Beginning this Monday, we’ll be starting our play through of Shadow of the Dragon Queen. For those unaware of the adventure, it was released in December 2022, and is the first official adventure in a long time to be set in the Dragonlance setting.

I delighted in the original Dragonlance novels and adventures, so exploring the new take on the story is exciting for me – even if it goes badly. At the moment, I have no idea how it will go. It looks promising, but adventures don’t click with all groups. Or DMs.

One thing that hasn’t clicked with me for this adventure is the prelude; the small adventure that takes the characters from level 1 to 2. When I run level 1 adventures, I want them to be significant experiences, taking 4 hours or thereabouts. With “Broken Silence”, the prelude to give god-worshipping characters their power, it looks like it would take 20 minutes, if that.

I understand the utility of “Broken Silence”, but it feels wrong to me, especially because I’m very fond of the full-length adventure Dragons of Despair that is the original way the gods of good re-enter Krynn.

“Eye in the Sky” and “Broken Scales” are better, but they’re still not great for my purposes. If I was running a Session 0 and ran them at the end, I might include them. But I want a full session of action for the first session.

So, we’ll be beginning this campaign at Level 2.

I have also restricted the classes and races available, as follows:

Races: Human, Kender, Dwarf (Mountain or Hill), Elf (High or Wood), Half-Elf.
Classes: Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard.

Now, this is quite non-standard. Why these races and classes? For the races, these are canonical races available in the old AD&D Dragonlance adventures. AD&D was very human-centric, and though my group won’t be, it feels wrong for an old-timer like me to have Dragonborn or Tieflings available. (It’s really not fitting the campaign, either!) Gnomes are excluded because the Dragonlance version of gnomes, the tinker gnome, is very, very tricky to get right.

The classes are chosen to restrict healing magic. The group will have access to almost none. At some point as the campaign continues, they might meet one of the new clerics of the gods, but until then, they’ll have to struggle on. This will likely require some adjustment to how the game plays. I’m interested to see what the effects are. (Short rests and hit dice become a lot more important).

Why am I restricting healing magic like that? Primarily, it’s to emphasize that the gods are gone. At the beginning of Shadow of the Dragon Queen, it has been over 300 years since the gods threw a flaming rock at the planet and turned their faces from the world. If the players just come in with healing magic, then it feels like every other setting. You’ve got to remove something and have the players live with it before restoring it, so it feels special.

With that in mind, we have the following four characters selected by my players:

• Dwarf Fighter
• Kender Ranger
• Wood Elf Monk
• Human Wizard

Allowing the Monk was a choice – they don’t exist in Dragonlance as of Dragonlance Adventures, despite Dragons of Mystery describing a god of monks! But I think a Wood Elf (Kagonesti) martial artist makes a lot of sense, so in it goes.

As suggested in the adventure, the players have been choosing their links to the late Ispin Greenshield, so they can attend his funeral during the first session and get the campaign underway. It feels a much stronger starting point than the preludes.

We won’t be using the board game, Warriors of Krynn for this campaign. This is largely because we’re playing online (using Roll20 and Skype), but even if we were face to face, the board game makes timing of the sessions problematic. It’s a pain to set-up and tear down, meaning we’re likely spending 90-120 minutes on it, which is a fair chunk of a session. And if we get 30 minutes of role-playing, then play the game of 120 minutes, what is left then in a 3- or 4-hour session?

Anyway, it’s less than 24 hours until we get underway: more reports soon!