My deluxe edition of #Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen has escaped from the maw of shipping!
I have not done much more than flip through it at this point, but let's take a quick peek.
Back of the Deluxe Edition lays out what you've got here:
- The campaign book.
- The board game.
- The DM screen.
I do wish that the Deluxe Edition box was functional.
(It would be nice, for example, to pack everything up if I were taking it to a friend's house or game store.)
But with this tab design, it is not.
Also, the box is made out of tissue paper.
I actually made an effort to gentle separate the tab, but the force still somehow managed to rip the back corner of the box?
C'est la vie.
Inside the box we can see the good stuff securely packed away.
Great design on the cardboard insert. Keeps everything tight & protected, even when the box is wandering around the upper Midwest.
(Might be the only 5E book I've had mailed that didn't end up with a dinged corner.)
Early promo images had suggested the deluxe edition would have a copy of the regular edition cover. But it turns out the deluxe edition has its own, unique cover with a metallic treatment.
Full spread, featuring the full DM screen.
Great spread on the DM screen. Would be more than happy to have this setting tone for the table.
Interior of the screen.
Left side has your core D&D references.
I like seeing the skill list.
And organized alphabetically, rather than split up by ability score.
This was a debate we recently had while designing the Planegea GM screen. Utility of being able to glance at skill list for rulings is essential; and I'm a big fan of the variant rule for flexibly pairing of a skill to the most appropriate ability score.
I wish Conditions didn't chew up a full panel. It's incredibly useful to have that info on the screen, but it's something we actually ended up dropping from the Planegea screen because of what we would have to give up in other utility.
The other half of the screen has the campaign-specific stuff.
Pay particular attention to the visual reference for the many different flavors of draconians. I love this, because I know from experience that keeping them all straight can be tough for a new #Dragonlance DM.
I actually think setting-specific and campaign-specific reference on a GM screen is great, but often overlooked because commercial screens usually go for system-generic.
I don't always agree with what WotC chooses to put on there...
The post is, IMO, deceptive in countless ways, for example by claiming that my descriptions of private messaging in the spring of 2023 is actually describing a public comment on a deleted blog post from 2018.
Remove the script and the formality of the stage and... well...
I'm not even saying "it's because people will get concerned." I'm saying human emotion is complicated and personal comfort with emotion, particularly in Puritanical America, is varied.
A lot is made of chapter order (start by creating a pantheon of gods!). That's easy to point to, but is really only representative of the more fundamental problem:
The designers didn't have a clear vision for the structure of play.
So there's a bunch of stuff, but very little of it is actually connected to any clear function. It seems mostly sourced from other D&D books and a vague sense that this is "cool" or "should be there."
Which makes it tough for the reader to come to grips with it.
It's like a hoarder's garage. If you dig through it, you're occasionally like, "Holy crap! There's a 3D printer in here!"
The print head is missing and you'll need to track down some filament before you can use it, but... 3D printer! Wow!
Attempting to de-authorize the OGL is simply unacceptable. I will not purchase anything from Hasbro if you persist in this extra-legal act of cultural vandalism.