Dragonlance, do you like it?

[Voadam]

I say take the time you need to put out good stuff, I prefer one good book a year to a dozen poor ones.

I just wish they were available as cheap non-drm pdfs on www.dtrpg.com or www.rpgnow.com.

I would love to get a digital copy of bestiary of Krynn.

 

[glass]

this setting really stinks!
for three reasons, two of them maybe coincidence.
-i really don't like the idea of dragons being the ordinary mount, dragons are alot more powerful then any humanoid and are very unlikely to act as amount for one.

Dragons are hardly an 'ordinary mount'. Only the greatest warriors on either side road dragons, and (for the most part) only in key battles. Nobody hopped on a dragon to pop down the shops for a pint of milk...


glass.

 

[HellHound]

Ahhh. The plainly visceral twenty-years-ago-I-hated-the-modules-so-I-hate-it-now-too thread.

Been a few months. Welcome back thread.

You make it sound like this is not a valid argument.

If you tried drinking gasoline 8 times in your life, and each time you hated it... do you think that you would try it again 20 years later?

Dragonlance reamins the thing that chased me away from AD&D for 10 years.

Sure, Dragonhelm, the setting may be better now, or the modules, or maybe a good DM would make some cool adventures in the setting. But to me, it would have to involve drinking gasoline yet one more time in the hope that *this* time it will taste good. How many times do you have to hate something before you just give up on it? I know a lot of people who won't eat something a second time after gagging on it once... let alone eight times.

I'm not going to say the setting sucks, or the game sucks, or the novels suck.

I'm going to say that I can't stand them personally. Just as some people gag when they eat raw fish, or can't stand brussel sprouts. I gag at the taste of dragonlance.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

With a little imagination, a DM can work with these races to achieve any number of results. Do the gully dwarves seem too silly? Create a cult of them dedicated to Morgion who wander the countryside spreading disease. Create themes for gnomish Life Quests, and come up with themes for kender that make them more than a "Tas Clone".

And if you think a kender can't fit in a dark themed game, think again! An old DM of mine had a kender in his Cataclysm era game. The kender taunted soldiers in the service of Istar once upon a time, and they cut his tongue out for it. When our characters met him, he was a tragic figure who had lost his innocence.

So I think there's more to those humorous races than the stereotypes. It requires a little work from DM's, but no more so than with any race in any world.

Most worlds don't require the DMs to actively work to undercut the default assumptions to make three of the prominent races pallatable to a wider audience.

I'm not opposed to work, but this is a weak argument you're making here.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

I have never understood this personally. Not attacking, but just simply don't get it. Any metaplot is inescapable... it it your world. Do with it as you will. Don't like the post WOS stuff, send the setting spirallying off into your own direction. Mine newer books and supps for ideas and charas to incorporate...

I am no longer specifically speaking of Dragonlance-- as I noted earlier, I've spoken my piece on the subject.

However, there is, in my opinion, a flaw in your argument. You are absolutely right in that whatever campaign setting I am playing is my world, and as DM, I am able to do with it as I see fit. This is one of the most basic principles of roleplaying games, and in my opinion is what makes them superior to even the most cinematic and epic electronic games.

But, if I have to take ownership of a setting-- if I have to cross lines through the setting and change things in order to make it my own-- then the setting is not what I wanted as-is. If I can change any campaign setting to be exactly the setting I want, then there is no difference between any two settings, or even between off-the-shelf settings and the myriad homebrews that other people are willing to share with others.

The standards by which I judge a campaign setting are based mainly on how it functions as-is-- how much I would enjoy playing or running a game in that setting if I were not capable of changing it. The less I need to change it, the easier (and more satisfying) it is for me to use it, and the more of the supplemental materials I will be able to use with it. I don't use anything without taking it apart, getting elbow-deep in its guts, and then putting it back together the way I think it ought to be.

To a lesser extent, I also judge a setting based on how the ideas therein inspire me to run my own games within that setting. The settings I love-- Planescape, Star*Drive, and Gamma World (and to some extent, Marvel Universe and Spelljammer), are the ones for which I have a nearly endless supply of ideas, and the ones which give me ideas that I feel a burning need to use. The settings I like-- Eberron, Star Wars, Dragonstar, among others-- are the ones that give me a number of interesting ideas that I'd like to try, or ideas that I'd love to apply to games in one of my favorite settings.

I will admit that Dragonlance simply does not give me any good ideas-- reading the Chronicles and War of the Twins filled me with a sense of awe and I eagerly devoured them, but I found nothing therein that I could apply to my own games. This is not a flaw in the setting-- which is why I did not mention it earlier-- but it does prevent me from considering it among my favorite settings.

 

[the Jester]

But don't let my facts confuse your hat that know no limit. By all means - continue to react

Well, just to clarify, I loved the first two trilogies of novels. If DL had stopped there, I'd have loved it. (The two or three later novels I've read I really found uninspiring, but that's one problem I've had with virtually every dnd based book I have read other than the first two DL series.)

As a setting- way, way too much metaplot, and the style inherent in the first rack of modules (what with heavy railroading, at least in the ones I played/read/ran) really turned me off.

There are a lot of other setting elements I have problems with- others have mentioned the whole 'steel = coinage but it's everywhere' issue (what exactly is the point of doing that?), as well as the 'all wizards belong to one organization'. Err, hmm... nope, don't like it. That kind of overarching organization needs some serious backstory to justify its existence as a continued force (imho).

Anyhow, this is all opinion; my opinion on DL was forged on the white-hot anvil of bad modules that tried to capture the spirit of good books. I do like certain elements of the DL setting- especially draconians, with their origin story- but a lot of the random revisions of standard dnd annoy me (c'mon, Paladine and Takhisis are clear analogues of Bahamut and Tiamat but 'turned up to 11'; gully dwarves, tinker gnomes and kender are almost offensively stupid to me; the re-write of the Orbs of Dragonkind into the Dragon Orbs could have been dispensed with or made better by making them Dragon Crowns or something; etc).

Ask for opinions and ye shall so receive.

To be honest, I haven't given the 3e DL stuff more than a cursory look. I was hoping to like it but the art alone turned me off enough to not give it a chance. With something like Dragonlance, where my initial high hopes were crushed long ago, the onus is on the new iteration to bring me back to the fold. It has to stand out really high above the crowd to convince me to give it a chance, and it just... didn't. :\

I'm not saying some of the innards of the new setting stuff isn't great; I wouldn't know. I'm saying that it would have to jump off the shelf and grab me to warrant my spending any more money on a setting that, traditionally, made me feel as if I'd been conned, fleeced, pickpocketed and mugged (at various points).

 

[mcrow]

I would humbly suggest that this is not at all the case. At least, no more is it the case than any Forgotten Realms multiple-part trilogy makes the Realms impossible to play in.

Cheers,
Cam

I agree with this. I don't understand why people feel that the metaplot makes the world unplayable. The DL world is so huge that there is plenty of room to work with. I don't recall anything in any of the books saying your game has to revolve around any of the plots in the novels.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Originally Posted by BelenUmeria
I can see why you would want to release this given that context; however, you still do not address the glacial publishing schedule. We simplely have to wait too long for new DL material.

Huh? You are way off here.

Eberron was released at Gencon 2003. Since that time, we have recieved:

1 Eberron Campaign Setting
2 Races of Eberron
3 Sharn
4 Five Nations
5 Eberron Explorer's Handbook
6 Eberron DM's Screen
7 Eberron Character sheets
8 Eberron Adv Trilogy: Whisper of the Vampires Blade, Shadows of the Last War and Graps of the Emerald Claw adventures: 32 pages each. - 96 total. (Actually - come to think of it - was Shadows of the Last War only 16 pages long?)

DragonLance was released at Gencon 2002 - 1 year before Eberron
So far:

1 DragonLance Campaign Setting
2 DragonLance Age of Mortals
3 DragonLance DM's Screen
4 DragonLance: Bestiary of Krynn
5 DragonLance: Towers of High Sorcery
6 DragonLance: War of the Lance (330pp. or so)
7 DragonLance: Tasslehoff's Map Pouch
8 DL AoM1 : Key of Destiny - 192 pp adventure
9 DL AoM2: Spectre of Sorrows - 192 pp. adventure
10 DragonLance: Holy Order of the Stars (later this week):

On the horizon for later this year are DragonLance: Legends hardcover and another 192 page adv. Price of Courage.

Too slow? Huh? Au contraire, with the exception of the Forgotten Realms, you will not see a more rapid and expansively covered setting on the market. (And DL is catching up to FR 3.5) In comparison, even Greyhawk and Eberron both fall short.

While I appreciate your frustration at HootS and Legends not being in your hot little hands and some early target dates announced which fall a few months late - I think your perceptions (emotions) are not according with reality (logic).

 

[HellHound]

Huh? You are way off here.

Eberron was released at Gencon 2003. Since that time, we have recieved:

...
(10 products)
...

DragonLance was released at Gencon 2002 - 1 year before Eberron
So far:

...
(10 products)
...

Well, if we do indeed count the 3 adventures for Eberron as 1 product, that brings it to 8 in 2 years for Eberron (4 / year) and 10 in 3 years for Dragonlance (3.33 per year)

However, Eberron has seen other support - each critter in the Monster Manual III has a section for being used in Eberron specifically, and there is at least one Eberron adventure in Dungeon magazine since the release.

(Not coming from an Eberron fan, here, mind you - there may be more than the one Eberron adventure in Dungeon, I don't track Eberron stuff since I don't ever use any of it)

But claiming that the release schedule is faster for DL 3.5 compared to Eberron, using even just the numbers you gave above seems very strange (3.3 releases per year versus 4 releases per year).

 

[Dragonhelm]

I'm going to tackle a few posts all at once here...

Now later in life, rereading chronicles was less satisfactory - especially with the gaps of time missing that my brain remembered being there... (Ironically, Now LOTR is more satisfying to read.

I have yearned for a directors cut revised edition for a while now.

You might be interested in a new trilogy of books by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman - the Dark Chronicles. They're including sections that were originally edited out for space, and expanding on the story in general. Should be a fun ride.

Sure, Dragonhelm, the setting may be better now, or the modules, or maybe a good DM would make some cool adventures in the setting. But to me, it would have to involve drinking gasoline yet one more time in the hope that *this* time it will taste good. How many times do you have to hate something before you just give up on it? I know a lot of people who won't eat something a second time after gagging on it once... let alone eight times.

I can see where you're coming from, and to each their own. If DL isn't to your liking, that's fine.

With me, I was a huge AD&D fan, and had several wonderful games both as a player and a DM. So my first taste was sweet. Admittedly, I wasn't a fan of the changes made in SAGA and the 5th age. So my second taste was a bit sour. Yet with the Nexus and later the War of Souls trilogy and the current D&D products by Sovereign Press, I've had some good tastes again.

I guess I could equate this to Planescape. Some people consider it the greatest setting ever, and I was turned off by the art and the feel of it upon my first glance. It's a great setting, just not for me.

Most worlds don't require the DMs to actively work to undercut the default assumptions to make three of the prominent races pallatable to a wider audience.

I'm not opposed to work, but this is a weak argument you're making here.

It's no more work than creating a character background for any character. I'm not talking about rewriting an entire race - just making the ones you meet memorable and not stereotypical. Come up with a theme and run with it. Really, all the work you're putting in is in character background.

And if all else fails, just don't implement them in your game. Kender can be on wanderlust somewhere else, gnomes can be making explosions in Mt. Nevermind, and gully dwarves can be eating filth in a sewer far away from you.

Again, though, to each their own. Obviously, I'm a DL nut, and there are those who aren't. It's all cool.