Dragonlancehas a Dragon-humanoid race it's called Draconian. Up until the start of the war, the only reptilians humanoids seen were Lizardmen. As Koboldare in service of the Dragons, and were not seen by society until the war broke out.
D&D 5th Edition core Race, Dragonborn & Kobold.
The campaign book is set in year 2 of the War as it spills into a region untouched by the war.
The Draconians are the main soldiers of the Dragon Army, evil Metallic Dragon Eggs corrupted to hatch as humanoid soldiers of Evil. They had lots of subtypes and rules, and basically kind of cool monsters.
Dragonborn basically in this setting are Draconians, most DMs who have been using AD&D, 3rd/3.5, and 4th campaign material with 5th Edition have been using Dragonbon as Draconians, as they are basically the same. With a few minor variations (Metallic being Evil aligned soldiers, and Chromatic being goodish)
All this would not be an issue if the New Book takes place 20 to 100 years later, aka Dragonlance The Next Generation, but Year 2 of the war, there is no way possible for Draconians to have dispersed into society, no way possible for the less evil ones to have children who were born free. I can totally see a band or two of kobolds running away from their dragon overlords and ladies, and arriving ahead of the war, but Draconians were still very single minded at this point.
Question to the Community: Hopes fears, solutions, do you think they addressed this in the book or are they dropping this problem in the hands of DMs?
There's no reason that they have to have Draconians/Dragonborn as an available player race in the setting. It's not the only PHB race not extant in the world. (Tiefling and Half-Orc off the top of my head.)
Though I expect they'll have an option for "renegade draconian".
So we have Draconians already in Fizbans. In fact I'm imagining, "x pages of the books were just copy pasted from Fizbans" as being in the opening salvos of complaints from completists when it drops. I'm definitely waiting on it to see if it's worth getting. That said, in Fizban's it's very clear the Dragonborn are a species distinct from Draconians. Dragonborn don't have to be in Dragonlance and I'm going to guess if anyway does Sage ask "what about Dragonborn in Krynn?" to WotC, we'll hear "well you can spell jam, blue veil or somehow planescape some Dragonborn if you really want to"
Dragonborn basically in this setting are Draconians, most DMs who have been using AD&D, 3rd/3.5, and 4th campaign material with 5th Edition have been using Dragonbon as Draconians, as they are basically the same. With a few minor variations (Metallic being Evil aligned soldiers, and Chromatic being goodish)
You're saying Dragonborn were house ruled as Draconians in prior editions, right? I don't remember Draconians ever being a playable race in AD&D, their death features alone put them in the "monster" camp solidly. I don't know if the other editions had playable draconian either.
Anyway, I don't see this as a problem. If you want to play in Krynn as written, Dragonborn aren't an option (perhaps that's another reason Dragonlance shows up so late in 5e's lifecycle, it pushes against some character options considered "core"). If you really really want to introduce a Dragonborn in Krynn, no one will really stop you and there might even be one of those highlighted paragraphs titled "But I want to play a Dragonborn?" in the book.
Also Kobold is not a "core race." So the only real problem here are Dragonborn, and I just don't see it as much of an upset. Same case for Tiefling and Half-Orc (as I believe Tarkhesis is the closest you get to a Devil in Krynn, and Orcs I don't believe exist). If anything the Dragonlance Book could demonstrate how you can have a 5e game world and not have all the "core options" avaialable to you but the game can still be recognized as D&D.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Dragonborn are not Draconians. Draconians are in Fizbans. They are shocktroops made by corrupting (usually metallic) dragon eggs. Dragonborn are a separate race entirely.
Dragonlance might tie the origins of the two together in some way, since this book is set early on in the war, but Draconians are definitely their own thing (and still evil monsters.)
After the chaos war the female draconian eggs was found by Kang and this led them to building their own city, Teyr in 385 AC. Prior to this it was believed that all draconians were male. Kang and his crew were not happy with the dragon queen and will not follow her and I believe have actively fought against her in later books.
The books The Doom Brigade and Draconian Measures tell this story.
If the story takes place in year 2 of the war of the lance, year 350 AC, then they cannot be a playable race. If individuals broke off from the dragon army and showed up in a Solamnia recruiting centre they would be captured and whisked away. If your table wants to handwave it sure but it makes zero sense to do so.
Dragonlance is a setting bound by history more so then most any other setting. If you want to play in this setting you need to be bound by its restrictions. A Draconian based storyline would be better after the war of the lance or after the founding of Teyr. Hell you could easily make a game the follows the whole story. Much easier to have other races, the PCs, inside a draconian army. These individuals don't hate us and have been helping us so they are cool. Most others we meet hate us because we were the face of the army that killed a great many people.
As someone who got the module early due to buying the bundle, there are no options for Draconian player characters in the book, and any dragonborn (which despite the blurb in the PHB are separate from Draconians) found on Krynn are from another world and exist only at the DM’s volition.
I preordered the Dragonlance book and am currently gearing up for a campaign, and my take is that you do best to restrict PC species to those with lore and backstory for this setting. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Kender, Gnomes. For my campaign, that's it. Plenty of rules exist for other species, but would they add something meaningful to this story? I've focused on making the cultures for the PC species more rich and diverse rather than working in everything under the sourcebook sun. Your approach may differ.
As someone who got the module early due to buying the bundle, there are no options for Draconian player characters in the book, and any dragonborn (which despite the blurb in the PHB are separate from Draconians) found on Krynn are from another world and exist only at the DM’s volition.
Here's the sidebar excerpt for folks who don't have the book:
PEOPLE FROM BEYOND
Peoples who aren’t native to the world still might find their way to Krynn. It’s possible to find individual members—or even small enclaves—of folk like dragonborn, halflings, tieflings, or any other race in Ansalon. Perhaps such individuals stepped through a portal and found themselves on Krynn, or traded with one of Krynn’s great empires before the Cataclysm. Use such possibilities to play characters of any race you please in your adventures across Krynn.
Bold mine - essentially it's saying that if you're a nonstandard race, you're not a Krynn native, though that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be a unique snowflake character who arrived via blue police box either. The pre-Catacylsm Age of Might was very, very high magic, so it's reasonable that a few portals were opened to other worlds by one of the magocracies bouncing around the place back then - and now there could be isolated pockets of nonstandard races in Krynn, if your DM wants there to be. Your character could arrive in Ansalon as a descendant of one of those, rather than say tripping and falling through a wild portal in the Mournland one day.
There are a lot of great things about this book, not least how many cool dragons and dragon-like monsters there are to run. Also, the presence of epic battles and potential for PC's to play a heroic part in a major war has some great potential. I was thinking of running it for a group of young players who LOVE dragons... but the problem is that these kids would much prefer to BE dragons or dragon-associated characters, rather than just killing them. It's unfortunate that there's nothing written into the story for a good-aligned faction of dragons and dragonborn who could get involved in this war (unless I missed it? Haven't read cover to cover in depth, yet). Having air power in the form of friendly dragons might make for a more interesting battles, and I don't see why the metallic dragons would remain neutral after learning that their hostage eggs are actually being turned into Draconians.
I suppose if I do run this for my dragon-obsessed kid and his friends it will have to be like 80% homebrew and rewritten, which seems to be par for the course for most big adventure books anyway. Seems like a lost opportunity on the part of the writers, though.. I mean who wants to just fight dragon-riders when you could learn to become one? And in such a dragon-heavy book it seems unfortunate to almost totally ignore the material in Fizban's. Probably I'll just mine it for parts and rebuild it in Eberron, where a hyper-intelligent dragon's questionable morality is defined more by her choices rather than by the color of her scales.
There are a lot of great things about this book, not least how many cool dragons and dragon-like monsters there are to run. Also, the presence of epic battles and potential for PC's to play a heroic part in a major war has some great potential. I was thinking of running it for a group of young players who LOVE dragons... but the problem is that these kids would much prefer to BE dragons or dragon-associated characters, rather than just killing them. It's unfortunate that there's nothing written into the story for a good-aligned faction of dragons and dragonborn who could get involved in this war (unless I missed it? Haven't read cover to cover in depth, yet). Having air power in the form of friendly dragons might make for a more interesting battles, and I don't see why the metallic dragons would remain neutral after learning that their hostage eggs are actually being turned into Draconians.
I suppose if I do run this for my dragon-obsessed kid and his friends it will have to be like 80% homebrew and rewritten, which seems to be par for the course for most big adventure books anyway. Seems like a lost opportunity on the part of the writers, though.. I mean who wants to just fight dragon-riders when you could learn to become one? And in such a dragon-heavy book it seems unfortunate to almost totally ignore the material in Fizban's. Probably I'll just mine it for parts and rebuild it in Eberron, where a hyper-intelligent dragon's questionable morality is defined more by her choices rather than by the color of her scales.
Late in the campaign, the PCs do ride dragonnelles! The airborne combat mechanics are a bit basic, but there are rules for knocking riders off their mount and then allies catching them before they hit ground. The metallic dragons joining the fight after the events of this campaign makes perfect sense. If your dragon-enthused kids want to ride dragons from the start, then this setting isn't the best, since part of the world-building is that dragons have been missing from the world for some time and are very, very special. But if it's something to build to, I'd say the setting is solid for it.
Just while writing this, I made the decision that in my version of Krynn, if a dragon serves Takhisis, its natural metallic sheen turns flat and chromatic. Alignment determines the color difference rather than the other way around. Innate goodness versus evil problem solved. Thanks, this conversation made me think of that!
Just for fun, I would suggest players to read "Doom Brigade" by Margaret Weis & Don Perrin. This is the first book of (The kang's Regiment Series/The Chaos War series") It really is a fun book following a group of draconians who no longer have a war to be in service of. I am reading it for the second time almost 25 years after the first time I read it.
My next set I will be reading is "The War of souls" trilogy, which came highly recommended to me. Anytime I need inspirations for a campaign, I read the books that help me figure out which spot my setting will be in. And this helps me make suggestions to the table.
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I am not sure what my Spirit Animal is. But whatever that thing is, I am pretty sure it has rabies!
There are a lot of great things about this book, not least how many cool dragons and dragon-like monsters there are to run. Also, the presence of epic battles and potential for PC's to play a heroic part in a major war has some great potential. I was thinking of running it for a group of young players who LOVE dragons... but the problem is that these kids would much prefer to BE dragons or dragon-associated characters, rather than just killing them. It's unfortunate that there's nothing written into the story for a good-aligned faction of dragons and dragonborn who could get involved in this war (unless I missed it? Haven't read cover to cover in depth, yet). Having air power in the form of friendly dragons might make for a more interesting battles, and I don't see why the metallic dragons would remain neutral after learning that their hostage eggs are actually being turned into Draconians.
I suppose if I do run this for my dragon-obsessed kid and his friends it will have to be like 80% homebrew and rewritten, which seems to be par for the course for most big adventure books anyway. Seems like a lost opportunity on the part of the writers, though.. I mean who wants to just fight dragon-riders when you could learn to become one? And in such a dragon-heavy book it seems unfortunate to almost totally ignore the material in Fizban's. Probably I'll just mine it for parts and rebuild it in Eberron, where a hyper-intelligent dragon's questionable morality is defined more by her choices rather than by the color of her scales.
So in the broader War of the Lance, the "good guys" wield those dragonlances atop actual metallic dragons. There's a lot of Dragonlance lore easily found summarized elsewhere about the War of the Lance and why the metallic dragons were initially sitting out the War. If you're not married to Dragonlance canon, and just make the setting your own, there's a lot a party can do to address the issue of the metallic dragons' absence and eventual joining into the war effort.
I've only done a skim of the book, but it seems it's sort of set itself up for a sequel that will likely never happen in official WotC product, given the edition change count down, which is a shame because I was expecting more detail on dragon riding and dragon jousting with lances. But at the same time, some DMs may like the liberty of furthering the PCs adventures however they see fit.
It's a little more complicated than traditional D&D combat, but if you think you're players may want to get into really detailed dragon on dragon mount aerial combat, the MCDM magazine Arcadia Issue 3 has a great system called "Aces High" which provides to my mind excellent rules both for dogfighting on aerial mounts, including "rider, hold on!" moments as well as aerial combatants clashing into aerial melee (in a subsection of the article called "like a knife fight in a phone booth". It's a different type of combat, there's basically a maneuvering phase where folks jockey for position (or "firing solutions" in modern parlance) then attacks take place, it's sorta "three dimensional abstract" but if players want to get into it and can act out spatial relations through hand gestures and what not, it's a good time. It can be bolted into a War of the Lance game real well. The issue I think will set you back $7(?) but on top of Aces High, it's also got I think the best third party species I've seen for varient D&D, four varieties of "dream folk" who are all based on aspects of dreaming.
In the original DL novel trilogy, I think you only get one explicit example of mounted dragon v mounted dragon combat ... I think it's in the second book (so much of the actual war takes place "off camera" which I guess gives space for campaigns like the one in this edition's book). If you lean more to "rule of cool", it's pretty easily adapted.
@midnightplat, thanks for the bigger picture. I never read the books back in the 80’s, despite being a huge fantasy fan I just couldn’t get into them for some reason. This all makes a lot of sense and I’ll bet there’s a lot of great stuff being published on the dmsguild to flesh these things out as we speak. Definitely going to check out that MCDM reference, since I’m always looking for better ways to handle flying or underwater combat, thanks!
No problem. And like I said, there's no reason you have to make the "canon/lore" key tides in the War of the Lance reserved for the canonical heroes of the lance. The Metallic dragon's non combatant reasons are a compelling conundrum, and would definitely be something worth exploring whether you stick to the way it was handled in canon or retconned it with your characters at the center.
I re-read the original trilogy during lock down so it's in recent memory. Rather than plowing through it, I'd recommend others getting a world feel through the wikis, and know if you really want that level of source inspiration, the novels are out.
Another way, using the current rules is to assume any non-Krynn characters got there through spelljamming. Old background material suggests that spelljamming ships regularly visit the Minotaur League on the other continent of Taledas and some clandestine visits occur in Palanthas from time to time. This might explain why gold is valueless in places like Abanasinia but exchanges at a value of 1Gp = 1Stl in Solamnia, it is those strange hippo-like traders who turn up from time to time and buy up all the scrap gold at ridiculous prices, paying with steel ingots.
The jewelers back in their homeland must use a LOT of it!
When it comes to Krynn there is no such thing as "canon" anyway as the setting allows for multiple timelines and Time-travel.
For example, in the original story does Laurana leave Qualinesti by putting on armor and follow on behind the Innfellows on their trip to Sla-Mori (Dragons of Autumn Twilight) or does she get kidnapped on wyvernback by Fewmaster Toede and carried off to Pax Tharkas the night before (Dragons of Flame Module)?
Or another one from the same early sources, does Verminaard die at Pax Tharkas or later in Thorbardin in an attempt to acquire the Hammer of Kharas (or is he still alive later as Sevil Dranim Rev)?
All this would not be an issue if the New Book takes place 20 to 100 years later, aka Dragonlance The Next Generation, but Year 2 of the war, there is no way possible for Draconians to have dispersed into society, no way possible for the less evil ones to have children who were born free. I can totally see a band or two of kobolds running away from their dragon overlords and ladies, and arriving ahead of the war, but Draconians were still very single minded at this point
First and foremost, I effing love the Dragonlance series. I must have read Chronicles and Legends way, way, way too many times!
Now that said - if a DM is wanting to run a "true Dragonlance" feel for 5e... that's going to be difficult without disallowing some races... Tieflings... Dragonborn... Plasmoids... the list goes on and on.
However, to me Dragonborn are the easiest to explain. While, yes, naturally, it would break away from "true Dragonlance" - but the lore of the Dragonborn could simply be that they were Draconians who, in the end, were infused with too much of the goodness, from the very dragon eggs that they represented, that they were able to eventually overcome the "evil" infused by the dark magic that creates Draconians - and in an effort to distinguish themselves from their evil counterparts, they've adopted the name Dragonborn.
There is a lot that has to be disallowed for a Dragonlance setting. Luckily WOTC pulled through by making as generic a campaign as possible for you with no real dragonlance uniqueness to it. Heck, play whatever you want, after all, sorcerers and warlocks are now mages of the tower and despite clerical magic being lost, clerics and paladins are Knights of Solamnia. This book is a turd.
There is a lot that has to be disallowed for a Dragonlance setting. Luckily WOTC pulled through by making as generic a campaign as possible for you with no real dragonlance uniqueness to it. Heck, play whatever you want, after all, sorcerers and warlocks are now mages of the tower and despite clerical magic being lost, clerics and paladins are Knights of Solamnia. This book is a turd.
Well, the book doesn't follow the existing Dragonlance, sure.
But even if you played the old Dragonlance, I am pretty sure the DM (or you, if you were the DM) did things that were not cannon to Dragonlance.
The book tries to allow for any class to play - with the war having just started, the gods being turned to - and called upon - could reasonably make sense (without the events of the Chronicles taking place exactly). So this could permit for Clerics and Paladins and explain why they're level 1. It's new to the world.
As for other classes (Sorcerers, Warlocks) - they could work. There are demons in Dragonlance for Warlocks, and Sorcerers could exist, through draconic bloodlines, as an easy one to think of. And could be fun, depending on how the DM wants to play it - to have the Wizards of High Sorcery recruiting them to take the Test.
The races, where it becomes a little more difficult. Because there's so many options - like goblins, in D&D are now a race that can be played. But that would not do too well in Dragonlance, unless a good background is written up for it. But really, anything, with some creativity is possible.
The issue:
Dragonlance has a Dragon-humanoid race it's called Draconian. Up until the start of the war, the only reptilians humanoids seen were Lizardmen. As Kobold are in service of the Dragons, and were not seen by society until the war broke out.
D&D 5th Edition core Race, Dragonborn & Kobold.
The campaign book is set in year 2 of the War as it spills into a region untouched by the war.
The Draconians are the main soldiers of the Dragon Army, evil Metallic Dragon Eggs corrupted to hatch as humanoid soldiers of Evil. They had lots of subtypes and rules, and basically kind of cool monsters.
Dragonborn basically in this setting are Draconians, most DMs who have been using AD&D, 3rd/3.5, and 4th campaign material with 5th Edition have been using Dragonbon as Draconians, as they are basically the same. With a few minor variations (Metallic being Evil aligned soldiers, and Chromatic being goodish)
All this would not be an issue if the New Book takes place 20 to 100 years later, aka Dragonlance The Next Generation, but Year 2 of the war, there is no way possible for Draconians to have dispersed into society, no way possible for the less evil ones to have children who were born free. I can totally see a band or two of kobolds running away from their dragon overlords and ladies, and arriving ahead of the war, but Draconians were still very single minded at this point.
Question to the Community: Hopes fears, solutions, do you think they addressed this in the book or are they dropping this problem in the hands of DMs?
There's no reason that they have to have Draconians/Dragonborn as an available player race in the setting. It's not the only PHB race not extant in the world. (Tiefling and Half-Orc off the top of my head.)
Though I expect they'll have an option for "renegade draconian".
You're saying Dragonborn were house ruled as Draconians in prior editions, right? I don't remember Draconians ever being a playable race in AD&D, their death features alone put them in the "monster" camp solidly. I don't know if the other editions had playable draconian either.
Anyway, I don't see this as a problem. If you want to play in Krynn as written, Dragonborn aren't an option (perhaps that's another reason Dragonlance shows up so late in 5e's lifecycle, it pushes against some character options considered "core"). If you really really want to introduce a Dragonborn in Krynn, no one will really stop you and there might even be one of those highlighted paragraphs titled "But I want to play a Dragonborn?" in the book.
Also Kobold is not a "core race." So the only real problem here are Dragonborn, and I just don't see it as much of an upset. Same case for Tiefling and Half-Orc (as I believe Tarkhesis is the closest you get to a Devil in Krynn, and Orcs I don't believe exist). If anything the Dragonlance Book could demonstrate how you can have a 5e game world and not have all the "core options" avaialable to you but the game can still be recognized as D&D.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Dragonborn are not Draconians. Draconians are in Fizbans. They are shocktroops made by corrupting (usually metallic) dragon eggs. Dragonborn are a separate race entirely.
Dragonlance might tie the origins of the two together in some way, since this book is set early on in the war, but Draconians are definitely their own thing (and still evil monsters.)
After the chaos war the female draconian eggs was found by Kang and this led them to building their own city, Teyr in 385 AC. Prior to this it was believed that all draconians were male. Kang and his crew were not happy with the dragon queen and will not follow her and I believe have actively fought against her in later books.
The books The Doom Brigade and Draconian Measures tell this story.
If the story takes place in year 2 of the war of the lance, year 350 AC, then they cannot be a playable race. If individuals broke off from the dragon army and showed up in a Solamnia recruiting centre they would be captured and whisked away. If your table wants to handwave it sure but it makes zero sense to do so.
Dragonlance is a setting bound by history more so then most any other setting. If you want to play in this setting you need to be bound by its restrictions. A Draconian based storyline would be better after the war of the lance or after the founding of Teyr. Hell you could easily make a game the follows the whole story. Much easier to have other races, the PCs, inside a draconian army. These individuals don't hate us and have been helping us so they are cool. Most others we meet hate us because we were the face of the army that killed a great many people.
As someone who got the module early due to buying the bundle, there are no options for Draconian player characters in the book, and any dragonborn (which despite the blurb in the PHB are separate from Draconians) found on Krynn are from another world and exist only at the DM’s volition.
I preordered the Dragonlance book and am currently gearing up for a campaign, and my take is that you do best to restrict PC species to those with lore and backstory for this setting. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Kender, Gnomes. For my campaign, that's it. Plenty of rules exist for other species, but would they add something meaningful to this story? I've focused on making the cultures for the PC species more rich and diverse rather than working in everything under the sourcebook sun. Your approach may differ.
Half-elves, minotaurs, goblins, hobgoblins, and centaurs all have solid connections.
I could see Goliaths, Firbolg and maybe Tritons from far out of the way places. Most of the other options, much harder to integrate.
Here's the sidebar excerpt for folks who don't have the book:
Bold mine - essentially it's saying that if you're a nonstandard race, you're not a Krynn native, though that doesn't necessarily mean you have to be a unique snowflake character who arrived via blue police box either. The pre-Catacylsm Age of Might was very, very high magic, so it's reasonable that a few portals were opened to other worlds by one of the magocracies bouncing around the place back then - and now there could be isolated pockets of nonstandard races in Krynn, if your DM wants there to be. Your character could arrive in Ansalon as a descendant of one of those, rather than say tripping and falling through a wild portal in the Mournland one day.
There are a lot of great things about this book, not least how many cool dragons and dragon-like monsters there are to run. Also, the presence of epic battles and potential for PC's to play a heroic part in a major war has some great potential. I was thinking of running it for a group of young players who LOVE dragons... but the problem is that these kids would much prefer to BE dragons or dragon-associated characters, rather than just killing them. It's unfortunate that there's nothing written into the story for a good-aligned faction of dragons and dragonborn who could get involved in this war (unless I missed it? Haven't read cover to cover in depth, yet). Having air power in the form of friendly dragons might make for a more interesting battles, and I don't see why the metallic dragons would remain neutral after learning that their hostage eggs are actually being turned into Draconians.
I suppose if I do run this for my dragon-obsessed kid and his friends it will have to be like 80% homebrew and rewritten, which seems to be par for the course for most big adventure books anyway. Seems like a lost opportunity on the part of the writers, though.. I mean who wants to just fight dragon-riders when you could learn to become one? And in such a dragon-heavy book it seems unfortunate to almost totally ignore the material in Fizban's. Probably I'll just mine it for parts and rebuild it in Eberron, where a hyper-intelligent dragon's questionable morality is defined more by her choices rather than by the color of her scales.
Late in the campaign, the PCs do ride dragonnelles! The airborne combat mechanics are a bit basic, but there are rules for knocking riders off their mount and then allies catching them before they hit ground. The metallic dragons joining the fight after the events of this campaign makes perfect sense. If your dragon-enthused kids want to ride dragons from the start, then this setting isn't the best, since part of the world-building is that dragons have been missing from the world for some time and are very, very special. But if it's something to build to, I'd say the setting is solid for it.
Just while writing this, I made the decision that in my version of Krynn, if a dragon serves Takhisis, its natural metallic sheen turns flat and chromatic. Alignment determines the color difference rather than the other way around. Innate goodness versus evil problem solved. Thanks, this conversation made me think of that!
Just for fun, I would suggest players to read "Doom Brigade" by Margaret Weis & Don Perrin. This is the first book of (The kang's Regiment Series/The Chaos War series") It really is a fun book following a group of draconians who no longer have a war to be in service of. I am reading it for the second time almost 25 years after the first time I read it.
My next set I will be reading is "The War of souls" trilogy, which came highly recommended to me. Anytime I need inspirations for a campaign, I read the books that help me figure out which spot my setting will be in. And this helps me make suggestions to the table.
I am not sure what my Spirit Animal is. But whatever that thing is, I am pretty sure it has rabies!
So in the broader War of the Lance, the "good guys" wield those dragonlances atop actual metallic dragons. There's a lot of Dragonlance lore easily found summarized elsewhere about the War of the Lance and why the metallic dragons were initially sitting out the War. If you're not married to Dragonlance canon, and just make the setting your own, there's a lot a party can do to address the issue of the metallic dragons' absence and eventual joining into the war effort.
I've only done a skim of the book, but it seems it's sort of set itself up for a sequel that will likely never happen in official WotC product, given the edition change count down, which is a shame because I was expecting more detail on dragon riding and dragon jousting with lances. But at the same time, some DMs may like the liberty of furthering the PCs adventures however they see fit.
It's a little more complicated than traditional D&D combat, but if you think you're players may want to get into really detailed dragon on dragon mount aerial combat, the MCDM magazine Arcadia Issue 3 has a great system called "Aces High" which provides to my mind excellent rules both for dogfighting on aerial mounts, including "rider, hold on!" moments as well as aerial combatants clashing into aerial melee (in a subsection of the article called "like a knife fight in a phone booth". It's a different type of combat, there's basically a maneuvering phase where folks jockey for position (or "firing solutions" in modern parlance) then attacks take place, it's sorta "three dimensional abstract" but if players want to get into it and can act out spatial relations through hand gestures and what not, it's a good time. It can be bolted into a War of the Lance game real well. The issue I think will set you back $7(?) but on top of Aces High, it's also got I think the best third party species I've seen for varient D&D, four varieties of "dream folk" who are all based on aspects of dreaming.
In the original DL novel trilogy, I think you only get one explicit example of mounted dragon v mounted dragon combat ... I think it's in the second book (so much of the actual war takes place "off camera" which I guess gives space for campaigns like the one in this edition's book). If you lean more to "rule of cool", it's pretty easily adapted.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
@midnightplat, thanks for the bigger picture. I never read the books back in the 80’s, despite being a huge fantasy fan I just couldn’t get into them for some reason. This all makes a lot of sense and I’ll bet there’s a lot of great stuff being published on the dmsguild to flesh these things out as we speak. Definitely going to check out that MCDM reference, since I’m always looking for better ways to handle flying or underwater combat, thanks!
No problem. And like I said, there's no reason you have to make the "canon/lore" key tides in the War of the Lance reserved for the canonical heroes of the lance. The Metallic dragon's non combatant reasons are a compelling conundrum, and would definitely be something worth exploring whether you stick to the way it was handled in canon or retconned it with your characters at the center.
I re-read the original trilogy during lock down so it's in recent memory. Rather than plowing through it, I'd recommend others getting a world feel through the wikis, and know if you really want that level of source inspiration, the novels are out.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Another way, using the current rules is to assume any non-Krynn characters got there through spelljamming. Old background material suggests that spelljamming ships regularly visit the Minotaur League on the other continent of Taledas and some clandestine visits occur in Palanthas from time to time. This might explain why gold is valueless in places like Abanasinia but exchanges at a value of 1Gp = 1Stl in Solamnia, it is those strange hippo-like traders who turn up from time to time and buy up all the scrap gold at ridiculous prices, paying with steel ingots.
The jewelers back in their homeland must use a LOT of it!
When it comes to Krynn there is no such thing as "canon" anyway as the setting allows for multiple timelines and Time-travel.
For example, in the original story does Laurana leave Qualinesti by putting on armor and follow on behind the Innfellows on their trip to Sla-Mori (Dragons of Autumn Twilight) or does she get kidnapped on wyvernback by Fewmaster Toede and carried off to Pax Tharkas the night before (Dragons of Flame Module)?
Or another one from the same early sources, does Verminaard die at Pax Tharkas or later in Thorbardin in an attempt to acquire the Hammer of Kharas (or is he still alive later as Sevil Dranim Rev)?
First and foremost, I effing love the Dragonlance series. I must have read Chronicles and Legends way, way, way too many times!
Now that said - if a DM is wanting to run a "true Dragonlance" feel for 5e... that's going to be difficult without disallowing some races... Tieflings... Dragonborn... Plasmoids... the list goes on and on.
However, to me Dragonborn are the easiest to explain. While, yes, naturally, it would break away from "true Dragonlance" - but the lore of the Dragonborn could simply be that they were Draconians who, in the end, were infused with too much of the goodness, from the very dragon eggs that they represented, that they were able to eventually overcome the "evil" infused by the dark magic that creates Draconians - and in an effort to distinguish themselves from their evil counterparts, they've adopted the name Dragonborn.
Check out my publication on DMs Guild: https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?author=Tawmis%20Logue
Check out my comedy web series - Neverending Nights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wr4-u9-zw0&list=PLbRG7dzFI-u3EJd0usasgDrrFO3mZ1lOZ
Need a character story/background written up? I do it for free (but also take donations!) - https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?591882-Need-a-character-background-written-up
There is a lot that has to be disallowed for a Dragonlance setting. Luckily WOTC pulled through by making as generic a campaign as possible for you with no real dragonlance uniqueness to it. Heck, play whatever you want, after all, sorcerers and warlocks are now mages of the tower and despite clerical magic being lost, clerics and paladins are Knights of Solamnia. This book is a turd.
Well, the book doesn't follow the existing Dragonlance, sure.
But even if you played the old Dragonlance, I am pretty sure the DM (or you, if you were the DM) did things that were not cannon to Dragonlance.
The book tries to allow for any class to play - with the war having just started, the gods being turned to - and called upon - could reasonably make sense (without the events of the Chronicles taking place exactly). So this could permit for Clerics and Paladins and explain why they're level 1. It's new to the world.
As for other classes (Sorcerers, Warlocks) - they could work. There are demons in Dragonlance for Warlocks, and Sorcerers could exist, through draconic bloodlines, as an easy one to think of. And could be fun, depending on how the DM wants to play it - to have the Wizards of High Sorcery recruiting them to take the Test.
The races, where it becomes a little more difficult. Because there's so many options - like goblins, in D&D are now a race that can be played. But that would not do too well in Dragonlance, unless a good background is written up for it. But really, anything, with some creativity is possible.
I am sorry you don't enjoy the book.
Check out my publication on DMs Guild: https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?author=Tawmis%20Logue
Check out my comedy web series - Neverending Nights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wr4-u9-zw0&list=PLbRG7dzFI-u3EJd0usasgDrrFO3mZ1lOZ
Need a character story/background written up? I do it for free (but also take donations!) - https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?591882-Need-a-character-background-written-up