Dragonlance Dragonlance Lives

[DMZ2112]

Seems like feats would be a great way to implement that. Subclass would be Knight of the Crown, and then you build feats whose prerequisite is the previous rank.

I totally agree; I started a thread about this ages ago... here. But it seems like this is not the direction in which Wizards is moving.

 

[bogmad]

I totally agree; I started a thread about this ages ago... here. But it seems like this is not the direction in which Wizards is moving.

Yeah. I think it works pretty well. The only disadvantage I can see now is that it's harder to give those ranks or prestige classes as story awards if the timing doesn't fit with when you're hitting a level with an ability increase/feat.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I know subclasses are the new hotness, but really, this sounds like a job explicitly for Prestige Classes and the multiclassing rules. If you meet certain prerequisites at level 3, you can be a Knight of X, at level 6, you can be a Knight of Y, at level 9, a Knight of Z (or whatever) just by taking levels in the thing. If you don't meet the prerequisites (if your Crown doesn't automatically go to Sword or whatever), you just don't get to take levels in the class.

It should be noted that I don't know much about DL, but I'm into a potential return. I'm a setting whore, first and foremost.

Planescape...man. I've done my own versions of PS for 3e and for 4e and it's inevitable that I'm going to do one for 5e (in fact, there's a high chance it'll be my first real 5e campaign, as it was one of my first 4e campaigns -- I've got a plot patterned after the Great Chicago Fire, but set in Sigil, that I've been eager to use!). Not gonna derail this thread too much, but I've got idears....

 

[vagabundo]

I never really got Dragonlance. They somehow managed to make riding around on dragons not cool.

Still I'm open to the idea. I'd certainly give it another look-see.

 

[Francisco Grillo]

I hipe this is true I Will gladly get into 5th for Dragonlance!

 

[Tyranthraxus]

TBH Im more of a Dark Sun / Ravenloft fan myself, however it would be nice to see Dragonlance come back but Im more concerned with how strange the story got in later incarnations. The War of the Lance was probably the golden age for the setting in terms of stories to be told , foes to identify and heroes to play. If they do redo Dragonlance Id like to see a time reset to that point... kinda akin to what the 4e Dark sun did by ignoring the Prism Pentad series.

Someone posted on the first page of this thread that if people wanted to play in the past of Dragonlance they could. While that looks good in theory, generally the more work you make for the gm the less likely it might happen. Now if it defaulted to the War of the Lance then you obviously wouldnt have to do all that extra work (npcs would be stat'd and so on), the people wanting to play in the Age of Mortals era would be doing the work etc.

 

[Dragonhelm]

But Dragonlance as a setting... it's better left dead. It's better if the Dragonlance Nexus can just do their own thing with the world now.

The problem is the setting is just as fractured as D&D. You have the fans of the original stuff up until the Summer of Flame/ Chaos War. Then you have the fans of the 5th Age pre-War of Souls. Then you have the people who like the post-War of Souls world. It's all but impossible to make a product that would appeal to all fans of the setting.
The setting has undergone a nuking worse than the Realms experienced twice. There's very little in the setting fans who stopped reading after Legends would even recognise.

You also have divisions in game systems (AD&D vs. SAGA vs. 3.5), plus the Ansalon/Taladas divide. I've made the argument that it's time to have more of a world view so that there's new frontiers. Ansalon is a relatively small continent.

The easiest and likely most successful way to publish the Dragonlance would be a back-to-basics setting, that takes the world back to during or just after the War of the Lance when most people are familiar with the world. Like what they did with Dark Sun for 4e. But for the ardent Dragonlance fans, the War of the Lance has been done to death, so this has little appeal.
Or they could publish a reimagined Dragonlance as an Adventure Path. Recreate and reimagine the modules from the War of the Lance story, tweaking them based on modern game and adventure design to make them the best version of the War possible.

We have debated this topic several times on the Dragonlance forums, and even at that, there is no consensus. Some want to go back to the WotL or post-Legends. Some want to go back to the Chaos War (or just before). Some want a Star Trek style reboot, and still others want the Dark Sun 4e treatment.

What I do know is that any future plans need to involve Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. They even have an idea for how to approach this topic with a new trilogy. They just need WotC to give the go-ahead.

Much like FR, DL seems to have so much baggage, that as a newcomer it makes the setting unappealing once you are exposed to it. Thus why I stuck with OGB FR and ignored nearly everything afterwards. with DL, I feel like I would have to buy a bunch of old stuff and then sift through it all to hopefully find the version I like. Maybe I should just try to score a copy of that old Bestiary and SAGA again(?)

One of the problems DL has is the buy-in. There are roughly 20 novels that you would have to read to get the core story up through the current era. That's roughly an 80-year history.

While I believe that Chronicles and Legends should be the core of DL, I think that there needs to be an easier jumping-on point.

 

[Elf Witch]

I think it would be interesting if they picked one time for the core but then put out supplements for the other major time periods.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I get the sense, from all the mentions throughout the process of D&D Next, that Dragonlance remains on the designers mind for 5th Edition. However, I also get the idea that the reason that it's not on the top of the list for release is that they want to find a proper niche for it. As well-designed as everything in the 3.5 MWP material was, I felt that much of it could have been any faux-medieval world rather than Krynn.

Good point, and one I would like to address.

Back in the day, Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and the Forgotten Realms were referred to as the Big Three. Even in Spelljammer, we saw how their crystal spheres were a major triad in the setting. There were the Wizards Three in Dragon Magazine, one wizard from each of these settings. Likewise, many classic D&D games were in the world of Mystara, which shares many themes with the Realms.

The problem is that Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Mystara, and the Forgotten Realms fill a similar niche. The Forgotten Realms have the luxury of being the most widespread and popular of all these settings, ergo why it is on top.

Greyhawk is mainly known for its dungeons, and quite honestly, those can be placed in any number of worlds. We saw some of that with the Nentir Vale. Heck, the Nentir Vale could be added to any number of settings. While I think Greyhawk will always hold a soft nostalgic spot on many gamers' hearts, I don't see what niche it has to offer.

Dragonlance as a game world has similar issues. Many of its themes are transportable. The Knights of Solamnia? You can obtain the same themes from the Purple Dragon Knights of Cormyr. Wizards of High Sorcery have seen a generic version in the Mage of the Arcane Order. Kender were borrowed from for the 3e halfling. Tinker gnomes seem to have emigrated to other settings.

What does Dragonlance have?

Dragonlance has story. While it did okay as a gaming world, its success has always been as a novel world. Dragonlance's golden age of gamng was when the games followed the novels. When WotC decided that novels must follow games in 4e, it was the death of DL.

To Wizards of the Coast, I submit that Dungeons & Dragons is more than about games. It is also about story. Not every product has to be game-driven. Dragonlance has a rich history of storytelling, and is at its best when about a group of heroes who are more than mere companions; they are family. A Dragonlance novel line is a viable product.

As for Dragonlance as a gaming property...as much as I would love to see a DL game line again, I have another plan that I think is more viable. Make Dragonlance the story-driven adventure path setting. Take a page from Paizo, and have story-based modules with world info as other chapters.

Dragonlance can live again. There is a formula for success. WotC has but to take the first step.