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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[Burnside]

it's not a handicap... just stick to the games and the books

Look. Saying the Book of Mormon has "nothing to do with" Dragonlance is just silly. We all know that it does. We all know that understanding the (numerous) Mormon allegories in Dragonlance can help illuminate the intentions of the authors, just like the understanding that Gygax liked Dead Earth can help explain why we have D&D's Vancian magic system.

It's also true that we can't discuss the Mormon underpinnings of Dragonlance because of this site's TOS. Which I agree with having because, as we have proven ad naseum here and elsewhere, we can't have nice things.

People saying "we can't make our point here because our hands are tied" are absolutely correct. But the fact is, their hands kinda need to be tied.

So since we can't talk about Mormonism in Dragonlance, it would be great to discuss this adventure in the thread about this adventure.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I just picked up Deadlands for the most recent edition of Savage Worlds. There's a sidebar on racism that says:



There's another sidebar on sexism that talks about how women have made great strides, taking up the spaces left open by men who died in the war and now can take on any role that a man could.

In the late 19th century, racism and sexism were considered normal and even good. But this game is being written for a modern audience. It doesn't try to claim that that something that was good back then should be accepted in a game played now.

To be fair, it also doesn't posit a world where those things don't exist.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Don't you think think though that the pre-test, the first scene of the adventure for this player, should be evocative of...something?

Solve the invisible maze thing. There's just no sense of atmosphere, or danger, or something to give a flavor of what this campaign or world is like and why it's different.

I feel like the Mages of High Sorcery, their tests, and the towers should carry an aura of mystery and awe and danger. A lot of players will come out of this like "Mages of High Sorcery? Oh yeah, those people that made me do that annoying maze."

Danger might be better left for levels above 1st. And it does have atmosphere and setting flavor with a Red Robe performing the test, and it happening on the Night of the Eye.

Do you really want to give players who are potentially completely new to the setting a full setting info-dump during the first campaign session? Dole it out a bit to maintain some mystery, as well as to not have their eyes glaze over as you give them a half hour synopsis of the history and lore of the setting.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Isn't the concept basically?

Spoiler: Minor spoiler

important events are about to go down, there's no time to actually Test

That seems pretty.. lazy? I'd probably rework that and actually just run the Test either as a side session for that player or work it into a group session where the players use of magic is tested as part of a larger event.

That happens when they get to 4th level or so. This is something of a pre-test. They do actually get the full (although somewhat unorthodox) test at around 8th - 9th level.

 

[Faolyn]

To be fair, it also doesn't posit a world where those things don't exist.

But it actively calls them out as evil. It doesn't try to pretend that it's OK just because it was OK back then.

 

[Burnside]

Danger might be better left for levels above 1st. And it does have atmosphere and setting flavor with a Red Robe performing the test, and it happening on the Night of the Eye.

Do you really want to give players who are potentially completely new to the setting a full setting info-dump during the first campaign session? Dole it out a bit to maintain some mystery, as well as to not have their eyes glaze over as you give them a half hour synopsis of the history and lore of the setting.

Did...I say I wanted to give them an info dump? I said I wanted to give them a nothic because I thought the maze was mechanically bad, and the nothic would thematically evoke the Dragonlance theme of power corrupting, as opposed to giving them a maze which evokes...a thing you shouldn't do in D&D because mazes are notoriously dreadful at the table in D&D.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Did...I say I wanted to give them an info dump? I said I wanted to give them a nothic because I thought the maze was mechanically bad, and the nothic would thematically evoke the Dragonlance theme of power corrupting, as opposed to giving them a maze which evokes...a thing you shouldn't do in D&D because mazes are notoriously dreadful at the table in D&D.

To each their own. I find it thematic and intriguing.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Elements from the real world are used as source of inspiration for speculative fiction.

We can allow some retcons if we believe the changes are more coherent. Maybe the original plan was a surgical attack but Chaos even within the Greyhawk, or from a prison transitive plane, could amplify the damage, and even maybe the Cataclysm was a "pest control" because in that moment a planar invasion by "compleated Phyrexians" was to start, and the collateral damages were unavoidable.

We shouldn't be surprised if later Chaos manipulated planewalkers to alter the timeline of Krynnspace.

* And what about Zivilyn? Here it was more than a massive extition, but the original plane was destroyed.

Zivilyn

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mod Note:

Discussing RW religion on ENWorld is limited but not completely forbidden. If the thread is about an RPG’s treatment of the gods of the ancient world, or how a certain writer or company incorporates RW religious themes into their product, then it’s relevant.

But the amount of leeway granted on this is very narrowly construed. So be EXTRA careful not to get into bashing a particular faith community, belittling others for their religious views (or lack thereof), and the like.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

. . . that says more about you than it does me.

Mod Note:

The stinger at the end of your post is starting to make things personal. Don’t go further.