Dragonlance & Icons
So we'll be getting new Dragonlance material through D&D Icons with Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman helping the design team with it.
I think the biggest thing that should be addressed is what Race/Class stuff is available.
This isn't the 80s anymore, and D&D has changed a lot. Not just mechanics and how the math plays out, but player & DM expectations, how the stories are told, how sessions are handled, and the overall vibe is mostly unrecognizable from even 20 years ago, let alone 40.
Krynn hasn't ever been what I call a "Kitchen-Sink" setting, like how the Forgotten Realms has everything thrown in (including the kitchen sink), and I think that's one of its strengths. It helps Dragonlance stand out from other settings.
Also, you can build a stronger character with restrictions on what you're allowed to make than if you just rely on, "I'm a tiefling so I'm special," to write your background for you because it makes you really think about who your character is and why they are at the place they are when the campaign starts.
(obviously, there are people who will disagree with that idea, but ‘the setting should change so I can play whatever character I want to play’ is not an argument I take especially seriously)
That's why I feel like restricting the playable Races is a good idea.
However, when it comes to the Classes, I feel like it's a different story.
I feel like the new material should tweak the Classes slightly to allow them to be played in the setting, instead of cutting out huge sections of the Player's Handbook. Warlocks and Paladins come to mind first.
Warlocks can flavor any of the Towers of High Sorcery as their Patron, and for me that's probably the best (or at least easiest) way to go about it. I'd like to see a Dragon or maybe even Death Knight Patron be part of the new setting material. Any kind of SubClass that could help the Class fit the setting is a good idea.
Paladins, however, famously DID exist as a Class during Dragonlance's heyday, and did NOT exist in the setting until fairly relatively recently (I think there was an Ergothian Paladin in one of the last novels I read; might've been War of Souls, but might've been another one?). Unfortunately, the biggest and best-known part of Krynn's history (and seemingly the period Wizards wants to focus on) is the War of the Lance. I'm happy with that, but it leaves Paladins out in the cold. However, a lot of the earlier Knight of Solamnia Class stuff from 2nd and even 3rd Editions had Knights of the Sword and Rose casting spells, and using abilities that were similar to Paladin abilities. I think this is one place where the setting can bend.
The Knights of Solamnia probably deserve special attention anyway, not just because they're my favorite part of Dragonlance, but because the last Dragonlance supplement confused the progression between the three Orders. You can't just join whichever Order you want when you graduate from being a Squire. You've got to start with the Order of the Crown, then if you want to and can complete the requirements you can advance into the Order of the Sword, and then finally if you can complete the requirements and if you so desire you can advance to the Order of the Rose.
Crown -> Sword -> Rose, in that order. There are exceptions, like when Tanis was given honorary membership in the Order of the Rose, but I wouldn't use them as any sort of basis for mechanics.
Also importantly, as I mentioned earlier, the Orders of the Sword and Rose both have minor spellcasting and abilities that seem Paladin-like in nature. Because the Order of the Crown doesn't have spellcasting, that presents a slight problem because unless your character wants to multiclass you'll be stuck as a Knight of the Crown for your entire career (assuming you want to be as lore-accurate as possible).
So how does this get resolved?
Feats are one option. Require Feats that take you into the different Orders, and give Sword & Rose Feats minor supernatural abilities that resemble what they're supposed to be able to do in the lore, like healing or detecting evil.
You could require a character that's starting as a Paladin to say they're a very young example of a Knight of the Sword.
You could say that when your single-Class Fighter moves up to become a Knight of the Sword they don't get the supernatural abilities normally associated with that promotion for whatever reason.
You could ignore it completely, which is fine by me since we aren't playing at the same table.
Whatever they do, I just hope they don't ignore the progression from Crown, to Sword, to Rose. Even if you start as a level 1 Knight of the Rose, that's fine as long as your character's backstory reflects the traditional progression. There are actual requirements explained in the novels (not just in the game books), and letting the players go on the quests, or keep track of their adventures so they can check to make sure they meet the requirements, can be very rewarding for fans of this part of Dragonlance.
(just to head off a particular argument, this progression IS NOT an artifact of older-edition game mechanics influencing the lore; the progression was established by Tracy Hickman as part of the lore two years before it became a game mechanic)
The Orders of High Sorcery can just be Feats. At most, one for Initiate, then one each for White/Red/Black robes, and honestly you can ignore the Initiate Feat. This organization doesn't have progression like the Knights of Solamnia do, even though there is that Test of High Sorcery, but you can just have it happen off-screen like they assumed the Knights of Solamnia progression would happen in the last supplement.
Sorry for the wall of text, I've just had a bunch of thoughts bouncing around in my head for a while now, and I'm hoping the new supplement is going to be well-thought-out, but worried that it'll make some of the same mistakes (repeated or otherwise) as SotDQ did.
