Here were my goals when I started the campaign:

1. Eliminate the railroads. Give the players free reign to make their own meaningful choices and take the story wherever they want to take it.
2. Make the war feel real.  Based on the initial reviews of the board-game, (And knowing I’d be running the game online), we decided to skip that tie-in, but I wanted to fulfill the adventure’s premise and promise of being the D&D “War Story,” and give the characters the ability to make tactical and strategic decisions. I also wanted to drive home the horrors and costs of war (especially against an enemy with air superiority).
3. Hit the Dragonlance Highlights. For me, that includes the Towers of High Sorcery and the Test, Solamnic Knights, Kender, Tinker Gnomes, the three moons, the Cataclysm, steel pieces, and of course, dragons.

We finished SotDQ in about a year. The group wanted to continue playing their characters,  experience high-level play, and if possible, finish (and win!) the war. I took a few months off to figure out what came next, gather my resources, build out the enemy calendar and ticking clocks and the course of the war should the characters not intervene, then we got back together and set the characters loose upon the world. 

In the second half of the campaign, my goals were:

1. Sandbox play. Open up Krynn even more, and let the characters drive the story.
2. Put the characters in command. If they desired it, I wanted to have the option of letting the characters control some or all of the allied forces, adding a war-game component to the game.
3. Hit more highlights. I expanded the list of Dragonlance-specific highlights to include Dargaard Keep, the Nightmare of Silvanesti, the Blood Sea of Istar, Icereach, the High Clerist’s Tower, Palanthas, the Whitestone Council, Dragonorbs, Thorbardin, the Hammer of Ergoth, the Silver Arm of Ergoth, and finally, Takhisis herself.

It was a lot of work. Hopefully some of that work will help others who want to run SotDQ or continue their campaign beyond that adventure.

About the Far Reach Remix of Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen

Two-and-a-half years ago, my friends from my early-20s (age, not decade) gaming group (a thing that existed over 20 years ago) agreed to get back together and start playing D&D again on Sundays. And the campaign we would be starting? Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. 

Why would we start down a notorious railroad saved only by being a slightly less notorious railroad than the orignal DL adventures? Well, blame our middle-school selves who grew up reading the original Dragonlance Chronicles in a time just before grunge. Big hair was in, Poison rocked the airwaves, and angsty half-elves were cutting-edge fantasy. This was a time before YA novels, 3rd edition, or the internet, so yes, the idea of getting to play through the War of the Lance was too tempting to ignore.

I did what I could to remove the railroads, to give the characters meaningful choices, and to shift the plot into something that seemingly evolved naturally. Looking back, I would have done a few things differently. 

In that vein, we’re starting a series of posts on the Far Reach, which (all credit to Jason Alexander of The Alexandrian for blazing the trail), we’re calling the Far Reach Remix of Shadow of the Dragon Queen (FRR:SotDQ?). The hope is that some of this work may help other DMs who can’t escape the allure of Krynn. As always, your thoughts and feedback are welcome and valued.