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

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

There are ways to include any kind of character in Dragonlance if you want. With the inclusion of Spelljammer, and soon Planescape anything is possible. That is one of the benefits of such glue settings. However there needs a reason: How did your planewalker or wildspace character came to be here at this time? What are they doing? How are folks in this world going to react when they see this foreign character? You want to play artificer in Krynn? ok, you are a gnome, or you lived among them for many years, and so on.

Yeah, what if the Orc is just a Space Orc (formerly known as "Scro") whose spelljamming ship crashed into Krynn somehow and now they have to deal with the War of the Lance before they can escape back to their people?

5e's default setting (according to the game designers) is the Multiverse, which Dragonlance is a part of. Banning orcs isn't going to work if Krynn isn't shut off from every other world (and it used to be one of the central worlds of Spelljammer).

 

[mamba]

Ansalon was humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings. That was it for the PC races there. Taladas added Irda and Minotaurs. Now we're going to see walking turtles, cat people, half-orcs, and elephant men in the party. That's not Krynn.

You could say the same about Forgotten Realms by virtue of 1e / 2e just having far less playable races.

 

[mamba]

As @Veltharis ap Rylix says, that's pretty much true of any adventure. While there might be some outliers, it's not exactly a strike against an adventure that it can be run in Forgotten Realms. That's kinda the point of FR is that it can be used for pretty much any D&D adventure. Might take a bit of jiggery pokery, but, it certainly can be done.

I did not mean it as a strike against the adventure. I was only arguing against this not being possible unless "you ignore anything about the adventure other than it's name and a reductive tagline". I am pretty sure you can 'convert' 95% of any adventure to any setting, at a minimum between DL, FR, and Greyhawk, heck, even Dark Sun and Ravenloft. As long as you stay in a similar enough world (similar level of technology and magic) pretty much anything can be converted

 

[Maxperson]

You could say the same about Forgotten Realms by virtue of 1e / 2e just having far less playable races.

Not really. The 1e Realms not only had half-orcs, but it had dinosaur people, jaguar people(might be 2e for this one), spirit folk, korobokoru(sp), Hengeyokai, and since it was 1e and monsters were playable in 1e, most monsters. And I'm sure I'm missing some races from 2e.

 

[Geoff Thirlwell]

I think you are losing more than you gain by letting players run characters that don’t fit in with the background of the setting. By keeping Warforged in Eberron and Kender in Dragonlance etc it helps define the differences between the settings and makes them feel more special and distinct

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I think you are losing more than you gain by letting players run characters that don’t fit in with the background of the setting. By keeping Warforged in Eberron and Kender in Dragonlance etc it helps define the differences between the settings and makes them feel more special and distinct

Which is why Kender are getting official stats in this book and Warforged and Kalashtar racial stats stayed in Eberron while the other two Eberron races (Changelings and Shifters) have become more "setting agnostic". There are setting-specific races still. But Orcs aren't really seting-specific, and if they're going to be banned from a world, the reason should probably be a good one.

 

[Hussar]

And, again, let's not forget, that the only reason that, say, Tieflings don't exist in Dragonlance is because DL was written first. If Tieflings had been part of D&D in 1982, then DL would have had Tieflings. It's not like Dragonlance banned any PHB races. And, before anyone starts up about half-orcs, I'd point out that the official removal of orcs from Dragonlance came much, much later. As in several years after the release of the setting.

You didn't have half-orcs in DL simply because no one played one. Drow weren't banned from the setting. They just didn't appear.

It was much later, after the fact, that people started justifying why this or that race didn't appear in Dragonlance by changing things to exclude those races.

I really wonder why people are so set on making sure that Dragonlance stays "true" to canon but insist that it must be canon that came much later and wasn't actually canon at the outset. I thought keeping settings true to their origins was the goal here. I thought that changing canon was a bad thing. Apparently not though. It's apparently only a bad thing to change canon when people don't like the changes.

It really would be nice if the canon police would mind their own campaigns and leave the rest of us to enjoy things. If you don't want orcs or drow in your DL? Not a problem. Knock yourself out. I don't imagine that there will be a single orc or drow NPC in the module, so, it's not like you'll have to change a single thing. Why do you feel that you should be able to tell me what should be in my campaign though? Why can't you simply mind your own table?

 

[AnotherGuy]

It really would be nice if the canon police would mind their own campaigns and leave the rest of us to enjoy things. If you don't want orcs or drow in your DL? Not a problem. Knock yourself out. I don't imagine that there will be a single orc or drow NPC in the module, so, it's not like you'll have to change a single thing. Why do you feel that you should be able to tell me what should be in my campaign though? Why can't you simply mind your own table?

Who is telling you what to do at your table?

 

[Delazar]

There were drow in some of the later adventures, and I guess if we accept the idea that devils and demons exist in DL, then it’s not so far fetched to admit the existence of tiefling.

 

[Remathilis]

Eberron would be impossible I think to put into the Realms, but I would also argue that despite its creator's desire, it is not a kitchen sink setting. There are off limits things(leaving the cosmology, knowing if gods are real or not, etc.) that are unique to that setting, as well as races like warforged that while I can use them elsewhere, are not included in any other setting and could be considered to be unique to that setting(even though it is not said outright). Dragonmarks are also a unique mechanic.

1. You can leave the cosmology. RftLW discusses the possibility as an option for DMs who want to use the wider Multiverse.
2. Of course the Gods are real. They don't directly send avatars to wander around, but anyone who goes to the heart of Thrane and sees the giant pillar of Silver Flame and says "nah, that ain't real" is a fool.
3. So by your definition, taking a kitchen sink and adding more to it no longer a kitchen sink? If so, you just said every setting except Faerun is not a kitchen sink. Exandria adds dunamancy and unique subraces, Ravenloft has lineages and dark gifts. Eberron has dragonmarks and new races, and Spelljammer has races and the ships themselves. Dragonlance will add kender, Knighthoods and moon magic.

But thank you for agreeing that all settings aren't the same despite all allowing the options in the core books.