The High Tale of the Dragonlance: What We Loved and 3 Things We Didn’t in Shadow of the Dragon Queen

3 Wise DMs

Happy New Year! As promised, we’re kicking off our 5th Season with one of our favorite episode varieties: the 3 Wise DMs Campaign Reviews! Following the footsteps of our Storm King’s Thunder, Curse of Strahd, and Woodstock Wanderers campaigns, we delve deep into the High Tale of the Dragonlance with our DM Review of Shadow of the Dragon Queen.

In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave review how we experienced running and playing it; what we enjoyed and what we didn’t in this campaign that clocked in at just under 2 years! For anyone wanting to run Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen, this episode is for you.

Stay tuned for Part 2 when we bring ALL the players on for our Player Wrap-Up episode!

1:50 How close to the book did the DM run the campaign?

3:30 The momentum that is created with the overall theme of impending war in a campaign.

4:30 Why DM Dave chose Dragonlance as his next campaign to run.

7:00 This is the Way: How Dragonlance did NPC death right.

9:30 The Kingfisher Festival: How mini games help get players invested, like fishing for Old Benebog.

12:30 The first stumbling block in the adventure – the translation of the adventure into the Northern Wastes.

17:50 The second stumbling block – Lord Soth is introduced only as a plot device.

22:20 The majority of the adventure is found in The Northern Wastes.

23:50 The Third Stumbling Block - the strange design decision to provide the players with the ability to fly over all the travel mechanics of The Northern Wastes.

27:10 The homebrewed Journey Game that we debuted in SotDQ.

32:00 Classic “Fetch Quests” to get the ball rolling for the players in a new territory.

35:55 The #1 Reason why this was DM Dave’s favorite game to ever run…

41:20 The 2 great things WotC learned leading up to SotDQ: the Adventure Hook and Encounter Difficulty.

44:05 Final Thoughts.