Dragonlance is back with two new products for Dungeons and Dragons, the Shadow of The Dragon Queen and Warriors of Krynn. The first is a campaign setting and adventure, three books in a single slip case. The latter is war game that integrates into the table top RPG.
Dragonlance is one of the original settings for the world’s biggest roleplaying game in the world, Dungeons and Dragons. Arguably the Critical Role of it’s time, the 1984 release of Dragonlance was a unique multi-media experience, translating a home-brewed D&D game into a series of books by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman into a war-torn fantasy setting. It spawned board games, comic books, even it’s own animated movie.
The original story detailed a small band of heroes who became part of great war between good and evil. Evil Dragons, long thought banished from the world of Krynn, return to wage war and take over the land. Over the year, D&D has returned to Krynn, usually to advance the setting.
Shadow of The Dragon Queen however, doesn’t do that. It’s set at the same time as the original game; just before the War of The Lance. This means that powerful magic is restricted to those who brave the Towers of High Sorcery, and that healing magic (and the gods) are all but lost from the world. No one has seen a dragon in generations, though it is a still world of magic and mystery. If this sounds very unlike modern D&D, don’t worry. Shadow of The Dragon Queen features a few ‘session zero’ style adventures that introduce players to the setting but also help them unlock the sort of powers one expects in a normal game of D&D. This puts your players front and centre in the story.
In addition to being a whole setting for D&D, it’s also an adventure. The story begins in the town of Vogler, but becomes a big cinematic adventure as the evil Dragon Army comes take over the world in the name of Takhisis, the Dragon Queen.
Senior Games Designer Wes Schneider told us “We spend a significant amount of time helping Dungeons Masters build up that the fact that Vogler is a pleasant place, it is the place where we want you to meet the people, enjoy the town, fall in love with the citizens. And then slowly all of that starts to get threatened. “
It sounds like a truly epic adventure crammed with fantastic battles. To help the players experience this, the adventure also integrates with a special board game, called Warriors of Krynn, designed by Rob Daviau and Stephen Baker. Both have designed battle focused games; Baker created Battle Masters, and Daviau is responsible for Risk Legacy and is the grand-father of board games designed in such a way that your actions in previous games have consequences. Warriors of Krynn is a campaign game; though no permanent changes are made to the games components through player action, each section of the game has can effect the next game.
Daviau said “This is a D&D board game where you can take the player characters and put them on the field of battle. Because D&D battle is really at the one on one level or a party versus a little tiny squad. But what happens when you’re on a battlefield, there’s hundreds or 1000s of people fighting all around you, you as a character, especially at low levels can have minimal impact.“ The game fixes that by putting the players into the action. The adventure opens with the evacuation of Vogler and escalates from there. The box will contain sealed components for certain scenarios, so you won’t know what’s coming until you play the game. NPCs (including some famous villains from Shadow of The Dragon) turn up here as well.
Both games come out December 6th, just in time for Christmas, and are available individually, as a bundle and also as a digital bundle where you can get the physical book and board game, as well the e-book via DNDBeyond.
