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To me, Dragonlance has been about dragons, honor, friendship and unlikely heroes. That's changed a little as some of the heroes now have legacies behind them and dragons have taken on new shapes and honor is under attack from more modern versions and anti-versions, but the root is still the same.
Now what about this book, the Dragonlance Campaign Setting? Well, much like the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, it's useful for any D&D player. What do players want in their character creation? Well, the start is usually new races and classes. For races, we've got modification rules for all of the typical Dungeons and Dragons standards with the Dragonlance variations. Many of these are the standard races with some minor modificatoins. Take the Dwarves. Both the Mountain and Hill are pretty much standard PHB Dwarves with specific history and background.
What new types and old Dragolance favorites? They're covered. For dwarves, we have Dark and Gully varieties and for Elves, we've got Sea Elves. Ogres have irda, ogres, half-ogres and minotaurs. Pretty good selection of monstrous races but it doesn't end there. For the first time, we've got rules for baaz and kapak draconians. This allows a campaign to take all sorts of shapes and allows the GM to run some really off the wall campaigns if he so choses. About the only thing missing is information on say, Titan ogres.
The mystic and noble are introduced and standard classes, like barbarian, cleric, rogue and even sorcerer, are provided notes on how to incorporate them into a Dragonlance campaign. The mystic is a divine spellcaster that doesn't rely on the gods to draw their power but rather, through self discovery and sacrifice, learn to channel that information. They are similar in some aspects to sorcerers in that they have a limited number of spells that they can cast and doesn't have to prepare them. They do get domains however so they have some options sorcerer's do not.
The noble is the replacement for the aristocrat in this setting. They gain numerous abilities in dealing with others like the ability to inspire confidence and call in favors as well as coordinate people in their efforts.
After a character is created and has gained some levels, the next option for a player is the Prestige Class. The problem to me is that unlike say, d20 Modern and it's advanced classes, several of the PrCs here aren't that easy to get into and certain classes that used to be core, are now PrCs. It's not too bad in some cases as the Knight of the Crown, the first level or tier of Solamnic Knight, one of the oldest orders of knighthood and honor in the setting, only requires a base attack bonus of +3, Base Save Bonus of Fort +4, and a few feats and skills, allowing most low level characters fairly easy access to the class.
The PrCs include a good mix of the old through the various Solamnic Knights, Dragon Riders, Wizards of High Sorcery, and other classic archetypes, as well as new legends forged in latter fiction in the Age of Mortals. This includes the three level Steel Legionnaire, a group of soldiers who hold that doing the right thing is more important then doing the honorable, codified lawful thing and the Knights of Neraka, a three ranking PrC group that is opposite to the Solamnic Knights. I love one of the quotes describing their motto, “Independence breeds chaos. Submit and be strong.”
Those looking for tons of new feats, including those regional feats introduced in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, are going to be let down. There are less than three pages of feats and a few of them are meant for dragons or their kin like Strafing Breath and Spectacular Death Throes, where if you're a Draconian and you die, you have those classic effects like exploding in a ball of energy.
Some may say that I worry too much about the mechanical aspects of the game and that I need to enjoy the setting for what it is. I do but I also realize that WoTC has an agenda in the amount of information provided on the Age of Mortals and intends to continue with their fiction line, rewriting history and making nips and tucks where they feel necessary regardless of how well it does or doesn't mesh with the previous material. Having said that though, it's important to note that almost every bit of information here from the races, classes, and prestige classes, has a Dragonlance take on things. It's not some blank slate with only crunch information, but rather, information on how this particular incarnation is done up in the Dragonlance campaign.
For a setting with numerous types of spellcasters ranging from traditional clerics and wizards, to the new mystics and sorcerers, the authors decided to add numerous new spells to the setting, an area that DL was fairly weak in before despite some notable mages. Now we've got new domains like Restoration and Storm, Treachery and Forge, new spells like Crackling Sphere and Dalmar's Lightning Lance, as well as Drown and Electrical Storm. It's much more a combat oriented spell selection than previous editions, perhaps in no small part due to the emergence of sorcerers who are often used in play as heavy hitters due to their limited spell selection but numerous spell firings.
Now as a GM, I'm glad that I have the same tools at my disposal as the players in terms of races, classes, spells, feats and other goodies, but I need more. Enter the monsters. It's almost a miniature monster manual in here with Death Knights, Draconian's updated to 3.5, Fireshadows and other monsters. I was a little disappointed that more material from the various Age of Mortal novels wasn't included but I can understand the need to hold the price down as well as the fact that there is an Age of Mortals RPG book out.
Other mechanics are needed for a game like this though as one of the classics of the genre is aerial combat as riders atop dragons clash overhead and the section on aerial combat allows a Gm to have fights. It's similar in some aspects to standard movement in that you have different move actions and other actions that can be taken in the same round but there are other things taken into account like blind spots, speed status, the scale used to represent the background and different maneuvers. In some ways, it'd be nice if some of this could come over to the regular game outside of the typical charge attack as maneuvers like sideslip and flyby attack can make for some excellent descriptive elements in aerial combat.
There are numerous things to help the GM along in his tasks. For example, there are pages upon pages of information covering not only the gods of the setting, but how magic works, the role of dragons, geography and ideas on how to run a proper Dragonlance campaign.
Armed with this, a GM can describe the roles of sorcery in the new Age or Mortals and how Wizards and Clerics lost their power during the start of that Age of Mortals. GMs can have players explore Neraka or Qualinesti, help the elves try to retake their homelands or fight against minotaur aggression.
In terms of a proper DL campaign though, I was impressed that some effort was made to make the standard different. One idea is that there are numerous fallen nations and ruined cities. To me, that's not a big draw as almost any established campaign setting will have it's share of such. The example sites included make it easier for a GM to include them though.
What I liked was the mechanics used to show the difference. How about Dying Curses with the example of Lord Soth being turned into a Death Knight via curse or using Sotry Awards and Noncombat Awards? How about using Mission Goals and Roleplaying Awards? Those areas which are crucial in the fiction are not skipped over and details are provided so that GMs who wish to emphasis that this is a DL campaign and that appropriate behavior will be rewarded, now have the tools to do so.
The roleplaying aspect of the book doesn't has a heavy focus on the Age of Mortals, but does have a heavy feel for that era. There is information on playing during the War of the Lance but a lot of it is focused on the gods and their efforts during this time. The nice thing is the regional descriptions with the maps. These break down different areas with the capital, population, government, languages, trade, alignment, background, life and society, major features, and important sites.
This allows you to look up say, Northern Ergoth, see the Palins of Dust and the Capital of Tarsis, see that the major features are the Torath River and that the only important site is the Kings Road. It's a brief introduction to the various lands during the War of the Lance and for the starter, it's a good introduction to the setting.
Ironically, despite the heavy emphasis on the whole Age of Mortals, it doesn't receive a lot of attention here going from the numerous events in the Age of Mortals in a few pages with some ideas coming more fleshed out in the adventure, The Sylvan Key and The Ghost Blade.
In terms of production, it's hard to find fault with the book. It's a $39.95 hardcover in full color with good solid layout, great art, and great maps. For the dollar, it's one of the better buys on the market. Those who think I'm mistaken need to look at the hardcovers of other publishers and note the price ranges for black and white material. Shocking really when you realize how much pull Wizards has to be able to pull something like this off without a loss.
The book has some organization and repetitive issues though. It's hard to keep focused on what's role playing information, what's trying to be conveyed from the novels, what's trying to be tied into the sections and what's important where. For example, under the various descriptions of the gods, there is information on The One God and the War of Souls. Well, that's fine and good, but a lot of that information is already covered elsewhere so I don't need to see it again. The same is true of the various spellcasting classes and magic. I don't need to see it under the classes, then under the section on magic, and the gods, and elsewhere. Once is enough. Yes, sorcerers are an old form of magic that was gone and is now returned. Got it.
In addition, I'm one of those weird guys who likes seeing all of the characters in one place, not scattered here and there. When I'm trying to find a particular NPC, I don't want to have to flip through the book. Well, why would I have to flip when I could just go to the Index and look under NPC? That would be because there is no index. Very good table of contents mind you and it does break down such information at a glance but I like my indexes. Magic items also suffer this fate as they're scattered all over the place.
In some ways, the writers have taken the best of the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons and helped smooth out the issues with the fiction that introduced via a new game engine in Saga, Mystics by making the old gods return and allowing the new type of magic to stay, shoehorned under divine but not god worshipping energy. The sorcerer here fits in well with the standard 3.5 version of the sorcerer and the new noble class can be used with much more ease and confidence than the standard NPC aristocrat.
In the end, if you're looking for lots of new crunch or looking to visit an old friend and see what they've done to her, the Dragonlance campaign Setting has a lot to offer most players and GMs and gives you more than your dollar's worth.
