The Dragon's Demand: A non-DL module fitting for a DL adventure

In 2013, Paizo published The Dragon's Demand, by Mike Shel.

This module will be the one that introduced me to Pathfinder, and I loved it. (all the more because I choose to play an Arcanist, which was a Pathfinder 1e non-vancian wizard).

It starts with a single exploration mission, but soon evolves into a small sandbox around the village of Belhaim, surrounded by forests, swamps, and ruins. The village itself is described, giving the game master an idea of politics, important NPCs and their families/allies, etc..

And after playing it as a PC, and as a game master, I can tell this is a good module that can be easily converted to be played withing the Dragonlance Universe.

So, let's start the conversion!

The Conversion

There are two kind of conversion that needs to be applied, the first to the background, so the module can be integrated into a Dragonlance campaign, and the second the rules themselves, assuming you want to play it using D&D5e, or one of its variants (the original can be played, unmodified, using the Pathfinder 1e system, or the D&D3.5e system).

The Background

In the Dragonlance universe, the Dragon's Demand most probably happens after the War of the Lance, when the dragons are back on Krynn, after an absence of 1300 years. The village itself is probably situated somewhere around Solamnia.

The Location

The best location, I find, should be in the central forests around Tresvka, Patina and Delgaard, with 23km from west to east, and 35km from north to south. This location is very similar, if quite smaller, to the original location of Belhaim in the Verduran Forest of Golarion.

The map of Belhaim and its swamp is 4km from west to east, and 3km from north to south, so it fits, somewhat.

The Timeline

“I’m certain that, according to the Measure, women are not permitted in the Knighthood—”

“You are wrong,” Astinus stated flatly. “And there is precedent. In the Third Dragonwar, a young woman was accepted into the Knighthood following the deaths of her father and her brothers. She rose to Knight of the Sword and died honorably in battle, mourned by her brethren.”

- Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Dragons of Spring Dawning, Book I, Chapter 7

The Timeline is heavily modified, for it moves Tula Belhaim's life during the Third Dragon War, as one of the original Knights of Solamnia who fought against the Dark Queen's dragons, and most particularly, her nemesis, the black dragon Aetheperax. Unlike Huma, she came back from the war, and founded what would become the village of Belhaim near the swamp where she killed Aetheperax.

• 1045 PC — Birth of Tula in the town of Nazilli
  
• 1029 PC — Beginning of the Third Dragon War.
• 1028 PC — Nazilli is destroyed, and its population decimated, by the might black dragon Aetheperax. Tula, the last of her family of solamnic knights, swears justice will be delivered.
• 1025 PC — Tula Belhaim joins the Knighthood, as a Knight of the Crown.
  
• 1018 PC — End of the Third Dragon War.
• 1017 PC — Thanks to her courage and valor, Tula becomes lady Baroness of Belhaim, and marry Arturic Canteclure.
• 1001 PC — Death of Tula Belhaim and Arturic Canteclure, with no direct heirs. They will be buried in the crypt built by Tula during the last decade of her life. A cousin will inherit the title, and a long uninterrupted line of solamnic nobles will rule the village and its surrounding forests, quarries and swamp well after the Cataclysm.
• 253 PC — A group of monks of Majere build a monastery on the far side of Belhaim's swamp, the Monastery of Kyerixus
  
• 1 AC — The Cataclysm ravages Ansalon. The gods leave Krynn. The monks of Kyerixus vow to search for the gods.
• 103 AC — After decades of reserach, the monks of Kyerixus found something. No one saw them after the Night of the Eye, and those who dared visit the monastery either never came back, or came back with stories of haunted ruins.
  
• 335 AC — Beginning of the Rebellion, where peasants rise up against the solamnic nobility. In Belhaim, the locals rebelled against corrupt and cruel baron Sarvo Canteclure.
• 336 AC — Ending of the Rebellion, where Arkold Devy, a folk hero who led the rebels against the evil baron, became the baron of Belhaim.
• 343 AC — Death of Arkold Devy, leaving his wife, Origena Devy, as the Baroness of Belhaim.
• 348 AC — The War of the Lance begins.
• 353 AC — The War of the Lance officially ended.
  
• ??? AC — The Witch Tower collapses. Lady Origena asks outsiders to investigate.
  

The Dark Tapestry

The Dark Tapestry was believed, by the monks of Kyerixus, to be the planes beyond the stars and constellations of Krynn.  In their research, they came upon occult books mentioning the Great Beyond, from where the gods of Krynn came from before creating Krynn, so they naturally deduced the gods of Krynn to have come back there, or at least, they hoped to find traces of them there.

What they opened instead is an unstable portal to a demi-plane of alien creatures, who had been unable to force their way into Krynn because of the gods, but found the boundary separating the Dark Tapestry from Krynn's material plane to be weakened when the gods left Krynn. The monks were tricked into completing the work from Krynn's side, opening a portal, the Dark Window, enabling a creature to invade the monastery. Only by sacrificing themselves would the monks stop the portal to be permanently open. The last surviving monk would ritually bind himself to the monastery to wait for heroes to complete the destruction of the Dark Window.

An ambitious red robe, Balthus Hunclay, would follow the traces of occult book to the monastery, and would, as did the monks before him, try to unearth the secret of the Dark Tapestry. Szangi, a green dragon who had shown more wits than courage during the War of the Lance, had also heard about the Dark Tapestry, and would try to acquire one of Hunclay's book, the Secrets of the Dreaming Dark.

Bassy the Gnome

Gnomes of Krynn are quite different from their D&D counterparts. And gnomes of Golarion are even more different from the two previous gnomes ancestries:

Gloarion gnomes will usually end up searching for adventures and distractions, to avoid the Bleaching. They have colored hairs depending on their recent past experiences, and have peculiar eye brows.

Krynn gnomes are engineers, spending their lives in life quests to unearth the scientific knowledge from this or that phenomena, and/or building contraptions that are as complex as they are prone to undefined and unexpected behaviors.

On Krynn, Bassy would be better described as a Mad Gnome, a gnome who couldn't conform to the norms of gnomish society, and either was exiled or moved away from Mount Nevermind, to end up settling in Belhaim, after a few decades of adventuring and exploring. Finding an obsessive interest in history, she joined the local scribe/historian, and took over her business and archives after her passing.

The half-orcs

There are no orcs on Krynn, and thus, no half-orcs. Replacing them with half-ogres (or even humans with ogrish ancestry) is the easy solution for both the half-orcs NPCs of Belhaim, and the eventual PC wanting to play a half-orc.

The Treasures of Tula

This is where the fusion of Dragonlance and the Dragon's Demand really shines: Tula, being a solamnic knight during the Third Dragon War, came back from war with her own footman's dragonlance, as well as a few other dragonslaying weapons. This dragonlance has been buried with her in her crypt, and will come handy as the heroes explore the crypt for anything that could help them against "Aeteperax".

The Factions of Belhaim

The followers of Abadar are easily replaced with followers of Shinare.

The followers of Shelyn are easily replaced with followers of Branchala.

The followers of the Green Faith are easily replaced with followers of Chislev.

Of course, the gods came back recently, but these folks' philosophies existed since before the Cataclysm, and remained thus until the gods came back, prompting the construction of two temples in Belhaim: The House of Abadar for Shinare, and the Shrine of the Seven Roses for Branchala.

The Rules

You need to compare each creature from D&D5e to their equivalent in Pathfinder 1e. For example, the Gibbering Mouther: 

• Pathfinder 1e: CR5
• D&D5e: CR3

...

Conclusion

The Dragonlance-ification of the Dragons Demand does not damage the original adventure in any way, and enables Dragonlance players and game masters to enjoy a very well done adventure within the Dragonlance universe.

I'd even argue the Dragon's Demand is more dragonlance-y than most recent official Dragonlance books from WotC... But that's another story.

Let's talk about Istarian Droids...

Only one question applies, there, and this question is... WHY?

Technology in Fantasy Universes

It's okay to have fantasy universes with technology, or firearms.

Some have these by design, like the firearms of Legends of the Five Rings.

And some others can have these design, like Pathfinder's Golarion and D&D's Forgotten Realms that either have advanced technology in some form, but usually rare or difficult to access (the Numerian technology of Golarion, the smokespowder of Toril): It these worlds, you could spend your whole life campaigning without any firearm in sight... Or you could be a gunslinger.

Matt Mercer's Exandria embraces the idea as Percy was the very first gunslinger, and knowledge of his discovery has slowly expanded.

Technology and Dragonlance

Krynn is a low-technology world.

Technology in the history of Krynn

The only civilization who somehow showed interest in advanced technology, and actually engineered something worthwile are the gnomes of Mount Nevermind.

Tinker gnomes have been cursed by the god Reorx to forever desire to build things, and yet, never succeeding in building something that works as expected and reliably (*).

(*) There has been one exception, though. He died, though.

Every other known civilization barely reached medieval-era technology like iron forging. The only clocks were water-based clocks, and certainly no firearms exist anywhere.

What about Istar?

Istar was described as having a lot of things, but advanced technology was not one of them. Nor did they had flying citadels, but that's another story.

So, lets take a look at Shadow of the Dragon Queen

So...

• Having technology or firearms in fantasy universes is not something shocking per se. But as every concept, you need to be sure this is coherent with that universe.
• Dragonlance has no firearms nor automation technology (if we except the gnome "inventions").

And yet, at some point, someone at WotC, out of nowhere, because their campaign was not original enough, decided to introduce advanced technology in an universe were technology was at its best primitive and/or unreliable.

And the problem is not the technology, it's how it's introduced in a setting where none existed before.

Indeed, this is important enough to warrant its own adventure, or important event. Maybe a continent in the northern hemisphere of Krynn has been discovered, maybe the Ogre Race had actually built droids 9000 years ago... Whatever. But in the end, as a writer, you need to do **the works** when you are deviating that much from the canon.

But in Shadow of the  Dragon Queen, this isn't even worth a footnote: p154, it abruptly starts with "monitoring tower", and "consoles, levers, colored stones, dull-glass hemispheres". Then it follows with "Energy Field", "magical systems", "drone monitoring", complete with a console to take control of "istarian drones".

Translation: You're on the bridge of 1960's era USS Enterprise, half-expecting an elf giving you the Vulcan Salute.

Someone thought: What this Dragonlance campaign really needs, is droids

Then come the droids: Someone in the Shadow of the  Dragon Queen team clearly wondered what if a Star Wars prequel's Droideka and a Portal's Sentry Turret had an illegitimate baby, but shooting electrified gel hardening into cristal instead of bullets or blasters:

Then, the authors pulled out of their ass a story about how these droids were somehow the robots who built the buildings of Istar, again, retconning half of the Time of the Twins novel, just for the lulz.

And this is how D&D5 adventurers end up fighting discount-cylons on discount-Dragonlance.

This is sad.

Let's Talk about the Lunar Sorcerer...

The Lunar Sorcerer was introduced in two Unearthed Arcana 81: Heroes of Krynn, then published in Shadow of the Dragon Queen, p34-35.

It is clear this was a subclass created for Shadow of the Dragon Queen, for many reasons:

• It is an application of the idea that mages of Krynn were not just Wizards, but also could be any arcane spellcaster
• It is very moon-centric, in an attempt to tie them to the famous Krynn moons (in a way the new High Sorcery D&D5 feats are not)
  

And yet, I'd argue all this is at best superficial, and at worst the antithesis of what a Krynn sorcerer might be.

Moons & Magic

Let's describe why the Moons of Krynn, and magic, are closely tied. Much more than moons and magic in other D&D and D&D adjacent settings.

The Moons of Krynn

Krynn has three moons, which are the celestial embodiment of the three gods of magic, Solinari (good, white, largest, period of 36 days), Lunitari (neutral, red, normal-sized, period of 28 days) and Nuitari (evil, black, smallest, period of 8 days).

Fun fact, the black moon, Nuitari, is invisible in the sky because it emits no visible light, but it still roam the skies and hides astrophysical bodies behind it, like stars, or even part of the other moons...

The three gods of magic became the patrons of the Orders of High Sorcery, an organization of three orders, each one working to further the knowledge of magic, following their particular patron's teachings. Each mage can be recognized by the color of their robes, which is the same as the color of the moon of their patron. The orders are governed by a Conclave of 21 mages, 7 for each order.

Second fun fact: Nuitari actually emits a very specific kind of light, a light that only undead, and black robe mages, can see.

Wizards of High Sorcery had once five towers, but 360 years after the Cataclysm, only two remain. There towers were powerful, magical fortresses where the mages were safe to study and live. For all mages of the three orders, their first and foremost loyalty is for magic.

An interesting thing about the Wizards of High Sorcery was that the power of their magic is influenced by the phases of the moons. Mainly the moon of their patron, which make their magic more powerful during the full moon phase, and weaker during the new moon phase. But also because of conjunctions, where two moons are aligned together, increasing the power of the wizards tied to them.

And of course, the famous Night of the Eye, happening once every 1.5 years, where the three moon are aligned in the sky, forming a great eye, Solinari forming a white sclera, Lunitari forming a red iris on it, and Nuitari forming a black pupil on top of both of them.

What about other settings?

Let's take a look:

• Greek mythology: Hecate is a goddess of witchcraft, but also of the moon. But she was far from the only one. For example Artemis and Selene had nothing to do with magic, and yet, had the moon as their symbols
• Golarion (Pathfinder): Nethys is the god of magic, but has nothing to do with Somal, its only moon.
• Forgotten Realms (D&D): Selûne is the goddess of the moon (also called Selûne), and Mystra is the goddess of magic. There's some kind of moon magic there, and it seems like heavy inspired by Krynn's moon/magic mythology. The moon is followed by a "shower" of asteroids called the Tears of Selûn.
• Greyhawk (D&D): Luna and Celene are the two moons of the setting. Boccob is the main god of magic (there are many gods of magic in Greyhawk), Wee Jas is another. None has any special connection with the moons, if we except some "holy days". Corellon Larethian, god of elves, has a crescent moon as symbol, and has magic as one of the many items in his portfolio, but that's it.
• Eberron (D&D): Eberron has 12 moons, but they seem unrelated to magic. Instead, they seem related to a dragonmark. There are two gods of magic, Aureon and The Shadow, and none are related to moons.
• Dark Sun (D&D): Dark Sun has two moons, Ral and Guthay. Magic comes from draining the energy of the surrounding soil. Fun fact, there's no gods in Athas.
• Exandria (Critical Role): Exandria has two moons, the white Catha and the red Ruidus. They have no direct relation to magic, even if they sometimes interfere. The god of magic is most probably Corellon who, appart from his symbol of two crested moons over a star, has nothing to do with magic.
  

To be fair, we must admit there are more Tiamats in these settings than moon gods of magic, or even moon magic, which is saying a lot.

Let's taker a look at the game mechanics

From a mechanics viewpoint, this is a sorcerer subclass whose main feature is to be able, every morning, to choose one among pre-determined set of "domains of spells". That's all.

This is so simple that this is not limited to lunar phases: Any concept with multiple domains can be applied. For example:

• Rainbow Sorcerer: Seven Color Domains!
• Seasons Sorcerer: Four Season Domains!
• Moral Sorcerer: Good, Neutral and Evil Domains!
• Societal Sorcerer: Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic Domains!
• Fey Sorcerer: Feywild and Shadowfell Domains!
• Tactics Sorcerer: Attack and Defense Domains!
• Coin Sorcerer: Heads and Tails Domains!
• etc.

This is pretty generic, and as shown above, you can find a set of domains that would easily work in any setting. And I mean, any setting.

That's problematic, but it can still be salvaged.

Let's experiment: How was the Lunar Sorcerer created?

Let's take the pattern above, and try to create such an subclass adapted Krynn's Moons, and see how it fares on other D&D settings.

Application to Dragonlance

In the current case, on Krynn, one would have thought they would have chosen a set of domains specific to that universe, for example:

• Krynn Moons Sorcerer: Solinari (Good)-magic, Lunitari (Neutral)-magic and Nuitari (Evil)-magic Domains!

The spells in each domain are adapted to the notion of good/white magic, neutral magic, and evil/black magic as commonly understood by everyone.

And bonus on top of that, that description does fit with the illustration, as the guy seems to be playing with three different colored moons. And that is a problem.

Indeed, as designed, this Sorcerer can switch allegiance every morning, using either Solinari (Good)-magic, Lunitari (Neutral)-magic and Nuitari (Evil)-magic.

But in the Dragonlance universe, there is a definitive lore about the moons and magic practitioners. In particular, following one of the moons is, mostly, a moral choice. Not something you change at whim, every morning.

So the solution is to erase the gods of magic from the sorcerer subclass domains...:

• Moral Sorcerer: Solinari Good-magic, Lunitari Neutral-magic and Nuitari Evil-magic Domains!

 ... and replace the them with the next best thing lunar-related: Moon phases:

• Lunar Phase Sorcerer: Good-magic Full Moon, Neutral-magic Crescent Moon and Evil-magic New Moon Domain!

Suddenly, the original illustration above doesn't fit anymore.

So let's modify this illustration a bit to take phases into account...

The problem is that it stops fitting the Dragonlance universe: Not only the Lunar Phases sorcerer is unrelated to the specifics of the moons of Krynn, but it is inadequate to be used in a RPG setting where there are three moons instead of one.

But at least, it has a superficial link with moons, hasn't it?

Application to other settings

One would think that the Lunar Phase sorcerer would be adapted to other D&D settings.

And indeed, it is adequate for single-moon settings, like Toril or Golarion.

But there are other D&D worlds with a different number of moons, like Exandria, Oerth or Eberron (and of course, Krynn), and when you have many moons, what does this Lunar Phase sorcerer means?

Nothing much, and thus, in all the worlds where there are more than one moons, this subclass, as described, remains inadequate.

But it doesn't even stop there: Do you remember, at the top of this article, how almost no setting had moons and magic related as concepts?

So even for Golarion and Toril, this doesn't really work because Golarion's and Toril's magic is not tied to its moon.

Conclusion

I'm quite sure the Lunar Sorcerer is a badly executed concept trying to satisfy too many constraints at the same time, and failing spectacularly at each of them.

And it only takes a bit of examination to realize that.

In general...

Let's stop pretending: The Lunar Sorcerer from Shadow of the Dragon Queen is:

• Barely suited to Golarion and Toril, because, even if they have one moon, but their magic is unrelated to the moon.
• Not suited to any multi-moon setting, because it stops to make sense
• More particularly not suited to any other D&D setting, because none of them consider any of their moons a source of magic
• It's not even related to an actual phase of the moon.
  

For Dragonlance...

The "best part" is that, despite having been designed for a Dragonlance product, this Lunar Sorcerer is specifically incompatible with Dragonlance, as:

• ... if you take the original wording, it has nothing to do with the three moons, only with "moon phases"
• ... and if you tweak the subclass wording to attach each "phase domain" to one "moon domain" instead (full moon becomes Solinari, etc.), it becomes ridiculous as the sorcerer can change its "domain" from "one moon to another" despite this going against a main concept of Dragonlance.
  

Isn't this a lot like taking inspiration from the original Wizards of High Sorcery, and doing exactly the opposite?

About that "Shadow of the Dragon Queen" announcement...

Recently, WotC announced something that felt like the return of Dragonlance in the D&D multiverse.

The official announcement is the trailer, of course. But then, there's the Gizmodo article, and, last but not least, a free Unearthed Arcana beta-test supplement.

After taking a look at all of them, I must admit I am not really convinced, even if there's a specific consequence that could be good news for Dragonlance lovers.

Here's why.

The Trailer

The trailer can be found here:

The trailer is... not good.

Because it says nothing: Dragons. Wars. Battles.

That's all.

Ah, yes. There's also "dragonlance" written somewhere, in generic D&D fonts.

So, it's an appeal to fandom, and nothing concrete for now.

The Article

The article can be found here: https://gizmodo.com/d-d-direct-spelljammer-dragonlance-starter-set-1848822873

... and, I'm sorry, but it's freakingly bad.

The mistakes & misconceptions

First, because of some misconceptions and mistakes.

For example, Dragonlance was not originally a series of novels. It was instead both an enormous adventure path of 13 modules, and at the same time, a novel that soon became a trilogy, then was followed by another trilogy. Then a campaign setting sourcebook was published, etc..

Also, the following quote:

This is about as classic swords-and-sorcery role-playing as D&D can get, and it doesn’t seem from the trailer that WoC is deviating much from the formula.

... is actually missing that fact that Dragonlance was actually everything but the classic swords-and-sorcery, and at the time, revolutionized the industry. And this will become important, later.

If you want classic swords-and-sorcery settings, D&D's Forgotten Realms and Pathfinder's Golarion are exactly that (with Golarion having a dumber name, but a much better setting, IMHO). In these settings, everything is possible, every class/race exists, and every culture you can think of can be found somewhere. Generic is the right term, I guess.

What's in the "Shadow of the Dragon Queen"?

Let's make a list:

• lore-light game
  
• a brand new setting/story (but during the War of the Lance)
• situated on "Ancelon", a place not covered in previous Dragonlance materials
  

So... That's all?

A tasteless logo, some vague tidbits, ignoring the existing lore, and a place whose name is suspiciously similar to the original Ansalon?

Really?

What's in the "Warrior of Krynn"?

Who cares?

I mean, Dragonlance is not even back on track, and they are publishing a board game.

That would be like producing the merchandising before the Marvel Cinematic Universe even started in.

Also, the following quote:

Dragonlance is a war story

Dragonlance is as much a war story as is The Lord of the Ring.

Both are a story of a group of people caught in the middle of an epic war with fantastic beasts and monsters. Both are a story of Good vs. Evil. Both feel "personal", with well-beloved characters, with amazing backstories.

Being set during a war, or having one in thirteen modules being a wargame doesn't make Dragonlance a war story.

Red Flag: New designers

The following extract:

Original Dragonlance authors, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, were not associated with this setting or board game.

... is a red flag.

Not that T. Hickman, nor M. Weis need to be involved in everything Dragonlance.

But quite a few Dragonlance luminaries could have been involved. I'm thinking about the people who had worked on the 3.5 edition of Dragonlance books, some of them being involved in the excellent Tasslehoff's Pouches of Everything.

I guess having a few of them (even one), and mentioning it in the article would have be reassuring, as having someone who loves Dragonlance, and who knows the setting, would have helped made sure the new iteration wasn't changed into something Dragonlance is not.

So... it could become anything.

And what about Heroes of Krynn Unearthed Arcana?

It would be a mistake to not mention this Unearthed Arcana article, providing Krynn flavored features for beta-testers.

The PDF can be downloaded here: https://dnd.wizards.com/unearthed-arcana/heroes-krynn

So...?

Yeah, underwhelming.

The Kender is an underdeveloped joke of a mutant to try to avoid the "race-as-a-thief" controversy. The Sorcerer is... well, not very Krynnish (slapping a moon on a class doesn't suddenly make it Dragonlance-y).

A revised version was published here: https://dnd.wizards.com/unearthed-arcana/heroes-krynn-revisited

The kender is better (the supernatural curiosity is cute, even if I would have liked an emphasis on the chaos kender create around them), but still less developed than in Tasslehoff's Pouches of Everything.

The use of feats to customize characters even more is... interesting.

In the end, it feels like as if they wanted to give a light nod to the rule specifics of Dragonlance, but at the same time, changing as little as possible to the 5e character classes and races.

This is good in a way (reusability, as well as being rules-light), and yet somehow underwhelming. I guess I wanted more lore...

My advice is keep in mind the excellent Tasslehoff's Pouches of Everything, which you can download here: https://dragonlancenexus.com/tasslehoffs-pouches-of-everything/ and which usually provides better rules.

But... why?

The article-and-trailer are unconvincing because they give us little to no information, and seem to be missing the fact that what's interesting in Dragonlance is not its title, no matter how fanbait-y it can be.

My fear is that "Shadow of the Dragon Queen" will become some kind of cheap remake.

For example, it could be a follow up on the Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat, a way to bring and introduce the players from these modules into the Dragonlance setting, for some reason.

Or it could be a cheap remake of the Chronicles modules into the Fifth Edition, perhaps going as far as Disney did when they created the new Star Wars trilogy, copy-pasting the scenario and renaming characters and locations to hide the plagiarism.

Or it could be something new and as detached from Dragonlance as possible, not only rebooting the franchise, but cutting ties with everything Dragonlance from the past. But keeping the brand, because of its business value. It makes me think of what Sony shamelessly did when pumping out Spiderman movies as to make sure they would keep the rights to the setting, instead of it reverting back to Marvel.

In the end, I'm not sure there was a good reason to make a new Dragonlance product. But I'm quite sure there could be very bad ones.

WotC vs. Hickman & Weis

A piece of drama happened recently, with Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis going public about the fact Wizards of the Coast had no intention of going forward with their new Dragonlance novels trilogy. This was apparently resolved, and the new trilogy is happening, but the damage of that fallout is done.

I am not taking sides, here. I don't know why the disagreement happened. I just know the disagreement happened.

(Note: Roaming around on the internet, I have a very unfounded suspicion it happened because WotC might have asked Hickman & Weis to be more "inclusive" in the new trilogy. I don't know, different races, gay romances, transgender characters, or character with disabilities. For what is worth, I support more inclusivity, and the last years showed that we needed, as a community, to be more actively inclusive than just pay lip service and remain neutral on that social subject, so if that's the case here, I'm might side with WotC. But again, that's pure speculation, so, let's keep neutral.)

If the disagreement is real, that might be a motivation for WotC to part ways with Weis & Hickman once and for all.

Not convinced?

Remember the "Ancelon" vs. "Ansalon" typo above? Remember the generic font Dragonlance logo above?

If you look closely at the Dragons of Deceit image above, you'll see something weird. Don't you see it? Let me help you by zooming:

Still not seeing it? Zooming again...

So, the question is... What The Fish is this cancerous growth of a "classic" label on the top of the pristine Dragonlance logo?

Why the WotC products above write "Dragonlance" in a generic font, and this novel logo has some kind of "classic" ugly patch on it?

It feels like this is the result of a behind-the-scenes settlement, where Weis & Hickman kept the logo, but had to put the "classic" patch on top of it as WotC's kept the name, somehow. Like as if the WotC product and the Weis & Hickman Trilogy are distinct, unrelated products.

And that's not good, for a healthy setting.

Not many 5e Settings

Have you noticed there were few settings sourcebooks for the Fifth Edition?

If you want to explore the Forgotten Realms, you might as well search for previous edition books, or use the relevant public fan-made Wiki. The same for Greyhawk.

You can search DM's Guild, and see for yourself:

https://www.dmsguild.com/browse/pub/44/Wizards-of-the-Coast?filters=0_0_0_45462_0_0

That means even if we got a genuine awesome Dragonlance product, it would probably not be a setting book. At best, a campaign book, probably designed to be easily reusable in any other setting.

I can't really blame WotC, there. Any old setting has a lot of lore to compile, and making a 5e version might be a simple rehash of what has been done before, and these apparently never really profitable. Also, there are wikis out there doing exactly that, for free. So, if they can manage to minimize setting-specific rules, they don't even need to publish a rulebook only a subset of their customary clients will buy.

But there's a good news, there: This could be enough to make DM's Guild be open to Dragonlance products by non-WotC authors.

What it might be: Curse of Strahd

Curse of Strahd is a "remake" of the Ravenloft module. But it was done with love.

First, Tracy and Laura Hickman were creative consultants, which meant they had a say on what went there, and what was not appropriate. And they even took inspiration from other past Ravenloft products.

Second, they put most of Barovia in there, with many dungeons. It became an extended adventure path, not just a dungeon crawl in Castle Ravenloft. Many characters are present, some new. I mean, our beloved Rudolph van Richten is there.

This was a product born of love.

And the result is awesome.

I hope, I really hope, this new Dragonlance product will be of the same quality. But that hope is not based on the current article, trailer, and supplement. 

Dragonlance is not D&D

Strangely, I don't think I will make many friends writing that. But that's true. D&D has this concept of multiverse, but this never really applied to Dragonlance, no matter the similarities, or the ruleset.

Dragonlance is not an universe where everything is possible and okay, like the Forgotten Realms, or even Pathfinder's Golarion. There is no Elysium, nor Hell. Only the Dome of Creation, and the Abyss. This is not an "open" universe, where any god you can think of, including our own Greek and Egyptian ones, do exist.

Like it or not, this means Asmodeus has no place there. Nor Mystra. There's no drow per se, but there are Irda, and Kender. And it means Takhisis is not Tiamat, nor Paladine is Bahamut, nor draconians are dragonborns, despite all attempts at maintaining a semblance of compatibility.

And my greatest fear, I believe, is to have Dragonlance's very essence diluted so it can mix with the rest of the generic fantasy universes out there.

I don't really mind sharing rules, but having aasimars or tieflin in Krynn need a better explanation than: "Oh, they appeared in D&D 3rd Edition, so now, we have them". The same for sorcerers.

Of course, this is personal, and I know not everyone would agree with me. But that is important, in my humble opinion.

Conclusion

It's important to remember that everything in this post is based on the trailer, the Gizmodo article and the two Unearthed Arcana supplements (and knowledge of the fallout between WotC and Hickman & Weis)

I am not impressed by both the article and the trailer. And the lack of proper logo for Dragonlance is very worrying.

I really fear they are working on a adventure path parallel to the original Dragonlance modules, with half-baked feather-light Krynn-specific rules, happening in some "Ancelon" place, created from scratch by unknown people, the board game that goes with it, and paste a "Dragonlance" title on it.

So, yeah...

Meh...

The only exciting news is that it might mean that anyone might publish its own Dragonlance books on DM's Guild. From then, everything's possible!

• a new campaign settings with updated rules, à la Tasslehoff Pouches of Everything, with rules on how to play iconic characters like knights of solamnia, or wizards of high sorcery.
• the return of the RPG staff formerly working in Weis Production, so they could, again, publish updated 5e books.
  
• a gazetteer of Ansalon (or many gazetteers, one per nation), with background information on how each nation is organized, the important people, city maps, etc., like it was done with the Mystara Gazetteers.
• a new ambitious campaign building on what exists now, with emphasis on the PC protagonists and their relation with the Krynn universe. Perhaps there's a new Tracy/Laura Hickman out there, with outrageous ideas for the next RPG revolution. (Ok, this one is hard, but... well...).

If this happens, then let me change my mind: The new Dragonlance product will be awesome, no matter what's inside!

P.S.: Official Announcement

Shadow of the Dragon Queen had been announced, here https://dndstore.wizards.com/us/product/768939/shadow-of-the-dragon-queen-deluxe-edition-bundle ... and here https://dndstore.wizards.com/us/product/768939/shadow-of-the-dragon-queen-deluxe-edition-bundle ... which is not confusing at all.

One seems to be the rulebook, and the other contains the rulebook, plus the wargame.

Dragonlance®: Shadow of the Dragon Queen™ is a tale of conflict and defiance set during the legendary War of the Lance.

Create characters from Krynn, the world of the Dragonlance setting, then march them to the front lines of battle against the terrifying Dragon Armies.

A Dungeons & Dragons® adventure that takes characters from 1st to 11th level.

It might be some kind of "remake" of the original scenarios, and in that case, to avoid ending with a 500 pages book, they'll probably need to cut some content to make room for expansion of other content.

Also, they abandoning the logo is... really puzzling. I mean, the only lance there is the icon on the top left:

I mean, Legend of Vox Machina had a dragonslaying lance that was more dragonlance than the above logo...

https://www.amazon.com/Legend-Vox-Machina-Season/dp/B09PZG2979

Strange...