As someone who has only played 5e, and Only in Forgotten Realms at that...what makes Dragonlance different to Forgotten Realms? Why would I want to play DL instead of FR? Since we all play in our versions of each setting...is there anything stopping me from running SotDQ and just saying that it's in FR?

as i remember it (and i'm like 90% sure i'm wrong)...Dragon Lance was originally written to be a major campaign setting for D&D way back in Ed.1-ish.    The problem is, the early books painted such grand events that it became difficult for players to get into the lore with their own characters that never had the same impact.   

Enter Forgotten Realms, designed better to be a more genuine play space for the players over the lore-locked Dragon Lance series.  Dragon Lance had a more centralized epic storyline whereas Forgotten Realms spread out the events over the entire world in a giant web of individual plot lines.

Now, fast forward 30+ years today....the settings are probably pretty agnostic to a clever DM that wants to transition a storyline between one and the other.  Sure DL has the whole extra rules and content about Dragons and that war....but i don't think it would be difficult to mod any adventure to fit the setting.

At least when it was created, DL was a far more constrained setting than FR. FR has pretty much everything. You want ninjas? They have ninjas. Spelljammers? Yep. They have a training academy for it. Anything made for D&D that isn't for a specific other setting seems to exist in the FR. 

While they've probably added more stuff since I last paid attention, DL was very much the opposite. One type of wizard. Initially no clerics, and even once the gods came back after leaving in a snit, there's a very small selection. A fairly limited set of available races. A specific source of evil opposition.

I doubt the adventure would fit well in the FR without a lot of changes. (Any world-spanning war against an evil god in the FR raises the question of "Why aren't Elminster, Drizzt, and all the other uberpowerful NPCs dealing with this?", and, while you can answer the question, it's going to change the tone of the story.)

Quote from jl8e >>

At least when it was created, DL was a far more constrained setting than FR. FR has pretty much everything. You want ninjas? They have ninjas. Spelljammers? Yep. They have a training academy for it. Anything made for D&D that isn't for a specific other setting seems to exist in the FR. 

While they've probably added more stuff since I last paid attention, DL was very much the opposite. One type of wizard. Initially no clerics, and even once the gods came back after leaving in a snit, there's a very small selection. A fairly limited set of available races. A specific source of evil opposition.

And a rather small continent to play on with very little in the way of unexplored or uninhabited regions.

Quote from Sillvva >>

What Is Dragonlance? A World on the Brink of Destruction - new article here on D&D Beyond should help answer this.

OK, that's cheating if your just gunna write a whole article based on one guy's forum question!

:)