New Dragonlance board game was designed by Rob Daviau and Stephen Baker

The new Dungeons & Dragons “battle game” announced on Thursday during D&D Direct is a full-fledged board game, says Wizards of the Coast, and will include plastic miniatures. It is called Dragonlance: Warriors at KrynnYou can use the board game as a stand-alone experience. It is fully integrated with the tabletop RPG campaign, Titled Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. Who are the designers for this project? Rob Daviau, Stephen Baker. I can’t imagine a better pair to team up on this project.

A reboot of Spelljammer was announced Thursday. Wizards said that the new Dragonlance products will be very different.

“We zero in on this notion that Dragonlance is a war story,” said Ray Winninger, head of D&D at Wizards. “Classic Dragonlance is set against the backdrop of this massive conflict, and these sort of massive military battles are an important part of Dragonlance. A module from the 12 original Dragonlance Dragonlance units [published by TSR]Wargame [called Dragons of Glory]. They asked you to stop your role-playing game experience and start playing a wargame for a bit.”

Winninger continued:

We are also releasing it in the spirit of this. Shadow of the Dragon QueenThis battle game is part of the Role-Playing Experience. [It]You can play in massive military conflicts on the planet of Krynn. One of its most interesting features is the fact that there are many narrative elements. It’s almost like a role playing game. It’s a board game, but you’re asked to narrate what’s happening and whatnot. If you choose, while you’re playing the role-playing campaign when major sort of battles break out in the story you can break out the board game and start playing the board game. You can import your characters from the RPG into the boardgame. Your characters can be played in the board game. You will learn amazing, remarkable, heroic actions they perform in battles. This experience is completely optional.

Winninger is completely optional when playing tabletop RPG. The campaign book will contain rules that will help you resolve the battles. The board game can be picked up by players without them having to go into the bigger role-playing world. This is the first time Wizards has integrated its 5th Edition TTRPG products with its board games in such a unique way.

Baker and Daviau are the ideal designers to this project. They both have extensive experience with wargaming. For example, they share great design credits for the Risk franchise. Baker is, however, the design behind Risk franchise. Battle MastersA sprawling tabletop battlegame that uses 28 mm miniatures, and large-sized plastic playmats. Daviau is, of course, the inventor of the Legacy System. This system creates new board games every time they are played.

Daviau was also the co-founder of Restoration Games. Restoration Games specializes is resurrecting old games and giving them new life. Daviau will be returning to original sources to preserve as much TSR-related design work as possible.

But why didn’t Hasbro just task its hobby board games division, Avalon Hill, with that project?

“Avalon Hill was in-house with Wizards of the Coast […] until very recently,” said Winninger. The studio created its own production and design team, independent of Wizards. This team is busy with the rejuvenation of HeroQuestto live, as well as on a spiritual follower to the original Risk Legacy. Wizards were in dire need of outside assistance.

“Avalon Hill and Hasbro were not really involved in the creation of the board game,” Winninger continued. “We in the D&D studio oversaw the creation of it, but that said the designers of the board game Rob Daviau and Stephen Baker are very well-known board game designers, [they] have worked on a lot of games for Hasbro — most recently, [Return to Dark Tower] was one of their efforts.”

Both Shadow of the Dragon QueenThe Warriors of Krynn board game represent a “whole new story” Winninger said. Both products depict events that take place at the same times as original Dragonlance novels. This beloved series was created by Tracy Hickman (and Margaret Weis). He said that Tracy Hickman (the creators of Dragonlance) and Tracy Hickman’s collaborator Weis weren’t directly involved in the creation of any of these products.

Tracy Hickman, Weis and a new series are releasing a novel each in August. They will be continuing the Dragonlance story into the future.