Monday, December 9, 2019

Tyranny of Dragonlance

There's a lot in the published Tyranny of Dragons campaign that's nonsensical, and the whole reason is because this storyline is a bad fit for the Forgotten Realms. Stripped of the setting of Faerun, and this adventure is almost exactly the Dragonlance storyline condensed into two volumes. The way to fix the fundamental story flaws is to bring that War of the Lance goodness back into plot.

No, I don't mean bring back Goldmoon and Raistlin.

In the adventure as written, Tiamat is almost an entirely passive entity and if run strictly by the book she should not appear at all at the Well of Dragons, as the Cult of Dragon's plans to resurrect her would be completely thwarted. What fun is that? Instead of such an anticlimactic end, Tiamat should be given a more active role in the story by taking cues from Dragonlance's Takhisis and restored to her place as the main antagonist of the story.

Similarly, Bahamut is not mentioned or used at all in this storyline, and the only time the Metallic Dragons are involved is during a turgidly dull political council scene. Instead of that scene, whisk the players away to Bahamut's castle, in Celestia from 4e's Scales of War adventure path, or Paladine's Glitter Palace, and have the heroes undergo Paladine's tests of worthiness.

The final assault on the Well of Dragons is meant to be a massive clash between the armies of good and the Cult of the Dragon, exactly like the climax to the War of the Lance, but this first publication for 5e lacks any sort of mass combat rules so it all falls by the wayside. Honestly though, I would rather leave it there, as I feel that shoehorning in a mass combat wargame would only detract from the chapter. Contextualize the PCs as a special unit sneaking behind the battle lines while the main forces of good hold off the enemy just long enough to give the players an opening.

The Well of Dragons itself is a terrible dungeon, as it only exists as an area for a large battle and a pit for Tiamat to rise from. Replace it with any of the Temples of Takhisis or Tiamat.

These suggestions change the ending, and in doing so re-contextualizes the whole adventure. Now it truly is an epic battle between good and evil, between the two dragon deities, and not a hodgepodge collection of loose allies from around the Sword Coast fighting a demented cult and some scheming wizards.

To build up to this finale, I sprinkle in references to the two dragon deities and explicitly have their mortal avatars show up in certain instances. For example, Takhisis speaks to Frulam and Cyanwrath in the dragon hatchery just before they are interrupted by the players, and Paladine is encountered during the long caravan ride and offers words of wisdom and caution.

This also resolves my issues with the "half-dragons" introduced in Hoard of the Dragon Queen, as they are clearly meant to be Dragonlance's Draconians, but the official races of 5e have already retrofitted Draconians into the Dragonborn race, so why do half-dragons even exist? Well now they don't, they're just evil dragonborn leading an army of dragon kind in service of the Queen of Dragons.

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