It's almost as if the original authors and designers were just using tropes to tell a particular kind of genre story and weren't over concerned with realism or even verisimilitude.OK so something that bugs me a little bit about the premise of not just this adventure but the beginning of the War of the Lance in general is that, despite international trade continuing as normal in places like Kalaman, the existence of the Dragon Armies and their conquest of eastern Ansalon is still mere rumor.
Shouldn’t there either be merchants (and maybe even refugees) bringing tales of the Dragon Armies and their conquests? Or perhaps there are suddenly no more merchants or travelers from the east – but no one seems to wonder why.
It’s just always struck me as somewhat unbelievable that the Dragon Armies are essentially able to take all of western Ansalon by surprise – especially when you consider how small Ansalon is.
Many of us have very fond memories of Dragonlance because of when it came out [or when we discovered it. And it was very popular. But neither of those facts should be confused with the idea that it actually good in a literary sense. It wasn't. It's a pastiche of Tolkien through a D&D and Mormon lens and relies heavily on cliche. I loved it but we shouldn't ask too much of it.