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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...

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
 

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That's before we even get to the point of how the presence or absence of Orcs in Krynn is remotely connected to "respecting the work" or "actively disliking it".
The writers' vision saw no room for orcs in their world. Respecting the work for me, would be a sidebar reflecting their vision.
And to what counts as a change - as per my post upthread, when D&D was first published Orcs and Goblins were the same sort of beings (just as is the case in JRRT's works) and the differentiation of one from the other at the time DL was first published was different from that which obtains now. Given that WotC is intending to publish a setting book that supports the game it currently publishes, that includes fiction about Orcs and Goblins that is not the same as what existed in the 1977 Monster Manual, if it includes Goblins in Krynn it is also presenting something different from what was originally published.
In what way were orcs and goblins the same in D&D? Orcs of Thar was released in February 1988 - some months after Dragonlances Adventures and by that stage D&D has already differentiated goblins quite a bit from orcs.
Do note that although the discussion has centered around orcs - the race is but a representation for all other playable races not native to Krynn, this includes Tieflings, Dragonborn and the like.
I came into this thread after posting in two others about DL.

One was a thread in which there was outrage about whether or not Knights of Solamnia can be women, and/or can be clean-shaven.

Another was arguing about whether gods who inflict collective punishment for the sin of pride (in the form of the Cataclysm) can nevertheless be good gods.

In my view both threads have many posters who seem to be completely uninterested in what is actually interesting about DL as a work of fiction - a study of loyalty, honour, family, love, betrayal, faith and similar themes and values, that uses dragons and knights and knights riding dragons as some of its key tropes. I don't think those who are obsessing over Orcs and moustaches are showing any real respect for the work at all. To me, they seem to have missed its point.
It would be interesting to see a Venn diagram of those casting all gods of the Cataclysm as evil with those wishing to not include a sidebar in the latest DL book.

EDIT: And if one cannot keep to something as easy as the native races of Krynn what hope do they have of focusing on its more challenging aspects such as loyalty, honour, family, betrayal and 'staches.
 
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mamba

Legend
This is another claim that is not true.

The WotC Greyhawk setting book has completely different population figures from the TSR-era ones, revised because Eric Mona and others thought the early figures too sparse. The same book changes how druids and bards are described, to try and achieve some sort of fit between the rather baroque AD&D rules and the 3E ones.
This in no way contradicts what I wrote.

I said there is one objectively correct answer to whether orcs exist in a published setting, it is not up for interpretation. If you deviate, that is a change at your table.

For 1e, 2e and 3e the answer for DL was ‘no’. For 5e we do not know that answer yet, but there will be one and it will be objectively true (i.e. be in accordance with what the book says), regardless of what it is.
 
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Cruentus

Adventurer
Not unless they want to make a ton of people upset they can't. Their options are limited if they want to do that, because a lot of Krynn is long established. The more people they upset, the less money they make on the product.
Not to pick this out @Maxperson, but I think that a "ton" of people getting upset is probably overstating it. Will some small number of people who play DnD, and who frequent forums be "upset" about this? Sure. Will a "ton" of people, who likely play with home groups, maybe get stuff through Beyond, and tangentially engage with online news and discussion? (ie. the vast majority of DnD players, who have never heard of or read the books). Likely not.

And WOTC is making so much money on its product now, it is likely that Dragonlance will make just as much as recent adventure/setting books, for good or ill.

I know for myself, I won't be buying it (as a 40+ year DnD player) because I have all the old stuff. But its more the tenor of "discussion" about it, the things people nitpick, etc that I read on forums like this that has me turned off to it.

And, as we know about "lore", WOTC has stated nothing that came before 5e is considered canon. Whatever they publish in the new Dragonlance book will be the canon for Dragonlance as far as WOTC and 5e is concerned. That's about where it begins and ends for me.
 

Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
This is simply not true.

Marvel/Disney is not deceiving movie-goers about Aunt May. About whether or not the Scarlet Witch is a mutant. By having filmed multiple versions of the Death of Phoenix neither of which involves Phoenix on trial for genocide on the moon at the hands of Xavier's alien empress lover.

No one was deceived by LotR films which replaced Glorfindel with Arwen, and freely played with the sequence and geography of events in and around Rohan and Gondor.

People who care about these differences can learn about them from the multitude of commentaries on them that inevitably will spring up.

This is another claim that is not true.

The WotC Greyhawk setting book has completely different population figures from the TSR-era ones, revised because Eric Mona and others thought the early figures too sparse. The same book changes how druids and bards are described, to try and achieve some sort of fit between the rather baroque AD&D rules and the 3E ones. (Even TSR books did something similar - Turin Deathstalker the Guildmaster of Assassins gets redescribed as a fighter rather than an assassin, when that latter class is abolished.)

3E-era Forgotten Realms used a different set-up for its Outer Planes than Appendix IV of the AD&D PHB.

More generally, these are commercially published fictions written for the amusement of the fan-base who purchases them. They're not encyclopaedias. They're not the artistic visions of a single creator (and even a world that is, like JRRT's Middle Earth, is not an objective thing - as is well known he had many version of various stories about all of his Ages, including revisions between editions of published versions of his books).

Even in its earliest published form, there were various published ideas of Krynn: in the novels, for instance, casting spells caused tiredness to wizards; but there was no analogue to that in the game rules for magic-users ostensibly describing the same imaginary world.

"Burning down the house" has no aptness here as a metaphor.

WotC is going to publish a book, about an imaginary place. It is free to present that place as it likes, and will do so. If you want to imagine the place without Orcs, you're free to do so. Others might differ in what they imagine. Maybe you'll even have to ignore a few words of what WotC publishes to do your imagining. Why does it matter? Who is being harmed? What damage is being done?

Your memories of other books you've read, in which there are no Orcs in Krynn, will not be damaged. Nothing will stop you continuing to imagine the world as you do. Why does it matter that some other people might think of something different when they think of Krynn?

I don't know which blockbusters you've got in mind. Some of the blockbusters I can think of that ignored "original lore" include the LotR movies, the X-Men movies, the MCU movies, the recent Star Wars movies, David Lynch's film of Dune, the original Conan film, and Lawrence of Arabia.

That's before we even get to the point of how the presence or absence of Orcs in Krynn is remotely connected to "respecting the work" or "actively disliking it". And to what counts as a change - as per my post upthread, when D&D was first published Orcs and Goblins were the same sort of beings (just as is the case in JRRT's works) and the differentiation of one from the other at the time DL was first published was different from that which obtains now. Given that WotC is intending to publish a setting book that supports the game it currently publishes, that includes fiction about Orcs and Goblins that is not the same as what existed in the 1977 Monster Manual, if it includes Goblins in Krynn it is also presenting something different from what was originally published.

I came into this thread after posting in two others about DL.

One was a thread in which there was outrage about whether or not Knights of Solamnia can be women, and/or can be clean-shaven.

Another was arguing about whether gods who inflict collective punishment for the sin of pride (in the form of the Cataclysm) can nevertheless be good gods.

In my view both threads have many posters who seem to be completely uninterested in what is actually interesting about DL as a work of fiction - a study of loyalty, honour, family, love, betrayal, faith and similar themes and values, that uses dragons and knights and knights riding dragons as some of its key tropes. I don't think those who are obsessing over Orcs and moustaches are showing any real respect for the work at all. To me, they seem to have missed its point.
This is my personal opinion, but I have an expectation that a piece of media made into a film will have differences from the original, as a result of adapting the story to another form of media. Hopefully, the spirit of the original is maintained. There are many, many examples of this, so I feel confident of my opinion. Most of the examples you cite are of this type.

Dragonlance is an RPG, being made into another RPG. Adaptation of mechanics will be necessary and is not my issue. Adaptation of story is not necessary to maintain the spirit of the original, and so generally (with specific exceptions related to inclusivity), I don't desire it.
 

Vaalingrade

Legend
The DL book absolutely needs to mention that you can't play a 60's Klingon with a porn 'stache. It just wouldn't be DL without such a statement.
The porn 'stache can and in fact, MUST stay though.

It would be a failure in respecting the work, after all.

There needs to be a knight that is just a moustache in armor.
 

I wonder if WotC to fix this will tell the parallel worlds are oficially canon in the D&D multiverse. Then you will can publish in DMGuild your alternate versions of Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Jakandor or Mystara.

There are plans for Dragonlance franchise beyond the TTRPG. Hasbro wants to sell different products, for example videogames and toys, and maybe also new novels, but I don't know the strategy about the plot for the age of mortals.
 



Faolyn

(she/her)
They're not legally obligated, but if they publish a new version of an old setting without noting that's it new and different, or what the traditional setting allowed, they are deceiving anyone who has ever heard of Dragonlance prior to the new product. Not to a great degree, but it is happening.
It's for a new edition and is written by new people, as opposed to being a reprint of on original book. That literally is noting that it's new and different.
 

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