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

[Mercurius]

While I agree with this also, I was thinking more on a personal level also - certainly, I started with a very light system (BECMI), and gradually proceeded to ever-more-complex systems as I went, always looking for the perfect system that would do everything, cover everything.

Eventually, I realised that that was impossible, of course. And now I spend my time looking for that happy medium of a game that both has fairly coherent rules and also doesn't bog me down with unwanted detail.

(Basically, SWSE-style D&D, although even SWSE has some major issues. I want something more rules-light than even 3.0e core-rules-only, but don't want to go back to 2nd Ed's 'quirks', the same reason I don't go for Castles & Crusades. It does
sometimes look like 5e just might be what I want...)

We're absolutely on the same page here and, I think, want basically the same thing from 5E.

 

[Sunseeker]

I never read the Dragonlance books until well...last month. I'm moderately bored by them.

I never cared for the "modular" D&D design, the sort of aimless adventuring from one dark cave to the next. I find it horridly boring. And this is not just applicable to D&D for me, it applies to all games. When the game design is "go here, grind trash until you get loot and/or level" I'm bored.

I think his point is contradictory through, he says early on D&D should either "cleave to old traditions or make new ones", but then spends his time reprimanding D&D for cleaving to new traditions. I find the article fairly disingenuous from that point on, it sounds like one of those age old rants on how D&D desperately needs to innovate, but only if it does so by sticking to the "tried and true" "formulaic" design that he likes.

 

[pemerton]

If you have a rich, evocative, thematic campaign world, and you use that to hexcrawl and dungeon-dive, you're just sitting there as a DM wondering why you bothered to purchase the boxed set in the first place. So what's the best way to get the players to appreciate the setting? Make a story-adventure where the PCs encounter all the wonderful richness of the setting!

Basically, without player buy-in, a rich campaign setting just frustrates the DM until they set up sessions that are "Look at my beautiful campaign world! LOOK AT IT!" That's why I stopped getting them, as much as I love them. (Eberron, Al-Qadim, Planescape, Dark Sun....love them all.) It's just not worth it.

Have you seen this?

This on p 2 seems especially apposite:

There’s a big book about the setting. The GM reads the book. Then, the players enjoy the setting, or rather enjoy the GM’s enjoyment of the setting, by using play as a proxy. . .

This kind of play is often called setting-heavy, but as I see it, when playing in this fashion, the goal of having the players enjoy the setting as such is actually at considerable risk. It’s hard to parse the relationship between (1) the story, first as created, then as played; and (2) the setting both as a source for conflicts (“adventures”) and something which might be changed by them. The two things may be positioned orthogonally: in a way, setting is “everything” for such play in the GM’s mind, but “nothing” for play in the players’. Perhaps this is what leads to those monstrous textual setting histories in the books, with the only people who read them (or care) being their authors and the GMs.​

 

[TwoSix]

Have you seen this?

Reading it now, thanks for the link!

 

[Neonchameleon]

Dragonlance was not the end. It was not even the beginning of the end. It was, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

 

[TwoSix]

Dragonlance was not the end. It was not even the beginning of the end. It was, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Never in the the field of dragon conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

 

[Dragonhelm]

On a Google search I came across James Maliszewski's (JM) site Grognardia, which I hadn't read in a couple years but remember reading early on, and even before - his LiveJournal entries that inspired the blog.

Anyhow, I came across this very interesting blog article: How Dragonlance Ruined Everything.

I also run a site. It's called the Dragonlance Nexus. It's this fun uber-source for Dragonlance fandom on the web. So yeah, I'm kind of a fan.

I remember this article when it came out, and I want to say I even talked to James about it. James is entitled to his opinion, of course, as am I. They diverge where Dragonlance is concerned. We do agree on one thing, though - Dragonlance was the catalyst for change.

I find myself having mixed feelings. On one hand, I often find myself feeling nostalgic for the D&D of yore - the pre-Dragonlance era from which the classic "Gygaxian" tropes were formed, without the "taint" of D&D needing to be anything more (or less) than a fantasy game of dungeon-exploring and dragon-slaying. I'll sometimes browsing through old AD&D modules and locations, from horrific tombs to lost caverns to forgotten temples, shrines and vaults of evil creatures, remembering How It Used To Be.

On the other hand, I can't help but feel that JM is missing something crucial, that the classic D&D of his (and my) childhood is not gone, its just that A) the field has gotten much larger, and B) we're no longer children (or rather, we're more than just children). What "D&D" means is more than it did in its first 10 years (1974-83) before Dragonlance. It also means great epic stories and adventure paths, it means thematically rich and detailed settings from Dark Sun to Eberron, or whatever variation of flavorings have come about since Tasslehoff Burrfoot, Flint Fireforge and Tanis Half-elven re-met after five years apart in a glade outside of a village called Solace, in a flurried medley of poorly written prose and joyfully entertaining story.

Why can't D&D be both?

We are all different players with different styles. I'm not a dungeon crawl guy. I crave narrative, story, and character development. Yet that's not for everyone.

D&D is rules. How you apply those rules is what matters. You can waltz into a dungeon, ride on the back of a dragon, survive the burning world of Athas, run a pirate campaign, etc. etc.


The article mentions multimedia and corporate profit. I think these were inevitable. If not Dragonlance, then some other setting.

These days, D&D is a brand that encompasses many aspects of the D&D experience, from RPGs to novels to board games and so on. Where I think WotC falters is placing the RPG first and having everything else follow. I think some D&D properties can lend well to all of these (i.e. Forgotten Realms). But let's look at Dragonlance. During the 3.5 days, Margaret Weis Productions, who held the DL RPG license, had to follow the novels. In 4e, everything had to follow the RPG. That killed the DL novel line. Traditionally, DL has done better in novels than in RPGs. In essence, WotC killed a potential revenue source by focusing first and foremost on the RPG, as well as disenfranchising a portion of their fan base. Some DL fans refuse to support WotC at all due to lack of DL support.

Anyway, I'm sure I will have more to discuss on this topic.

 

[Dragonhelm]

No. Dragonlance was not the beginning of the end. It was a new world based on books that a lot of people liked and gave players a chance to either play their hero, or to play a character and do things a bit different and see if they could get the same outcome of saving the world.

Not quite. Dragonlance was a game first, novels second.

Weis and Hickman learned a lot in this era. For example, modules didn't translate well into novels. Tracy adjusted the modules after the first four so that they weren't as railroady. What he came up with is the concept of the Closed Matrix, which says that yes, players do have choices, but they are nudged towards a certain outcome. Tracy's book X-Treme Dungeon Mastery can explain this concept better.

 

[Dragonhelm]

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".

Luckily, Paladine smiled upon Dragonlance, and it saw the heights of its glory during the MWP 3.5 era.

I may be biased here, of course.