Today’s D&D Direct brought with it a slew of surprises, including one campaign setting that hasn’t seen published in a sourcebook since 2008. Dragonlance is returning to D&D Fifth Edition in both an adventure book and a tabletop board game later in 2022.
The announcement comes courtesy of a short teaser trailer broadcast during D&D Direct, which gives fans definitely got a sense of Dragonlance’s chaotic world, with massive armies clashing while dragons launch fireballs from far overhead. Three heroes--two elves and a human--fight to lead the world of Krynn to a new age, and all of it is narrated by Shohreh Aghdashloo.
Dragonlance was first created back in Dungeon & Dragons’ early days. The original novels were penned by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis in 1984, but many other authors have contributed to the over 190 published books. Dozens of sourcebooks range from First to Third Edition D&D, as well as eight video games, several comics, and a direct-to-TV movie.
The world of Krynn will seem roughly familiar to those who’ve played in D&D’s Forgotten Realms setting. There’s a large pantheon of gods, Chaos is working to end the world, and several ages mark various cataclysmic wars or events. Dragons are either plentiful or not, depending on the age, and the titular Dragonlance is the only way for mortal, non-magical people to kill a dragon.
Dragonlance features many of D&D’s existing races, with many of them assigned “evil” or “good” alignments. Fifth Edition has since eliminated much of the old alignment system, so it’ll be interesting to see how the new Dragonlance adventure handles that.
The new adventure book will be called Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen and tells a new story of the early stages of the War of the Lance. As for the tabletop game, we know it’ll be called Warriors of Krynn, and that it can be combined with the adventure book in some way. We’ll likely learn more as we get closer to the launch date of both the Dragonlance board game and adventure book, which will arrive in late 2022.