Dragonlance WotC Officially Confirms Takhisis and Tiamat Are The Same

It's been an issue in dispute for decades, over various editions of D&D, but WotC has officially confirmed that - at least in 5E - Dragonlance's Takhisis is, indeed, currently Tiamat. In previous editions, Tiamat has varied from being a big dragon to a minor goddess, while Takhisis has been a greater god on Krynn. At times they've been the same entity, and at others different entities. Today, WotC is putting its foot down and saying that Takhisis and Tiamat are, indeed, the same being.



Of course, this is not an opinion universally held. Dragonlance co-creator Margaret Weis emphatically stated that "TAKHISIS IS NOT TIAMAT, DAMN IT!"

Fizban's Treasuryof Dragons confirms that the beings echo across various settings.

D&D 5E - Is Paladine Bahamut? Is Takhisis Tiamat? Fizban's Treasury Might Reveal The Answer!

According to WotC's James Wyatt, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons introduces a new cosmology for dragon gods, where the same beings, including Fizban, echo across various D&D campaign settings with alternate versions of themselves (presumably like Paladine/Bahamut, or Takhisis/Tiamat). Also... the...

www.enworld.org

 

[dave2008]

The novels were so popular at the time it would have been foolish, just from the financial side, to have not put them together. And once that happened, it became pretty impossible to disentangle them...

I find it incredibly easy to do so.

 

[darjr]

The novels were so popular at the time it would have been foolish, just from the financial side, to have not put them together. And once that happened, it became pretty impossible to disentangle them...

Still TSR wrote that you didn’t need to use the pregens.

I have to say though the nostalgia effort by WotC for Dragonlance seems more based on the fiction and computer games than the actual RPG products of TSR.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I find it incredibly easy to do so.

That was meant for TSR/WotC, who have milked the novel cash cow for all it was worth, not players/DMs.

 

[Shadowedeyes]

So let me get this straight...

Let's say there is a guild of evil mages. We'll call them the Withered Hand. Your PC fights them a bunch of times, they do evil plots, etc. Pretty stock evil villains.

The next time you encounter them, you find out they are actually a bunch of Orcus Worshippers/cult. This never came up in the previous encounters with them, but now they're all Orcus, all the time. So you ask the DM "When did the Withered Hand go from just evil mages to an Orcus cult?"

If the DM says, "well, they've always been Orcus worshippers, they're just more vocal about it" that's a bad retcon because it changes what was fundamentally known about them.

If the DM says "well, last year while you were off fighting pirates, the Withered Hand was infiltrated by an Orcus cultist who rose in the ranks and quickly turned them into an Orcus cult" that's a good retcon because it added to or advanced the timeline.

Does that sound about right?

I mean, both seem pretty reasonable. The only issue I would have is if the first encounters established some as devoted to, I don't know, Zuggutmoy or something, and then the DM was saying that they were all actually worshippers of Orcus and always have been.

But an evil group doing evil things that I found out also was a cult to Orcus? Not exactly shocking in my opinion.

 

[Dire Bare]

Wait! Isn't the RPG continuity separate from the novel continuity?! I mean, IMO, it has to be. I don't know enough of either of them to tell you which lore belongs to which continuity, but I gather there is a lot more lore in the novels than the RPG products.

Up until the new products released this year, the novels and RPG books all existed within the same canon. Like most shared worlds, things were inconsistent and contradictory to a degree, but it's all the same world.

WotC seems to have a looser concern for canon these days, and likely aren't worried about maintaining all the baggage from over 30 years of Dragonlance novels, comics, and RPG adventures. Still, the changes we've seen confirmed so far are very minor, so the new products don't stray far from existing canon. And it's not likely we'll get much more than the new W&H novels and the new RPG adventure and board game. Of course, the game products are just now getting out there, and only the first of three novels has been published, so . . . . we'll see.

 

[dave2008]

Up until the new products released this year, the novels and RPG books all existed within the same canon. Like most shared worlds, things were inconsistent and contradictory to a degree, but it's all the same world.

But that is impossible, my group died in the original adventure so the dragon armies won!

 

[Velderan]

Well yea. In our game so many moons ago Goldmoon didn’t exist.

I've seen it both ways. I've played campaigns where we were the Heroes of the Lance and only a few of the potential pregen PCs existed as NPCs (Laurana and Tika come to mind). We've also played a campaign very similar to SotDQ (except in Southern Solamnia) where our PC cleric had met Elistan just prior to the start of the campaign and didn't cross paths with any of the novel characters beyond that. It all depends on when and where your campaign takes place if the Companions should exist imo. They're a storytelling tool like any other NPC if you need them.

 

[Marandahir]

This is getting very Quixotic, like how Cervantes made Don say he wasn't that other guy pretending to be Don Quixote after some other writer wrote a fanfic unofficial sequel, even though both writers had claimed in their texts that they were just uncovering old manuscripts of a true story…

Does it really matter for your D&D table whether WotC thinks Takhesis is Tiamat or Weiss thinks she isn't?
Does it really matter for Weiss' new novels what WotC's stance is?

Isn't D&D a game about making it your own?

WotC has marketing reasons to try to unmuddy the waters and tied Krynn closer to the rest of their brand. But Weiss has her own reasons to make Takhesis separate. Ultimately, how much of this big picture multiversal question is going to affect your table when you play Shadow of the Dragon Queen or Tyranny of Dragons? How much is going to affect your table when you play homebrew, which may not even have Tiamat in it? How hard is it to ignore or adapt what is written? Isn't that what EVERYONE does to some extent?

Why do we need to agree on one canonical answer when D&D is shared storytelling?

Even WotC agrees that their crossovers between Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering are not canonical to both storylines at once (Acquisitions, Inc. may have an office in Ravnica in D&D, but they don't exist in the Magic Story; Mordenkainen and Drizzt are Planeswalkers in the D&D Magic sets but that doesn't mean they have the Spark but rather that they are prominent planar travellers in D&D…).

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I can't imagine the troubles about the canon the day we saw a crossover D&D-Fortnite.

I guess WotC understands in the table the canon not always is respected too much. Then.... why go to so much trouble?

And in the true axis of the canon will be not the TTRPG but the future novels/comics, or the media-productions. I would bet Hasbro wants Dragonlance to be adapted to the big or the little screen. I doubt a movie because there are too many things to be told. I don't know the industry but I suppose an animated adaptation should be safer option than action-live. If I was Paramount I wouldn't like the "licence" of Dragonlance was for Disney, and although we should doubt this to happen, I admit I feel a lot of curiosity about a Disney (cartoon) version of Dragonlance characters. If Hasbro wants merchandising of Dragonlance, Disney+ might the best option to promote the franchise. Why not in Netflix? Because this has got a sad fame of cancelling a lot of series, even when the last episode of the season ends with a cliffhunger.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

But that is impossible, my group died in the original adventure so the dragon armies won!

I heard a story many years ago of a group that double TPKed with the pregens then ran overpowered munchkin built homemade characters and wrecked the war way easier including jumping off the tracks of the adventures... I often wonder how that group would feel being told "Nope goldmoon had to do X"