Meh.
When Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen was announced, I was really excited about it. So excited, in fact, that I ended up spending most of the summer and beyond doing a deep dive into the Dragonlance Saga. I was excited about the campaign returning to the War of the Lance, the time period of the original Saga (and accompanying Chronicles trilogy). I was excited about Stephen Baker (designer of great mainstream wargames) and Rob Daviau (father of the legacy board game genre) joining forces to design Warriors of Krynn, a companion wargame that was designed to be played in conjunction with the campaign.
What an amazing opportunity to reinvent the bond between wargaming and roleplaying that has been part of D&D’s legacy from the very beginning! And, more than that, an opportunity to triumphantly realize the unfulfilled promises of the original Saga!
Plus it was coming out within mere days of my birthday! What a fun little birthday treat! I didn’t hesitate at all in preordering the Deluxe Edition that bundled the D&D campaign and board game together into one package.
So when the book showed up at the beginning of December I didn’t hesitate for a moment in ripping open the box— (Literally. The Deluxe Edition box is incredibly fragile and basically impossible to open without destroying it. Bizarrely, it’s apparently deliberately designed to be disposable.) —and flipping open the book.
Of course, I was still excited! Just completely engaged with the book. There’s some nifty little player handouts in the first chapter that are designed as missives from various NPCs to the PCs as an introduction to the setting, and I recorded some dramatic readings of those, thinking they’d be cool to send to my players as little teasers.
But then I found myself reading the book less and less. At first I thought it was just the holidays keeping me distracted, but by the end of the month it was clear that Shadow of the Dragon Queen had become a slog for me. It was frustrating and, even worse, it was boring.
And then the OGL crisis hit, with Wizards of the Coast flipping off the entire hobby and promising to detonate a devastating nuclear bomb in the middle of the industry. As I dealt with the professional and personal fallout from that, I wasn’t really in the mood to read any D&D books (and it wouldn’t really have been fair to the book), so I laid it aside. Fortunately, the OGL crisis eventually resolved itself in perhaps the best way anyone could have reasonable hoped for, and so, in February, I eventually picked up Shadow of the Dragon Queen again.
… and it was a still a miserable slog.
To a large extent, the simple fact that I have only just now, at the end of April, managed to drag my carcass to the final page of the book, is a pretty accurate summary of my entire review.
IS THIS BOOK FOR YOU?
The original Dragonlance adventures, published in the 1980’s, sought to bring the power of a true fantasy epic to Dungeons & Dragons. It plunged the players into the world-spanning epic of the War of the Lance, in which the evil draconians of Takhisis, the Dragon Queen, formed the Dragon Armies and invaded the realms of Ansalon, positioning the PCs to change the course of history.
Shadow of the Dragon Queen is set during the earliest days of the war, ostensibly serving as a prequel or sidequel of sorts to the Dragonlance Saga. Part of the appeal of a ‘quel narrative like this, of course, is seeing how the continuity meshes with the existing work. When done well, as in the early issues of Kurt Busiek’s Untold Tales of Spider-Man or Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, you get an exciting bit of frisson whenever you see a character walk off stage left, knowing that they are simultaneously walking on stage right in a different story. Like a great heist movie, there is a kind of puzzle-solving delight in seeing the pieces come together, plus a real opportunity for depth and meaning that resonates beyond the immediate boundaries of what you’re creating.
The problem, though, is that Shadow of the Dragon Queen cares so little for the established continuity of Dragonlance or the War of the Lance that it’s a complete turn-off for any Dragonlance fans who would be interested in that sort of thing.
For example, the fact that several hundred years ago the True Gods abandoned the world of Ansalon during the Cataclysm and have not been heard from since is a really big deal. It’s a central tenet of the Dragonlance setting, a crucial element of the War of the Lance, and something which, in my opinion, is part of what makes the original Dragonlance Saga something special and unique in the annals of D&D. The quest to find the True Gods and restore the divine magic of clerics is, in fact, a really big part of the Saga.
So when it became clear to me that Shadow of the Dragon Queen was set in a time period before the True Gods returned to Ansalon, I was really curious: How were the designers going to deal with the fact that clerics canonically (pun intended) don’t have their spells?
And the designers’ provided a truly epic answer:
“Eh… fuck it.”
The book provides a short dream sequence. If a player creates a cleric, the DM basically says, “A god appears to you in your sleep! So I guess all that stuff that happens over in the Saga was completely pointless! Woo-hoo!”
The fact that the designers really couldn’t give a fig about this is really underlined by the fact that the FIRST TRUE CLERIC TO BE SEEN IN CENTURIES is just… kind of irrelevant? There’s one oblique reference to an NPC being impressed if the PCs have healing magic and that’s it.
Okay, so existing Dragonlance fans aren’t the target audience here. None of that continuity crap matters because this campaign is being written for new fans! Shadow of the Dragon Queen is their introduction to the wonderful world of Dragonlance, and it’s fine if stuff doesn’t match up perfectly up with the old stuff.
… except Shadow of the Dragon Queen kinda sucks as an introduction to Dragonlance.
The setting “gazetteer” (if you’re willing to call it that) is just fifteen pages long, and six of those are dedicated to short descriptions of every god. There’s an absolutely stunning poster map of Ansalon by Francesca Baerald, but most of the locations listed on it are not given even the briefest of descriptions.
From a player’s perspective it’s probably a slightly better experience, but I honestly don’t know how any DM would be expected to run the setting with confidence based on the information (or, more accurately, the lack of information) given here.
So if the book shows a careless disregard for the old fans and is completely inadequate for the new fans… who is it for, exactly?
Oooo! Spicy, looking forward to reading more
Ultimately, the book isn’t for players. The book is for the investors, the moneymen/women who went through the properties that WotC had in the TSR back catalog and asked “Why are you not doing anything with this?” It’s same thing that had thing bring back Spelljammer without the stuff that made it unique or interesting.
Kind of underscores part of the problem of the original DL saga as well – if you want to play a cleric, you either play subsequent to Goldmoon’s (or Di An’s or some other True Clerics’) appearance or you play one of them and not a character of your own invention. At least in this case, the cleric (or other divine-based character) essentially IS a True Cleric – just operating in another region from Goldmoon, Di An, and Elistan.
And, honestly, it’s probably a better option for a group of players interested in a taste of DL than be second-stringers behind the heroes of the books.
Though I loved the Dragonlance Books, and enjoyed Krynn immensely, I could never bring myself to play in the Dragonlance world. Too many restrictions on mages, non-existent clerics..yeah, no.
Having said that, I completely understand the angst or even anger of anyone when someone takes the source material and just trashes it. Just b/c the original Dragonlance wasn’t my cup of tea, does not mean it didn’t have a huge audience that absolutely enjoyed the heck out of it.
But, this is also typical of today’s creators, for the most part. Hollywood does it all the time now, where they trash the source material and then blame the audience b/c they don’t like it.
Best review opening ever!
Ooh, it’s always so fun watching Mr. Alexander try to make sense of WotC’s adventure design! It takes him hours to sift through it, to chart all the paths. And then comes the struggle, thrashing against the idea-chains WotC uses to strangle each good idea, draining all the artistic merit out of the product and into their squeezing, wrenching, covetous claws. And then comes the Realization. Like a bolt from the blue, Mr. Alexander sees directly into the mind-shattering truth: That WotC doesn’t care. That all his work to treat these products as serious art runs counter to designed intent.
And then (THEN!) we get the delicious treat of reading along as a man snuffs out a little bit of his faith in mankind. The utter despair trapped in timeless Internet amber, available for all future generations to GLORY IN! MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Ya I agree with this. Was so excited. It is actually hard to run as they give 2 shits about any history or previous works on Krynn.
And that board game is a waste of time. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised based on who designed it.
I too found this to be a really great product that is again lacking in the one aspect that makes stories interesting – lore. Lore is basically totally left out of the product. From a cool game and module perspective its a 10/10. Fixing the issue with clerics is the least of my problems with some of the WOTC releases recently. Before this came out I was so excited about returning to Dragonlance I bought the 2e books and have owned the 1e book for quite a while. Boom, plenty of lore. WOTC could even have lazily recycled these and made the product amazing, but the fact is that they just don’t care about lore which is very disappointing.
I was reading a discussion over on the D&D subreddit (specifically talking about the Honor Among Thieves movie, which was excellent but sadly bombed at the box office) and they were talking about how the investors are considering splitting WotC off from Hasbro. WotC is the most profitable subsidiary by a wide margin. They don’t want it to get dragged down if Hasbro’s other ventures start to become a net loss.
A lot of the really strange decisions recently – the rushed reboot of Dark Alliance, the mediocre Planescape manual, the D&D movie, trying to kill the OGL, sending the Pinkertons after a guy who was leaking MtG cards, all the D&D branded crap – makes a lot of sense if you consider it as Hasbro trying to desperately play brand manager for their former underdog star that has suddenly seen a meteoric rise. Hasbro needs to convince the money men that their broader media empire is the “real” value, with WotC’s popular TTRPG and CCG only contributing to the total value (which is hard to do when they make up 70% of your profits).
So I can see this being yet another idea. Since Dragonlance is a cross-medium extravaganza, if we can bring back that magic with wargaming paired with TTRPG, and maybe even more media like new books or a streaming series, it makes Hasbro’s broader media portfolio an asset instead of a liability.
And we also get a bookshelf where “Shadow of the Dragon Queen” has absolutely nothing to do with “Hoard of the Dragon Queen”.
“So if the book shows a careless disregard for the old fans and is completely inadequate for the new fans… who is it for, exactly?”
Could be asked of many recent Fifth Edition products – since whenever it was it pivoted from being the nostalgia edition to the gateway edition.
I’m looking forward to the rest of this review, and I value Justin’s insights into scenario design extremely highly.
But I must say: in decades, I’ve gamed with like one group which I could present with a fifteen-page setting overview and have the general reaction be “that’s too short.” I think there are a LOT of players who might enjoy getting into a classic D&D setting, but who wouldn’t front-load double digit pages of research on it.
@Highbrowbarian: My rule of thumb for a player handout is 5 pages maximum.
The material I’m talking about, though, isn’t intended for the players. It’s the GM’s material.
….ah.
Yeah, that does seem like a pretty scant overview for months worth of GMing. Objection withdrawn.
I just finished running a session, probably our penultimate session in Chapter 5 and it isn’t without its faults but I’m having fun so far and the players are giving me great feedback. (1 Dragonlance fan, 2 people who read the books as teens and 2 dragonlance newbies).
I understand the issue with clerics and I added a prequel session with no divine magic to drive home the lack of it but the setting has to serve the game. Making clerics and paladins effectivley pointless and not allowing healing magic for druids, artificers, warlocks, sorcerors was just never going to happen, they could have put more in but would the first chapter being about the gods returning have improved the story and fitted the timeline better? I doubt it.
My biggest issue so far has been that other than the mini-dungeons the material on the wastes is very thin. A couple of extra pages fleshing out some of the locations and NPCs would have gone a long way.
I wasn’t around for original Dragonlance but to me it has a very old-school feel while using the 5e mechanics. It works better than I thought it would.
It is a shame that in going to all the trouble to redo the map of Ansalon, they did not take a least a little creative license to try and “de-hex” the coasts, rivers, and mountain ranges.
Would love to see a remix on this! You could work wonders!
> Making clerics and paladins effectivley pointless and not allowing healing magic for druids, artificers, warlocks, sorcerors was just never going to happen
… to me, this starts to feel like an admission of defeat: that of course 5e is so intensely setting-agnostic, so homogenisation-mandatory, that it can’t be adapted to fit.