Dragonlance, do you like it?

[the Jester]

DL gave me a bad taste in my mouth back in the 80s that still hasn't gone away.

Hop aboard the dragon railroad!!

 

[Turjan]

I would humbly suggest that this is not at all the case. At least, no more is it the case than any Forgotten Realms multiple-part trilogy makes the Realms impossible to play in.

This seems to be subject to personal view. I have no problems with completely ignoring the metaplot of the Forgotten Realms; I always find a part of the world that's worth playing in. With Dragonlance, it's different: Here the metaplot kills the setting for me *shrug*.

 

[thol]

I used to LOVE Dragonlance. I bought the old AD&D hardcover as soon as it came out. I had read every single book in the series up until Dragons of Summer Flame. When I finished that book, I swore I'd never read another Dragonlance book again. And I haven't. I was done with that setting when they ruined it with the collection of paper they called literature that was DoSF. I felt like they half-assed some kind of conclusion to their story because they couldn't be bothered to come up with something more interesting.

As much as I am curious to check out the new d20 Dragonlance book, I can't bring myself to invest any more of myself into a setting that was ruined by the very authors who created it. I miss the setting and the characters from the War of the Lance era and all those who spun from that, but I can never go back.

 

[Voadam]

I'm tempted to convert and run the TSR 25th anniversary compilation module that had the whole run of modules. I've got a bunch of old DL stuff, the 3.5 CS and age of mortals but don't think I'll get much more 3.5 stuff unless it comes out on non-drm pdf for a decent price.

 

[Dragonhelm]

3. To play devil's advocate regarding some of the previous comments in the thread, there is an advantage to the way the world has changed so much - bearing in mind the potential for time travel in DL, it means I can take my group anywhere in the history of the DL world for very different types of adventure.

I often refer to Dragonlance as a "setting of settings". Though it is one setting, there's a different feel depending on the era you play in (i.e. Cataclysm, War of the Lance, Chaos War, War of Souls and beyond, etc.). Plus it has the advantage of having two playable continents to play in, each with a different feel.

I compare the era thing with Star Wars, which has several playable periods such as Tales of the Jedi, Old Republic, Rebellion, New Republic, and New Jedi Order eras.

Having different feels can offer so much. I've played Dragonlance for years, and I'm finding more new and interesting things in the post-War of Souls climate. Four types of magic is a neat dynamic, and the current state of affair with the gods is something different indeed.

 

[M.L. Martin]

Be like me and my group and play from the Fourth Age to a different direction so we don't have to deal with the event when the gods went away (the Fifth Age "SAGA" cra- , err, thingie).

You misunderstand. It's the Fifth Age and SAGA that brought me back to DL after I burned out on the novels in 1991. It's the way they took the setting for 3.5E, combined with other baggage, that I'm not interested in. No offense to the design team--it's just a different direction than I care for.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

It depends on what you mean by Dragonlance. I have little interest in Ansalon, but I like Taladas a lot. Has there been any news on an update to Time of the Dragon?

 

[Dragonhelm]

It depends on what you mean by Dragonlance. I have little interest in Ansalon, but I like Taladas a lot. Has there been any news on an update to Time of the Dragon?

Yes there is, though it has been on the novel side of things. Chris Pierson is currently writing the Taladas Trilogy. Book one is Blades of the Tiger. I've not read it yet myself, though I've heard good things about it. Chris Pierson is one of Dragonlance's best writers anyway.

Presumably, a new d20 book on Taladas may come out when the trilogy is complete, though that will be a couple of years down the line.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I would humbly suggest that this is not at all the case. At least, no more is it the case than any Forgotten Realms multiple-part trilogy makes the Realms impossible to play in.

As much as Forgotten Realms has a serious problem with major NPCs, what it generally does not have a problem with is metaplot. Faerûn is a huge continent and the huge crises that the huge NPCs are dealing with still leave you plenty of room for your own campaign. (Though, once your PCs start dealing with big problems, you do start to wonder where Elminster and Drizzt are hiding.)

In Dragonlance, not only are the PCs overshadowed by the main NPCs of a game-- which is a crtical problem in any RPG setting-- there's simply no room to deal with other problems. The events of the metaplot-of-the-moment dominate the entire planet; characters not involved with it are utterly insignificant, and PCs involved with it are forced to take a backseat role to the NPC stars of the setting.

To play otherwise is to make massive changes to the setting's canon, moreso than in other D&D settings-- even moreso than Forgotten Realms, which also has serious (though less fatal) metaplot problems.

 

[DragonLancer]

As a playable world... it isn't. Not only is the metaplot inescapable, it's too thick for the PCs to meaningfully affect.

What people seem to be forgetting or ignoring is that the events of the novels are the adventures and stories of the characters in those books. Just because the companions were the characters in the original trilogy that doesn't mean that your characters can't play just as an important role in the setting. The same goes for the metaplot in general.

When Qualinesti fell during the War of Souls was it so dominant that it had an affect on your characters on Mithas? Did the main characters actions prevent yours from performing just as important and relevant actions? No. Theres more to Dragonlance than standing in the shadows of the companions.

There's no real continuity of sourcebooks, because of how drastically the setting changes every couple of years-- for comparison, the Forgotten Realms has had a number of major plot events that changed the campaign world, but none of those completely reshaped the world's cosmology or stripped (semi-permanently) the abilities of the player characters.

Sadly I have to agreed a little here. I was turned off the setting when the Chaos War happened, and its taken me this long to really come back to the setting. It really was a case of too much too soon, and TSR jumped the shark here IMO.

Now that doesn't mean that DM's can't choose to play when they want to. My campaigns are always set following the WotL and the Blue Lady's War, because I think thats the most interesting time for me.

There's also the Tinker Gnomes and Kender-- either of which could have been a fine player race and a good plot element, if the racial stereotypes weren't turned up to 11. If the Gnomes were relatively compotent and the Kender didn't actually have to roll to resist blatant stupidity... Later mechanics have spared the small races the worst of these blunders, but they are still part of the idea of the race-- whether in the minds of players who insist on using these horrors or in the minds of DMs who try to enforce the stereotypes.

I don't think you are quite understanding the role that kender, gully dwarves and tinker gnomes have in DL. Dragonlance can be quite the dark setting, just read through the chronicles and see for yourself. These races are there to help provide hope and to lift people from the darkness. Sure, I accept that to some the humour factor is too much and theres nothing I can say to change that view, but I do suggest that you look at what those races were there for before hating them so much.

Not to mention that some players really can't play a Kender right.