Dragonlance New Dragonlance Novels from Weis and Hickman in 2026

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman announced a new trilogy of Dragonlance books titled Dragonlance Legacies with the first novel titled War Wizard.

Tracy Hickman made the announcement on his Facebook page this past weekend:

Just announced at Gencon: Margaret Weis and I will be writing a new trilogy: Dragonlance Legacies. First book: War Wizard

Margaret Weis’s Facebook announcement had a bit more detail:

Tracy and I are pleased to announce Dragonlance Legacies. The story of the legendary wizard, Magius, and his friendship and adventures with the Solamnic knight, Huma. Published by Random House Worlds. 2026.

Weis also answered a few questions giving us a bit more information.

• Weis and Hickman are writing the books together
• When asked if this will conflict with pre-existing lore established in Richard A. Knaak’s The Legend of Huma, Weis said “This is our story.”
• When asked if Hasbro was involved, Weis said “Random House Worlds is the publisher”
• The omnibus edition of Chronicles will be accompanied by an omnibus edition of Legends as well in 2025.

So far, the only new book officially announced through any publishers is Dragonlance Chronicles: Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Witner Night, Dragons of Spring Dawning omnibus edition coming in February 2025 (pre-order on Amazon through this affiliate link), but it may be several months until we get details on the Legends omnibus or the new trilogy.

 

[M.L. Martin]

That's correct. DoSF has strong pre-sales and sales, and the setting's supporters on the staff thought this was a good time to pitch a relaunch. Upper management was getting desperate for a new hit by 1995, so they gave the Fifth Age a shot in 1996. A lot of the RPG material was great, but the strong DL novel sales had stopped translating into Dragonlance RPG sales in the mid to late 80s. Even after Dragonlance withered as a game setting, the novels consistently hit genre, chain bookstore, and other bestseller lists, at their high point selling more than 100,000 copies in English and seeing translation around the world. And that's the average DL novel, not the even more successful titles from Margaret and Tracy.

Thanks for the confirmation. I have anecdotal evidence that suggest things started falling off midway through the original module series, based on seeing massive quantities of DL9 and DL12-14--still in shrinkwrap--at a local game store in North Dakota in the early 2000s. Is that a fluke, or does that match what you know? (That is also roughly around the point where the novel storyline got ahead of the modules currently available, which I think may have been a non-trivial point.)

 

[JLowder]

Thanks for the confirmation. I have anecdotal evidence that suggest things started falling off midway through the original module series, based on seeing massive quantities of DL9 and DL12-14--still in shrinkwrap--at a local game store in North Dakota in the early 2000s. Is that a fluke, or does that match what you know? (That is also roughly around the point where the novel storyline got ahead of the modules currently available, which I think may have been a non-trivial point.)

The interrelationship of the original DL novels and the game material is complicated. From some point in the middle of the first two DL trilogies through the remainder of TSR's history, the company would struggle to figure out how to align fiction and RPG continuity and content, with serious implications for individual products, the lines, and the settings themselves. Even the game design for D&D was impacted over time. It's not a shock all this proved to be a challenge; a lot of the things TSR did with transmedia, especially between 1984 and 1992 or 1993, covered new territory for them and for RPGs as an art form. It was all much harder to wrangle pre-Internet, with coordination verging on horrific once creators outside the offices in Lake Geneva were involved in the transmedia projects. Given what we have learned about RPGs and building worlds across media in the last fourty years, the original DL project likely would be run differently now, as would the Avatar project for the Realms. Empires in the Realms and some of the early Ravenloft crossovers were probably the first time we solved some of the cross-form problems successfully and deliberately. But there's still no single right way to handle this kind of multimedia RPG universe, all these years later.

 

[JLowder]

But my speculation is that, since Wizards has lost their book publishing department in the big Hasbro layoffs, all of that oversight is going to Random House with them having a lot more freedom rather than being mostly done in-house at Wizards with Random House only printing and distributing and handling bookstore marketing and whatnot.

There were licensing and brand people laid off recently at WotC, but the Book Department withered starting in the early 2000s and disappeared years ago. They are still publishing some Magic-related fiction, but they no longer have dedicated fiction editors, no dedicated people for fiction sales or marketing or distribution, and so on.

The novels being published under license in New York have to be approved by various people at Wizards and Hasbro. The approval process is intensive and run through the brand teams at WotC, which does have people with fiction and comics publishing backgrounds. How much creative control the writers and editors will have can vary wildly by product. Publishing fiction connected to D&D under license is a different process than publishing it from a department within the company.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

There were licensing and brand people laid off recently at WotC, but the Book Department withered starting in the early 2000s and disappeared years ago. They are still publishing some Magic-related fiction, but they no longer have dedicated fiction editors, no dedicated people for fiction sales or marketing or distribution, and so on.

The novels being published under license in New York have to be approved by various people at Wizards and Hasbro. The approval process is intensive and run through the brand teams at WotC, which does have people with fiction and comics publishing backgrounds. How much creative control the writers and editors will have can vary wildly by product. Publishing fiction connected to D&D under license is a different process than publishing it from a department within the company.

It shows, the consequences has been a huge mess with the fiction, stories and sets often being at odds which they aren't supposed to be, among other issues.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

I would love it if we got a new novel line and not just a few books every once in a while.

 

[JLowder]

I also believe Weis's claim that Williams didn't want "stars" and was happy to downgrade TSR's relationship with Weis and Hickman. Both can be true, and there are probably other reasons also.

TSR's problem with "stars" and creative credit--and this was common with upper management and even some of the others in the company--runs through the entire history of the company, in both games and fiction. The problem was more pronounced with the fiction releases because they are commonly sold and marketed by author name. TSR wanted the brands and worlds and company to be the main selling point. Rose Estes wrote million-sellers for the company with the Endless Quest books and the company gave her many reasons to leave, in part because they refused to treat the creators as anything but interchangeable. Margaret & Tracy wrote million-sellers for the company with DL and the company gave them many of the same reasons to leave. The company came close to doing the same things with Bob Salvatore in the mid-90s. Had TSR not sold the company, they would have driven him away too. The company treatment of creators was the reason I quit editing and writing for them, too. Between the novels I wrote and the ones I edited for the company, I handed them millions in sales, too. So Margaret is absolutely correct, but that poisonous attitude had a long history at the company and was shared by more than just Lorraine.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I started in D&D thanks Rose Estes' Endless Quest gamebooks.

I guess now WotC would rather fiction by written by 3PPs because these can hire better writters, but these need to know the lore of the franchises and keeping enough coherence, nothing about this important character to die or like this.

 

[JLowder]

I started in D&D thanks Rose Estes' Endless Quest gamebooks.

I guess now WotC would rather fiction by written by 3PPs because these can hire better writters, but these need to know the lore of the franchises and keeping enough coherence, nothing about this important character to die or like this.

Rose and the Endless Quest books she wrote and championed as a concept kept TSR profitable as the Satanic Panic took a toll on D&D sales. The fiction program that grew out of the EQ line would help keep the company going for a decade, covering for a lot of terrible business decisions the games alone might not have been able to cover.

Many of the authors working for the third-party publishers would likely work for WotC, if the company still had a functioning fiction publishing program. The New York houses have easier access to dedicated fiction writers and can promise better fiction distribution and the like. And D&D is now cool, so even some of the fiction folks who would have avoided writing a shared world novel in the past would consider it now.

The WotC staff on the brand and licensing team will be responsible for keeping the novels true to the source material--though the company has been quite clear they do not consider anything they or anyone else publishes immutable "canon" these days.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Rose and the Endless Quest books she wrote and championed as a concept kept TSR profitable as the Satanic Panic took a toll on D&D sales. The fiction program that grew out of the EQ line would help keep the company going for a decade, covering for a lot of terrible business decisions the games alone might not have been able to cover.

I've said it before, but Rose Estes deserves way more credit than she gets in the history of D&D.

 

[Dire Bare]

I've said it before, but Rose Estes deserves way more credit than she gets in the history of D&D.

I remember enjoying her EQ books and novels back in the day. Her name stood out among the other D&D authors at the time.

I recently listened to the "When We Were Wizards" podcast and learned how poorly she was treated by TSR pretty much from Day 1.

She did move on to bigger and better things, however, so there is a silver lining there.