So I have some time on my hands, and was thinking about how Wizards will be releasing a Dragonlance in the coming weeks, and after watching several podcasts from Wizards, its obvious they are trying to make the setting as assessable to 5e as possible by including every player option possible into the setting. In my view, this makes Dragonlance no different that any other setting, which really takes away from what makes it so compelling. Yes, Dragonlance doesn't have many of the common tropes we accept as stock in 5e, but for what it lacks, it brings us a truly unique and wonderous setting that seems larger by what it isn't, rather than what it is. As a DM, i personnally intend to make the 5e release as true to Dragonlance as i possibly can and I thought some of you out there may feel the same. So I thought I would run down what Dragonlance is, compared to other settings.
What is Krynn?
The world of Krynn is composed of several continents. The primary is Ansalon, Taladas is the other. The two continents are almost completely different settings. Krynn is the sole creation of its Gods. The gods themselves are not native to Krynn and created the world is a refuge. There are no outside influences allowed on Krynn. This means no outside gods can have patrons, or visit Krynn. However, all the Krynn gods reside on the outer planes, and so visitors from Krynn can go to other worlds. Krynn was created by these gods with their native magic. The all-god, seeing in-fighting among the lower gods, demanded that there should always be a balance between the gods of good and evil. There are three types of gods, the gods of good, evil and neutrality. Krynn is accessible and is well known to Spelljammers, which could be used to explain the existence of non-natives to the world. Unlike other worlds, the gods of Krynn are extremely active in the world, and make regularly appearances. They treat the world like their own personal playground.
What is the Balance?
The balance between good and evil isn't as clear cut as it seems. Krynn has a very different concept of what is good and evil than other worlds. Good is not always good, and Evil is not always evil. Good is about the greater good, even if it means committing heinous acts. It doesn't take into account the individual. Evil, is about self-ambition. Neither of these are inherently bad, but when taken to the extreme, they can both be disastrous. When the King-Priest of Istar attempted to become a god so he could eradicate all evil, he started a campaign of genocide that collapsed the balance. Similarly, self-ambitious evil people have risen to be heroic saviors. Steel Brightblade, despite being a dark paladin devoted to Takhisis personally saved the world. There is a mantra, "Good redeems its own, and evil turns upon itself, both good and evil must exist in contract." There is a fourth law, created by the all god. "The law of Consequence" For every law maintained, there is a balance for any broken there is a consequence. The most extreme example is when the King Priest demanded to become a god so he could eradicate the Ogre races. The result of the destruction of Krynn, and the loss of priestly magic for 300 years.
What are the Races?
There are four races native to Krynn.
Elves. Created by the gods of good. The elves are to ensure the advancement of the world. They have no connection to the Fey, and no trance sleep or resistance to charm. When chaos was captured in the greygem, some elves were transformed into sea elves and other fey like races, such as centaurs.
Ogres. Created by the gods of evil. The Ogres are to advance civilization with their ambition. They are long lived, and extremely beautiful. Unfortunately, their ambition turned to cruelty and they were cursed so that their internal ugliness reflected their outside. The ogres have lost all civilization and have been reduced to an almost primitive status. However, the transformation wasn't universal. Some Ogres became Giants (there is only one type of giant, hill), hags, ogre magi, goblinoids, minotaur, gnolls and other monstruous races. Ogres today despise the gods. Presumably, Takhisis renounced the Ogres to be the Patron god of Dragons, but the Ogres blame Paladine.
Humans. Created by the gods of neutrality. They get to choose who they align to. They are short lived in order to make them productive and truly shape the world. The god Reorx taught humans to create wonderous inventions. When humans grew highly talented, the started to mock Reorx , he then transformed these humans into gnomes as punishment. The gnomes of Ansalon, called Tinker gnomes, are afflicted with a curse that makes them obsessed with invention and constant improvements so that they will never achieve their life's goal. Gnomes from other worlds, or from Taladas are not afflicted. When the grey gem passed over the gnomes, they were transformed into Kender and Dwarves. The Kender have an insatiable curiosity, that tends to make them unsuited to civilization and often hated. Dwarfs are obsessed with craft and riches and have little use for other races. All variants of Dwarves exist on Krynn.
Dragons are native creations to Krynn and are actually part of the world itself and are natively magic. Dragons on Krynn are actually much smaller than outside Dragons. They do not grow into great-wurms as they do in other worlds. During the first or second dragon war, many dragons refused to align to Takhisis. These dragons became the metallic dragons of good, and the gem dragons of neutrality. Gem dragons live in Taladas and do not come to Ansalon.
Draconians were created from the eggs of good dragons by Clerics of Takhsis, and black robe wizards. Draconians are the elite shock troops of the Dragon Armies. They are all males as the Dark Queen intends to exterminate them at the end of the war as she views them as threat.
What Races Don't Exist?
When Laura and Tracy Hickman were designing Dragonlance, TSR was going through a number of copy right lawsuits from the Tolkien foundation. Naturally, they wanted Dragonlance to be as un-middle earth like as possible. This is what made Dragonlance truly unique.
There are no native Orcs and obviously Half Orcs. Halfling are also unknown, replaced by Kender. There is no fey, or fey influences in Krynn. This means that elves have no connection to the fey. Similarly, there are no Drow, at least not as described in other settings. The spider-queen is forbidden on Krynn, as with other Gods and so cannot corrupt the Krynnish elves. All fey like creatures, such as Goblins and Hags are descended from Ogres. There is no giant ordering. All giants are of the hill-giant variety.
There are no forest gnomes or deep gnomes. Afflicted gnomes that leave Krynn lose their affliction.
Dragonkin / Dragonborn don't exist. While there is instances of dragon-demihuman pairing, there is no lore to support a union. This doesn't mean Dragonkin dont exist, but such a person would be highly feared by both societies. At the time of the Lance, Dragons have been exiled for thousands of years, and there would be no such unions. Post war, such a thing is possible.
Tieflings also don't exist, but there is enough lore to support them. Demons and fiends of the Abyss spend a lot of time on Krynn, usually as agents of the Dark Queen, so its very possible a union would happen.
The Existence of Non-Krynn Races
I must also point out that any of the non-existent races could be shoehorned in. Sigil has a number of portals to Krynn and Krynn is well known in Spelljammer circles with a Spaceport in Taladas. If you want to shoehorn one of these foreign races into the game, you can, but just consider that you are taking the game outside of the boundaries of the setting and injecting something foreign and not Dragonlance.
How does magic work?
All known magic comes from the gods. The moon gods of neutrality, good and evil quickly realized that magic could shape and unbalance the world, and so these three gods decided they would be the sole provider of magic and created the Orders of High Sorcery to both restrain and promote magic above all other devotions. Magic users may not wear armor, and may never be armed with more than a dagger. This is to encourage the devotion to above all others endeavors. If this rule is broken, the moon gods will deny them access to magic. All magic users are required to be members of one of the Orders. A test is typically given at level 3. If a magic user does not join, he will be asked to join and if they refuse, they are to be placed under strict supervision and will be executed if they abuse the magic. Basically, this means sorcerers and warlocks would not be welcomed in their ranks. Magic waxes and wanes according to the phases of each of the three moons. When all three moons are full, magic is always at its max effect.
This is where I must note, that sorcerers and warlocks do exist on Krynn. Krynn has a native magic to it, which is generally unknown until the 5th age, but was very prevalent during the first age. This was why the Orders were created. If such spell casters exist, they are likely living in hiding, or posing as an order wizard. Warlocks are a special case. Warlocks would never join the order, and would likely be executed as a result of their abusive source. There would be no native warlock patrons from outside Krynn, such as the Great Old One. The exception to this would be demonic patrons. The 1st planer of hell, Avernus has a special connection to Krynn thanks to Takhisis's constant intrusions. (On Krynn, Avernus is called the Abyss. The denizen of the outer planes tell a lot of jokes about how stupid people from Krynn are.)
Also, any god of Krynn can give arcane magic. Takhisis did this during the Chaos war, by creating an order of Wizards that actually wore armor and carried swords. These individuals may be warlocks or sorcerers.
Another About Magic
Magic is reserved for the three base races of Krynn. Only elves and humans actively practice arcane magic. Elves only practice good magic. Any elf that joins the black robes and sometimes the red robes is exiled and deemed a dark elf, derogatorily called drow. Humans can join any order. Dwarves naturally despise magic and distrust magic users. However, Dark Dwarves are active magic users but rarely join the Order. Gnomes have no patience to learn magic. They believe magic is a natural phenomenon that can be explained by science that they will discover. Kender would like nothing more than to learn magic, but lack the patience and concentration to learn. It is generally believed that a Kender learning magic will spell the doom of all life on Krynn. Ogres have lost the ability to learn magic due to their curse. However, every so often an ogre is born with the ability to natively cast magic. They are dubbed Ogre Magi and are highly prized. Also, Ogre Shaman are born once a generation with innate divine abilities. Both are likely sorcerers.
Are there Clerics in the Present Age?
At the time of the War of the Lance, the Gods had departed, and returned. As a result, Divine magic is unknown, but does exist. Mishakal, god of healing has been secretly operating since the start of the cataclysm. The War of the Lance had been going on for 5 years by the time the heroes of the lance arrived at the Inn of the Last Home where they met the god Paladine himself. Takhsis's clerics were active for much longer, about a 100 years. At the time of the Lance, the old gods are hated for abandoning Krynn during the cataclysm. False faiths, have taken hold and actively hunt and execute devotees to the old gods. Also, Takhsis, whom has been active for the past hundred years is actively hunting any clerics of the gods. When Goldmoon discovered the Blue Crystal Staff, the army of Takhisis were dedicated to hunting her down to prevent proof of the gods return. Due to Krynn gods being so protective of their world, clerics from other worlds will lose all divine spell casting, though a Krynn god is likely to take particular interest in such a foreign agent.
About Prejudices.
Okay, this is a subject that has caused some controversy recently with the new novel. Krynn is a world populated by peoples that have taken sides in a great cosmic struggle. It is also a world that is short on resources and too much competition. It is such an important part of what Krynn is, it's impossible to not acknowledge it. I must point out, what I write is a generalization of their civilizations and not them individually. There are plenty of examples of members of each race that don't display these traits.
Dwarves distrust everyone. Humans are too hasty and elves are too uppity. They don't actually hate either, but they have little tolerance. Other races care little for dwarves and have no actual opinion of them. Mountain Dwarves are relatively friendly with their dark dwarf cousins. Hill Dwarfs and Mountain Dwarfs are sworn enemies due to the Dwarf Gate Wars, which took place shortly after the cataclysm. They hate each other to the point on enragement. Gully Dwarves are dwarves that live in sewers and have very low intelligence (in game terms, a 4 or 5). Gully Dwarves aren't hated, but they are barely tolerated.
Silvanist are high elves. They are extreme isolationists. They don't hate other races, but they are lofty, and consider other races, including their elven cousins to be beneath them. They are highly condescending and will not negotiate with anyone outside of Silvanosti. There are no Silvanisti half-elves.
Qualinesti are also high elves. They are more accepting of other races, but are in other ways worse. Half-elves are common. Qualinesti elves still consider themselves superior to other races, but they accept the value the other races contribute to their cause. They believe they must work with others. Their attitude towards others, and willingness to mingle has caused Dwarves and Humans to generally dislike elves. In fact, most societies dislike elves. Despite being a good aligned race, the Qualinesti elves have enslaved their Wood Elf cousins the Kaganesti. Much how the Silvanisti elves view the Qualinesti, the Qualinesti view the Kaganesti as uncivilized barbarians. The Qualinesti know that slavery is wrong, but view it as a good act to help the Kaganesit to become more civilized. (See what I mean about Good not always being Good). The Qualinesti will not take non-Kaganesti slaves. The Qualinesti treat their slaves well, but it's still slavery and the Kaganesti detest their slavers. Some of the Kaganesti slaves work as double agents, by spying on the senate. Ambushes and skirmishes outside the capital is common.
The Kaganesti live in the woodlands. They do not build cities, nor typically live in villages. They live purely off the land. Kaganesti elves are typically friendly with humans, particularly the Ergoths. They have no contact with the Silvanisti and rarely tolerate the Qualinesti whom they instantly distrust, if not hate.
Ogres are split into two camps, Blode and Kern. Blode Ogres are large and round. They consider themselves the inheritors of the ogre empire and live in the ruins of the old empire. They are a cruel and unforgiven people. They hate most everyone equally, but only have prejudices for the elves because they view them as Paladines people. (they blame Paladine for their curse.) Kern Ogres are lean and live in small villages. They are more tribal and tend to be more thoughtful in their actions. Kern and Blode ogres fight amongst themselves often, but it's more of a culture thing, than a hatred thing. It's just what they do. Both groups will work with other races, and have no direct prejudices against other races, though Blode Ogres have a particular hatred for elves, and Kern Ogres distrust them (Blode Ogres hate everyone equally). Both groups dislike the Knights of Solamnia. Of particular note is that Ogres will not follow any cause of gods.
Goblinoids. Goblins are cruel, and self-serving. They don't actually hate anyone, they just view everyone as a means to an end. Surprisingly, Goblins are generally trusted and are active members in most societies. They will serve whomever pays, or bullies them most. The later is particularly dangerous, as a subservant goblin is a murderous goblin. Goblins were the primary foot soldiers during the second dragon war.
Kender are a complicated race. As a race, they are incapable of hatred or prejudices. They are driven by curiosity that too often gets their companions killed or arrested. Also, Kender have no sense of personal property. It's a completely foreign concept to them, and they cannot be taught otherwise. Kender borrow often, and are usually unaware that they are taking other people's property. While they are hated by many, most societies tolerate them and go out other way to avoid them. Almost all law enforcement is devoted to rounding up Kender and escorting them out of town. Kender aren't dangerous, which is why there is so few laws enforced on them, but they cause considerable disorder when introduced to a human civilization. Arresting Kender is almost pointless, as they escape easily, and putting them on trial will only draw the curiosity of more Kender.
Minotaur are a race devoted to war and conquest. Minotaur fall into two groups. Those of Kiri-Jolith that are devoted to righteous war, and those to Sargas that are devoted to conquest. They will not align to any other gods. Minotaur don't hate or have prejudices. They view all other races as victims, or potential victims. They are highly honorable in combat, and will always fight fair. There is no greater honor, than to die in combat. In fact, it's considered dishonorable to die of old age. In all aspects, they are very similar to the Knights of Solamnia. Minotaur in Taladas are the ruling race.
Draconians are generally considered to be servants of Takhisis. Draconians were created for war and they are very good at it. They have no other purpose. As a result, all other races view Draconians as a threat. Due to all Draconians being male, they are doomed to die out. They are well aware of this. After the war, Draconians will continue to serve the dragon armies and then hire themselves out as mercenaries when the armies are defeated. They know they are destined to extinction but consider their destiny unavoidable...for now.
True Clerics are hated throughout Ansalon. Followers of fake gods will execute any true clerics on site. The people blame the gods for the cataclysm and will actively hunt their clerics or turn them into the inquisitors of the fake gods. True clerics live in hiding.
The Knights of Solamnia are also hated. The Knight of the Rose, Lord Soth was given a mission to stop the cataclysm. He failed in his quest and as a result, millions died. Most people blame the knighthood for the cataclysm as there are no clerics to place direct blame on. The knights have a deep rooted prejudice against magic users and will not actively work with them unless forced, or its for the greater good.
Wizards of High Sorcerery are forgiving and accepting of most everyone. The mages are aligned with the gods of magic before all others. When Takhisis tried to draw the Black Robes to her during the war, they betrayed her when she threatened the balance of magic. This was why Takhisis had to make her own order of wizards during the chaos war. The Order however does not tolerate non-order spell casters. These spell casters are actively hunted by all three orders. White and Red Robes will try to recruit the grey robe, while black robes will execute them. Outside of wizard orders, they are generally distrusted and often blamed for crimes or natural disasters. Only the elves trust the wizards. Mostly because all elf wizards are white robe. All non-white robbed elves are exiled.
What does Ansalon Look Like?
Krynn in the 4th age is a post-post-apocalyptic world. When the cataclysm happened, there was wide spread famine and disease. War was rampant and all the old institutions that had kept order were abandoned. Istar, the seat of power on Ansalon is beneath the blood sea, and individual city states have risen to replace it. Silvanesti has closed its borders. The Mountain Dwarfs have also closed their kingdom to outsiders. Without the knights of Solamnia, Solanthus has fallen into disorder and revolt. The result are individual townships, ruled by mayors, or the priests of fake gods. Only the isles of Ergoth has managed to maintain order. Palanthas is the only major city not to have been affected by the cataclysm and has become the beating heart of Ansalon. At the time of the Lance, trade is only just now returning to the world and there is some hope of a return to civilization. Unfortunately, the Armies of Takhisis has swept through Ansalon in only five short years, and is on the verge of returning the Dark Queen herself to rule in person over all of Krynn.
What happens after the War?
For the next 15 years, the Dragon Armies still maintain their hold on much of Ansalon, with their capital at Sanction. The Wizard Tower at Palanthas is reopened by Raistlin Majore, but after his death two years after the War, it is reopened under Dalamar the Dark Elf and once again accepts apprentices of the Black Robe. The Gods return in force, and their clerics are present in almost every city. The Knights of Solamnia are once again trusted after their sacrifice at the high cleric tower and are working to unit Ansalon. The elves are returning from exile and have re-opened communications with outside peoples. It even looks like the elven nations may unit for the first time in thousands of years after the marriage of their rulers. Thorbardin, the Mountain Kingdom of the Dwarves is open to free trade, flooding the world with high quality dwarven goods.
After the 15 years, the Dragon Armies have been defeated. However, a secret army of Dark Paladins, called the Knights of Takhisis are forming. Unlike the Dragon Armies, these knights are united under one cause, and are highly honorable, being modeled after the oath and measure from the Knights of Solamnia. They are currently amassing an army, that actively utilizes clerics and mages in its ranks, a major failure among the Solamnics. They have also aligned with the Blue Dragons. The Knights of Solamnia, wary of war, continue to ignore the rising army. The Wizards of High Sorcerery are concerned about the grey wizards in the army and are actively trying to stop them, but have met with disaster.
Silvanesti has been reclaimed, and the elves have all returned to their homelands. Unfortunately, their alliances have fallen apart. The Qualinesti are ruled by a weak puppet king that is controlled by the senate and Silvanesti is ruled by a regent that is trying to close its borders once more. Their rightful rulers, Porthios and Alhana have been exiled and designated dark elves.
Draconians have discovered female eggs and have built their own kingdom to live in peace. For the first time, there is a Draconian civilization and future.
The Ogres of Blode have discovered how to evolve themselves into Ogre Titans. These are 15 foot blue giants, with powerful magic and super intelligence. This transformation requires the blood of elves to fuel. The Ogres are trying to find a permanent solution to maintain their transformation and hope to eventually unit and transform all ogres into Titans.
The Dragons have retreated into the world and live in isolated pockets, away from civilization. On the Blue Dragons are still active.
On a far off island in the north of Ansalon, a group of beautiful blue skinned ogres, called Irda are watching the unrest in the world with great nervousness.
Goblinoids. Goblins are cruel, and self-serving. They don't actually hate anyone, they just view everyone as a means to an end. Surprisingly, Goblins are generally trusted and are active members in most societies. They will serve whomever pays, or bullies them most. The later is particularly dangerous, as a subservant goblin is a murderous goblin. Goblins were the primary foot soldiers during the second dragon war.
Kender are a complicated race. As a race, they are incapable of hatred or prejudices. They are driven by curiosity that too often gets their companions killed or arrested. Also, Kender have no sense of personal property. It's a completely foreign concept to them, and they cannot be taught otherwise. Kender borrow often, and are usually unaware that they are taking other people's property. While they are hated by many, most societies tolerate them and go out other way to avoid them. Almost all law enforcement is devoted to rounding up Kender and escorting them out of town. Kender aren't dangerous, which is why there is so few laws enforced on them, but they cause considerable disorder when introduced to a human civilization. Arresting Kender is almost pointless, as they escape easily, and putting them on trial will only draw the curiosity of more Kender.
Tinker gnomes view the world as one big problem that demands scientific analysis. They have no personal opinion about other races because that would compromise the scientific analysis. No one hates tinker gnomes, they are fear them. Nothing will drive a crowd to panic faster than the Tinker Gnome Death Cry, "Watch This!" Only the Rock Gnomes of Taladas have an actual opinion of the Tinker Gnomes, which is pity.
Minotaur are a race devoted to war and conquest. Minotaur fall into two groups. Those of the minority worship Kiri-Jolith that are devoted to righteous war, and those to Sargas that are devoted to conquest. They will not align to any other gods. Minotaur don't hate or have prejudices. They view all other races as victims, or potential victims. They are highly honorable in combat, and will always fight fair. There is no greater honor, than to die in combat. In fact, it's considered dishonorable to die of old age. In all aspects, they are very similar to the Knights of Solamnia. Minotaur in Taladas are the ruling race. Minotaur and Ogres are eternal enemies due to Ogres once enslaving the minotaur.
Draconians are generally considered to be servants of Takhisis. Draconians were created for war and they are very good at it. They have no other purpose. As a result, all other races view Draconians as a threat. Due to all Draconians being male, they are doomed to die out. They are well aware of this. After the war, Draconians will continue to serve the dragon armies and then hire themselves out as mercenaries when the armies are defeated. They know they are destined to extinction but consider their destiny unavoidable...for now.
True Clerics are hated throughout Ansalon. Followers of fake gods will execute any true clerics on site. The people blame the gods for the cataclysm and will actively hunt their clerics or turn them into the inquisitors of the fake gods. True clerics live in hiding.
The Knights of Solamnia are also hated. The Knight of the Rose, Lord Soth was given a mission to stop the cataclysm. He failed in his quest and as a result, millions died. Most people blame the knighthood for the cataclysm as there are no clerics to place direct blame on. The knights have a deep rooted prejudice against magic users and will not actively work with them unless forced, or its for the greater good.
Wizards of High Sorcerery are forgiving and accepting of most everyone. The mages are aligned with the gods of magic before all others. When Takhisis tried to draw the Black Robes to her during the war, they betrayed her when she threatened the balance of magic. This was why Takhisis had to make her own order of wizards during the chaos war. The Order however does not tolerate non-order spell casters. These spell casters are actively hunted by all three orders. White and Red Robes will try to recruit the grey robe, while black robes will execute them. Outside of wizard orders, they are generally distrusted and often blamed for crimes or natural disasters. Only the elves trust the wizards. Mostly because all elf wizards are white robe. All non-white robbed elves are exiled.
What does Ansalon Look Like?
Krynn in the 4th age is a post-post-apocalyptic world. When the cataclysm happened, there was wide spread famine and disease. War was rampant and all the old institutions that had kept order were abandoned. Istar, the seat of power on Ansalon is beneath the blood sea, and individual city states have risen to replace it. Silvanesti has closed its borders. The Mountain Dwarfs have also closed their kingdom to outsiders. Without the knights of Solamnia, Solanthus has fallen into disorder and revolt. The result are individual townships, ruled by mayors, or the priests of fake gods. Only the isles of Ergoth has managed to maintain order. Palanthas is the only major city not to have been affected by the cataclysm and has become the beating heart of Ansalon. At the time of the Lance, trade is only just now returning to the world and there is some hope of a return to civilization. Unfortunately, the Armies of Takhisis has swept through Ansalon in only five short years, and is on the verge of returning the Dark Queen herself to rule in person over all of Krynn.
What happens after the War?
For the next 15 years, the Dragon Armies still maintain their hold on much of Ansalon, with their capital at Sanction. The Wizard Tower at Palanthas is reopened by Raistlin Majore, but after his death two years after the War, it is reopened under Dalamar the Dark Elf and once again accepts apprentices of the Black Robe. The Gods return in force, and their clerics are present in almost every city. The Knights of Solamnia are once again trusted after their sacrifice at the high cleric tower and are working to unit Ansalon. The elves are returning from exile and have re-opened communications with outside peoples. It even looks like the elven nations may unit for the first time in thousands of years after the marriage of their rulers. Thorbardin, the Mountain Kingdom of the Dwarves is open to free trade, flooding the world with high quality dwarven goods.
After the 15 years, the Dragon Armies have been defeated. However, a secret army of Dark Paladins, called the Knights of Takhisis are forming. Unlike the Dragon Armies, these knights are united under one cause, and are highly honorable, being modeled after the oath and measure from the Knights of Solamnia. They are currently amassing an army, that actively utilizes clerics and mages in its ranks, a major failure among the Solamnics. They have also aligned with the Blue Dragons. The Knights of Solamnia, wary of war, continue to ignore the rising army. The Wizards of High Sorcerery are concerned about the grey wizards in the army and are actively trying to stop them, but have met with disaster.
Silvanesti has been reclaimed, and the elves have all returned to their homelands. Unfortunately, their alliances have fallen apart. The Qualinesti are ruled by a weak puppet king that is controlled by the senate and Silvanesti is ruled by a regent that is trying to close its borders once more. Their rightful rulers, Porthios and Alhana have been exiled and designated dark elves.
Draconians have discovered female eggs and have built their own kingdom to live in peace. For the first time, there is a Draconian civilization and future.
The Ogres of Blode have discovered how to evolve themselves into Ogre Titans. These are 15 foot blue giants, with powerful magic and super intelligence. This transformation requires the blood of elves to fuel. The Ogres are trying to find a permanent solution to maintain their transformation and hope to eventually unit and transform all ogres into Titans.
The Dragons have retreated into the world and live in isolated pockets, away from civilization. On the Blue Dragons are still active.
On a far off island in the north of Ansalon, a group of beautiful blue skinned ogres, called Irda are watching the unrest in the world with great nervousness.
All good info... but I should point out a few things, which relate.
"There are no native Orcs and obviously Half Orcs."
All Orcs in most settings are Outsiders from another world. In Toril (Forgotten Realms) Orc come in 2 varieties, Mt Orcs and Grey Orcs. Mt Orcs are all Half-Orcs and are descended from Male Orcs summoned by Mages during a great war (implied Netheril Empire era, but never fully confirmed) The Grey Orcs have the Basic WarCraft origin, Wizard made a gate under direction of a Dark God and a Massive immigration army of Orcs swarmed out and tried to invade the lands. The irony is the Orc Diety is known to Toril before the Orcs came to Toril, as Gruumsh and Corellon are bitter enemies.
Due to Orcs of the Multiverse being actually nomadic and without a proper homeland, they can show up on any world, or plane. Not being a Common Race of a world should never limit the option of playing an Orc/Half-Orc.
"Dragonkin don't exits." While technically true, it is realistically false as ... "Draconians" are the OG Humanoid Dragon in D&D (1984) other settings copied "Draconians" to make humanoid dragons/dragonkin/Half-Dragons/Dragonborn. Now there is a problem here, as Dragonborn are a Core Race now, and Clearly Draconians are problematic, esp if they keep the "On Death" feature which makes them ill-suited as Player Characters. (Even though AD&D did allow for it) They should update the setting to make it possible for all Core Races, with some kind of backgrounds and Subrace features to allow for them. Because you know Adventure League will be doing DL after it releases.
PHB Races which need inclusion in Dragonlance- Human (easy), Dwarf (Done), Elf (With minor changes), Gnome (Subrace), Half-Elf (Done), Halfling (Kinder Subrace)... Problem Children: Dragonborn (WotC better have a good way so no one complains, people will complain no matter what.), Half-Orc (Portals to other planes, a wizard summoned you), Tiefling ... (Honestly I can see it being a result of Pact Magic, but do Devils count as Deities, because usually they do.)
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Big Bad Pigsmelled lotsof flowersand becamea good pig. - Snapple 1999~ radio ad.
A clever DM can shoehorn any explanation for the existence of whatever in the setting. For instance, Krynn is very accessible by Spelljammer and even has a Spaceport in Taladas. Sigil also has many portals between the lower planes and Krynn. However, the peoples of the lower planes generally view Krynn as a backwater world of laughable ignorance. (Moon magic, LOL!) All races of Krynn were created by its Gods and are not products of the multiverse. They never created orcs and so there are no native orcs on Krynn. In fact, known player races, such as Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes are not the same as those on other planets.
The same with Dragonborn. The Dragons have been in exile for thousands of years, and so there is no chance of a union producing a child. If such a thing had occurred, they would have long ago died of old age.
Lastly, the point of the article is to layout what makes Dragonlance unique, and special, not try to make it another generic setting where everything is available, and the setting diluted. Wizards should be under no obligation to add orcs and halflings to the setting, any more than they are obligated to add Kender to Eberron.
This morning I realized I should speak a little more about the problem race in Krynn. Wizards no doubt wants to avoid negative modifiers, and any stereotypes that may reflect real world people. This makes Gully Dwarfs a bit of problem race.
Gully Dwarves are the JarJar Binx of DnD. Gully Dwarves look like any other dwarf, if not a bit more skinny. They are generally filthy, rarely bath, and are incredibly simple minded. Gully Dwarves can rarely count past the number 2, and never higher than 3. However, Gully Dwarves are very cunning, and crafty which makes one believe their mental deficiencies are not natural, much like the Tinker Gnomes are cursed. For whatever reason, they are incapable of any academic learning.
To a real world observer, Gully Dwarves may resemble homeless people, and real life mental disability. This makes them a bit of problem race in the setting.
Due to their reduced intelligence (about 4 or 5), they keep no records. As a result, their history is completely unknown. Maybe they were cursed by Reorx when they showed little aptitude in crafting. Perhaps they were cursed as a result of laziness, in much the same way ogres and gnomes were cursed. It is completely known what happened to them, if anything at all.
Gully Dwarves are known for being highly gullible due to their low intelligence, and extremely cowardly. However, when cornered, Gully Dwarves are some of the most fearless fighters on Krynn. Gully Dwarves are expert navigators, and never get lost. They have an extremely acute sense of smell and taste. They are also known for being able to eat most anything without getting sick.
Even more surprisingly, they are considered the best cooks and brewers on Krynn, surpassing even their Dwarven cousins. Assuming you can clean them up, a Gully Dwarf cook is a highly valued commodity often found in the best establishments on Krynn. Gully Dwarf taverns are some the most frequently visited establishments (mostly because they never charge more than 2 coins).
Other Dwarves argue that Gully Dwarves aren't real dwarves. However, they do have a representative in Dwarf politics (mostly, because they tend to vote with whomever spoke last).
When role-playing a Gully Dwarf, be wary of how you betray them. Never go full Gully Dwarf. Don't try to mimic a real world disability. They are simple, but very clever and have a natural sense of danger. Imagine them as a person that has never attended a day of school, or been taught anything.
Lastly, the point of the article is to layout what makes Dragonlance unique, and special, not try to make it another generic setting where everything is available, and the setting diluted. Wizards should be under no obligation to add orcs and halflings to the setting, any more than they are obligated to add Kender to Eberron.
Besides the War, the only stuff Dragonlance brings to the table is a bunch of bad takes and Racism. Back when D&D was young, and most settings were filled with bad takes and racism, Dragonlance was unique because of the War. As time moved on, other settings and creators tried to distance themselves from the racism, but Dragonlance kind of doubled down on it. It's still problematic, and I am hoping the 5th edition version fixes these issues. And we don't get the Space monkey event again, which we will. I'm looking forward to a massive facepalm in the new book, not sure where or what, but I am 100% sure there is a Facepalm worthy cringy bit of "accidental" racism.
This morning I realized I should speak a little more about the problem race in Krynn. Wizards no doubt wants to avoid negative modifiers, and any stereotypes that may reflect real world people. This makes Gully Dwarfs a bit of problem race.
Gully Dwarves are the JarJar Binx of DnD. Gully Dwarves look like any other dwarf, if not a bit more skinny. They are generally filthy, rarely bath, and are incredibly simple minded. Gully Dwarves can rarely count past the number 2, and never higher than 3. However, Gully Dwarves are very cunning, and crafty which makes one believe their mental deficiencies are not natural, much like the Tinker Gnomes are cursed. For whatever reason, they are incapable of any academic learning.
To a real world observer, Gully Dwarves may resemble homeless people, and real like mental disability. This makes them a bit of problem race in the setting.
Due to their reduced intelligence (about 4 or 5), they keep no records. As a result, their history is completely unknown. Maybe they were cursed by Reorx when they showed little aptitude in crafting. Perhaps they were cursed as a result of laziness, in much the same way ogres and gnomes were cursed. It is completely known what happened to them, if anything at all.
Gully Dwarves were originally the offspring of dwarf/kender unions, shortly after both races were created by the Chaos Gem altering gnomes. Seeing what their children turned out to be, dwarves avoided having relationships with kender after that. But there were enough of them that they started reproducing with each other enough to keep their numbers up despite the high mortality rate they tended to suffer due to their lack of intelligence and having no communities of their own. Don't know where you got the stuff about them being particularly cunning, allowed to vote in dwarf matters, or skilled at cooking, none of those things match any lore I remember from the game.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
In the War of Souls novel, it speaks about their talent for cooking. Speaker Gilthas, the Lioness and the King of Thorbardin meet up in a Gully Dwarf tavern to discuss evacuating Quanlinesti. Also, the Inn of the Last Home keeps a Gully Dwarf on staff for this reason. In the Chronicles Trilogy, Flints speaks a lot about how cunning Gully Dwarves are. This stems from him being captured in Preludes and forced to be their king. The Legends trilogy is the first to talk about the Highbup being allowed on the Dwarven Council. This also happens in a lot of other novels.
All these novels were written by Margrette Weis and Tracy Hickman. There are other novels to support this, but I kept it to the creators of the setting. The Dwarf/Kender thing was an insult directed at Flint. There is no lore to support it and there is no Dwarf or Kender that would admit to it. Dwarves have a very different idea of physical beauty from other races, and completely opposite view on absolutely everything. Such a union would be near impossible and even had it happened, it would have been so isolated, that a new race would never have been able to spawn.
Gully Dwarves look exactly like normal dwarfs and for the exception of their intelligence, there is no difference, which means they are unlikely a mix-bread. The Mountain Dwarves clearly accept them as Dwarves. The Hill Dwarves generally do not.
Besides the War, the only stuff Dragonlance brings to the table is a bunch of bad takes and Racism. Back when D&D was young, and most settings were filled with bad takes and racism, Dragonlance was unique because of the War. As time moved on, other settings and creators tried to distance themselves from the racism, but Dragonlance kind of doubled down on it. It's still problematic, and I am hoping the 5th edition version fixes these issues. And we don't get the Space monkey event again, which we will. I'm looking forward to a massive facepalm in the new book, not sure where or what, but I am 100% sure there is a Facepalm worthy cringy bit of "accidental" racism.
I don't think you know what racism is. Most of what you think is racism is politics and competition. Yes, the world would be great if no one needed to compete for anything, knew where their next meal was coming from, always had somewhere to live, a source of income, everyone had the exact same sense of moral obligation, and no one would ever commit a crime, and everyone was categorized as either good or bad, but sadly, that's not the world anyone lives in. It's certainly not a very interesting place for a campaign setting. It's also very unrealistic. Yes, it would be great if all the races, and peoples of Krynn got along, but would you honestly believe that's possible in such a war torn world where gods are actively competing to one-up each other?
The King Priest of Istar certainly wanted unity of all peoples when he called down the Gods to smite all evil in the world. He believed that evil thoughts, not just deeds is what prevented the world from becoming truly one peoples. He thought, if he could get rid of evil thoughts, he could rid the world of crime, wars, and yes, racism. What he ended up committing was genocide in the name of a good cause. This misguided sense of right and wrong is why the cataclysm happened.
Imagine everyday, a Kender walked into your house, uninvited and robbed you blind. Now, if you catch him, he will gladly give it all back and say it was all a miss-understanding. Now this happens every day, all the time and not always the same Kender Eventually, you'd stop allowing Kender anywhere near your house and trying to avoid them. Does this make you a racist, or just someone that doesn't want to lose the pocket watch your dear old grandfather gave you?
As to the greater world, Krynn is a post apocalypse world where too often its take, or die of starvation. For 300 hundred years it has been like this. Resources are very scarce, and everyone blames their protectors, such as the Solamnics, the sworn protectors of the world. Others blame the old clerics and many blame the mages out of ignorance. While this is unfair, it's not racism, because it's not a people, but an organization. People are scared, there is no media, no way of explaining to them what has happened. Alls they know is the world and lives they had before is gone and its not their fault. So they blame others that once promised to protect them. Afterall, it has to be someone's fault.
Imagine your poor, and hungry. Your crops dried up and your family will surely starve this winter. However, rumors are the Mountain Dwarves are stockpiling food and shelter in their mountain home. You don't have a personal problem with the dwarves, but why aren't they sharing? Are the dwarves greedy, cruel... racists? You have a choice, stay and die with your family, or attack the dwarven home in hopes of providing food for your family, and if you die, that's one less mouth to feed this winter. What you don't know, is that the Dwarves are starving too. The Dwarves don't hate the Humans for this, but they knew that if they shared their limited resources with them, both groups will die this winter. So the dwarves have chose self preservation over hopeless kindness. This is what started the Dwarfgate Wars.
This is a common theme in Dragonlance. There is no clear-cut good or evil people despite the gods. There are just people in a very grey area. So along comes the Dark Queen Takhsis and her army. They are brutal, and want to control the world. However, they bring safety and stability. Your life may be hard under them, but your family won't starve and maybe your children will grow up in a better world. In our world, this is how dictators come to power.
Truth is, there is no DnD setting that doesn't explore these themes. In Forgotten realms, everyone has an opinion about the Thayans and Zents. All are negative. In Eberron, due to war, the nations have hundreds of years of built up hatred towards each other. The refugee camps are considered lesser people. Shifters are so hated, that they are hunted and must live in hiding. The Warforge are actively killing all fleshies for using them as canon fodder. There is a whole nation in Eberron populated by monstruous races that the rest of Eberron doesn't recognize as people, and want to exterminate.
Unlike other DnD settings, Dragonlance has no dark skinned evil races. There are no Orcs or Drow in Krynn. There are two main dark skinned peoples in Krynn and both are portrayed positively in lore. The Ergoths, which is like the Wakanda of DnD, and along with all humans, were created by the Neutral gods. The Ergothian, Theros Ironfeld forged the Dragonlances, which helped enda the 3rd Dragon War. The other dark skinned race is the Kaganesti elves, which are a woodland people that live off the land and were created by the gods of Good. The Kagonesti, the Lioness saved the entire elven race, founded the elven homeland, and became queen of both the Silvanesti and Qualinesti. All the races created by the Evil gods (Goblins and Ogres) are light skinned. Kender and humans in general are mixed in complexion.
If anything, there may be a question mark over Ogres. In ancient times, Ogres were blue skinned, and considered the most beautiful and advanced race, and then they degenerated into cruel and sloven, ugly light skinned giants...that may be a metaphor.
I also want to point out that in these campaign settings your supposed to play the good guy. Maybe you decide the world has too much conflict, and you are going to set out to unify a War-torn world. You can't do this if everyone already gets along. There are 3 types of conflict in a story. Man-vs-Man, Man-vs-Nature, and Man-vs-Himself. Dragonlance is typically a man versus man setting.
The whole point of any DnD setting is the world is screwed up, and you are going to fix it. If you think there is too much racism and conflict, this is a world in which you can save it. You can't do that in a world where there is no conflict and everyone is happy. Lord of the Rings would be a very boring book without the Orcs.
In the War of Souls novel, it speaks about their talent for cooking. Speaker Gilthas, the Lioness and the King of Thorbardin meet up in a Gully Dwarf tavern to discuss evacuating Quanlinesti. Also, the Inn of the Last Home keeps a Gully Dwarf on staff for this reason. In the Chronicles Trilogy, Flints speaks a lot about how cunning Gully Dwarves are. This stems from him being captured in Preludes and forced to be their king. The Legends trilogy is the first to talk about the Highbup being allowed on the Dwarven Council. This also happens in a lot of other novels.
All right, I retract my previous statement.
All these novels were written by Margrette Weis and Tracy Hickman. There are other novels to support this, but I kept it to the creators of the setting. The Dwarf/Kender thing was an insult directed at Flint. There is no lore to support it and there is no Dwarf or Kender that would admit to it. Dwarves have a very different idea of physical beauty from other races, and completely opposite view on absolutely everything. Such a union would be near impossible and even had it happened, it would have been so isolated, that a new race would never have been able to spawn.
In Dragons of a Summer Flame, there was a section talking about how the various Krynnish races had come into being: humans, ogres, and gnomes had been created by the gods and the rest of the races had been either created by the Chaos Gem changing members of one of those races or via some effect thereafter. This was presented in a third-person omniscient way that was not being recounted by a character in-universe. The part about gully dwarves being a dwarf/kender hybrid race was definitely not done as an insult to Flint because he'd been dead for decades in-universe at that point.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Just for accuracy: according to Dragonlance Adventures (1987), gully dwarves (2d4+1 INT, 2d4+1 WIS, 2d4+1 CHA) are the distant descendants of a brief spate of intermarriages between gnomes and dwarves after the Greystone (Graygem) created the latter from the former. This lore has been revised a number of times since then, and the statblock has moved around a little, but to my knowledge, kender have never been involved, and gully dwarves have always been mentally handicapped.
The most recent version of the lore, which was not in a Wizards of the Coast product, reiterates the original lore (gnome-dwarf marriages following the Siege of Gargath; -4 INT, -4 CHA). This most recent lore also seems to be where their reputation for ruggedness and cooking originate, both of which directly contradict previous material (and are even contradictory within the text of this source).
It's time to stop trying to salvage the gully dwarf. Some of us have been saying this since the '80s. They were a bad idea then, and they are still a bad idea.
It's not allegory, and it's not metaphor: gully dwarves' defining characteristic is mental handicap. Mental handicap is not funny. Every effort to 'rescue' the gully dwarf since the original rules has been mired in attempts to justify ongoing comic relief.
If a player wants to play a mentally handicapped dwarf, they can do it easily without the presence of a whole race of them played for laughs. I'm sure there are many mentally handicapped dwarves on Krynn, and I would hope that the player and their table would treat the character and their condition with respect that has never been afforded gully dwarves.
To be clear, this isn't about how mentally handicapped dwarves are treated by other people on Krynn. That's a matter for the dungeon master to work out with their players. The gully dwarf needs to be removed from the game because it has always been presented as a discriminatory joke to the audience, and 40 years of that cannot be undone. That's something a lot of defenders of old lore don't seem to understand: it is one thing to have discrimination in a fantasy world. It is another thing entirely for a sourcebook to be discriminatory, and the former does not require the latter.
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J Great Wyrm Moonstone Dungeon Master
The time of the ORC has come. No OGL without irrevocability; no OGL with 'authorized version' language. #openDND
Practice, practice, practice • Respect the rules; don't memorize them • Be merciless, not cruel • Don't let the dice run the game for you
Dugan didn't mention Gully Dwarves in that conversation. There was one slight retcon though, in that Gnomes came from Human stock. Not all races sprung from the greygem however. Some were flat out cursed. All the monstruous races, including minotaur came from the degeneration of Ogres. Sargas specifically saved his ogre followers and turned them into minotaurs, at least as far as the minotaur think.
Lets assume you're right, and gully dwarves are discriminatory and represent the mentally disabled. Should the mentally disabled be excluded from fantasy fiction because they make the rest of us uncomfortable? Should people of color, and LGBT people all be removed from fantasy literature because any attempt to portray them will be discrimination?
Truth is, people see what they want to see. Maybe Gully Dwarves don't represent mental disability and are just a species that is below average intelligence. For instance, gorillas are only 3% DNA away from humans, but I wouldn't think a gorilla could perform advanced math or drive a car. That's not a slight against gorillas. I mean, a gorilla is like 3x stronger than me and would murder me in a fist fight. That doesn't make me disabled because I can't beat up a gorilla and the gorilla's not disabled because he can't drive a car. He's just a gorilla and I am a human.
Somebody said that orcs represent black people when that comparison has never been made or supported before in any novel that I know of, but now orcs as an evil species is racist, same with Drow, a matriarch slaver race created by an evil goddess. I personally always thought orcs represent Neanderthals and Drow were feminist.
That's the rub though. No one has ever said Gully Dwarves are a mentally disabled dwarf, nor has any of the books made that comparison. Flint flat denied they are even of the dwarf species. I would much rather play a character of a species that is dumb, than play a character with a mental handicap. The former is just playing a race to it limitations, while the latter would be imitating a real-life disability. What's more respectfully, role-playing an average gorilla, or role-playing a human with brain damage?
I do agree however that not everyone is mature enough to be respectful, regardless of how the material is intended.
Lets assume you're right, and gully dwarves are discriminatory and represent the mentally disabled. Should the mentally disabled be excluded from fantasy fiction because they make the rest of us uncomfortable? Should people of color, and LGBT people all be removed from fantasy literature because any attempt to portray them will be discrimination?
See, there's the problem: you're assuming that representation is the same thing as discrimination. It's not. Good representation treats the characters as if they're real people with actual developed personalities. That's not what we get with gully dwarves: they're just treated as jokes. Mean jokes about how stupid and dirty they are because they're incapable of being anything more than that. They're not heroes. They're not main characters. They're just there to be silly little things that make you laugh with how dumb they act. That is not and never will be respectful.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Lets assume you're right, and gully dwarves are discriminatory and represent the mentally disabled. Should the mentally disabled be excluded from fantasy fiction because they make the rest of us uncomfortable? Should people of color, and LGBT people all be removed from fantasy literature because any attempt to portray them will be discrimination?
See, there's the problem: you're assuming that representation is the same thing as discrimination. It's not. Good representation treats the characters as if they're real people with actual developed personalities. That's not what we get with gully dwarves: they're just treated as jokes. Mean jokes about how stupid and dirty they are because they're incapable of being anything more than that. They're not heroes. They're not main characters. They're just there to be silly little things that make you laugh with how dumb they act. That is not and never will be respectful.
Absolutely not true. Unlike Kender, Gully Dwarves are welcome in all societies on Krynn. The gully dwarves in the books were responsible for bringing the old gods back to the world, by leading Goldmoon to the Disks of Mishakal and saving the Companions from the Black Dragon. Bupa saved both Raistlin Majores life and Crysanias. Raistlin was very protective of them. Tika and Caramon Majore employed a Gully Dwarf at the Inn of the Last home and never once made a disparaging comment about him, though she was frustrated by their antics sometimes. Gully Dwarves are even given a seat on the Thorbardin senate. In the War of Souls, the Gully Dwarves ran an Inn that was extremely popular and even the King of Thorbardin commented on how good the food and ale is. The inn was the meet up place for the alliance between the elves and dwarves. During the Chaos war, a gully dwarf was the lookout for the Thieves guild in Palathas and managed to fool Steel Brightblade and Palan Majare. While you may not like the portrayal of them in the books, at no point has a main character or even an evil character described a Gully Dwarf in a disparaging way. Flint owes his life to gully dwarves which they then elected him king for a time. Flint led a gully dwarf rebellion against the dark queen's forces. Are they a bit comic relief. Yes, but no more than TInker Gnomes and Kender are, and at no point is anyone mean to them. Instead they are approached with patience and understanding, which is pretty unrealistic.
Gully Dwarves and Kobalds are portrayed the exact same way, yet no is defending Kobalds. Dolby and the other House Elves, from the Harry Potter series are similar characters and they are treated way worse than Gully Dwarves.
Then there is the other argument of realism. Yes, I would love to live in a world where everyone is treated well, and with kindness and were people are judged by their character and what they are. Where everyone is welcome, and understanding, and there are no conflicts based on religion, ethnicity, or nationality. Sadly, that is not realistic, and pretty unbelievable from a literary standpoint. In that regard, Dragonlance breaks the mold by treating these races respectfully and with acceptance, despite their inability to assimilate to society. If this were medieval earth, they'd likely have been executed.
I get it, you're going to see what you want to see and I am probably not going to convince you otherwise and I would be willing to concede the argument if you can show me an instance in the novels where Gully Dwarfs were discriminated against.
So, the book Dragonlance: Shadow of The Dragon Queen's been out for a while now. And there's no mention of Kender not being able to be casters in it. Perhaps they've done away with that in 5th Edition? It's page 27, if you'd like to check that out...
Some other things that are unclear though, are if people can play Warlocks, Artificers or Clerics. It's been a strange read, for the few days that I've had the book.
So, the book Dragonlance: Shadow of The Dragon Queen's been out for a while now. And there's no mention of Kender not being able to be casters in it. Perhaps they've done away with that in 5th Edition? It's page 27, if you'd like to check that out...
Some other things that are unclear though, are if people can play Warlocks, Artificers or Clerics. It's been a strange read, for the few days that I've had the book.
There are no restrictions on classes in Dragonlance. Some of the classes weren’t included in the original Dragonlance material because they didn’t exist in (A)D&D then. For Clerics and other divine-themed characters, one of the introductory scenes in the adventure gives a reasonable way to accommodate Clerics if wished.
No restrictions have been placed on races/species, but they have given a clear guide to the commonly encountered races on Krynn.
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So I have some time on my hands, and was thinking about how Wizards will be releasing a Dragonlance in the coming weeks, and after watching several podcasts from Wizards, its obvious they are trying to make the setting as assessable to 5e as possible by including every player option possible into the setting. In my view, this makes Dragonlance no different that any other setting, which really takes away from what makes it so compelling. Yes, Dragonlance doesn't have many of the common tropes we accept as stock in 5e, but for what it lacks, it brings us a truly unique and wonderous setting that seems larger by what it isn't, rather than what it is. As a DM, i personnally intend to make the 5e release as true to Dragonlance as i possibly can and I thought some of you out there may feel the same. So I thought I would run down what Dragonlance is, compared to other settings.
What is Krynn?
The world of Krynn is composed of several continents. The primary is Ansalon, Taladas is the other. The two continents are almost completely different settings. Krynn is the sole creation of its Gods. The gods themselves are not native to Krynn and created the world is a refuge. There are no outside influences allowed on Krynn. This means no outside gods can have patrons, or visit Krynn. However, all the Krynn gods reside on the outer planes, and so visitors from Krynn can go to other worlds. Krynn was created by these gods with their native magic. The all-god, seeing in-fighting among the lower gods, demanded that there should always be a balance between the gods of good and evil. There are three types of gods, the gods of good, evil and neutrality. Krynn is accessible and is well known to Spelljammers, which could be used to explain the existence of non-natives to the world. Unlike other worlds, the gods of Krynn are extremely active in the world, and make regularly appearances. They treat the world like their own personal playground.
What is the Balance?
The balance between good and evil isn't as clear cut as it seems. Krynn has a very different concept of what is good and evil than other worlds. Good is not always good, and Evil is not always evil. Good is about the greater good, even if it means committing heinous acts. It doesn't take into account the individual. Evil, is about self-ambition. Neither of these are inherently bad, but when taken to the extreme, they can both be disastrous. When the King-Priest of Istar attempted to become a god so he could eradicate all evil, he started a campaign of genocide that collapsed the balance. Similarly, self-ambitious evil people have risen to be heroic saviors. Steel Brightblade, despite being a dark paladin devoted to Takhisis personally saved the world. There is a mantra, "Good redeems its own, and evil turns upon itself, both good and evil must exist in contract." There is a fourth law, created by the all god. "The law of Consequence" For every law maintained, there is a balance for any broken there is a consequence. The most extreme example is when the King Priest demanded to become a god so he could eradicate the Ogre races. The result of the destruction of Krynn, and the loss of priestly magic for 300 years.
What are the Races?
There are four races native to Krynn.
Elves. Created by the gods of good. The elves are to ensure the advancement of the world. They have no connection to the Fey, and no trance sleep or resistance to charm. When chaos was captured in the greygem, some elves were transformed into sea elves and other fey like races, such as centaurs.
Ogres. Created by the gods of evil. The Ogres are to advance civilization with their ambition. They are long lived, and extremely beautiful. Unfortunately, their ambition turned to cruelty and they were cursed so that their internal ugliness reflected their outside. The ogres have lost all civilization and have been reduced to an almost primitive status. However, the transformation wasn't universal. Some Ogres became Giants (there is only one type of giant, hill), hags, ogre magi, goblinoids, minotaur, gnolls and other monstruous races. Ogres today despise the gods. Presumably, Takhisis renounced the Ogres to be the Patron god of Dragons, but the Ogres blame Paladine.
Humans. Created by the gods of neutrality. They get to choose who they align to. They are short lived in order to make them productive and truly shape the world. The god Reorx taught humans to create wonderous inventions. When humans grew highly talented, the started to mock Reorx , he then transformed these humans into gnomes as punishment. The gnomes of Ansalon, called Tinker gnomes, are afflicted with a curse that makes them obsessed with invention and constant improvements so that they will never achieve their life's goal. Gnomes from other worlds, or from Taladas are not afflicted. When the grey gem passed over the gnomes, they were transformed into Kender and Dwarves. The Kender have an insatiable curiosity, that tends to make them unsuited to civilization and often hated. Dwarfs are obsessed with craft and riches and have little use for other races. All variants of Dwarves exist on Krynn.
Dragons are native creations to Krynn and are actually part of the world itself and are natively magic. Dragons on Krynn are actually much smaller than outside Dragons. They do not grow into great-wurms as they do in other worlds. During the first or second dragon war, many dragons refused to align to Takhisis. These dragons became the metallic dragons of good, and the gem dragons of neutrality. Gem dragons live in Taladas and do not come to Ansalon.
Draconians were created from the eggs of good dragons by Clerics of Takhsis, and black robe wizards. Draconians are the elite shock troops of the Dragon Armies. They are all males as the Dark Queen intends to exterminate them at the end of the war as she views them as threat.
What Races Don't Exist?
When Laura and Tracy Hickman were designing Dragonlance, TSR was going through a number of copy right lawsuits from the Tolkien foundation. Naturally, they wanted Dragonlance to be as un-middle earth like as possible. This is what made Dragonlance truly unique.
There are no native Orcs and obviously Half Orcs. Halfling are also unknown, replaced by Kender. There is no fey, or fey influences in Krynn. This means that elves have no connection to the fey. Similarly, there are no Drow, at least not as described in other settings. The spider-queen is forbidden on Krynn, as with other Gods and so cannot corrupt the Krynnish elves. All fey like creatures, such as Goblins and Hags are descended from Ogres. There is no giant ordering. All giants are of the hill-giant variety.
There are no forest gnomes or deep gnomes. Afflicted gnomes that leave Krynn lose their affliction.
Dragonkin / Dragonborn don't exist. While there is instances of dragon-demihuman pairing, there is no lore to support a union. This doesn't mean Dragonkin dont exist, but such a person would be highly feared by both societies. At the time of the Lance, Dragons have been exiled for thousands of years, and there would be no such unions. Post war, such a thing is possible.
Tieflings also don't exist, but there is enough lore to support them. Demons and fiends of the Abyss spend a lot of time on Krynn, usually as agents of the Dark Queen, so its very possible a union would happen.
The Existence of Non-Krynn Races
I must also point out that any of the non-existent races could be shoehorned in. Sigil has a number of portals to Krynn and Krynn is well known in Spelljammer circles with a Spaceport in Taladas. If you want to shoehorn one of these foreign races into the game, you can, but just consider that you are taking the game outside of the boundaries of the setting and injecting something foreign and not Dragonlance.
How does magic work?
All known magic comes from the gods. The moon gods of neutrality, good and evil quickly realized that magic could shape and unbalance the world, and so these three gods decided they would be the sole provider of magic and created the Orders of High Sorcery to both restrain and promote magic above all other devotions. Magic users may not wear armor, and may never be armed with more than a dagger. This is to encourage the devotion to above all others endeavors. If this rule is broken, the moon gods will deny them access to magic. All magic users are required to be members of one of the Orders. A test is typically given at level 3. If a magic user does not join, he will be asked to join and if they refuse, they are to be placed under strict supervision and will be executed if they abuse the magic. Basically, this means sorcerers and warlocks would not be welcomed in their ranks. Magic waxes and wanes according to the phases of each of the three moons. When all three moons are full, magic is always at its max effect.
This is where I must note, that sorcerers and warlocks do exist on Krynn. Krynn has a native magic to it, which is generally unknown until the 5th age, but was very prevalent during the first age. This was why the Orders were created. If such spell casters exist, they are likely living in hiding, or posing as an order wizard. Warlocks are a special case. Warlocks would never join the order, and would likely be executed as a result of their abusive source. There would be no native warlock patrons from outside Krynn, such as the Great Old One. The exception to this would be demonic patrons. The 1st planer of hell, Avernus has a special connection to Krynn thanks to Takhisis's constant intrusions. (On Krynn, Avernus is called the Abyss. The denizen of the outer planes tell a lot of jokes about how stupid people from Krynn are.)
Also, any god of Krynn can give arcane magic. Takhisis did this during the Chaos war, by creating an order of Wizards that actually wore armor and carried swords. These individuals may be warlocks or sorcerers.
Another About Magic
Magic is reserved for the three base races of Krynn. Only elves and humans actively practice arcane magic. Elves only practice good magic. Any elf that joins the black robes and sometimes the red robes is exiled and deemed a dark elf, derogatorily called drow. Humans can join any order. Dwarves naturally despise magic and distrust magic users. However, Dark Dwarves are active magic users but rarely join the Order. Gnomes have no patience to learn magic. They believe magic is a natural phenomenon that can be explained by science that they will discover. Kender would like nothing more than to learn magic, but lack the patience and concentration to learn. It is generally believed that a Kender learning magic will spell the doom of all life on Krynn. Ogres have lost the ability to learn magic due to their curse. However, every so often an ogre is born with the ability to natively cast magic. They are dubbed Ogre Magi and are highly prized. Also, Ogre Shaman are born once a generation with innate divine abilities. Both are likely sorcerers.
Are there Clerics in the Present Age?
At the time of the War of the Lance, the Gods had departed, and returned. As a result, Divine magic is unknown, but does exist. Mishakal, god of healing has been secretly operating since the start of the cataclysm. The War of the Lance had been going on for 5 years by the time the heroes of the lance arrived at the Inn of the Last Home where they met the god Paladine himself. Takhsis's clerics were active for much longer, about a 100 years. At the time of the Lance, the old gods are hated for abandoning Krynn during the cataclysm. False faiths, have taken hold and actively hunt and execute devotees to the old gods. Also, Takhsis, whom has been active for the past hundred years is actively hunting any clerics of the gods. When Goldmoon discovered the Blue Crystal Staff, the army of Takhisis were dedicated to hunting her down to prevent proof of the gods return. Due to Krynn gods being so protective of their world, clerics from other worlds will lose all divine spell casting, though a Krynn god is likely to take particular interest in such a foreign agent.
About Prejudices.
Okay, this is a subject that has caused some controversy recently with the new novel. Krynn is a world populated by peoples that have taken sides in a great cosmic struggle. It is also a world that is short on resources and too much competition. It is such an important part of what Krynn is, it's impossible to not acknowledge it. I must point out, what I write is a generalization of their civilizations and not them individually. There are plenty of examples of members of each race that don't display these traits.
Dwarves distrust everyone. Humans are too hasty and elves are too uppity. They don't actually hate either, but they have little tolerance. Other races care little for dwarves and have no actual opinion of them. Mountain Dwarves are relatively friendly with their dark dwarf cousins. Hill Dwarfs and Mountain Dwarfs are sworn enemies due to the Dwarf Gate Wars, which took place shortly after the cataclysm. They hate each other to the point on enragement. Gully Dwarves are dwarves that live in sewers and have very low intelligence (in game terms, a 4 or 5). Gully Dwarves aren't hated, but they are barely tolerated.
Silvanist are high elves. They are extreme isolationists. They don't hate other races, but they are lofty, and consider other races, including their elven cousins to be beneath them. They are highly condescending and will not negotiate with anyone outside of Silvanosti. There are no Silvanisti half-elves.
Qualinesti are also high elves. They are more accepting of other races, but are in other ways worse. Half-elves are common. Qualinesti elves still consider themselves superior to other races, but they accept the value the other races contribute to their cause. They believe they must work with others. Their attitude towards others, and willingness to mingle has caused Dwarves and Humans to generally dislike elves. In fact, most societies dislike elves. Despite being a good aligned race, the Qualinesti elves have enslaved their Wood Elf cousins the Kaganesti. Much how the Silvanisti elves view the Qualinesti, the Qualinesti view the Kaganesti as uncivilized barbarians. The Qualinesti know that slavery is wrong, but view it as a good act to help the Kaganesit to become more civilized. (See what I mean about Good not always being Good). The Qualinesti will not take non-Kaganesti slaves. The Qualinesti treat their slaves well, but it's still slavery and the Kaganesti detest their slavers. Some of the Kaganesti slaves work as double agents, by spying on the senate. Ambushes and skirmishes outside the capital is common.
The Kaganesti live in the woodlands. They do not build cities, nor typically live in villages. They live purely off the land. Kaganesti elves are typically friendly with humans, particularly the Ergoths. They have no contact with the Silvanisti and rarely tolerate the Qualinesti whom they instantly distrust, if not hate.
Ogres are split into two camps, Blode and Kern. Blode Ogres are large and round. They consider themselves the inheritors of the ogre empire and live in the ruins of the old empire. They are a cruel and unforgiven people. They hate most everyone equally, but only have prejudices for the elves because they view them as Paladines people. (they blame Paladine for their curse.) Kern Ogres are lean and live in small villages. They are more tribal and tend to be more thoughtful in their actions. Kern and Blode ogres fight amongst themselves often, but it's more of a culture thing, than a hatred thing. It's just what they do. Both groups will work with other races, and have no direct prejudices against other races, though Blode Ogres have a particular hatred for elves, and Kern Ogres distrust them (Blode Ogres hate everyone equally). Both groups dislike the Knights of Solamnia. Of particular note is that Ogres will not follow any cause of gods.
Goblinoids. Goblins are cruel, and self-serving. They don't actually hate anyone, they just view everyone as a means to an end. Surprisingly, Goblins are generally trusted and are active members in most societies. They will serve whomever pays, or bullies them most. The later is particularly dangerous, as a subservant goblin is a murderous goblin. Goblins were the primary foot soldiers during the second dragon war.
Kender are a complicated race. As a race, they are incapable of hatred or prejudices. They are driven by curiosity that too often gets their companions killed or arrested. Also, Kender have no sense of personal property. It's a completely foreign concept to them, and they cannot be taught otherwise. Kender borrow often, and are usually unaware that they are taking other people's property. While they are hated by many, most societies tolerate them and go out other way to avoid them. Almost all law enforcement is devoted to rounding up Kender and escorting them out of town. Kender aren't dangerous, which is why there is so few laws enforced on them, but they cause considerable disorder when introduced to a human civilization. Arresting Kender is almost pointless, as they escape easily, and putting them on trial will only draw the curiosity of more Kender.
Minotaur are a race devoted to war and conquest. Minotaur fall into two groups. Those of Kiri-Jolith that are devoted to righteous war, and those to Sargas that are devoted to conquest. They will not align to any other gods. Minotaur don't hate or have prejudices. They view all other races as victims, or potential victims. They are highly honorable in combat, and will always fight fair. There is no greater honor, than to die in combat. In fact, it's considered dishonorable to die of old age. In all aspects, they are very similar to the Knights of Solamnia. Minotaur in Taladas are the ruling race.
Draconians are generally considered to be servants of Takhisis. Draconians were created for war and they are very good at it. They have no other purpose. As a result, all other races view Draconians as a threat. Due to all Draconians being male, they are doomed to die out. They are well aware of this. After the war, Draconians will continue to serve the dragon armies and then hire themselves out as mercenaries when the armies are defeated. They know they are destined to extinction but consider their destiny unavoidable...for now.
True Clerics are hated throughout Ansalon. Followers of fake gods will execute any true clerics on site. The people blame the gods for the cataclysm and will actively hunt their clerics or turn them into the inquisitors of the fake gods. True clerics live in hiding.
The Knights of Solamnia are also hated. The Knight of the Rose, Lord Soth was given a mission to stop the cataclysm. He failed in his quest and as a result, millions died. Most people blame the knighthood for the cataclysm as there are no clerics to place direct blame on. The knights have a deep rooted prejudice against magic users and will not actively work with them unless forced, or its for the greater good.
Wizards of High Sorcerery are forgiving and accepting of most everyone. The mages are aligned with the gods of magic before all others. When Takhisis tried to draw the Black Robes to her during the war, they betrayed her when she threatened the balance of magic. This was why Takhisis had to make her own order of wizards during the chaos war. The Order however does not tolerate non-order spell casters. These spell casters are actively hunted by all three orders. White and Red Robes will try to recruit the grey robe, while black robes will execute them. Outside of wizard orders, they are generally distrusted and often blamed for crimes or natural disasters. Only the elves trust the wizards. Mostly because all elf wizards are white robe. All non-white robbed elves are exiled.
What does Ansalon Look Like?
Krynn in the 4th age is a post-post-apocalyptic world. When the cataclysm happened, there was wide spread famine and disease. War was rampant and all the old institutions that had kept order were abandoned. Istar, the seat of power on Ansalon is beneath the blood sea, and individual city states have risen to replace it. Silvanesti has closed its borders. The Mountain Dwarfs have also closed their kingdom to outsiders. Without the knights of Solamnia, Solanthus has fallen into disorder and revolt. The result are individual townships, ruled by mayors, or the priests of fake gods. Only the isles of Ergoth has managed to maintain order. Palanthas is the only major city not to have been affected by the cataclysm and has become the beating heart of Ansalon. At the time of the Lance, trade is only just now returning to the world and there is some hope of a return to civilization. Unfortunately, the Armies of Takhisis has swept through Ansalon in only five short years, and is on the verge of returning the Dark Queen herself to rule in person over all of Krynn.
What happens after the War?
For the next 15 years, the Dragon Armies still maintain their hold on much of Ansalon, with their capital at Sanction. The Wizard Tower at Palanthas is reopened by Raistlin Majore, but after his death two years after the War, it is reopened under Dalamar the Dark Elf and once again accepts apprentices of the Black Robe. The Gods return in force, and their clerics are present in almost every city. The Knights of Solamnia are once again trusted after their sacrifice at the high cleric tower and are working to unit Ansalon. The elves are returning from exile and have re-opened communications with outside peoples. It even looks like the elven nations may unit for the first time in thousands of years after the marriage of their rulers. Thorbardin, the Mountain Kingdom of the Dwarves is open to free trade, flooding the world with high quality dwarven goods.
After the 15 years, the Dragon Armies have been defeated. However, a secret army of Dark Paladins, called the Knights of Takhisis are forming. Unlike the Dragon Armies, these knights are united under one cause, and are highly honorable, being modeled after the oath and measure from the Knights of Solamnia. They are currently amassing an army, that actively utilizes clerics and mages in its ranks, a major failure among the Solamnics. They have also aligned with the Blue Dragons. The Knights of Solamnia, wary of war, continue to ignore the rising army. The Wizards of High Sorcerery are concerned about the grey wizards in the army and are actively trying to stop them, but have met with disaster.
Silvanesti has been reclaimed, and the elves have all returned to their homelands. Unfortunately, their alliances have fallen apart. The Qualinesti are ruled by a weak puppet king that is controlled by the senate and Silvanesti is ruled by a regent that is trying to close its borders once more. Their rightful rulers, Porthios and Alhana have been exiled and designated dark elves.
Draconians have discovered female eggs and have built their own kingdom to live in peace. For the first time, there is a Draconian civilization and future.
The Ogres of Blode have discovered how to evolve themselves into Ogre Titans. These are 15 foot blue giants, with powerful magic and super intelligence. This transformation requires the blood of elves to fuel. The Ogres are trying to find a permanent solution to maintain their transformation and hope to eventually unit and transform all ogres into Titans.
The Dragons have retreated into the world and live in isolated pockets, away from civilization. On the Blue Dragons are still active.
On a far off island in the north of Ansalon, a group of beautiful blue skinned ogres, called Irda are watching the unrest in the world with great nervousness.
Goblinoids. Goblins are cruel, and self-serving. They don't actually hate anyone, they just view everyone as a means to an end. Surprisingly, Goblins are generally trusted and are active members in most societies. They will serve whomever pays, or bullies them most. The later is particularly dangerous, as a subservant goblin is a murderous goblin. Goblins were the primary foot soldiers during the second dragon war.
Kender are a complicated race. As a race, they are incapable of hatred or prejudices. They are driven by curiosity that too often gets their companions killed or arrested. Also, Kender have no sense of personal property. It's a completely foreign concept to them, and they cannot be taught otherwise. Kender borrow often, and are usually unaware that they are taking other people's property. While they are hated by many, most societies tolerate them and go out other way to avoid them. Almost all law enforcement is devoted to rounding up Kender and escorting them out of town. Kender aren't dangerous, which is why there is so few laws enforced on them, but they cause considerable disorder when introduced to a human civilization. Arresting Kender is almost pointless, as they escape easily, and putting them on trial will only draw the curiosity of more Kender.
Tinker gnomes view the world as one big problem that demands scientific analysis. They have no personal opinion about other races because that would compromise the scientific analysis. No one hates tinker gnomes, they are fear them. Nothing will drive a crowd to panic faster than the Tinker Gnome Death Cry, "Watch This!" Only the Rock Gnomes of Taladas have an actual opinion of the Tinker Gnomes, which is pity.
Minotaur are a race devoted to war and conquest. Minotaur fall into two groups. Those of the minority worship Kiri-Jolith that are devoted to righteous war, and those to Sargas that are devoted to conquest. They will not align to any other gods. Minotaur don't hate or have prejudices. They view all other races as victims, or potential victims. They are highly honorable in combat, and will always fight fair. There is no greater honor, than to die in combat. In fact, it's considered dishonorable to die of old age. In all aspects, they are very similar to the Knights of Solamnia. Minotaur in Taladas are the ruling race. Minotaur and Ogres are eternal enemies due to Ogres once enslaving the minotaur.
Draconians are generally considered to be servants of Takhisis. Draconians were created for war and they are very good at it. They have no other purpose. As a result, all other races view Draconians as a threat. Due to all Draconians being male, they are doomed to die out. They are well aware of this. After the war, Draconians will continue to serve the dragon armies and then hire themselves out as mercenaries when the armies are defeated. They know they are destined to extinction but consider their destiny unavoidable...for now.
True Clerics are hated throughout Ansalon. Followers of fake gods will execute any true clerics on site. The people blame the gods for the cataclysm and will actively hunt their clerics or turn them into the inquisitors of the fake gods. True clerics live in hiding.
The Knights of Solamnia are also hated. The Knight of the Rose, Lord Soth was given a mission to stop the cataclysm. He failed in his quest and as a result, millions died. Most people blame the knighthood for the cataclysm as there are no clerics to place direct blame on. The knights have a deep rooted prejudice against magic users and will not actively work with them unless forced, or its for the greater good.
Wizards of High Sorcerery are forgiving and accepting of most everyone. The mages are aligned with the gods of magic before all others. When Takhisis tried to draw the Black Robes to her during the war, they betrayed her when she threatened the balance of magic. This was why Takhisis had to make her own order of wizards during the chaos war. The Order however does not tolerate non-order spell casters. These spell casters are actively hunted by all three orders. White and Red Robes will try to recruit the grey robe, while black robes will execute them. Outside of wizard orders, they are generally distrusted and often blamed for crimes or natural disasters. Only the elves trust the wizards. Mostly because all elf wizards are white robe. All non-white robbed elves are exiled.
What does Ansalon Look Like?
Krynn in the 4th age is a post-post-apocalyptic world. When the cataclysm happened, there was wide spread famine and disease. War was rampant and all the old institutions that had kept order were abandoned. Istar, the seat of power on Ansalon is beneath the blood sea, and individual city states have risen to replace it. Silvanesti has closed its borders. The Mountain Dwarfs have also closed their kingdom to outsiders. Without the knights of Solamnia, Solanthus has fallen into disorder and revolt. The result are individual townships, ruled by mayors, or the priests of fake gods. Only the isles of Ergoth has managed to maintain order. Palanthas is the only major city not to have been affected by the cataclysm and has become the beating heart of Ansalon. At the time of the Lance, trade is only just now returning to the world and there is some hope of a return to civilization. Unfortunately, the Armies of Takhisis has swept through Ansalon in only five short years, and is on the verge of returning the Dark Queen herself to rule in person over all of Krynn.
What happens after the War?
For the next 15 years, the Dragon Armies still maintain their hold on much of Ansalon, with their capital at Sanction. The Wizard Tower at Palanthas is reopened by Raistlin Majore, but after his death two years after the War, it is reopened under Dalamar the Dark Elf and once again accepts apprentices of the Black Robe. The Gods return in force, and their clerics are present in almost every city. The Knights of Solamnia are once again trusted after their sacrifice at the high cleric tower and are working to unit Ansalon. The elves are returning from exile and have re-opened communications with outside peoples. It even looks like the elven nations may unit for the first time in thousands of years after the marriage of their rulers. Thorbardin, the Mountain Kingdom of the Dwarves is open to free trade, flooding the world with high quality dwarven goods.
After the 15 years, the Dragon Armies have been defeated. However, a secret army of Dark Paladins, called the Knights of Takhisis are forming. Unlike the Dragon Armies, these knights are united under one cause, and are highly honorable, being modeled after the oath and measure from the Knights of Solamnia. They are currently amassing an army, that actively utilizes clerics and mages in its ranks, a major failure among the Solamnics. They have also aligned with the Blue Dragons. The Knights of Solamnia, wary of war, continue to ignore the rising army. The Wizards of High Sorcerery are concerned about the grey wizards in the army and are actively trying to stop them, but have met with disaster.
Silvanesti has been reclaimed, and the elves have all returned to their homelands. Unfortunately, their alliances have fallen apart. The Qualinesti are ruled by a weak puppet king that is controlled by the senate and Silvanesti is ruled by a regent that is trying to close its borders once more. Their rightful rulers, Porthios and Alhana have been exiled and designated dark elves.
Draconians have discovered female eggs and have built their own kingdom to live in peace. For the first time, there is a Draconian civilization and future.
The Ogres of Blode have discovered how to evolve themselves into Ogre Titans. These are 15 foot blue giants, with powerful magic and super intelligence. This transformation requires the blood of elves to fuel. The Ogres are trying to find a permanent solution to maintain their transformation and hope to eventually unit and transform all ogres into Titans.
The Dragons have retreated into the world and live in isolated pockets, away from civilization. On the Blue Dragons are still active.
On a far off island in the north of Ansalon, a group of beautiful blue skinned ogres, called Irda are watching the unrest in the world with great nervousness.
All good info... but I should point out a few things, which relate.
"There are no native Orcs and obviously Half Orcs."
All Orcs in most settings are Outsiders from another world. In Toril (Forgotten Realms) Orc come in 2 varieties, Mt Orcs and Grey Orcs. Mt Orcs are all Half-Orcs and are descended from Male Orcs summoned by Mages during a great war (implied Netheril Empire era, but never fully confirmed) The Grey Orcs have the Basic WarCraft origin, Wizard made a gate under direction of a Dark God and a Massive immigration army of Orcs swarmed out and tried to invade the lands. The irony is the Orc Diety is known to Toril before the Orcs came to Toril, as Gruumsh and Corellon are bitter enemies.
Due to Orcs of the Multiverse being actually nomadic and without a proper homeland, they can show up on any world, or plane. Not being a Common Race of a world should never limit the option of playing an Orc/Half-Orc.
"Dragonkin don't exits." While technically true, it is realistically false as ... "Draconians" are the OG Humanoid Dragon in D&D (1984) other settings copied "Draconians" to make humanoid dragons/dragonkin/Half-Dragons/Dragonborn. Now there is a problem here, as Dragonborn are a Core Race now, and Clearly Draconians are problematic, esp if they keep the "On Death" feature which makes them ill-suited as Player Characters. (Even though AD&D did allow for it) They should update the setting to make it possible for all Core Races, with some kind of backgrounds and Subrace features to allow for them. Because you know Adventure League will be doing DL after it releases.
PHB Races which need inclusion in Dragonlance - Human (easy), Dwarf (Done), Elf (With minor changes), Gnome (Subrace), Half-Elf (Done), Halfling (Kinder Subrace)... Problem Children: Dragonborn (WotC better have a good way so no one complains, people will complain no matter what.), Half-Orc (Portals to other planes, a wizard summoned you), Tiefling ... (Honestly I can see it being a result of Pact Magic, but do Devils count as Deities, because usually they do.)
A clever DM can shoehorn any explanation for the existence of whatever in the setting. For instance, Krynn is very accessible by Spelljammer and even has a Spaceport in Taladas. Sigil also has many portals between the lower planes and Krynn. However, the peoples of the lower planes generally view Krynn as a backwater world of laughable ignorance. (Moon magic, LOL!) All races of Krynn were created by its Gods and are not products of the multiverse. They never created orcs and so there are no native orcs on Krynn. In fact, known player races, such as Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes are not the same as those on other planets.
The same with Dragonborn. The Dragons have been in exile for thousands of years, and so there is no chance of a union producing a child. If such a thing had occurred, they would have long ago died of old age.
Lastly, the point of the article is to layout what makes Dragonlance unique, and special, not try to make it another generic setting where everything is available, and the setting diluted. Wizards should be under no obligation to add orcs and halflings to the setting, any more than they are obligated to add Kender to Eberron.
About Gully Dwarves.
This morning I realized I should speak a little more about the problem race in Krynn. Wizards no doubt wants to avoid negative modifiers, and any stereotypes that may reflect real world people. This makes Gully Dwarfs a bit of problem race.
Gully Dwarves are the JarJar Binx of DnD. Gully Dwarves look like any other dwarf, if not a bit more skinny. They are generally filthy, rarely bath, and are incredibly simple minded. Gully Dwarves can rarely count past the number 2, and never higher than 3. However, Gully Dwarves are very cunning, and crafty which makes one believe their mental deficiencies are not natural, much like the Tinker Gnomes are cursed. For whatever reason, they are incapable of any academic learning.
To a real world observer, Gully Dwarves may resemble homeless people, and real life mental disability. This makes them a bit of problem race in the setting.
Due to their reduced intelligence (about 4 or 5), they keep no records. As a result, their history is completely unknown. Maybe they were cursed by Reorx when they showed little aptitude in crafting. Perhaps they were cursed as a result of laziness, in much the same way ogres and gnomes were cursed. It is completely known what happened to them, if anything at all.
Gully Dwarves are known for being highly gullible due to their low intelligence, and extremely cowardly. However, when cornered, Gully Dwarves are some of the most fearless fighters on Krynn. Gully Dwarves are expert navigators, and never get lost. They have an extremely acute sense of smell and taste. They are also known for being able to eat most anything without getting sick.
Even more surprisingly, they are considered the best cooks and brewers on Krynn, surpassing even their Dwarven cousins. Assuming you can clean them up, a Gully Dwarf cook is a highly valued commodity often found in the best establishments on Krynn. Gully Dwarf taverns are some the most frequently visited establishments (mostly because they never charge more than 2 coins).
Other Dwarves argue that Gully Dwarves aren't real dwarves. However, they do have a representative in Dwarf politics (mostly, because they tend to vote with whomever spoke last).
When role-playing a Gully Dwarf, be wary of how you betray them. Never go full Gully Dwarf. Don't try to mimic a real world disability. They are simple, but very clever and have a natural sense of danger. Imagine them as a person that has never attended a day of school, or been taught anything.
Besides the War, the only stuff Dragonlance brings to the table is a bunch of bad takes and Racism. Back when D&D was young, and most settings were filled with bad takes and racism, Dragonlance was unique because of the War. As time moved on, other settings and creators tried to distance themselves from the racism, but Dragonlance kind of doubled down on it. It's still problematic, and I am hoping the 5th edition version fixes these issues. And we don't get the Space monkey event again, which we will. I'm looking forward to a massive facepalm in the new book, not sure where or what, but I am 100% sure there is a Facepalm worthy cringy bit of "accidental" racism.
Gully Dwarves were originally the offspring of dwarf/kender unions, shortly after both races were created by the Chaos Gem altering gnomes. Seeing what their children turned out to be, dwarves avoided having relationships with kender after that. But there were enough of them that they started reproducing with each other enough to keep their numbers up despite the high mortality rate they tended to suffer due to their lack of intelligence and having no communities of their own. Don't know where you got the stuff about them being particularly cunning, allowed to vote in dwarf matters, or skilled at cooking, none of those things match any lore I remember from the game.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
In the War of Souls novel, it speaks about their talent for cooking. Speaker Gilthas, the Lioness and the King of Thorbardin meet up in a Gully Dwarf tavern to discuss evacuating Quanlinesti. Also, the Inn of the Last Home keeps a Gully Dwarf on staff for this reason. In the Chronicles Trilogy, Flints speaks a lot about how cunning Gully Dwarves are. This stems from him being captured in Preludes and forced to be their king. The Legends trilogy is the first to talk about the Highbup being allowed on the Dwarven Council. This also happens in a lot of other novels.
All these novels were written by Margrette Weis and Tracy Hickman. There are other novels to support this, but I kept it to the creators of the setting. The Dwarf/Kender thing was an insult directed at Flint. There is no lore to support it and there is no Dwarf or Kender that would admit to it. Dwarves have a very different idea of physical beauty from other races, and completely opposite view on absolutely everything. Such a union would be near impossible and even had it happened, it would have been so isolated, that a new race would never have been able to spawn.
Gully Dwarves look exactly like normal dwarfs and for the exception of their intelligence, there is no difference, which means they are unlikely a mix-bread. The Mountain Dwarves clearly accept them as Dwarves. The Hill Dwarves generally do not.
I don't think you know what racism is. Most of what you think is racism is politics and competition. Yes, the world would be great if no one needed to compete for anything, knew where their next meal was coming from, always had somewhere to live, a source of income, everyone had the exact same sense of moral obligation, and no one would ever commit a crime, and everyone was categorized as either good or bad, but sadly, that's not the world anyone lives in. It's certainly not a very interesting place for a campaign setting. It's also very unrealistic. Yes, it would be great if all the races, and peoples of Krynn got along, but would you honestly believe that's possible in such a war torn world where gods are actively competing to one-up each other?
The King Priest of Istar certainly wanted unity of all peoples when he called down the Gods to smite all evil in the world. He believed that evil thoughts, not just deeds is what prevented the world from becoming truly one peoples. He thought, if he could get rid of evil thoughts, he could rid the world of crime, wars, and yes, racism. What he ended up committing was genocide in the name of a good cause. This misguided sense of right and wrong is why the cataclysm happened.
Imagine everyday, a Kender walked into your house, uninvited and robbed you blind. Now, if you catch him, he will gladly give it all back and say it was all a miss-understanding. Now this happens every day, all the time and not always the same Kender Eventually, you'd stop allowing Kender anywhere near your house and trying to avoid them. Does this make you a racist, or just someone that doesn't want to lose the pocket watch your dear old grandfather gave you?
As to the greater world, Krynn is a post apocalypse world where too often its take, or die of starvation. For 300 hundred years it has been like this. Resources are very scarce, and everyone blames their protectors, such as the Solamnics, the sworn protectors of the world. Others blame the old clerics and many blame the mages out of ignorance. While this is unfair, it's not racism, because it's not a people, but an organization. People are scared, there is no media, no way of explaining to them what has happened. Alls they know is the world and lives they had before is gone and its not their fault. So they blame others that once promised to protect them. Afterall, it has to be someone's fault.
Imagine your poor, and hungry. Your crops dried up and your family will surely starve this winter. However, rumors are the Mountain Dwarves are stockpiling food and shelter in their mountain home. You don't have a personal problem with the dwarves, but why aren't they sharing? Are the dwarves greedy, cruel... racists? You have a choice, stay and die with your family, or attack the dwarven home in hopes of providing food for your family, and if you die, that's one less mouth to feed this winter. What you don't know, is that the Dwarves are starving too. The Dwarves don't hate the Humans for this, but they knew that if they shared their limited resources with them, both groups will die this winter. So the dwarves have chose self preservation over hopeless kindness. This is what started the Dwarfgate Wars.
This is a common theme in Dragonlance. There is no clear-cut good or evil people despite the gods. There are just people in a very grey area. So along comes the Dark Queen Takhsis and her army. They are brutal, and want to control the world. However, they bring safety and stability. Your life may be hard under them, but your family won't starve and maybe your children will grow up in a better world. In our world, this is how dictators come to power.
Truth is, there is no DnD setting that doesn't explore these themes. In Forgotten realms, everyone has an opinion about the Thayans and Zents. All are negative. In Eberron, due to war, the nations have hundreds of years of built up hatred towards each other. The refugee camps are considered lesser people. Shifters are so hated, that they are hunted and must live in hiding. The Warforge are actively killing all fleshies for using them as canon fodder. There is a whole nation in Eberron populated by monstruous races that the rest of Eberron doesn't recognize as people, and want to exterminate.
Unlike other DnD settings, Dragonlance has no dark skinned evil races. There are no Orcs or Drow in Krynn. There are two main dark skinned peoples in Krynn and both are portrayed positively in lore. The Ergoths, which is like the Wakanda of DnD, and along with all humans, were created by the Neutral gods. The Ergothian, Theros Ironfeld forged the Dragonlances, which helped enda the 3rd Dragon War. The other dark skinned race is the Kaganesti elves, which are a woodland people that live off the land and were created by the gods of Good. The Kagonesti, the Lioness saved the entire elven race, founded the elven homeland, and became queen of both the Silvanesti and Qualinesti. All the races created by the Evil gods (Goblins and Ogres) are light skinned. Kender and humans in general are mixed in complexion.
If anything, there may be a question mark over Ogres. In ancient times, Ogres were blue skinned, and considered the most beautiful and advanced race, and then they degenerated into cruel and sloven, ugly light skinned giants...that may be a metaphor.
I also want to point out that in these campaign settings your supposed to play the good guy. Maybe you decide the world has too much conflict, and you are going to set out to unify a War-torn world. You can't do this if everyone already gets along. There are 3 types of conflict in a story. Man-vs-Man, Man-vs-Nature, and Man-vs-Himself. Dragonlance is typically a man versus man setting.
The whole point of any DnD setting is the world is screwed up, and you are going to fix it. If you think there is too much racism and conflict, this is a world in which you can save it. You can't do that in a world where there is no conflict and everyone is happy. Lord of the Rings would be a very boring book without the Orcs.
All right, I retract my previous statement.
In Dragons of a Summer Flame, there was a section talking about how the various Krynnish races had come into being: humans, ogres, and gnomes had been created by the gods and the rest of the races had been either created by the Chaos Gem changing members of one of those races or via some effect thereafter. This was presented in a third-person omniscient way that was not being recounted by a character in-universe. The part about gully dwarves being a dwarf/kender hybrid race was definitely not done as an insult to Flint because he'd been dead for decades in-universe at that point.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Just for accuracy: according to Dragonlance Adventures (1987), gully dwarves (2d4+1 INT, 2d4+1 WIS, 2d4+1 CHA) are the distant descendants of a brief spate of intermarriages between gnomes and dwarves after the Greystone (Graygem) created the latter from the former. This lore has been revised a number of times since then, and the statblock has moved around a little, but to my knowledge, kender have never been involved, and gully dwarves have always been mentally handicapped.
The most recent version of the lore, which was not in a Wizards of the Coast product, reiterates the original lore (gnome-dwarf marriages following the Siege of Gargath; -4 INT, -4 CHA). This most recent lore also seems to be where their reputation for ruggedness and cooking originate, both of which directly contradict previous material (and are even contradictory within the text of this source).
It's time to stop trying to salvage the gully dwarf. Some of us have been saying this since the '80s. They were a bad idea then, and they are still a bad idea.
It's not allegory, and it's not metaphor: gully dwarves' defining characteristic is mental handicap. Mental handicap is not funny. Every effort to 'rescue' the gully dwarf since the original rules has been mired in attempts to justify ongoing comic relief.
If a player wants to play a mentally handicapped dwarf, they can do it easily without the presence of a whole race of them played for laughs. I'm sure there are many mentally handicapped dwarves on Krynn, and I would hope that the player and their table would treat the character and their condition with respect that has never been afforded gully dwarves.
To be clear, this isn't about how mentally handicapped dwarves are treated by other people on Krynn. That's a matter for the dungeon master to work out with their players. The gully dwarf needs to be removed from the game because it has always been presented as a discriminatory joke to the audience, and 40 years of that cannot be undone. That's something a lot of defenders of old lore don't seem to understand: it is one thing to have discrimination in a fantasy world. It is another thing entirely for a sourcebook to be discriminatory, and the former does not require the latter.
J
Great Wyrm Moonstone Dungeon Master
The time of the ORC has come. No OGL without irrevocability; no OGL with 'authorized version' language. #openDND
Practice, practice, practice • Respect the rules; don't memorize them • Be merciless, not cruel • Don't let the dice run the game for you
Dugan didn't mention Gully Dwarves in that conversation. There was one slight retcon though, in that Gnomes came from Human stock. Not all races sprung from the greygem however. Some were flat out cursed. All the monstruous races, including minotaur came from the degeneration of Ogres. Sargas specifically saved his ogre followers and turned them into minotaurs, at least as far as the minotaur think.
Lets assume you're right, and gully dwarves are discriminatory and represent the mentally disabled. Should the mentally disabled be excluded from fantasy fiction because they make the rest of us uncomfortable? Should people of color, and LGBT people all be removed from fantasy literature because any attempt to portray them will be discrimination?
Truth is, people see what they want to see. Maybe Gully Dwarves don't represent mental disability and are just a species that is below average intelligence. For instance, gorillas are only 3% DNA away from humans, but I wouldn't think a gorilla could perform advanced math or drive a car. That's not a slight against gorillas. I mean, a gorilla is like 3x stronger than me and would murder me in a fist fight. That doesn't make me disabled because I can't beat up a gorilla and the gorilla's not disabled because he can't drive a car. He's just a gorilla and I am a human.
Somebody said that orcs represent black people when that comparison has never been made or supported before in any novel that I know of, but now orcs as an evil species is racist, same with Drow, a matriarch slaver race created by an evil goddess. I personally always thought orcs represent Neanderthals and Drow were feminist.
That's the rub though. No one has ever said Gully Dwarves are a mentally disabled dwarf, nor has any of the books made that comparison. Flint flat denied they are even of the dwarf species. I would much rather play a character of a species that is dumb, than play a character with a mental handicap. The former is just playing a race to it limitations, while the latter would be imitating a real-life disability. What's more respectfully, role-playing an average gorilla, or role-playing a human with brain damage?
I do agree however that not everyone is mature enough to be respectful, regardless of how the material is intended.
See, there's the problem: you're assuming that representation is the same thing as discrimination. It's not. Good representation treats the characters as if they're real people with actual developed personalities. That's not what we get with gully dwarves: they're just treated as jokes. Mean jokes about how stupid and dirty they are because they're incapable of being anything more than that. They're not heroes. They're not main characters. They're just there to be silly little things that make you laugh with how dumb they act. That is not and never will be respectful.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Absolutely not true. Unlike Kender, Gully Dwarves are welcome in all societies on Krynn. The gully dwarves in the books were responsible for bringing the old gods back to the world, by leading Goldmoon to the Disks of Mishakal and saving the Companions from the Black Dragon. Bupa saved both Raistlin Majores life and Crysanias. Raistlin was very protective of them. Tika and Caramon Majore employed a Gully Dwarf at the Inn of the Last home and never once made a disparaging comment about him, though she was frustrated by their antics sometimes. Gully Dwarves are even given a seat on the Thorbardin senate. In the War of Souls, the Gully Dwarves ran an Inn that was extremely popular and even the King of Thorbardin commented on how good the food and ale is. The inn was the meet up place for the alliance between the elves and dwarves. During the Chaos war, a gully dwarf was the lookout for the Thieves guild in Palathas and managed to fool Steel Brightblade and Palan Majare. While you may not like the portrayal of them in the books, at no point has a main character or even an evil character described a Gully Dwarf in a disparaging way. Flint owes his life to gully dwarves which they then elected him king for a time. Flint led a gully dwarf rebellion against the dark queen's forces. Are they a bit comic relief. Yes, but no more than TInker Gnomes and Kender are, and at no point is anyone mean to them. Instead they are approached with patience and understanding, which is pretty unrealistic.
Gully Dwarves and Kobalds are portrayed the exact same way, yet no is defending Kobalds. Dolby and the other House Elves, from the Harry Potter series are similar characters and they are treated way worse than Gully Dwarves.
Then there is the other argument of realism. Yes, I would love to live in a world where everyone is treated well, and with kindness and were people are judged by their character and what they are. Where everyone is welcome, and understanding, and there are no conflicts based on religion, ethnicity, or nationality. Sadly, that is not realistic, and pretty unbelievable from a literary standpoint. In that regard, Dragonlance breaks the mold by treating these races respectfully and with acceptance, despite their inability to assimilate to society. If this were medieval earth, they'd likely have been executed.
I get it, you're going to see what you want to see and I am probably not going to convince you otherwise and I would be willing to concede the argument if you can show me an instance in the novels where Gully Dwarfs were discriminated against.
So, the book Dragonlance: Shadow of The Dragon Queen's been out for a while now. And there's no mention of Kender not being able to be casters in it. Perhaps they've done away with that in 5th Edition? It's page 27, if you'd like to check that out...
Some other things that are unclear though, are if people can play Warlocks, Artificers or Clerics. It's been a strange read, for the few days that I've had the book.
I have not read any the Dragonlance books since the late 1980s. Any written after that (assuming that there are some) are unknown to me.
Thanks, everybody, for reminding me of these books. I'll add them to my "re-read" list.
There are no restrictions on classes in Dragonlance. Some of the classes weren’t included in the original Dragonlance material because they didn’t exist in (A)D&D then. For Clerics and other divine-themed characters, one of the introductory scenes in the adventure gives a reasonable way to accommodate Clerics if wished.
No restrictions have been placed on races/species, but they have given a clear guide to the commonly encountered races on Krynn.