Shadow of the Dragon Queen Review

 Review copy courtesy of Wizards of the Coast.

Pros

• The art continues to be plentiful and good. In particular, the scenery and art involving Lord Soth has been a highlight.

• The intro adventures are interesting. They are different for different characters and backgrounds. So the wizard character gets a different intro than a fighter. You’d run them in small groups, or one after another with everyone present. It’s an interesting idea, and I hope to see more. Though be careful. Since not all characters play, it needs to be kept at a brisk pace.

• There’s some effort to give players characters they’ll remember. They typically don’t overstay their welcome and fit into an archetype. I think many players will like them, and appreciate how they are involved in the story.

• It’s Dragonlance! Well, assuming you like it.

• Combat encounters often have complications occurring on a particular initiative count. They can be beneficial or detrimental.

• Maps are provided for the combat areas. As well, 2 options are provided. A mass battle situation using the board game, or good old grid based D&D combat. There is also the idea of the “fray”, which keeps players on the map lest they get bumped by the crowd engaged in combat. I’m glad to see them experimenting with new elements/experiences and hope to see more, though the board game costs extra.

• There are some new monsters, dragon themed, and they fill in some nice earlier BR ranges.

Could Go Either Way

• The structure of the adventure is more guided than others. It still has freedom to go towards the objective, but it’s not a go anywhere type of adventure.

• There is some amount of puzzle boss going on. If you like doing everything using combat rules, you won’t like that. When done in moderation though, I personally like it. Also good for story telling.

• The adventure only goes up to level 10, which is lower than some previous outings. Though it also doesn’t skip past the early levels either.

Cons

• There are mass battle rules in the DMG. Here we have both classic D&D encounter options, and mass battles involving the board game. However, there is no option provided for using the mass battle rules in the DMG. What’s the point of those rules if even the official adventures don’t provide examples of it?

• No PDF*

* Denotes nitpicking.

Cover for the adventure!

Introduction

Dragonlance is a classic D&D setting. There are many people I’ve met who have never played D&D, but they know Dragonlance. The books were incredibly popular, and helped bring many into the fantasy genre. The setting and adventures are famous classics. The cartoon is... alright, we don’t mention that one. The point is that it’s an old setting, and I’m happy to see it back. Slowly we’re getting all of the old setting back in this edition of D&D. Hopefully Planescape comes soon. So what do I think of this one? Let’s jump in.

The Adventure

New Player Options

Again, not much here. There are a few though, and some nice flavour. A big part of it is how the existing D&D races fit into the world. Halflings are kender, and there’s effort made to tie different races and communities into the world. Those are good things of course. Giving players ways to think how their characters tie into the world is very important for character creation.

New Monsters

There isn’t a large amount by count alone, but they made their appearance very strongly felt. Draconians are an important part of Dragonlance, and here they are. There’s also new types of dragons, and followers of Tiamat. One thing this adventure does particularly well in this regard, is that it uses these new creatures commonly. As a result of this, the adventure feels like there’s more new creatures than there is. That’s a good thing from an adventure perspective, but less good for reuse. All of this together gives the adventure more of a unique feel in presentation.

What You Need to Play

As usual, the Monster Manual, Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide required and referenced at the start of this book. For the option mass combat stuff, the board game Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn is also required. If you don’t have those books, this is probably one of the easier ones to run just using the included monsters and the SRD. There’s just such heavy use of the creatures including with the book.

The army on the march. I particularly like the water and armour appearance.

The Adventure Itself

The adventure is organized into chapters where major events occur before going onto the next one. It starts with a funeral and a small town, introduces characters to their main adversary and source of chaos the forces of Tiamat, sees them leave as refugees to a new kingdom and fight back. Typically Dragonlance isn’t known for being the most open of campaigns. I’d say that also carries over here, but it is also more open than I remember the original AD&D Dragonlance campaign I played originally. At parts a few different objectives need to be accomplished to proceed. The order and specifics of how to handle them is left to the players, but they must be accomplished. There’s some surprise twists, that caught my players and was a blast to see. It makes sense and is for the course for published adventures. But still, keep it in mind.

One thing this adventure does differently than others is that depending on their background, there are mini-quests just for their players at the start of the adventure. This is interesting and new as a concept. It is also a good way to get the ball rolling right after making characters. However, not every player is engaged in playing at the same time. For this reason I’d suggest breaking the party into groups so characters can be made, and their special short session can be run so no-one is left out. Alternatively if your players enjoy watching D&D too, you can run through everyone in one go. But for this I think a brisk pace is necessary so that the next group gets their chance to play.

Typically the adventure is included in the book. Sometimes there’s a supplement provided with some maps, that sort of thing. Here however, there's an entire board game that can be used. The reviews seem pretty decent for it too. What is it used for here? There are times in the adventure where mass battles can occur. One way to resolve these is by using the board game to play through the battles. It’s quite an interesting idea, and I hope more attempts are made to play around with the concept and gameplay of adventures. The downside though? We already have mass combat rules provided in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. And here, the perfect time to have used these rules, they are unused. It’s like the creators themselves forgot it existed. You can even provided a free PDF for it. So that it’s completely left out here is astounding. Are the mass battle rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide are so bad even the authors of Dungeons & Dragons don’t want to use it? They should say something if so, and at least have some errata replacing it with something better. 

 

The iconic Lord Soth makes an appearance, as well as various forms of dragons and draconians. This isn’t a campaign where the end features a fight against the goddess Tiamat (you want Tyranny of Dragons for that), but is about disrupting and pushing back her evil dragon aligned armies, and stopping their current plot. Soth the scariest of them I’d say, and the adventure does spend some time and encounters building him up. The majority though, is working with a kingdom/army against the enemy army, and facing officers. I enjoyed it, but the conflict and villain(s) go a long way to defining what a campaign feels like. Some scenarios don’t work for certain people, or they want something different. So be aware.

The army of the Dragon Queen. The dragon in particular looks great.

The combat encounters try to do interesting things. In some ways, I’d prefer if both regular combat and mass battles could be run one after another, or a good balanced proposed in the book. In encounters where larger battles are occurring, there is a “fringe” on the outside of the map. Getting close to it causes issues, thus forcing players into a particular area. This is good and bad. Bad because it restricts the combat to an area, but good for multiple reasons. It doesn’t force you to make up map space, and it has a mechanical effect to those that get close to it. It’s also an in world barrier as opposed to an invisible wall. We can’t go there because tons of people are fighting there. We can’t squeeze through, and trying gets us bumped or worse. To keep things more interesting, many encounters here have complications occur on a certain initiative count. This could be a wounded enemy joining the encounter. However, it can also be beneficial. It’s something that I don’t think should be overused, but something to consider in your own encounters to help keep things more varied, chaotic, interesting, and replayable. This adventure particularly tries to be more creative with combat encounters. There is also a very important encounter towards the end that’s not so direct, but makes sense in context and is a story telling opportunity.

There’s quite a few characters here. They occupy many different roles, from villains, to allies and ties to the world. They are competently done, and the cast does add to the adventure and give a motivation to the events. It’s not just going into dungeons for the gruff looking quest giver. They aren’t super memorable or do something I’ve never seen before, but they’re effective for the story being told. I do recommend adding some more interactions with one particular character, who also grows through the adventure and is introduced to the characters early. The adventure already does it, but more characterization would really help. One thing that gets a little messy is that since we’re fighting an army, there’s quite a few different bad guys. Bad guys have bad guy bosses, and it means you really don’t directly deal with the main bad guy until the end. And even they aren’t the tip top of the hierarchy. It’s to be expected, but some people do like to see the main bad guy play a more direct role from the start. It’s also not the easiest to make them all land, but they do help build up the dragon army. And Soth in particular gets attention, and lands I think.

The alt cover. It continues the tradition of me loving the alt covers often more than the standard.

The Art and Book Build Quality

The art continues to be plentiful and well made. It should come as no surprise that I like realistic art by now, and quite a bit of the art here is less so. But despite that it continues to be well made and evocative. I've included some of my favourite pieces above in the best quality I could. When it's good, it's very good. The adventure covers a wide variety of characters, and locations. Dragons always look great in art too. All of it together makes for a great read. The covers, both the standard one featuring flying dragons, and the alternate one featuring Lord Soth, are great as well.

The quality here was excellent throughout. But as always, if you can, take a quick look through the book. Check the bindings, stuck pages, improperly cut pages, and major issues with art. In the past I’ve experienced all these issues and more. Though thankfully not here.

Price

MSRP is as we’ve come to expect, $49.99 USD and $64.99 Canadian. And as usual you can find it for lower on sale if you look. The board game Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn is more expensive, though the new website doesn’t have an MSRP. Seems to be between $72 and $75 US dollars from my quick search.

What I felt was Missing

A PDF of the adventure would be nice (like always I mention this), and having a supplement provided online with the monsters so the Monster Manual would not be needed. They used to do this, they can do it again. This adventure absolutely should have supported the mass combat rules from the Dungeon Master’s Guide. The absence of this is astounding to me. It’s like they forgot these rules existed. It could work as an exemplar for these rules. Or did they decide they aren’t good?

Free Stuff

Not much here. The PDF rulebooks for the board game can be found here. Besides that, nothing really.

Summary

So here we have it. Dragonlance is back. The adventure we have here is interesting, varied, and handles combat encounters in ways that keep them interesting. There’s some elements of exploring, combat encounters, examples of storytelling, and some creative novelties like the separate mini-adventures at the start based on character background. If it sounds like I like this adventure, I do. But all of that comes with the important detail that it does what it does well. Set piece encounters, characters, story telling, and novelty. If you wanted a compromise of story and role-play, or a sandbox, this isn’t it. You need to be onboard with its style.