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

Dragonhelm gets the scoop from Weis and Hickman on why there are no orcs in Krynn. Read More

dragonlancenexus.com

 

[Vaalingrade]

Because they've decided they like it and want to do it?

That's what I don't get.

What in the seven interlocking hells is so fun about making sure other people don't get to play the character they want.

Especially from the position of someone who has infinite characters of their own they can play.

 

[Faolyn]

I strongly disagree. I don’t think that position bears any relation to how art is made. da Vinci doesn’t have to explain why the Mona Lisa doesn’t have a hat on. She doesn’t have a hat because he didn’t paint her with a hat.

Middle Earth doesn’t have a school of wizardry because Tolkien didn’t put a school of wizardry in it. My novel doesn’t have a robot in it because I didn’t want a robot in it. One doesn’t have to explain the absence of every possible element.

But... neither Middle Earth nor your novel was written specifically for a game system that has a school of wizardry and robots in it.

Since Dragonlance was and is written for D&D, a game system that has orcs in it, "because I said so" isn't really a good enough answer for not having them. It's a pretty standard D&D world. The classes, races (let's face it: kender are just halflings with "burglar" dialed up to 11), monsters, spells--everything is practically the same as Realms or Greyhawk. The main difference, mechanics-wise, is the moon-based magic, and I'm pretty sure that a lot of DMs gave up on tracking the phases pretty quickly. So having this "no orcs" thing is very jarring and nonsensical.

See, with Dark Sun, you can get away with saying "no orcs" because the world is so very different than the standard D&D setting. Everything is different. Different races, different monsters, magic works differently and is secondary to psionics, clerics are themed around elements instead of gods... even chargen for Dark Sun was different back in 2e.

If you wrote a setting for D&D world and said "no orcs," I'd expect there to be a reason for it other than "I don't want to be like Tolkien," and I'd expect that setting to lack most or all of the other Tolkienesque trappings as well.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Adding elves to a campaign that doesn't already include them is far from trivial. You need to establish where the elven populations live geographically, their lore, how they interact politically with the other people, etc.

Why go through that to accommodate a player who clearly isn't very interested in your setting, they just want to play D&D, when you can play with someone else instead?

Why indeed.

Just have the PC elf there. Done.

 

[Minigiant]

Again, what does that have to do with @Remathilis 's desire to have six races, one for each ability score? That wasn't a part of 1st ed, for which the setting was developed, or 5th ed, for which the book under discussion is being released. That's what I was responding to.

Well that's more my desire.

A setting designed for D&D, since it is a ability score and class based game, should have a race associated with each ability score and applicable with each class OR waive ability score or classes requirements/adjustments OR replace any ability or class niche with another.

Yes. They are obviously well aware of that fact.

It feels like they're saying "If you're going to be playing 5e Dragonlance then the race based ASIs won't matter apparently, because they seemingly wont' be a thing."

If you're not going to be playing 5e Dragonlance, or will be modding it to have race based ASIs, then saying so feels like that would address their query? (Edit: Or similarly for saying you're focussing on the worlds original creation way back when and not on anything modern.)

That's wasn't my argument.

Mine was that they designed DL before TCOE so they should have included a race of each ability score or had a Dragonlance special rule where racial adjustments are freely chosen.

When it comes to going for a thematic setting, game-mechanics like attribute-scores should be the least of considerations. Races aren't just a set of modifiers.

That's fine for a book. For a game setting for a specific game meant for mass appeal, the game mechanics shouldn't be ignored.

 

[Kai Lord]

***

 

[Remathilis]

Im always curious at the attitude of ‘I want to be [race X] in [setting where the established lore doesn’t include race X]’, what is going to be able to play that specific race bring to your enjoyment (besides perhaps mechanics, which by itself IMO is a terrible reason to force playing a race), but why do you need to play them in this setting where they’re not specifically?

Tangentially, much earlier in this thread i saw a comment to the effect of ‘why would i want to play a human? im always a human, humans are boring’ but I feel like that’s this same problem from the other side, being or not being a specific race does not make your character interesting, there are tons of franchises that only have humans but those aren’t the least bit uninteresting because it is not your race that makes you interesting.

If you’re a player in a game in a specific setting play that setting, play to what you have, not what you haven’t.

I'd answer that with two follow ups:

1. How often does the DM switch settings from campaign to campaign?
2. How much access do I have to other DMs with different allowance?

Because if you're going to restrict races for a campaign, but switch worlds for the next game, I might be convinced to hold off for a campaign. Or if I know a couple different DMs that I can jump in and play my concept with, then I might be willing to hold off.

But more than likely, a DM is going to run multiple campaigns in the same setting (double so if it's their homebrew) and most players don't have multiple DMs or the time to play in multiple campaigns. So if my idea is for a haregon monk and the DM says "no", it's not "sorry, maybe next time", it's "you're never going to play that ever, unless you quit and find a totally different group of players." Which is where the food analogy comes in: a good sushi place might be better than a mom and pop restaurant, but if there is only one restaurant in town, I'd rather have a mom and pop that has burgers, quesadillas and spaghetti than only eat sushi every day, regardless how good the sushi is.

 

[Remathilis]

Again, what does that have to do with @Remathilis 's desire to have six races, one for each ability score? That wasn't a part of 1st ed, for which the setting was developed, or 5th ed, for which the book under discussion is being released. That's what I was responding to.

I don't have a desire for races to align to ability scores. I just don't want less options than the PHB offers me. So if you take something away, add something new to replace it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well that's more my desire.

A setting designed for D&D, since it is a ability score and class based game, should have a race associated with each ability score and applicable with each class OR waive ability score or classes requirements/adjustments OR replace any ability or class niche with another.


That's wasn't my argument.

Mine was that they designed DL before TCOE so they should have included a race of each ability score or had a Dragonlance special rule where racial adjustments are freely chosen.


That's fine for a book. For a game setting for a specific game meant for mass appeal, the game mechanics shouldn't be ignored.

Since ASIs are no longer associated with races in the current game, for which the upcoming book was written, NO races, in the entire game no matter the setting, are associated with ability scores. That's why I'm confused by your statements. If what you're saying is that you want that not to be true, I sympathize, and encourage you to do what you like at your table, but WotC's version of the game has changed; that's undeniable.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't have a desire for races to align to ability scores. I just don't want less options than the PHB offers me. So if you take something away, add something new to replace it.

I'm all for that. There are plenty of races already in DL that can replace orcs, dragonborn, tieflings, and drow as options. I just don't get the ability score connection.

 

[Faolyn]

Adding elves to a campaign that doesn't already include them is far from trivial. You need to establish where the elven populations live geographically, their lore, how they interact politically with the other people, etc.

Why go through that to accommodate a player who clearly isn't very interested in your setting, they just want to play D&D, when you can play with someone else instead?

Or you can get the elf's player to help out. "You want to play an elf? OK, here's the map, these are the areas that currently have space for a new species. Pick on. OK, now tell me about these elves. Since it's my world, I have veto power if anything is particularly egregious, but go ahead."

If the player then says "nah, that's too much work," then sure, say no elves. "I don't have the time to figure out their culture or how they'd work in my game." But if the player has a cool idea, you can work together to improve the world. In my current homebrew setting, I started out with a short paragraph on each race (the world was intended to help introduce a new guy into the game). Another player, who joined later, went hog-wild and took my few sentences on tieflings and turned them into a pretty cool culture.