Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen

Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition

by F. Wesley Schneider (Project Lead), Kate Irwin (Art Director), Justine Arman (Writer)

The Legendary War Has Begun
The Dragon Queen Takhisis—known as Tiamat on other worlds—was banished from Krynn over a thousand years ago.

Summoning forth the infamous death knight Lord Soth and vast Dragon Armies to fight for her dominion, she has finally set her plot to return into motion.

In the War of the Lance, no choice is easy and the actions of heroes can have world-altering consequences.

Epic Battlefield Encounters
Enter the Fray of Battle. This book introduces a way to create encounters that simulate the dangers of fighting on a battlefield. A deadly region of difficult terrain called “the Fray” surrounds these battlemaps, representing the chaotic clash of combatants, slinging of deadly spells, and other perils that vary from battle to battle.

Connected Board Game Scenarios. Six of the adventure’s dramatic battles can be enhanced even further by playing out connected scenarios in the Warriors of Krynn board game (available in the Deluxe Edition)—earning rewards and further shaping the story of the war.

More Character Options
Lunar Sorcery Subclass. Tie your sorcerer’s magic to Krynn’s three mystical moons, with special abilities that vary depending on the phase of the moon you currently embody—Full Moon, New Moon, or Crescent Moon.

Kender Race. Play as a kender, a character race known for their fearlessness and a fierce curiosity that drives many to adventure and some to amass an impressive collection of odd trinkets.

Feats & Backgrounds. Learn how war shapes your character with a selection of feats and two new backgrounds—whether it’s membership in the ancient organization known as the Mages of High Sorcery or the noble Knights of Solamnia.

Genres: Dungeons and Dragons, Fantasy, Role Playing Games, Dragonlance, Gaming, Fiction, Games

224 pages, Hardcover

First published December 6, 2022

About the author

Editor-in-chief at Paizo Inc. and co-creator of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, F. Wesley Schneider is the author of dozens of Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons adventures as well as several dark fantasy and sci-fi tales.

His first novel, Pathfinder Tales: Bloodbound, debuted from Tor and Paizo Inc. in December 2015. Watch for his story, "Stray Thoughts," in Eclipse Phase: After the Fall - The Anthology of Transhuman Survival & Horror, coming in early 2016.

Find more from Wes at wesschneider.com, on Tumblr at wesschneider, or on Twitter at @FWesSchneider.

Reviews

[Ogre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dragonlance had been my favorite setting when it came out way back in the early 80's. I read every novel in the world, owned the modules, and loved the rich story in the world.

I then watched in horror as the world went through world upheaving change after change in Krynn. The return, departure, return, and departure again of the gods...all within a single generation. The changes in magic that made no sense. The invasion of dragons...that made no sense. The diceless gaming system that didn't fit with the previous gaming system. I thought I'd never return with any excitement to Krynn.

I was wrong.

This book has returned to the original roots of the story, ignoring all the garbage after the first generation. I will not say it's perfect...there are characters making appearances with changes I'm not happy with, and many of the original characters are gone completely, to my regret. But it was not only better than I expected, it was better than anything WotC has come out with this entire year. Sadly, that is an example of the lowered bar of WotC's quality than the quality of this book...but perhaps it is an indication of things to come. I was worried that this would be another Spelljammer fiasco, but it's honestly better than expected. I would have liked more world building than just another adventure, but it's a start.

[Brent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid book, though it would be nice if WotC would release 100% campaign setting books, rather than books that try to be both campaign settings and adventure modules while only partially succeeding.
I would definitely rework the Solamnic Knights and Wizards of High Sorcery to better fit the lore, were I to use this at any point, but would likely use the 5e conversion here as a base for that.

[Pádraic]

I can't comment on this book's faithfulness to the Dragonlance setting or anything about the related board game, as I have no history with the former and haven't (and won't) play the latter. But on the face of it this is a decent, if extremely linear, adventure about war sweeping over a region, and trying to stop one part of the invading army from reanimating a great source of power and destroying a city. It manages to simultaneously feel like it's one part of something much larger happening all over, and also epic in itself. At its peak it reminded me of maybe my favourite adventure module, Red Hand of Doom.

There are some really good guidelines and tips at the start about making characters that are connected to this world (imo you need at least one Knight of Solamnia and one Mage of High Sorcery in your party to make this adventure sing), and then that continues as the party gets attached to a small town in the middle of a festival (adventure writers really like festivals). This early section is maybe the best part of the book, as the fights feel really desperate and the stakes really high.

From there the party travels to a larger city and undertakes some generic missions. These are all boring. Things pick up once the plot resumes, but there's no reason the inbetween stuff can't also be interesting. Either make it good or cut it out.

And then there's, to my surprise, a little hexcrawl into the wastelands. There's some good locations in here, varied, not all combat, and a simple but really nice environmental effect going on in the region. The fact that you've got a small army in tow is one of those things that could go either way: an interesting wrinkle if handled well, extremely tedious if not.

The lost city crawling with enemy soldiers is another highlight, again nicely varied, large enough to meaningfully explore but not so large to get lost in/bored of. Unfortunately the actual finale is just another dungeoncrawl, which seems a waste of theme and setting. Really it ought to be a big multi-part siege defence, that seems like the natural culmination of where the story is headed.

Nevertheless, I could see myself running this, if I had players in the mood for such an adventure. To my mind there's plenty of pieces that would need changes or improvements, but it's by no means unsalvageable.

[Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5. Chapters 3 and 4 are good. Five is ok. Six has a few “yeah, no” bits but is otherwise ok. First half of chapter 7 is good, but the ending is… lackluster and awfully balanced. How is a group supposed to go through the whole citadel AND so many big boss fights and survive when there is no possibility of a long rest?

Kansaldi feels like an afterthought. She’s only briefly mentioned, there’s no building up to the encounter with her. It’s the final boss battle and it almost feels like a random encounter that could totally be skipped and the story would not change at all. It sucks because she could have been a great villain. Instead she’s overshadowed by Lord Soth and feels out of place.

Also… vampires living in a temple in a city nobody knew about for centuries? Who did they feed on? Come on, I can’t believe writers don’t ask themselves these questions. So many of the encounters in the “dungeons” feel like space fillers (although that’s a critique for every single published adventure and not only this one).

All that said, I couldn’t give it 3 stars because I really like the two first story chapters and I think the rest has good ideas and potential to become the most epic of campaigns after some (major in certain parts) tweaks and completely rethinking the role of Kansaldi in the adventure.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather uneven. A few things are left really vague so the DM has to flesh out parts. If I'm buying a pre-made adventure, I expect this to be done... I don't have time to come up with things on my own. And while the ending is quite good, the story isn't finished. Meaning the Red Dragon Army is routed, but Takhisis has other armies. Also, Lord Soth is on the cover but is not meant to be fought so that's quite disappointing. I KNOW my players are going to try and fight him and there is stats for him so we'll see how it goes.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seems like a decent adventure. It is a parallel story to the main heroes quest in the Heroes of the Lance series. The maps are good and Lord Soth is always very intriguing and deadly. I'm just disappointed that they didn't consult with the creators of the original series on this. I think that they could have contributed a lot.

[Benjamin]

How? I've now bought just about all D&D 5e books (I still don't have the Critical Role-related ones), and for a writing project I am noodling on, I needed to read/skim this.

What? OK, first, some background: Dragonlance was one of the original big AD&D campaign worlds, which started out as a multimedia project, which basically meant that it had a bunch of novels and then some game stuff that was so tied to the novels as to be largely unplayable. The big story was that, in a world that was more or less abandoned by the gods and by dragons (the evil ones got exiled, the good ones decided to self-exile for balance, if I'm recalling correctly), the big bad dragon god came back with an unstoppable army, and a bunch of heroes has to stop them by, among other things, rediscovering the gods, the good dragons, and the air-to-air weapon of the dragonlance.

This book is also a bit of a multimedia or at least multi-game event, since there is a related board game where you can play out a bunch of the battles that make up the background of the adventures here. And most of this book is that series of adventures: there's a short chapter on the history of the world and some of the culture stuff (gods and calendars); and a chapter on character options.

But after that, it's all adventure: the Red Dragon Army attacks a small town (PCs have to help evacuate the town); then PCs are given missions by the city that the Red Dragon Army is going to attack; then the PCs realize that the Red Dragon Army is searching for a super-weapon in a destroyed city and have to (a) go through the wilderness to find the city and (b) prevent them from making the whole city fly; then the PCs have to destroy the flying tower while the Red Dragon Army is attacking the city.

Yeah, so? As with all game material, I wonder how this plays -- are some of these encounters going to be cakewalks and others going to be total party kills? (One of the appendices is about some sidekicks you can bring along, which is a thing with a long lineage in D&D, but which I don't know if I like: does the presence of sidekicks imply that the PCs can't handle this by themselves?)

But putting aside questions about how it actually works in practice, how does this work in theory? And in theory: I like this a lot as a premise. Rather than put the PCs in the center of the world-historical events -- which they can't change because that's the center of the novel and other adventures -- this places them in a particular pocket of the war that (I think) hasn't seen much action. But it also lets the adventure showcase a lot of the Dragonlance specific stuff: kender, draconians, different types of elves, the history of the continent, the gods, a dragonlance itself.

That said, though I understand that "floating tower/island" is a classic trope of Dragonlance (the cover of the old Gold Box computer game Champions of Krynn features a well-known one), I'm a little... dissatisfied with how the structure of the adventure leads up to one and then has the PCs invade it. I can't entirely put my finger on it, but the thought that came up was "video-gamey." Or maybe it's just that we have two successive chapters that are "invade this location" -- which especially seems repetitive since the second location is just a part of the first.

That said, I love how the first adventure isn't "defeat the bad guys" but "help the villagers evacuate." I'd like to see more of that.

And yes, I did get several good ideas for my writing project.

[Ross Kitson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This year's campaign adventure (if you don't count the Critical Role one) is a long awaited Dragonlance one. Being a grognard I recall playing DL1 to 4 before losing momentum in the 80s and just sticking with the books (which I latterly lost momentum with beyond the first trilogies).
Anyhow, WotC were clearly in a conundrum as most DL fans really enjoy the War of the Lance period but in essence that story has been told. With memorable characters...
So either the choice was a version of those (very linear) adventures or trying to use the setting and having an adventure with suitable stakes elsewhere in war torn Krynn. Whilst having some clerical magic. And not too many key NPCs who might get accidentally killed. And keeping the Dragonlance flavour with Schools of High Sorcery, Kender, Solamnic Knights etc.
All credit to the writers they do a solid job here. The sourcebook material is better than the playtest (UA) stuff, the buff up with extra feats is interesting, and there's enough re the gods and backgrounds to give you a proper taste of Krynn. I'd have liked more world building material, although the adventure adds some, and I hope the book is popular enough to warrant a full campaign setting (maybe with mini adventure).
The adventure is a somewhat linear/railroad story which, if you wanted to run it, you'd have to square with your players. It's a good story with scope for character arcs and progression, varied locations, mix of combat and creativity, and many mini-dungeons and encounters. There are some great bits (the wander across the periodically flooding wastes, and the discovery of the crashed city is great, although it's a little like Rime from 2y ago). The finale in the Bastion is great, with the inclusion of Lord Soth well considered and potentially very tense for the PCs.
The best aspects? I like the warzone encounters with random events occurring to represent the chaos of war..I thought the flavor with Soth, Dalamar, the dragonlance, the gnome inventor, and the pompous knight of Solamnia was perfect.
The worst aspects? Like the original DL modules it's just too linear for sake of a good story, although with work that could be adjusted, and key events manipulated so it feels the players choices influence events more. I also struggle with the double finale. The events in the Bastion are good enough IMO, and then throwing in a second battle against the Highlord seemed both pointless and potentially lethal (the time frame on the final events is appropriately tight, meaning they go through some heavy duty battles against vampires, undead, skeletal knights, potentially Soth, Death Dragon, then the BBEG with minimal chance for even a short rest). That would need some work, I think. The BBEG Kansaldi is only a name until the finale which makes it a damp squib as a final scrap; think DMs would need some decent foreshadowing as the adventure does with Lord Soth.
All in all, it's better than I thought it was going to be and made up for the slight disappointment with the Light of Xaryxis adventure in Spelljammer.

[Ed]

Ring Side Report- Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen

Originally posted at www.throatpunchgames.com, a new idea every day!

Product- Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen
System- DnD 5th Edition
Producer- Wizards of the Coast
Price- $36 here
TL; DR- kind of fitting for what we have been seeing from WotC. 73%

Basics- Time for the War of the Lance… again. Learn the basics of the Dragonlance setting and play through the most famous adventure.

Mechanics or Crunch- This book adds a bit, but not much, in terms of game mechanics. You get a bit of background on the setting's most famous addition, the kender, and you also get rules for mass battles and sidekicks. Overall, it's not bad, but it's not much. For this world, I would expect more, especially given the crazy things that have happened with magic, moons, and divine magic. What’s here is good, but there is not as much as I would hope. 4/5

Theme or Fluff- This is a let down. There is a story that is decent, but it's been done. Why not modernize the setting or deal with the fallout of many of the books? This just feels like a rehash of things or a reboot. Couple that with the fact that the whole setting is given 20 pages of background and you get something that works, but it’s not a solid effort. 3/5

Execution-You can buy a decently made book. But there is no PDF available, legally. You can buy a computer version via DnD Beyond, but you must deal with DnD Beyond. It’s got good layout and text, but those two things itself knock this down many pegs. 4/5

Summary- This book feels like many of the most recent setting books WotC is putting out. There are a few pages of setting and then an adventure. You have a GIANT world out there with lots of stuff and you get 20 pages. I just feel this isn’t done well. If you want to replay the war of the lance and you want 5e to do it, this will be your book. If, like me, you wanted a solid introduction to the system and you wanted it to tie in to where the world is now, then this will not be your book. 73%

[Francisco · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first book in Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition to be set in the Dragonlance universe, this should have been a bigger even than it was. Dragonlance, which originated in 1984, was a setting which brought a completely new philosophy to tabletop role playing games, heavy on character and plot, with a bunch of novels and art coming along with it to create a multi-media world unlike anything before.

The world of Krynn where Dragonlance is set, is complex and extremely detailed. So making a 200 and something page illustrated book which seeks to at the same time give readers a background into the world of Krynn, new player options from the Knights of Solamnia to the Mages of High Sorcery and new races like the Kender while at the same time cramming an adventure that goes up to level 11 in this seems a bit too tight.

Hopefully we will get a full campaign setting for the world, like we did for Ravenloft after the Curse of Strahd adventure came out. That being said, what is here is pretty good. An adventure that pitches the characters against the legendary Death Knight Lord Soth, with a great roster of NPCs and plenty to do, this is a good adventure and if the DM is a fan of the world, they will be able to flesh out Krynn enough for their players.

[Eran Weiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't run it, but I did read it preparing to run it, so big disclaimer here.
Overall looks like a good adventure, but not great.
It has a great tone to it, though it could have been more specific (but that you can fix easily).
The overall structure is good, and the biggest flaw is that the adventure assumes how the characters will start the next chapter. It has a lot of good places, people, and things, and gives the vibe it was going on.
The main beef I have is that I don't think the ending is going to be very satisfying, and it's hard to change.

[Matthew A. Thiel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great Nostalgia, mediocre adventure.

Fun to see Krynn again and glad WoC tried to get a beloved setting fired up again. The adventure has some good moments but is clearly dependent on the associated board game and levels the characters up WAY too quickly. Can be fun if worked for less advancement and taking some threats at the end down a peg or two and forcing the characters to be more clever. Some good ideas, but I’m left a little cold.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting scenario and just the right amount of world building to get started. Interesting locations, NPCs, and the villains don’t disappoint. Would also be an easy scenario to incorporate into a home-brew world.

There are several obvious seeds for further books and I would happily scoop up the next book for my group.

[Kurt Vosper · Rating 5 out of 5]

For fans of Dragonlance this is the revival of the setting for the 5e rule set. An excellent source and adventure book to get you started in Krynn. Excellent.

[John Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dragonlance updated for fifth edition.

[Camilo Navarrete - D-Propósito Humano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es una campaña lineal, que desaprovecha la riqueza del mundo abierto en el contexto de guerra.

[Walker Jinks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seems like a super awesome campaign, my party is going to love it.

[CountZeroOr]

Review will be forthcoming after I've finished running this.

[Derk Bruger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very railroady, characters aren’t that memorable unless you constantly remind your players. A few too many Deus ex Machina moments

[Benjamin Hesdorf · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book, because I wanted to know more about the Dragonlance lore. It did tell me about it for about the first 1/4, then it became a description of an adventure for 4-6 players. It wasn't really what I expected, but I had a really good time reading through it. 5/5.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wizards of the Coast has taken a lot of flack as of late for putting out subpar material at a rapid clip and I’m glad to say this bucks the trend. This book is a fun adventure placed in a setting I’m glad to see get expanded in 5e. And if that weee it I’d be happy, but this book not only introduced some very clever and fun game mechanics, it also includes roles for the sister board game, so in theory you could bounce between mass combat in the board game and individual hero focused adventures with the Role Playing Game. I even hasten to suggest that this book would be fun to read even if you didn’t play DND just as a novel 2nd person presentation of a Dragonlance story.

[Geordie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A D&D campaign adventure set in the world of Krynn. The player characters oppose the armies of the Dragon Queen, Takhisis, as they spread across unprepared and peaceful lands.

I don't know if I'd want to run this adventure, but it was a pleasure to read, one of the better D&D supplements I've read this year. There's a nice chunk on the setting and expanded rules for Krynn that gives extra flavor and lets the PCs (and DM) know what to expect in this setting. The adventures are creative and challenging, but not overboard. PCs will have a lot of chances to interact with interesting PCs and struggle through novel terrains, in addition to a ton of good-old-fashioned fighting.

Not every encounter was perfectly polished, and in some cases the PCs didn't have a lot of choices in order to progress, but it's still a lot better than many of the other 5e books I slogged through. I think my biggest 'what the heck??' feeling was the two (or three?) times that PCs finish one stage of an adventure and, boom, go up a level that very minute so they'll be strong enough to handle the next stage of that adventure. This was a little rushed and Dragonball Z feeling, but, not a deal breaker!

A fun feel, and well thought out. You know, maybe I WOULD run this adventure some day!

[Daniel V. N. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have begun running this campaign with a group of friends, and I wanted to read it through before we have our first proper session. This is my fourth campaign I have read, (Lost Mines of Phandelver, Curse of Strahd, and The Wild Beyond the Witchlight) and in many ways this feel more epic than the other ones.

I see concerns that the campaign is rather railroady, but to me it works. The players are offered plenty of chances to explore segments of the world in some chapters, whereas other chapters are more fast-paced and thus the railroadiness is really the only sensible option.

This campaign also does not contain too many NPCs to navigate and manage, letting the players shine a bit more.

Spoilers:
This adventure is significantly more generous with magical items, thus boosting their capabilities. It offers a lot more combat scenarios that seem way harder than other adventures.

I am pretty excited to get this party started with my group.