When it comes to Dragonlance, and especially the newest published adventure, Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, there are few villains that grab the imagination (and the spotlight) like the OG Death Knight himself, Lord Loren Soth. While the original cover art of the adventure depicts Dragon Highmaster Kansaldi Fire-Eyes riding her Red Dragon, Ignia, … Read more
This is the truth of the Riddle, children… that we make of our lives what we will. Destiny, purpose, fate… all stories in the end. And your greatest desires? Yet one more story. Make of it what you will, mortal children, but make it a good one. Leolemus, the Sphinx Riddles. They are a part … Read more
One of the players is planning on playing an evil wizard wearing the Black Robes. Is this doable in the campaign seeing that the group is going to face off against some Black Robes, or is this really hard to uphold in a further good aligned party? Our Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen campaign … Read more
Running the adventure outside of the game session? Yes, that’s right. Starting back in DM Dave’s Curse of Strahd campaign, we began to develop characters and backstories with narrative side quests via text, email, and online documents (like Google Docs). In our Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen campaign, we have utilized them from the … Read more
One of the hardest things for me about higher-level play in D&D is that, inevitably, we’re going to war. It just makes sense that at some point above level 10, we’re going to get into wars between nations, factions, religions, devils and demons, etc. At that point, either I need to present the war as … Read more
While Fizban looks like a traditional Gandalf-type wizard, he is anything but. A confused, doddering and incredibly powerful Wizard, he seems to forget what he’s doing, who he’s talking to, and most of his incantations in every scene – casting Fireball at the most opportune, or inopportune times, depending on where you’re standing.
There has been much discussion about how some of the major features that separate the Dragonlance setting from other settings were left out of the adventure. While this allows DMs and players unfamiliar with the setting to not feel completely lost, it does leave a good deal of work to a DM (like myself) who loves the Krynn setting and wants to have it feel different and special.
With this in mind, here is the way that our friend of the show, and resident Terrain Wrangler, Scott “The Wizard” Washburn, cobbled together a small and simple change to make the return of True Clerics to the world after three centuries feel special – without rewriting all the mechanics of 5e!
All kidding aside, putting the time into creating a believable, character-centric hook to the upcoming adventure does a lot of the heavy lifting for you by increasing player buy-in to the story and giving them a seriously good reason to risk life and limb to go adventuring.
