WotC Dragonlance: Everything You Need For Shadow of the Dragon Queen

WotC has shared a video explaining the Dragonlance setting, and what to expect when it is released in December.

World at War: Introduces war as a genre of play to fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons.

Dragonlance: Introduces the Dragonlance setting with a focus on the War of the Lance and an overview of what players and DMs need to run adventures during this world spanning conflict.

Heroes of War: Provides character creation rules highlighting core elements of the Dragonlance setting, including the kender race and new backgrounds for the Knight of Solamnia and Mage of High Sorcery magic-users. Also introduces the Lunar Sorcery sorcerer subclass with new spells that bind your character to Krynn's three mystical moons and imbues you with lunar magic.

Villains: Pits heroes against the infamous death knight Lord Soth and his army of draconians.

Notes --

• 224 page hardcover adventure
• D&D's setting for war
• Set in eastern Solamnia
• War is represented by context -- it's not goblins attacking the village, but evil forces; refugees, rumours
• You can play anything from D&D - clerics included, although many classic D&D elements have been forgotten
• Introductory scenarios bring you up to speed on the world so no prior research needed

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah. Saying "rocks fell, everyone died, nobody know where they came from, the gods were blocked despite their best efforts" would be heaps better.

Exactly even a simple retcon like that would be good.

 

[Maxperson]

these arent 'moral words' or 'legal words' these are words.

In D&D the DM is the one who determines objective morality for the game. Killing an evil undead could be good, neutral or evil, depending how the DM views it. Not that it matters since 5e has degraded alignment to almost non-existence.

my buddy has this magic ore that interacs in weird magic ways (in game we the players don't fully understand it) one way we have seen is that when I cast a spell near it, it absorbed the magic, radiated it and as such caused a minor chain reaction and a cave in...

in theory (since we don't know how to detect it yet) I could throw a burning hands at a wight attacking me and cause a chain reaction destroying a town (I assume it would need to be a lot of the stuff)...

now since my intent was good, my act was good/neutral depending on view point (defense of self and/or other) and I killed a whole bunch of people... you can argue that i didn't MURDER anyone but I KILLED them etheir way...

If you suspect that it could amplify and kill the town and you do it anyway, the act will be evil regardless of your intent. Or put another way, your intent was to risk the lives of the town in an act of utter indifference in order to kill a wight.

What you should do is send the buddy with that ore away before casting the spell.

so is your argument that the gods did not intent to kill innocents and it was a mistake?

No. It's like this. If there is an incurable, deadly cancer spreading up your leg, you are going to lose a lot of health, innocent when the doctors cut your leg off to save your life.

The cancer was the Kingpriest and his villainous squads and the life of Krynn was at stake. Istar got amputated to remove the cancer and keep the rest of the body of Krynn safe, and it sucks that all those others died with them.

earlier you put up an idea that you were in a dungeon for no reason, sneaking around found some creatures, killed them before they could act (surprise) and they turned out to be a vampire or ghoul...

I didn't say "they turned out to be" a vampire or ghoul. I said if there is a vampire or wights and I attack them... The implication being that I know what they are before I ambush them. I'm not hoping for the best and discovering it later.

You were not protecting self or other was THAT murder? DOes it matter they were undead if you were not aware of that fact? NOW that is worth discussing.

If we didn't know that they were undead or evil, we wouldn't just attack them with lethal force.

 

[Maxperson]

escept when the god dragon said HE WAS GOOD... in his example of TOO MUCH GOOD

He didn't say he was good when he was killed. He said he WAS good, THEN did a lot of evil in the name of good. He was saying that good taken to that extreme is evil. Like you can't survive without water, but if you drink too much you will die. Good things taken to extremes become bad.

 

[Faolyn]

Strawmen are strawmen. This is not an argument that has been made here or by the setting.

Here's what Hussar said:

The people supported the Kingpriest. It's not like he was some fascist dictator that held the people under his thumb. The people loved him. Loved him for generations - nearly a century. Loved him so much that they committed numerous atrocities and genocides (attempting to kill all non-humans, all wizards) over the decades and no one so much as batted an eye. They loved him so much that they actually literally worshipped him to the point where he was a step away from becoming a god.

These are the people that you're saying are innocent.

So yes, people on this forum have actually claimed that they were all evil.

Tell that to the evil gods that did it and the neutral gods that went along in order to restore world balance. The good gods tried to stop it.

Not according to every other source I've read. You want to prove this?

 

[Maxperson]

my god... that is horrifying and worthy of a forked thread, but I can't imagine it going well so I am not doing it...

Yeah. That position he took there was pretty bad and not in line with what was in the 1e books. He did things very differently in his own games than he put out in 1e.

 

[Velderan]

is that what happened here? or (maybe we really are not on teh same page) did people come here talking about the things they hope get changed so they can enjoy the setting they are looking forward to?

It's a 224 adventure book with promotional material supporting the same lore the setting has been based on for 35+ years. Pretty safe to say it's not changing in the book coming out in 4ish weeks.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You said, and I quote:



So excuse me for taking that to mean that you don't understand these posts.


I literally don't care about how 1e alignments mesh with real world philosophies. I care about having an alignment system that doesn't claim genocide is not an evil act.


They "imposed retribution" via genocide. Unless you think that mountain just spanked everyone and sent them to bed without supper?

It does not matter if the gods are claiming it as retribution. They dropped a mountain on a country and it not only killed everyone in that country, it seriously and irreparably harmed people across the world. And no amount of pride--which is a thoughtcrime--is worth genocide.

Because you're saying that the gods did all this because the kingpriest was prideful. Not because he committed murder. Not because he was bigoted. Not for any other reason. But because he demanded that the gods let him destroy evil.

From the DL wiki:


Words cannot describe how horrified I am at those gods.

And this "good and evil need to be in perfect balance" is a stupid trope that needs to die in a fiery mountain.


If I were to run an AD&D game and the paladin tried to kill someone for being prideful, that paladin would fall so fast as to burn up in the atmosphere.

As a side note, I don't think paladins can fall in 5e, any more than clerics or warlocks can lose their powers no matter what they do. It's far too important that the PCs get to keep their cool toys.

 

[Faolyn]

It's not. A group of hardened mercenaries or a mercenary adventuring group is a lot of fun to play. We're not good guys, though we can and will save a town if hired to do so. We're not bad guys, though we might be on the side of an invading force. Perhaps we were hired to go into that tomb and make sure that the lich waking up inside never lives to retake dominance over the region and we can keep what we find.

No, that's plenty boring.

Or, rather, can you understand that while some people think saving every town is fun and you find it boring, likewise you may find it fun to play mercenaries and other people find it boring?

 

[Maxperson]

Here's what Hussar said:


So yes, people on this forum have actually claimed that they were all evil.

Fair enough. I can't see Hussar's posts. He's wrong about what he's saying, though. All the people didn't engage in heinous acts for the Kingpriest.

Not according to every other source I've read. You want to prove this?

We know "the gods" in general are blamed for the event. But we also know that the good gods(Mishakal) sent Lord Soth to try and stop the Cataclysm, so it stands to reason that they didn't want it to happen and were forced into it if the Kingpriest couldn't be changed.

 

[Maxperson]

Or, rather, can you understand that while some people think saving every town is fun and you find it boring, likewise you may find it fun to play mercenaries and other people find it boring?

Absolutely, which is why I told him that if they were having fun, they were doing it right, and that it would be boring to ME.

 

[Faolyn]

As a side note, I don't think paladins can fall in 5e, any more than clerics or warlocks can lose their powers no matter what they do. It's far too important that the PCs get to keep their cool toys.

They can fall, technically, but they just become oathbreakers. Or in my mind, redemption paladins, depending on where they started. They just don't lose their powers.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

That's not even the worst of it. He also expressed support for LG characters engaging in outright genocide, and quoted a 1800s genocidal, racist maniac in support of this. Note said genocidal racist maniac was so horrible he was considered "the shame of a nation" even in the 1800s, which takes some doing.

how has this not been more often revealed?

 

[Velderan]

As someone who has run Dragonlance for like 30 years on and off, I strongly disagree with you.

It is absolutely worth examining how messed-up the whole Kingpriest/Cataclysm deal was, and looking at the various retcons as Hickman/Weis realized it was totally unacceptable.

I would definitely suggest a further, more sound and considered retcon of the Kingpriest/Cataclysm scenario would be a good idea if we want to pretend there are any non-Evil gods in Krynn.

I'm not saying it's not worth discussing, it's the repeated attempts to come into threads and convince people who don't have an issue with how it has been presented that it's dumb when that's an incredibly subjective thing. Based on the promo material so far, it seems it will be the same way again and if it conflicts that much with real world morals, there are plenty of other places to play make-believe elf in.

Personally I always preferred the 2E Tales of the Lance presentation where the Cataclysm is discussed on page 25. It presents a few theories while saying ultimately none of us will ever know. To me, that sets it up where each table can grab the theory they like and run with it. Want to absolve the gods of any direct involvement? It has this theory as an option:

Perhaps the Kingpriest himself summoned the Cataclysm as the culmination of a bizarre ritual to gain all power. This theory would make some sense out of the fact that the Temple of Istar—the heart of Evil—was not destroyed, but gated to the Abyss.

The gods were unable to protect the people, who blamed them for not sparing them the catastrophe and everyone sulks for 350ish years.

 

[Micah Sweet]

is that what happened here? or (maybe we really are not on teh same page) did people come here talking about the things they hope get changed so they can enjoy the setting they are looking forward to?

Those are closely related topics.

 

[Faolyn]

That's not even the worst of it. He also expressed support for LG characters engaging in outright genocide, and quoted a 1800s genocidal, racist maniac in support of this. Note said genocidal racist maniac was so horrible he was considered "the shame of a nation" even in the 1800s, which takes some doing.

Yeah, he was pretty darn horrible at times. I hope his horribleness was strictly in-game and he that he simply believed that orcs and other humanoids were truly Always Evil and thus would always go back to being evil, even if they converted, and not that he thought that John Chivington was Lawful Good and the people he murdered were Always Evil.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

If you suspect that it could amplify and kill the town and you do it anyway, the act will be evil regardless of your intent. Or put another way, your intent was to risk the lives of the town in an act of utter indifference in order to kill a wight.

you miss understood.,.. I mean at some future point we could run into a wight, not know said ore was there, and by accident cause GRAVE HARM. we already caused MINNOR HARM when we didn't mean to or know.

I agree if we know it is there and that it could do that, it is at BEST reckless.

What you should do is send the buddy with that ore away before casting the spell.

we didn't keep the ore... it was in a wall when it happened last time and the next time we came across any we told local minors about it (with the warning of what little we knew) but we have been in no way able to research it any since then (although this last game ended with my artificer/wizard and our arcanetrickster/abjuror at a great library so we hope to be able to now)

No. It's like this. If there is an incurable, deadly cancer spreading up your leg, you are going to lose a lot of health, innocent when the doctors cut your leg off to save your life.

this seems a weird annalogy but lets see

The cancer was the Kingpriest and his villainous squads and the life of Krynn was at stake. Istar got amputated to remove the cancer and keep the rest of the body of Krynn safe, and it sucks that all those others died with them.

I don't think that fits what happened at all... they didn't surgically target the cancer or even the limb... the killed the patient with a rock

I didn't say "they turned out to be" a vampire or ghoul. I said if there is a vampire or wights and I attack them...

and if you KNOW what they are, how do you know before they attack? See this is why forum examples fail so much the entire set up is missing.

The implication being that I know what they are before I ambush them. I'm not hoping for the best and discovering it later.

If we didn't know that they were undead or evil, we wouldn't just attack them with lethal force.

so the undead you were targeting had been a threat or were about to be a threat?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

It's a 224 adventure book with promotional material supporting the same lore the setting has been based on for 35+ years. Pretty safe to say it's not changing in the book coming out in 4ish weeks.

I disagree here are the changes I am hopeful for and expecting:

Kenders wont be written as jerks by defualt
The 3 orders that are color coded and tied to the towers will not have an enforced alignment but an 'often' or 'mostly' alignment at most
any mention of balance between good an evil will be sparing
we will get rad new death dragons.
we willing et stats for Soth
There will be no beliefe of the main 3 knight orders being sexuised

 

[GMforPowergamers]

No, that's plenty boring.

Or, rather, can you understand that while some people think saving every town is fun and you find it boring, likewise you may find it fun to play mercenaries and other people find it boring?

just like (and one day I will make a thead about it) I can't understand how gold is any way a motivation for any game that goes for more then 2 or 3 levels

 

[Velderan]

how has this not been more often revealed?

I'd say don't meet your heroes, but we'll probably find out whoever said that originally was an awful person.

Gygax is an incredibly complicated legacy worthy of a thread on it's own easily, which probably already exists here somewhere. Off to search I go..

 

[Micah Sweet]

They can fall, technically, but they just become oathbreakers. Or in my mind, redemption paladins, depending on where they started. They just don't lose their powers.

But there are no mechanical effects of the fall. They can keep right on doing what they're including acts against whoever they got their powers from. You as the DM are forced to make it matter, because the game assumes it doesn't.