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

 

[Maxperson]

except that you cannot have half-orcs without orcs. And I would agree with you that maybe they just forgot to mention their creation, if they would not clearly say that there are no orcs

When they say that there are no orcs on Krynn, that's present tense. During the creation they wouldn't have mentioned either, and if orcs had been killed off or left 7000 years ago, not only would there be no trace of orcish blood left, but people wouldn't even have rumors of rumors of them.

The book saying no orcs now and failing to talk about half-orcs and orcs in a section they wouldn't be mentioned in isn't proof positive that the reason for no orcs is that the gods just didn't make any. Hell, maybe the gods didn't make any, then 5500 years ago 10,000 orcs invaded through the astral plane, only to be killed off by ogres. History wouldn't record that and it wouldn't have made it into any of the books we have, since the settings we have gotten only detail the last few hundred years at best, and primarily from the War of the Ring onward.

 

[Maxperson]

DL1 started with characters around level 4 or 5. Draconians where balanced against that starting level, which makes them effectively low level. It's all relative.

The mechanical reason for not having orcs is they would have been seriously out-levelled by the heroes, and not been a significant challenge. Orcs had around 5 hp in 1st edition.

The PCs were not the only ones who would be fighting in the War of the Lance. The vast majority of the armies facing the invading darkness would be 0-1st level folks, so orcs would be right in line with what they would encounter as front line troops. Also, DL1 had goblins and hobgoblins for the PCs to face, so orcs would not have been out of place in that module.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Shouldn't we be talking about what type of adventures for our heroes?

Nope.

The most important part of Dragonlance is how much it reduces your choices while playing in it.

Apparently.

 

[mamba]

When they say that there are no orcs on Krynn, that's present tense. During the creation they wouldn't have mentioned either, and if orcs had been killed off or left 7000 years ago, not only would there be no trace of orcish blood left, but people wouldn't even have rumors of rumors of them.

we've been down this route before, not interested in repeating myself. Will do it here, but if you keep on bringing up the same arguments again, please just look up what I said the last time a page ago.

If orcs had existed, we would have a record of their destruction, we have much less important events recorded in it. We have one race almost disappearing (Irda), we have Dark Sun as an example where orcs do not exist today and they were wiped out and it being recorded.

We do not have that, we have 'orcs do not exist'. We have zero evidence of them ever existing, so I stick with Occam's Razor.

since the settings we have gotten only detail the last few hundred years at best, and primarily from the War of the Ring onward.

the what now ?

 

[pemerton]

At the time that DL was written, the function of Orcs in a FRPG was to provide numerous, low-HD enemy soldiers/armies/raiders/opponents.

This function had been pretty constant since Chainmail, and the literary origins are obvious: Chainmail expressly bases its Orcs on JRRT's Orcs (with tribes like the White Hand and the Red Eye), further defines Orcs as "nothing more than over-grown Goblins) (p 30), and defines Kobolds and Hobgoblins as Goblin variants.

The diagram on p 114 of DLA indicates that Goblins are descended from Ogres, and that after the Greystone Goblins further differentiate into Hobgoblins, Bugbears and Kobolds. Whether or not Orcs get added to that diagram seems a small point.

 

[Velderan]

It doesn't matter where they set the adventure, the settings books are very unambiguous about there being no orcs. They do not say there aren't any in Abanasinia or even Ansalon. They say there are not any on Krynn.

"Half-orcs would be considered magical freaks or aberrations as there are no orcs in
Krynn."

The above is for PCs arriving from another world via Spelljammer or spells, as those could have half-orcs. For Krynn itself:

"Almost all the creatures in the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Monster Manual are appropriate for a DRAGONLANCE campaign, with a few notable exceptions (primarily
driders, drow elves, halflings, lycanthropes, mind flayers, orcs and half-orcs, and titans)."

Not sure how much clearer they need to make this for people to get it.

I'm not implying they could be in Eastern Solamnia, I'm implying they could retcon some history in somewhere to tell the story they want to tell and it wouldn't be that big a deal if it didn't mean suddenly there's a large orc nation somewhere. As @Stormonu said, there's a places you could sneak a small group in without major issue.

Would I rather they just put some language similar to what they did for the MtG settings and leave it alone? Sure, but if they went a different direction it wouldn't matter that much to me. I can also just choose to ignore the bits I don't like There's other things in the setting I'm far more concerned about them getting right.

 

[Faolyn]

What you do when you make a setting is based on 40 years of experience of making D&D settings. Which all started with Dragonlance. It did it first. It was a prototype for what came later. If you where making it with the 40 years of experience there are lots of things you might do differently.

But people don't care about Dragonlance because it's a brilliantly designed setting. They love it for the stories, and the lore, and the characters, and the history.

Then what's the point of even having a game set in that universe? You're clearly making it out to be a setting that's to be read, not to be played in or explored, and certainly not one where the players can make their mark in it--because doing so might go against the stories, lore, characters, and history.

Maybe that is why I have next to no memories of my time playing in Dragonlance back in college. It's not a setting for PCs to be interesting in. The only thing that stood out was the expletive-deleted kender.

Your suggestions are not "enhancing the things it does have" You clearly don't know the original setting at all. It was never a setting where everyone rode about on dragons hitting each other with lances. It's a setting where a band of heroes in a world that looks suspiciously like frontier America fight against villains in black hats.

So bring that up more. Make it a good versus evil frontier world. Only, you know, without the fake white Native Americans. A D&D frontier--again, without the colonialism--would make for a pretty cool setting. I'd play in it.

But, you know, it's pretty weird--when I look up descriptions of Dragonlance, descriptions written by people who presumably really like the setting, like on the various Dragonlance wikis and on fan pages, I get "armies on dragonback" and "war against the Gods of Evil/Chaos" with "Epic High Fantasy," "fabled dragonlances," "lots and lots of dragons," "color-coded wizards," and "lots of named NPCs" thrown around as well. But I never get "frontier America fight against villains in black hats" or anything that even hints that what's the setting's about. Not even once.

So it's kind of odd that you're claiming that it's not a setting where people ride around on dragons and use lances, whereas basically every single fan source out there says it is. So, are you right and everyone else is wrong?

So, whilst you are busy trying to think of something interesting to do with your rubber mask people, you are not spending time developing the things that are distinctive, interesting and relevant to the setting.

And you know that how?

And more importantly, why do you think that having interesting races or cultures doesn't make for an interesting setting?

 

[mamba]

I'm not implying they could be in Eastern Solamnia, I'm implying they could retcon some history in somewhere to tell the story they want to tell and it wouldn't be that big a deal if it didn't mean suddenly there's a large orc nation somewhere. As @Stormonu said, there's a places you could sneak a small group in without major issue.

I do not expect them to sneak in a band of orcs someplace. If they add orcs it is so half-orc players are a thing.

Having the graygem also create orcs is probably the best spot for this, but then they are not a tiny local faction like you seem to envision.

 

[Micah Sweet]

At the time that DL was written, the function of Orcs in a FRPG was to provide numerous, low-HD enemy soldiers/armies/raiders/opponents.

This function had been pretty constant since Chainmail, and the literary origins are obvious: Chainmail expressly bases its Orcs on JRRT's Orcs (with tribes like the White Hand and the Red Eye), further defines Orcs as "nothing more than over-grown Goblins) (p 30), and defines Kobolds and Hobgoblins as Goblin variants.

The diagram on p 114 of DLA indicates that Goblins are descended from Ogres, and that after the Greystone Goblins further differentiate into Hobgoblins, Bugbears and Kobolds. Whether or not Orcs get added to that diagram seems a small point.

But why would you bother? As you say, there are already goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears, and kobolds. Why change the world to add a heritage that brings no value to it?

 

[mamba]

So it's kind of odd that you're claiming that it's not a setting where people ride around on dragons and use lances, whereas basically every single fan source out there says it is. So, are you right and everyone else is wrong?

In the War of the Lance I am not sure we had more than a dozen riders, if that. During Huma's time, which was the giant war, the new one pales in comparison, we had maybe 40, maybe 100 after they forged more of them. Certainly not armies of them (and essentially only one side had them)

There are a lot more dragons than that however, they are just riderless (or at least without lances, some had riders)