What's so special about Dragonlance?

[Hammerhead]

The Kingpriest? Too much good? Didn't he run some kind of theocratic police state that disappeared its dissidents? And didn't the supposedly good gods murder thousands of people directly (and more indirectly) just because one guy annoyed them? That's an interesting definition of moral behavior.

Me, I've never really seen the need for the world to be a place of murder, robbery, rape, and cruelty. Dragonlance characters, according to their 'Balance of Alignments' theory, see these as necessary, as long as it's not in their backyards.

 

[Victim]

The Kingpriest was only Good according to his PR people. Hence, I also see the "Balance of Alignments" as being founded on BS.

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

The Kingpriest of Istar was actually tested by the gods IIRC (as were other characters in Dragonlance). That's one thing I didn't like about the setting, the gods test the mortals, some of course fail (e.g. Kingpriest, Lord Soth), their failures lead to the Cataclysm, and the gods just leave them with all that mess (which is, of course, just another test).

What I liked most about the setting was the second continent of Taladas. The gnomes there were really badass, building metal ships to fight a war against fire elementals on a sea of lava. Not your typical "1+1=3" tinker gnomes. Also savage jungle elves, degenerate mind flayers, a minotaur-ruled league, proto-draconians, and humans sailing on plains of glass. Taladas had a dark, gritty feel, quite similar to the PoL concept in many places.

E) Elmores pr0n: making us look at the legs and not at the dragons since the 1980s.

 

[Aries_Omega]

My only complaint about the modules and setting was that you played the main heroes and thusly were railroaded. I am of the opinion that there are other things going on during the War that player characters can be doing. No war hinges on a small group of scrappy adventurers. Maybe several groups...but not one.

 

[Cam Banks]

My only complaint about the modules and setting was that you played the main heroes and thusly were railroaded. I am of the opinion that there are other things going on during the War that player characters can be doing. No war hinges on a small group of scrappy adventurers. Maybe several groups...but not one.

You were not required to play the pregens in the original modules, but it was part of the approach they decided to take in the Dragonlance project that the players would feel they had some part to play in the greater story. The modules had moments of story constraint, but the railroading is nowhere near as prominent as people remember. There's as much if not more of it in 3e modules and adventures, including the Paizo adventure paths.

When we revised the original modules for 3.5, we made sure to keep the idea of archetypes and roles, but made sure it was possible to make up your own party of characters. The adventures don't need you to have Raistlin, but they do need a Sage, for example. This worked out pretty well, I think.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Ariosto]

I am no fan of the Hickman Railroad, but that's no warrant to knock the setting. The original modules feature some pretty splendid locales and NPCs, and the wider world has plenty of distinctive flavor.

The grim situation of a continent reeling from cataclysm, plunged into war, and deprived even of its gods was certainly striking: a milieu in which iron was truly more precious than gold!

 

[mach1.9pants]

Well I don't consider the modules a railroad. They were there to allow people to play the books, if you wanted a normal adventure then you shouldn't buy the DL1-9(?can't remember, I have them in my shelf somewhere). If you are railroaded in a module which is not based on a very famous and popular series, then complain. But the DL series was not a railroad.... they were just pretty poor modules

 

[Weregrognard]

I agree that the original modules weren't as "railroady" as people believe. I recall the first module starts sandbox style. You get to run into different encounters around the area pretty much at your leisure before running into the main plot.

I suspect DMs trying to stick to the novels were partially responsible for this perception.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

For me, the really unique thing about Dragonlance was how they took alignment and made it an important, even central aspect of the whole setting.

The wizards of High Sorcery are divided by alignment, yet all united; the gods form three pantheons based on their location on the good-neutrality-evil axis; the whole struggle between Paladine and Takhisis, and the Ansalon-spanning wars that ensued; elves, humans and ogres as the original good, neutral and evil races; and perhaps most impressively, the good vs. evil dragons!

 

[Chris Knapp]

they were just pretty poor modules

How so? I think they hold up very well today. Even if you remove the "Dragonlance" trappings, for the most part, they were good modules. Sure there were some holes and a few unbalanced encounters. but they had great environments, interesting things to meet & kill, and lots of opportunity to roleplay.