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]

yes, the generic ogre, hence 'kill all'

then no killing someone for no crim is not good

been doing this in every post so far... anything in particular that I did not already reply to?

yeah skip the accusation of cherry picking

Otherwise I just reiterate one more time (with no noticeable difference to your opinion) how the KP is not truly good and how the good gods can 'do a Cataclysm' and remain good if you only suspend disbelief enough and are in good tradition to plenty of stories originating on Earth that have the exact same issue

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I don't think anyone has any issues with what the gods (good, evil, and neutral) did to the Kingpriest himself.

It's the people who got caught in the crossfire (which, as I understand it, is essentially the rest of the entire planet) that are the point of contention.

thank you

THe lnger I am in Dragon Lance post the more I wonder if I have gone insane.

 

[Maxperson]

THAT sounds boring to me

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.

There are lot and lots of fun ways to not be heroes(doing things for the right reasons/altruism) or villains(evil) and still adventure.

so let me get this straight... you sneak up on people doing nothing and kill them... um what? with no reason?

Vampires and wights feed on life energy. There is no good or redeeming feature to them and to let them live is to condemn future innocents to death. Evil life sucking undead are not "people" in the way the humanoid races are.

 

[FrozenNorth]

First, a softening up example: many D&D games involve duels, including duels to the death, and these are not treated as murders. No one thinks that a LG knight or samurai PC is doing an evil thing by fighting in a duel against a willing opponent. Now, in the real world, duelling has been banned in many places since the eighteenth century or thereabouts, and killing someone in a duel would be murder (perhaps manslaughter in jurisdictions with very permissive provocation or similar doctrines). But D&D does not ask us to entertain the absurd proposition that a LG knight or samurai can permissibly commit murder. Rather, it asks us to suspend our actual moral judgement about duelling, and to entertain the proposition that it is not murder to kill someone who voluntarily stakes their life on a duel.

None of this requires us to label the paladin as LG.

Obviously, my preference would be to do away with alignment in the first place. If not, minimize the mechanical/narrative impact of alignment on the game.

Let’s go back to the duel example.
Case 1: The LG samurai sees no inconsistency with dueling opponents and the GM agrees. Duels occur, no problem.
Case 2: The LG samurai has moral objections to dueling and the GM agrees. Character avoids duels, no problem.
Case 3: The LG samurai has no moral objections to duels, the GM disagrees. Problems occur when samurai duels someone, GM changes alignment to LN.
Case 4: The LG samurai has moral objections to dueling, the GM does not. Player avoids duels, problems avoided.

Best way to get the duelling example to end up breaking the group? Have the GM change the player’s alignment to LN while NPCs (including gods) engage in sketchy behaviour and maintain their Good alignment.

The more frequently moral issues are brought up, the more likely you are to hit a problem.

The issue in DL is that it presents itself as a Good vs Evil setting, but the novels keep on bringing up and trying to justify Non-Good actions by the Good gods.

Someone upthread made an interesting comparison to Numenor in LotR. I think it is an interesting comparison, because my exposure to both settings is roughly equivalent.

I read LotR as a teen, and a second time as an adult. I only read the Dragonlance novels once, but I also read some of the short story collections. Both are settings where the principal dichotomy is a struggle between Good and Evil.

My recollection of Numenor is that Aragorn was a descendant of the Numenorean kings. Wasn’t aware Eru destroyed the continent or why.

Dragonlance? Destruction of Ishtar is pretty major, as is the fact that the Good gods have turned their backs on mortals. Paladine appears and justifies his actions. He claims that the Kingpriest was a good man despite much sketchiness on his part.

The result is that the sketchiness of the Good Gods is much harder to gloss over in Dragonlance than in LotR.

 

[Maxperson]

except every inbalance is evil

Why?

 

[FrozenNorth]

We are told he WAS(past tense) a good man. Then we are told that later on in life he started killing innocents, invading the minds of others(mind rape), acting out of fear, pride, wrath and envy, etc. Those are not the acts of a good man. So while he WAS good at first, he was very evil when the cataclysm happened.

We are told he WAS a good man. Then a flaming mountain fell on him and he died.

 

[mamba]

I don't think anyone has any issues with what the gods (good, evil, and neutral) did to the Kingpriest himself.

It's the people who got caught in the crossfire (which, as I understand it, is essentially the rest of the entire planet) that are the point of contention.

fine, doesn't change the difference between the two questions all that much though, so my point still stands

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Vampires are cool, and really snappy dressers.

 

[mamba]

We are told he WAS a good man. Then a flaming mountain fell on him and he died.

we are being told a whole lot more, which is why I called that narrative cherry picking.

 

[FrozenNorth]

So since the Kingpriest was evil and doing many evil things, where were the good people that tried and failed?

Banished, imprisoned and killed. Presumably, some were planning something and were killed when the mountain fell.

Or do you believe that everyone everywhere went along with the Kingpriest’s plan? If so, how is that not break suspension of disbelief?

I haven't seen anyone ask that. The evil and neutral gods dropped the mountain. The good gods tried to stop it via Lord Soth. Once Soth failed and the punishment was going to happen, the good gods had no choice but to withdraw with all the other gods.

Seems that destroying a continent would require all gods to participate.