dragon lance setting

[Kai Lord]

I've heard surprisingly little about the setting on these boards since it's been released.

Probably because Amazon STILL WON'T SHIP THE BLOODY THING.



When I get it, I'll review it, and rest assured that from what I've already seen (perusing through it at Barnes & Noble thankyouamazonsomuchforsucking) its awesome. Contrary to what Talinthas says, it has very much everything you need to play, and is a fantastic all around product.

The prestige classes are cool, the races are cool, it has rules for AERIAL COMBAT, and I'll go on...when I can read the rest. If it ever arrives.

 

[talinthas]

hehe. i got your point the first time, kai =)
As for the DLCS, i adore the book. Its seriously the best dragonlance game product ever released. But it does leave one wondering just what the hell to actually do in a campaign. Yeah, the geography section has small hooks here and there, you know as well as i do that small hooks aren't Dragonlance; epic stories are. Age of Mortals helps incredibly in that regard.

That said, Until I got AoM, the DLCS was totally enough to run a campaign from scratch based in dragonlance. But you know what they say, if you don't know what you are missing then you'll never miss it =)

 

[Kai Lord]

hehe. i got your point the first time, kai =)
As for the DLCS, i adore the book.

Gah, and here I thought ENWorld had frozen as completely as amazon.com's shipping department. *click click click submitreplysubmitreplysubmitreply*

Anyway fixed that mess, sort of. And while I agree with your enthusiasm for the DLCS, I just think its a misnomer to suggest that you can't run a campaign out of a 288 page sourcebook of regions, PrC's, event timeline, cultures, races, organizations, gods and so on. Its all there.

A longtime DL fan really only needs 3.5e conversions on the races and PrC's. The maps and story hooks we've had for years. But to a DL newbie, I do think the DLCS is chalk full of rules and flavor goodness.

Even if you haven't read a single DL novel, this is the one and only major campaign world where heroes regularly ride dragons into battle. Or get to play as divine sorcerers. With Minotaur legions that are playable as an ECL 0 race.

And even though they traded hobbits for kender, its always been the most "Tolkien" D&D setting in feel, but with a much more diverse playing field.

DL also has a great deal of fairy-tale whimsy, from the light side (dragons who have a tendency to polymorph into human/elven form and fall in love with their riders) to the dark--even including rules for "dying curses" where a dying character can bestow a nasty curse on someone who's wronged him as long as he foregoes the possibility of ever being raised or resurrected. And they list the effects of the curse the (most likely evil) character can choose to bestow before he dies. How wicked cool is that?

DL rocks, the DLCS rocks, and the product line-up looks only to get better. If only amazon would ship the freaking books....

 

[Davelozzi]

Hopefully I'll have time for a longer post later, but right now I'm about to leave for work and I just wanted to jump in and say that I'm loving the DLCS. I haven't been much of a Dragonlance fan in many, many years and really just picked this book up for the nostalgia value but now I'm actually considering a campaign.

Yeah, I'm pretty pleased with it, although I do agree that the lack of a fold-out map is a foul.

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

That's my real beef with the book, it seems to be written w/ an existing DL fan in mind, and it's too high level, delving mostly in theories and perceptions instead of nuts and bolts of what the DL world is like from an inhabitants view.The FRCS on the other hand , was brilliant at both giving the high level overview and the nuts and bolts of how your PC would see Faerun through his/her eyes and also was full of hooks, plot ideas and concrete info for the DM on how to run a FR game.

Just a quibble: I only knew the FR from the Baldur's Gate CRPG and a few Dragon articles. There is a lot in the FRCS that I was left feeling rather lost. The example I always give is Cormyr and Sembia, two major countries that seem to have nothing to do with each other. From this forum I know that isn't correct, but that's all. The FRCS organization is awful for a Realms-newbie, I have to know where a country is before I look it up? What gives?

Again, just my own view.

 

[Stormprince]

I don't know if DL is old enough to have it's fans qualified as grognards!

Next year, DL turns 20.

I think it's borderline

Christopher

 

[Planesdragon]

What Might have been...

It is a remarkably slim book at its price. I, for one, would have liked to see a more complete book without shelling out another $40 for Age of Mortals to get the information that should have been put into the Campaign Setting book.

Ugh. I think you just put the final nail in the "will I buy it?" question.

The DLCS is mostly fluff. On the quote unquote crunchy stuff it leaves alot to be desired. For example, the Irda. Probably my all time favorite pc race. It is now a castrated version of the gnome instead of the magic using powerhouses that they are. To become a Knight of the Rose, which is the highest rank in the Solamnic Knighthood, you have to have a total of 4 classes to reach that lofty pinnacle. There is no section on magic items unique to Krynn, and the biggest kick in the gut was making Wyrmslayer and Wyrmsbane longswords. LONGSWORDS! In the novels and 1st edition they were two-handed swords.

Again, ugh. The 4 classes to be a Knight of the Rose actually makes a whole bunch of sense--Fighter/Crown/Sword/Rose is just how it was in 1e, 2e, and exactly the setup that made PrCs scream "DRAGONLANCE!" to me three years ago.

The biggest thing is Wizards of High Sorcery. Even over on Wizards DL boards the fanboy admit that Raistlin doesn't fit within the framework of the new rules. Excuses are made as to his specialness and he doesn't abide by rules. Well, it just seems like poor game design to me.

Two years ago I was on the "WhiteStone Council", back when they still claimed to be "of the fans" and DL was a dead setting. At that time, I proposed no less than two complete systems to explain Raistlin's "specialness"--and when the ELH and Deities & Demigods came out, there were even more ways to stat him out.

Back in AD&D it was true that what made good fiction couldn't necessarily be expressed using the rules--but with d20 and 3e, that really isn't the case, and it's simply lazy design to be this way.

I had hoped that the 3e DL book would be of a sufficient quality to really play in the game--at least as good as DLA or even Tales of the Lance. Instead, appearantly, it's just more par for the course.

*sigh* And I used to really like Dragonlance, even through 5th Age...

 

[Stormprince]

Okay, first... mostly "fluff"?!?!

More than 10 PC races, including the Baaz & Kapak draconian.

2 new Core Classes, the Mystic & the Noble.

12 new PrCs.

9 pages of spells + rules on moon magic

A new section on roleplaying awards.

11 monsters.

Complete rules on Aerial Combat.

14+ magic items.

Only 5 NPCs

The Curse of the Magi, Ice Reavers, Dark Elves, Mad Gnomes, Taunt & Bluff skills, dying curses, dragonlances...

288 pages at about 850+ words per page (not counting the artwork)...

Yeah, there are a few things that didn't make it into the book that should have: a pull-out map for one, more racial weapons... and trust me, I'm disappointed that my Gnomish Invention Creation rules didn't make the cut, but this book is hardly "fluffy."

The DLCS was a gamble. People were either going to love it, or because it didn't fit their own expectations of what Dragonlance should have been, they're going to hate it.

In the end, we at Sovereign Press are very proud of what we've accomplished thus far, and with each product we put out, we're making sure that we're taking things further with each step.

As for Raistlin, well... you'll find out all about him later on, but his time is passed and it's a time for different heroes (and villains) to shine. We're trying to take the focus away from the old complaints that "Dragonlance is stagnant because all we ever see are the old Heroes of the Lance."

Of course, your mileage may vary.

Christopher

 

[Tsyr]

Yeah, there are a few things that didn't make it into the book that should have: a pull-out map for one, more racial weapons... and trust me, I'm disappointed that my Gnomish Invention Creation rules didn't make the cut, but this book is hardly "fluffy."

So when do we get to see those?

Those, and a lack of a handling table (Unless I missed that one) were a couple of big gripes I had with the book... Granted, I can just use the handling table in the DL: Adventures hardcover, but...

 

[Desdichado]

How does the DL noble compare to the SS noble. Or the Star Wars noble, for that matter?