Did Dragonlance kill D&D and take its stuff? (And a Question of the Way Forward)

[Mercurius]

D&D is big enough for roaming around and killing stuff or epic save the world adventures like Dragonlance or whatever type of adventure you want to run. But for me Dragonlance add a lot to the game.

Yes, I agree with you here. This was, as I said in the OP, one of my main beefs with JM's article - he didn't seem to want to allow for a diversity approaches to the game; that kind of narrowness is what gives the "grognard" a sometimes negative connotation, sort of like a crotchety old man who is unwilling to embrace change.

So, no, this is too much blame or praise on Weis & Hickman.

You kind of reiterated a point JM made himself; he doesn't see Weis & Hickman, or Dragonlance itself, as the big bad wolf, but a "touchstone" for a shift in trend, and the point where--according to JM--D&D took a downturn that was never reversed.

I very much agree here. OD&D is the core of the game. Opinions are like s, but this is what it is. It was written by Arneson and Gygax. Anything without that as its core is another RPG, corporate name rights be damned.

5E had such intent, but its mired in trying to please fans of other systems, and seems to be more of a redesign.

We shall see. I'm thinking that, as is, it can be what you want it to be - as long as you don't mind when they come in with a 3E-esque and a 4E-esque module, even with the three hardcovers.

This is why I want to see them come out with a separate starter set - to allow for folks who only want the simple core. I still think its a good idea to come out with this first, a commemorative product to the 40th anniversary of the OD&D box set. Then, 1-3 months later, they could release hardcovers that offer different modular options that allow for styles similar to 3E and 4E...but this probably belongs in another thread.

No. Dragonlance was not the beginning of the end.

Well it was, according to JM, the end of "old school" as the mainstream, default mode of D&D. I think he's right in that.

As for the idea that there are no new ideas in gaming; I would suggest that there are very few "new" ideas anywhere. Almost everything has been done or thought of if you study history. The greeks came up with the idea that there are only a limited number of actual plot types, I think it was 32 different plots, and that any story would fall into one of them. The fact that fantasy writers and game developers aren't able to come up with "new" stuff is pretty silly, they are at least as creative as movie writers, which means that they use what is out there as their inspiration.

I think this misses the point. It is not simply about coming up with "new" ideas, but ones that are derived from and influenced by more than just other RPGs, and D&D itself. I'm reminded of something I read somewhere about the problem with the later Star Wars movies. The earlier ones were vital and fresh and mythic because they were source in world mythology, whereas the later movies had a kind of stale, commercial quality because they were primarily influenced by both the other Star Wars movies and other media forms.

The one thing that the article kind of gets correct is that when people that love the game are replaced by people that love money, the game suffers. Where the original TSR guys were replaced by businessmen, I think there can be made an argument that the passion and creativity inherent in the original AD&D was not able to be recreated by the business "formulas" that came later. This had nothing to do with dragonlance though.

Again, I think you're missing some of the subtlety of his argument. He's pointing at Dragonlance because it was "multimedia" in that it was beyond just the RPG - the main money-maker was actually the novels, which drove the franchise, including the RPGs. In other words, decisions about the RPG were made based not only or even primarily on what was good for the RPG line itself, but how it "trickled down" from the novels.

Not sure why this guy chose dragonlance to beat up on. Guess critics are like that, if they can't do something special, they pick on someone that can and did do something special. Dragonlance sales and long lifespan speak for themselves.

This is an uncalled for jab and simply inaccurate. James Maliszewski has some quality RPG design credits to his name; check it out.

Did Dragonlance kill D&D and takes its stuff? It tried, but D&D succeeded at a Stealth check, backstabbed Dragonlance, and buried the body under a stone marked "Saga".

That's pretty good.

For me, Dragonlance breathed new life into a dying fad. It brought the idea that you could do epic storytelling to the game, rather than one-off jaunts to isolated monster-infested treasure vaults.

Sure, it brought some problems to the game - namely railroady adventures, but overall I think it elevated the game and helped show that D&D could be more than hex/dungeon crawling.

This is very well said in a nicely succinct way. Well done.

 

[DaveMage]

Dragonlance is a mixed bag for me.

On the positive side, I loved the original module and the novels were my introduction to fantasy literature. (Before Dragonlance I only read sci-fi.) I've now read tons of fantasy, of course, and looking back, Dragonlance doesn't match up as well as some of the other fantasy I've read, but when I was 14, I devoured those books.

On the negative side, Dragonlance (the machine) ended up hurting the game in my opinion because it marked the point where the TSR novels began to dictate the style/plot of the published adventures. While I've enjoyed both the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms novels, I've hated their impact on D&D products. (Although moreso the Realms than Dragonlance.)

For me, it's a lot less fun playing someone else's story than our own.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I believe a big part of D&D is cramming in game styles/preferences it was never meant to do.

 

[Jester David]

I wasn't a fan of the original article. Because I don't believe Dragonlance ruined everything so much as changed everything.
Or rather, they changed the presentation of modules from storyless locations you added to your campaign to plot driven tales. Which I don't views as a bad thing. If I have a campaign with a story I can pull Skullcap or Xak Tsaroth out of a Dragonlance module and run that in my game. But if I lack a story, having a hook-less plot-less module does me no good.

Dragonlance was arguably the first Adventure Path. Right now I'm running the Rise of the Runelords AP and allowing it to set the story for my group. I have no problem with this as it allows me to focus on other aspects of preparation other than story and mechanics. Such as maps or painting minis.
And the story is something I'd never think of. The players in my home game played my adventures for a year, saw my stories for a year. Now they're seeing the work of a half-dozen (and more) professional writers, who can think of things I'd never dream of. It's an advantage.

 

[MJS]

As for Dragonlance - those books were a real Solace to me in those years. Many an alienated geek identified with Raistlin, and others.
I never read the modules, but did mess with the 1E hardback some. So, Dragonlance to me was just another series that inspired my campaigns. I was very interested at the time with Krynn's magic system and how it interacted with its deities. The 3 Moons were brilliant stuff IMO. I loved the strong sense of good, neutrality, and evil. And of course, dragonlances themselves are FREAKING AWESOME.

I read that blog years ago as well, and a lot of James' entries. There is a stylistic link from DL to 2E. But DL is grittier than some people think. It's not all kenders and Fizban. I was a early fan of 2E, from its first printing. But everyone's homebrewed 1E was so well developed, that 2E seemed quaint and backwards in many ways. Not until 3E would they catch up with how race/class and level limits were commonly used, which was: not.
Despite my own Grognardian tendencies, and disappointment in 5E's direction, I do see the whole schizophrenic mess as a whole, and that all of these now very different D&D's are making some kind of pattern back to center.
Hopefully all the editions continue to get good material published for them. That's really all people want to see. We naturally tend to focus on the differences, sometimes forgetting they are all extremely good games on their own. People don't play AD&D, or 4E, because they suck. They only suck at being each other. And suffer from having the same name.
5E is turning into a true weirdo. Maybe I'll end up liking it because of that. But without casting times, and a more OD&D core, its just not compatible with what I do. The adventures and setting stuff will be though.

 

[Libramarian]

Lately I've been thinking that the blame for the lack of good sandbox modules since the early 80s should rather be placed on Gygax and the Basic D&D authors, for failing to produce a really clear articulation of the classic play style. IF this had been produced, I think that it would have survived and been replicated in the succeeding editions. But because much of that knowledge never made it from common practices into the official rulebooks, it died out.

 

[Celebrim]

Dragon Lance gets a bad rap. It was a remarkable piece of gaming that attempted to elevate the game to the level of being an art form. It was innovative. It was well written. It had amazing dungeon design. It incorporated all sorts of elements into a an epic campaign.

The real problem with Dragon Lance is that it is impossible to write down a campaign. You can make a transcript of a campaign, but you can't write down what it takes to run a campaign except by a pretty loose example. All published modules ultimately have this problem. You've got 32 or 64 pages worth of text. It's not enough to tell the guy running the game everything he needs to know to run a game, because the set of what you need to know is nigh near infinite. The real DM treats a published module like campaign source material, knowing that it can be repurposed, rearranged, reformatted, or recontextualized. He knows that the story may go off the rails and is ok with that. He knows he can go broad for a while, and eventually reel the story back in so that it comes at an event or location from a new direction. He knows the story is going to leave the road, and he's ok with that. Maybe in his DragonLance campaign there are completely different heroes of the lance with completely different ties to the NPCs in the game. Maybe in his DragonLance campaign, the PC's devote themselves to building a mighty navy and ship to ship (or ship to dragon, or dragon to ship) combat plays prominently in the story. Maybe in his DragonLance campaign, the characters join the dragon armies and try to help conquer Krynn. That doesn't eliminate the value of well crafted modules.

What it does mean is a well-crafted module can't replace a DM. That's the real mistake that the industry keeps making.

 

[RangerWickett]

Planescape sure was non-inventive. Eberron sure didn't add anything to the game.

I guess if all you want is dungeons, with dragons in them, sure, Dragonlance was part of a trend that saw that model change. But you can still play the Old School way. Now there are just new ways to do it.

And as to Celebrim's post above, I don't think modules try to replace the GM. My design philosophy when writing an adventure is that I'm making a theme park. I say, "Here are some cool rides, and here's a nice path that goes between them, and some suggestions for other things to do in different orders. Once you're done with this area, I think you'd really enjoy going to the next themed section of the park, but hey, you have fun however you want."

 

[Argyle King]

It was instrumental on making me a D&D fan.

Same here.

I largely credit Dragonlance for making me aware that D&D (and rpgs in general) even existed. I remember the first time I had read Dragonlance. One of my literature teachers had a bookshelf from which students could sign out books; he had a few Dragonlance books. At the back of one of the books (I believe it was War of The Twins) was an advertisement for D&D which talked about how the books were tied to the game. At that point in time, I already had a huge interest in mythology, fantasy, and choose-your-own-adventure books. While rpgs seem like the next natural step in the evolution of my interests from that, I lived in a very rural area, and I would have had no idea rpgs existed or what D&D was had I not read Dragonlance.

 

[Shrander]

1) It set in motion an uroboric process whereby later FRPG design was inspired by and based upon earlier FRPG design, which led to a kind of regurgitative diminishing of creativity, un-rooted in tradition and often unwilling to foster new ideas (he compares this to the Shannara books, which had a similar impact in fantasy literature). To quote JM:

"[after Dragonlance]...D&D -- and fantasy RPGs in general -- would be snakes swallowing their own tails creatively. That process continues to this day, with D&D ever more influenced by its creative progeny rather than either cleaving to older traditions or creating its own."​

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This doesn't pass the laugh test. Dragonlance was the first wave of the late-80s burst of creativity that gave us Planescape, Dark Sun, Al-Qadim, Birthright, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft. Plus the various "Complete" books that took the basic classes in new and unexplored directions.

(And while I'm no fan of the Shannara books, Terry Brooks did not invent the "utterly shameless Tolkien ripoff" genre. There have always been writers who make their bread imitating what's popular, and there always will be.)