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]

And yet even the new book doesn't really change anything on that score. The gods are still arranged as Good, Neutral, and Evil, and the gods of Good still participated in the Catclysm. How do you explain that?

Well, since I haven't read the book to know how they wrote it or how they described the Gods of Good, I can't say. But since it's based on an earlier property, what I said still stands: a skewed idea of good and evil, and the modern authors either not wanting to or not being allowed to change it, with the latter being somewhat more likely.

 

[ersatzphil]

And yet even the new book doesn't really change anything on that score. The gods are still arranged as Good, Neutral, and Evil, and the gods of Good still participated in the Catclysm. How do you explain that?

I'm going to just keep beating the big 'ole Leibnitz drum:
The problem of Theodicy

edit: With my honest apologies to @Micah Sweet , I only mean to bring up the fact that a lot of the questions people bring up over and over with regard to alignment have been considered by philosophers for an awful long time, and they've come up with some interesting answers over the years. I'm often hesitant to bring it up, because it often trends quite close to theology, which is an explicitly off-topic thing on these forums for good reason.
Anyway, long story short - I don't know how anyone who has played D&D didn't end up as a philosophy major.

 

[overgeeked]

I'm going to just keep beating the big 'ole Leibnitz drum:
The problem of Theodicy

edit: With my honest apologies to @Micah Sweet , I only mean to bring up the fact that a lot of the questions people bring up over and over with regard to alignment have been considered by philosophers for an awful long time, and they've come up with some interesting answers over the years. I'm often hesitant to bring it up, because it often trends quite close to theology, which is an explicitly off-topic thing on these forums for good reason.
Anyway, long story short - I don't know how anyone who has played D&D didn't end up as a philosophy major.

I only got a minor. Many of the problems with good and evil people grapple with are a result of squaring the circle of a singular omnipotent, omniscient deity with evil. Once you accept true polytheism, as exists in D&D, the need for justification and explanation disappear. None of the gods are omnipotent or omniscient, so no problem.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I only got a minor. Many of the problems with good and evil people grapple with are a result of squaring the circle of a singular omnipotent, omniscient deity with evil.

yes this is where 'mysterious ways' comes form (and my own personal spiritual belief is based on this)

Once you accept true polytheism, as exists in D&D, the need for justification and explanation disappear. None of the gods are omnipotent or omniscient, so no problem.

except when you call a group 'cosmic good' you expect them to be good. Here is the rub, by having 18 gods 6 good and 6 evil you perfectly remove the need for good gods to do or allow evil... you just have that they can not always 'win' to create good... but instead DL original classic doubles down on the 'mysterious ways' and says "Everytime good gets the upper hand bad things happen" but somehow thinks that evil can be good.

 

[Remathilis]

True.

On the other hand, we don't know what the LoP's abilities are. Sure, she can keep gods out and create permanent demiplanes, presumably at will. But other than that? And she doesn't actually really murder people so much as banish them to the Mazes, which may or may not be worse, depending on your personal view of what the Mazes are like. At the least, they're a prison, and--it's been a while, I could be very wrong--I don't think that you can starve to death in them. At the least, I assume that you can get hungry but not actually die of starvation, and that's how I'd use them.

Slight correction.

People who try to start coups get mazed. People who profess open worship get warned by the Dabus, and if they persist they meet the Lady, whose shadow passes over them and their body reacts as if they have been sliced open by a dozen blades simultaneously. The Lady never speaks to anyone but her Dabus.

Also, she never had an alignment in 2e. She got an alignment in 3e (Lawful Neutral) but no stats. Personally, giving her stats is like giving Ravenloft's Dark Powers stats; it defeats the purpose. I'm fine with her not having an alignment tbh, but WotC did give her a canonical one.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'm fine with her not having an alignment tbh, but WotC did give her a canonical one.

TBH i think most settings are better without trying to fit complex ideas into the 9 boxes

 

[Remathilis]

And yet even the new book doesn't really change anything on that score. The gods are still arranged as Good, Neutral, and Evil, and the gods of Good still participated in the Catclysm. How do you explain that?

The same way you explain the Great Flood, which was clearly the inspiration for it.

 

[Zaukrie]

good thing there is a new thread about, you know, dragonlance.....

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

So all player characters in D&D are evil then? Weird flex, but ok

If they murder? Yeah, definitely. Not that it's bad to play an evil character, but if they regularly do evil things, they're evil.

 

[DarkCrisis]

people bending themselves out of shape with how fantasy gods act when all you have to do if look at them like old real world stuff like the Greek and Norse pantheons.

The Gods (which some were considered good/evil etc) acted just like normal people with a lot of super powers. See also: Superman

It’s a lot easier to understand when you think “Well isn’t Paladine the ultimate good?” No, he’s the “god of good” but he’s also just Superman, a dude with a lot of power trying to do what’s right.