, DL is not a 'religion' but its absolutely a setting inspired by a world view and religion that is wildly different from the online morality of 2022.

lets pretend for a moment I take your religion exemption (that you wont find in ANY d&d 5e book by wotc) into account... it STILL doesn't mean that a reimagining in 2022 should not consider 2022 zeitgeist of morality.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

And? So is the Biblical (and many many other Myth/Religion/Creation stories) Flood.

where is that story in D&D by WotC? heck I wont limit you to 5e, go back to '99 to find it

Within the context of the story, its the Flood of the Bible. This isnt ignoring the D&D Alignment. Its perfectly in line with how Alignment was used at the time.

it is NOT in line with how alignment works in 2022

 

[Burnside]

Can we talk about the preludes?

Chapter 2 contains three short prelude I-won't-call-them-adventures. These are meant to be played either one-on-one or with only part of the party in each prelude. There are three preludes: one for cleric characters or others who will be drawing their power from Krynn's newly re-emergent old gods; one for aspirant Mages of High Sorcery; and one for Everybody Else.

I LOVE this prelude idea on paper and love the idea of running short one-on-one or small group sessions with each player before bringing the party together.

Unfortunately - and here is where I start to worry about the quality of this adventure - the first two preludes are very lame and uninspired, and the third is just okay. With such high-stakes to work with: the arrival of divine magic, an elite order of mages testing a possible new member, and the appearance of new unknown monsters, the writers here deliver some really banal and uninteresting stuff, which also offers very little for character to actually DO. Each of these is less than an hour long and worth advancing from level 1 to 2 (in the case of the cleric character, you're basically going to level up after watching a 20 minute cut-scene). If I was the editor, I would have sent at least two of these preludes back to the writers with the note "Not cool enough."

Hopefully, the adventure proper starts off strong in Chapter 3. As a DM, I can already say I would keep the IDEA of doing these three preludes, but would heavily re-work at least 2 of them.