D&D 5E Dragon Talk on Tyranny of Dragons

[Parmandur]

?!

That was staring me in the face THIS WHOLE TIME?!

man I just didn't see it

Well cool.

?!

That was staring me in the face THIS WHOLE TIME?!

man I just didn't see it

Well cool.

I don't think they ever particularly tried to hide that: similar to how PotA riffs on the Temple of Elemental Evil or Out of the Abyss works with some DQ material.

 

[pukunui]

As much as it does have some strong DL themes, the Tyranny of Dragons story is also a believable follow-on from some old FR lore.

In the 2e Cult of the Dragon book, it talks about how members of the Church of Tiamat have been trying to infiltrate and usurp the cult pretty much since its inception. In the 3e Dragons of Faerûn book, it talks about how Tiamat has all these grand plans ... which ultimately got disrupted by the Spellplague.

Having the Cult of the Dragon become focused on living dragons instead of undead ones and obsessed with bringing Tiamat into the world makes sense in that context. (It was just poorly conveyed in the adventures themselves.)

 

[Parmandur]

As much as it does have some strong DL themes, the Tyranny of Dragons story is also a believable follow-on from some old FR lore.

In the 2e Cult of the Dragon book, it talks about how members of the Church of Tiamat have been trying to infiltrate and usurp the cult pretty much since its inception. In the 3e Dragons of Faerûn book, it talks about how Tiamat has all these grand plans ... which ultimately got disrupted by the Spellplague.

Having the Cult of the Dragon become focused on living dragons instead of undead ones and obsessed with bringing Tiamat into the world makes sense in that context. (It was just poorly conveyed in the adventures themselves.)

Oh, yeah, it works on it's own terms (with a little elbow grease). But also not extremely difficult to translate into a DL Adventure, as HotDQ even includes some help in doing.

 

[Parmandur]

As much as it does have some strong DL themes, the Tyranny of Dragons story is also a believable follow-on from some old FR lore.

In the 2e Cult of the Dragon book, it talks about how members of the Church of Tiamat have been trying to infiltrate and usurp the cult pretty much since its inception. In the 3e Dragons of Faerûn book, it talks about how Tiamat has all these grand plans ... which ultimately got disrupted by the Spellplague.

Having the Cult of the Dragon become focused on living dragons instead of undead ones and obsessed with bringing Tiamat into the world makes sense in that context. (It was just poorly conveyed in the adventures themselves.)

So, a little research has turned up the interesting tidbit that the Cult of the Dragon was introduced in Dragon 110 in an article by Ed Greenwood that was opened up with the frame of "hey, you can use these guys to put the DL modules in your Homebrew campaign without interplant travel!" which is precisely what ToD ended up doing:

The series of DRAGONLANCE mod-
ules and novels from TSR, Inc., have given
us a detailed campaign setting dominated
by warring dragons: the world of Krynn.
This world is an admirable setting in which
to begin an AD&D® game campaign, or a
nice place to visit (via interplanar spells)
for player characters in an established cam-
paign.

Krynn is otherwise rather difficult to
integrate into an ongoing AD&D campaign.
It is too polarized a world for casual adven-
turing, and comes complete with its own
gods, powerful magic, and large-scale strife-
in-progress. For those DMs who like their
dragons less dominant, but still fancy some
sort of dragonkind organization or power
group (rather than using dragons as a suc-
cession of isolated, unsuspecting targets), I
present some details of the mysterious Cult
of the Dragon, from my Forgotten Realms
campaign.

Less powerful thus, necessarily more
secretive than the forces at work in
Krynn, this group of human dragon-
worshipers (and a splinter group or inde-
pendent sect, the devil-worshiping Dragon
Lords who serve Tiamat directly) has been
one of the behind-the-scenes continual
adversaries for a group of quite energetic
players over the last five years or so. There
is no reason its activities could not serve as
a similar incentive to challenging adven-
tures in other campaigns.

 

[darjr]

And the circle is closed

 

[Parmandur]

And the circle is closed

The wheel turns, at any rate.

 

[Charlaquin]

Agreed! I really enjoyed running it at the time. Yes, I changed a few things, but who doesn’t?

Most new DMs.

 

[Xenonnonex]

That is ridiculous. The starter set was first and was fantastic. And the adventure wasn’t as bad as the falling sky’s folk would like everyone to believe.

Not really no. The Starter Set was first and fantastic. And I am not talking about the first 5e adventure. I am talking about Hoard of the Dragon Queen. The adventure that very nearly killed 5e. The adventure that had completely forgettable npcs and fights. And was so on the rails that any deviation from the rails would completely break the adventure.

Sure people try to justify the encounter building rules were not out when they wrote the adventure. But the adventure writing itself was just so very bad.

 

[Xenonnonex]

Agreed! I really enjoyed running it at the time. Yes, I changed a few things, but who doesn’t?

The quality of an adventure is based on how well it stands on its own merits.

 

[gyor]

If this sells well, I wonder if they do this to Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage and if so what extras would they put in it?