Dragonlance Dragonlance Creators Reveal Why There Are No Orcs On Krynn

Talking to the Dragonlance Nexus, Dragonlance creators Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman revealed why the world of Krynn features no orcs -- in short, because they didn't want to copy Tolkien, and orcs were very much a 'Middle Earth' thing.

Weis told Trampas Whiteman that "Orcs were also viewed as very Middle Earth. We wanted something different." Hickman added that it was draconians which made Krynn stand out. Read more at the link below!

Why are there no Orcs in Krynn? Weis and Hickman give us the answer! – Dragonlance Nexus

dragonlancenexus.com

 

[Vaalingrade]

maybe no one is evangelizing about DL in a DL focused thread, as they expect you to already be familiar with it

A DL focused thread about the new product coming out after the last official game product on being put out a generation ago.

 

[Kai Lord]

I'm not saying the Towers of High Sorcery have to go. I'm saying I want options for people who don't buy into the High Sorcery mindset beyond just rolling up a new character after the magical hit squad shows up.

If the player wants to play a renegade wizard but neither the player nor the DM is interested in having a magical hit squad show up then why not just come up with an in-game reason that the hit squad doesn't show up? I'm surprised that there seems to be this aversion to putting any effort at all into coming up with a fun and creative solution to something that would normally go against the setting's tropes or lore as if there aren't many alternatives to simply abolishing the lore altogether.

Maybe the Conclaves just have bigger fish to fry than the one player's lone renegade, maybe the PC has some sort of leverage over the Conclave (or a high ranking member) or some previous act allowed for a rare and unique truce of sorts, who knows. But these are all the same questions that would have to be answered in one form or another if a player wanted to have a goblin or draconian character that wanted to openly adventure in Ansalon.

 

[mamba]

I'd love for the towers of high sorcerer to be wizard only, and even have dominion over heathen wizards. But I want there to be the Sect of Serious Sorcerers, the Bevy of Bards and the Wagon of Warlocks to govern those classes. Those names are not set in stone by the way. I'm open to the idea that they can be improved upon.

what do you do with renegade sorcerers and warlocks? the threat they pose is no different, so having them all be part of the towers does make sense

 

[mamba]

A DL focused thread about the new product coming out after the last official game product on being put out a generation ago.

are you under the impression that people in this thread are not familiar with DL?

How many people here do you think learned from you / never heard before that DL minotaurs are seafaring?

 

[Velderan]

Also, those minotaurs they keep mentioning as replacements for orcs? They're sailors and pirates. How is that something not getting mentioned in this five-thread running battle? Pirate. Minotaurs. We could have been talking about that that last three months instead of excluding player species and facial hair that went out of fashion before I was born (and I am old).

I do wish they would have played that up more throughout DL's existence, because the way they portray minotaur as these honor-bound seafaring people who follow the evil gods but somehow aren't used for cannon-fodder made them incredibly interesting to me when I first read about the setting. My teenage gaming group started a campaign where we all played as minotaur on Krynn and it was a lot of fun and felt fresh.

I seem to recall minotaur being more a thing on Taladas, which I don't think ever had novels supporting it so it didn't build the fanbase. I may need to mine my 2E Taladas campaign setting for some future campaign ideas.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I seem to recall minotaur being more a thing on Taladas, which I don't think ever had novels supporting it so it didn't build the fanbase. I may need to mine my 2E Taladas campaign setting for some future campaign ideas.

Yeah, the Minotaurs of Taladas are pretty sweet.

 

[Vaalingrade]

are you under the impression that people in this thread are not familiar with DL?

I think people interested in the new upcoming thing likely tried to read this thread at some point before being turned off by it.

Also also some people are too familiar and protective.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I do wish they would have played that up more throughout DL's existence, because the way they portray minotaur as these honor-bound seafaring people who follow the evil gods but somehow aren't used for cannon-fodder made them incredibly interesting to me when I first read about the setting. My teenage gaming group started a campaign where we all played as minotaur on Krynn and it was a lot of fun and felt fresh.

I seem to recall minotaur being more a thing on Taladas, which I don't think ever had novels supporting it so it didn't build the fanbase. I may need to mine my 2E Taladas campaign setting for some future campaign ideas.

Between reading early DL materials on them and MtG's Hurloon and Tarluum minotaurs (particularly the ones featured in the novel Ashes of the Sun and Weatherlight's Tanhngarth), I fell in love with minos and made sure they were in my setting (ironically, my minos are the descendants of the nearly extincted orcs) and got real mad upon seeing the 'core' Apetaur in the 3e books.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Agreed, I think the classes are far more important than races. Personally, WotC's approach to Mages of High Sorcery makes a bit more sense to me in supporting lore since I felt there were some inconsistencies in how magic was handled. Wizards are expected to test and be found worthy of learning higher level magic, but those same rules never applied to bards in earlier editions which could gain access to magic greater than a wizard has at the level they're expected to test (3rd iirc). Giving a bard the option of taking the Feats allows them the chance to be treated similarly from a lore perspective.

I actually don't know how bards were handled in 2e and 3e DL. And in 1e they were such a weird corner case that they would have to be dealt with on an individual basis. Have to look that up...

 

[Micah Sweet]

I do wish they would have played that up more throughout DL's existence, because the way they portray minotaur as these honor-bound seafaring people who follow the evil gods but somehow aren't used for cannon-fodder made them incredibly interesting to me when I first read about the setting. My teenage gaming group started a campaign where we all played as minotaur on Krynn and it was a lot of fun and felt fresh.

I seem to recall minotaur being more a thing on Taladas, which I don't think ever had novels supporting it so it didn't build the fanbase. I may need to mine my 2E Taladas campaign setting for some future campaign ideas.

Krynn minotaurs are my jam! Favorite race in Dragonlance, bar none.