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

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Not if it is simply unexplained. Cataclysm happened, people are upset the gods did not prevent it and stopped following them. Now that Takhisis is coming knocking they are much more inclined to believe again when they stumble across the others.

Not saying they need to do this or anything, just that there is no reason to not meddle with this as well when they are revisiting things anyway

this is a great answer, but with it ALREADY having an answer leaving a blank spot and not recontextualizing is a risk

 

[mamba]

This is said to be a reaction to too much good

only by people that do not understand the story…

In the books it is very clear that the Kingpriest was not very good at all. He might have been a good man, but with very misguided ideas of what good is.

I believe I read somewhere at one point that either of the authors said something along the line of ‘if you believe the Kingpriest did good, you were not paying attention’, and that is very much true.

 

[pemerton]

I would say if you want to write non modern views of good and evil you need to accept the the people reading will not see it as good.

I don't agree. I think many people can recognise when a fiction that invites them to entertain a moral framework that is different from their own, especially one that they can see has a basis in tradition or well-understood tropes.

Modern westerns, for instance, drop the racism - no one is going to entertain the absurd proposition that racist violence is permissible - but they don't drop the casual attitude towards lethal violence, both defensive and retributive.

Superhero stories have probably never been more popular, and like westerns they are incredibly casual in their attitude towards violence, although it is perhaps less often lethal.

To suppose that someone who enjoys JRRT's fiction must therefore, in their actual political views, be an utter reactionary, would be a pretty flawed inference!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Believing/knowing that the gods exist is not the same as believing that the gods are worthy of worship.

I love that theme of stories... and have played with it in D&D before but I am not sure it fits Krynn.

"Oh I know that old man is a powerful outsider/dragon thing, immortal and all knowing. I even know the classification he takes and many give is 'god' I am not saying I don't believe like I think he is fake. I am saying I don't believe in him because he is no more or less then a more powerful dragon, he doesn't fit an exemplar of good for sure"

 

[GMforPowergamers]

At least she isn't pretending to be good when she's murdering just a huge number of people.

Or cosplaying Gandalf while the world burns as a result of her actions.

yeah the 'god walking around making fun of old age and senility isn't he best look either.

 

[Maxperson]

Did Fizban need the permission of the other gods to cast the spells he did during the War of the Lance?

This is a pretty major False Equivalence. Casting pells that don't do kill anyone is not the same as killing mortals directly with a snap of the fingers. And if you notice, he didn't actually do much while he was with the group. If he could do as you just said, there would have been no War of the Lance because he would have just gone all Thanos on the evil armies.

 

[mamba]

Weird ideas like duty, responsibility and self-sacrifice you mean?

yeah, because those were the common ones in the middle ages… I also provided examples, so there was no need to ask

You are very much in value judgment territory there.

and can values not be judged ? seems we are doing that a lot around here

 

[GMforPowergamers]

If the gods of Dragonlance claim to be Good (upper-case Good) but perform Evil acts (upper-case Evil), such as genocide, then either the setting has a screwed-up morality or the writers are trying to claim that genocide is a good act.

If the writers had instead said that the Good gods were not, in fact, Good, and they performed an act of Evil but tried to convinced everyone that it was actually Good instead, or that the Good deities had performed an act of great evil, had turned Evil as a result, and now must try to redeem themselves so they can retake their place as the Gods of Good again, those would be a basis of a potentially very interesting setting.

again this is what I think needs to be done IF you want to keep the lable good on them, it needs to be IN setting and OUT of setting it needs to be removed. However since one of the main themes is balance of Good and Evil that makes this a hard sell.

I would think changing the actions and canon is better then lableing good as neutral or evil

Kick Ass is an action movie. While I have not seen that particular movie, I have seen enough action films and TV shows to know that they rarely try to pretend that the violence perpetuated in them is an act of Good. At most, it's a evil act (lower-case evil) performed by people who are trying to do good (lower-case good) but for whatever reason, do so through violent means. Probably more often, it's people of dubious morality performing acts of violence against other people of dubious morality for the entertainment of the viewers, with no actual attempt to to claim anyone is of any sort of morality.

that;s the thing a god of good can't be compared to a kid trying to do the right thing and finding bad ways to do it.

 

[Maxperson]

More to the point, the Valar do not claim to be objectively "good". They are based on the Aesir, and like them they are complex, nuanced, flawed and capable of making mistakes.

If you allow the Dragonlance gods may disagree with each other, may make mistakes, and may react emotionally, rather than say everything they do is "good" by definition, then the Cataclysm isn't a problem. The gods overreacted and screwed up, and now they have gone off to re-evaluate themselves.

It's also not a problem if there are some sort of cosmic laws they are bound to, such as if the neutral gods stop being in the middle for a moment and side with the good, the evil gods must go along with it and not stop what is going to happen, and vice versa. The cataclysm might have not been condoned or performed by the good gods at all.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

yeah, because those were the common ones in the middle ages… I also provided examples, so there was no need to ask

and can values not be judged ? seems we are doing that a lot around here

Values certainly can be judged, that was my original point. People are going to have differing views of the morality in Dragonlance because their own values differ.