Dragonlance, do you like it?

[JustaPlayer]

I have all the books made for the setting with the exception of the adventures and really love them. That said, my friend started a DL campaign not too long ago and I choose to sit it out. DL as a setting just doesn’t grab me.

Besides, if steel is so rare and precious for weapons, why would you use it for currency? It just doesn't make since. Heck, after every battle I'll take everyone’s sword and melt them down for more coins than the sword cost in the first place. Does not compute!

 

[teitan]

Hey, Just checking to see what people think of the new Dragonlance stuff. Dragonlance was my first exposure to D&D (also the best) and have always liked the novels. Besides liking the gaming world & novels I really like the what Sov Press has done in the way of production values and such. Some the best (IMO) art in gaming is in the DL book. what do you think?

What crack are you smoking? The bad art in the first two books ALONE damn near ruined the whole line for me. I ama BIG DL fan from my days first starting out in AD&D and really wanted to love this setting but the DLCS and AOM were such let downs. I admit, they got better quality wise but the prices keep me away from the setting for the most part.

 

[Cam Banks]

In Dragonlance, not only are the PCs overshadowed by the main NPCs of a game-- which is a crtical problem in any RPG setting-- there's simply no room to deal with other problems. The events of the metaplot-of-the-moment dominate the entire planet; characters not involved with it are utterly insignificant, and PCs involved with it are forced to take a backseat role to the NPC stars of the setting.

The books are in almost every case self-contained events with years, sometimes decades in between, during which time nothing much really happens that can steer the campaign off the path you want it to go on. There aren't a lot of uber-NPCs in the world - certainly many fewer than in the Realms - and a lot of territory isn't covered or even explored fully by the books.

You have 25 years between the end of Dragonlance Legends (when Raistlin leaves the story, for the most part) and Dragons of Summer Flame. There's another 30 years between the events of that book and the events of the Dragons of a New Age trilogy, albeit this is a period without wizards and clerics or the gods, and is dominated by dragon purges and other issues. It's seven-odd years between the end of that trilogy and the War of Souls, and that brings you to the present. Most of the novels being released now, while packed with events and characters, aren't steering the continent off on another track. It's an ideal time to run a campaign, one which the metaplot (for what there is of it) can be almost entirely ignored.

Even if you limit Dragonlance as a setting to the events of the original modules and the Chronicles novels, you have an enormous amount of freedom to place your campaign against the backdrop of that war. The modules are criticized on occasion as being far to railroaded. Compared to many of the popular adventures and campaign settings since then, they're practically open-ended. I think that because they were the first to really pursue this route, outside of G1-3/D1-2/Q1 and the Slave Lords series (which were more or less some dungeons linked together), they have earned a reputation as being relatively inflexible and limited. Now that they're 20 years old, of course, I think hindsight is myopic.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't think you are quite understanding the role that kender, gully dwarves and tinker gnomes have in DL. Dragonlance can be quite the dark setting, just read through the chronicles and see for yourself.

I would submit that, on a D&D board, it's probably a safe assumption that posters HAVE read the Dragonlance Chronicles. People are perfectly able to find the kender, gully dwarves and tinker gnomes to be ridiculously over the top while being aware of the darkness lite of the setting. (And, of course, in an attempt to placate people who don't like the setting, the powers that be at TSR/WotC then went and stepped on the neck of the kender, upsetting many people who DID like the setting.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The books are in almost every case self-contained events with years, sometimes decades in between, during which time nothing much really happens that can steer the campaign off the path you want it to go on.

Right, but if people are playing in Krynn, they presumably LIKE the settings in the novels and would want to play during those periods, but everything during those times, except events on the margins by any definition, are taken care of by the novel characters.

Saying that people who like the novels should play in an area not in the novels seems rather counterintuitive to me. The people who do that with Star Wars tend to be rather hardcore; the hardcore DL players are already playing in Krynn and don't need to be told to play during the periods other than which initially drew them to the setting.

Even if you limit Dragonlance as a setting to the events of the original modules and the Chronicles novels, you have an enormous amount of freedom to place your campaign against the backdrop of that war. The modules are criticized on occasion as being far to railroaded. Compared to many of the popular adventures and campaign settings since then, they're practically open-ended.

What modern adventures and campaign settings do you think are MORE railroady than the original DL modules? I think the DL modules earned their reputation quite fairly on their own.

 

[Turjan]

Saying that people who like the novels should play in an area not in the novels seems rather counterintuitive to me. The people who do that with Star Wars tend to be rather hardcore; the hardcore DL players are already playing in Krynn and don't need to be told to play during the periods other than which initially drew them to the setting.

Heh, the SW analogy is a good one. Playing in Dragonlance is to me like playing in Alderaan shortly before the events in 'A New Hope'. It feels so insignificant and futile.

 

[wingsandsword]

Dragonlance is an okay setting. The books are fun, and it's pretty traditional D&D, but there are some things that I just could never be 100% comfortable with.

All Wizards, regardless of anything else, being part of one world-spanning order who regardless of alignment all respected the same rules and all agreed that all other Wizards must join them or die.

D&Dism game mechanics woven directly into the world. Alignment is integral to the setting, right down to the divisions of gods and the Orders of High Sorcery. Dragonlance was the first official D&D setting that was designed to be a D&D setting, so instead of taking a fantasy world and adapting it to the quirks of D&D, a fantasy world was made built on the quirks of D&D. A very literal case of "adapting the setting to the rules, not the rules to the setting".

The "revolving door" nature of the gods and the world. Krynn has been through so many terrible things, the Cataclysm, the War of the Lance, the Chaos War, the coming of the Dragon Overlords, the War of Souls, that for decades now the entire world has been enveloped in horrible tragedy and disaster, and that was as they were settling in from the aftermath of an earlier horrible thing! The gods of Krynn almost need a sign like Lucy Van Pelt does on her Psychiatry booth: "The Gods of Krynn are currently: IN"

Steel is the main currency and is supposed to be equivalent to Gold in other settings, yet steel weapons and armor don't seem any rarer than they were before, and a steel longsword costs fewer steel coins than it would take to make it's blade. Knights go around in full steel plate, with loads of steel weapons, and there never seems to be a practical shortage of the stuff, even though it's supposedly so rare it's the basis of their currency.

To be fair, then there are the things I like a lot:

Abundance of Dragons. It's the whole point of the setting, to showcase the Dragons, and it does that very well. If you want a setting where PC's can kill dragons, ride on dragonback, and generally make good use out of the "D" section of the Monster Manual and get your moneys worth out of the Draconomicon, this is that world.

Depth and richness. One thing I really like about a good D&D setting is how detailed and rich it is. The idea that it's more than just a sourcebook, it has to feel like a "lived in" world, and the sheer breath of novels (and to a lesser degree the sourcebooks) give it that feeling.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

The books are in almost every case self-contained events with years, sometimes decades in between, during which time nothing much really happens that can steer the campaign off the path you want it to go on.

I will concede this point. There have been fairly large "gaps" in the setting's chronology when PCs could rise to some degree of prominence.

There aren't a lot of uber-NPCs in the world - certainly many fewer than in the Realms - and a lot of territory isn't covered or even explored fully by the books.

The unending supply of epic NPCs in Forgotten Realms is my least favorite aspect of that setting-- and it's one of the reasons I'm not particularly fond of it. And I agree, this problem is far, far worse in Forgotten Realms than it is in Dragonlance.

Still... it doesn't matter how powerful your heroes become, or what adventures they have-- they're still going to be sitting in the shadow of the Companions. My exposure to post War of the Twins material is fairly limited, though.

The modules are criticized on occasion as being far too railroaded. Compared to many of the popular adventures and campaign settings since then, they're practically open-ended.

In the years since I've originally read the original Dragonlance modules, I cannot recall any sourcebook that has been nearly as track-bound-- and the few that have come close (Under the Dark Fist springs to mind...) have at least provided sufficient external justification.

The old Dragonlance modules didn't even give advice for how to railroad the PCs-- they just told the DM to make sure that the module played out exactly as it was described. It even directly stated that if the PCs killed a villain "too soon" to simply bring the villain back without so much as an explanation.

I don't think you are quite understanding the role that kender, gully dwarves and tinker gnomes have in DL. Dragonlance can be quite the dark setting, just read through the chronicles and see for yourself. These races are there to help provide hope and to lift people from the darkness.

No, I certainly understand the purpose for them. In the original Chronicles, I even rather appreciated the character of Tasslehoff Burrfoot-- but it was because of the moments between his antics, and not for them. His kender traits even help enhance the tension of some situations and provided moving drama on their own-- such as when he smashed the Orb.

I also appreciate the need for comic relief in dark fiction. However, what I do not care for is when a character (or worse, an entire race of characters) exists solely for that purpose. Tasslehoff was great-- having an entire race of Tasslehoff, but without his redeeming qualities, was not.

And the gnomes simply never had any redeeming qualities to speak of. Also, thank you for undoing the time and hard work I had spent convincing myself that the Gully Dwarves didn't exist.

The Heroes of the Lance brought hope and lifted people out of darkness-- even Tasslehoff. The kender, as a whole, just went on a pixy stix bender and stole their silverware while the gnomes were burning their house down.

 

[Orius]

None of the options really fits my view. I don't dislike DL, but I'm not really interesting in running a campaign in the world either. I'm not really familiar with any of the recent stuff either, including 3e material published for the setting.

 

[Elf Witch]

I played in two Dragonlance D20 campaigns and I enjoyed both very much. Not once did I feel railroaded or inferior to the ionic characters. The world is huge and there are so many ways for a hero to make a name for themselves.

What I find strange is the unwillingness of players and DM to just take out things they don't like or change how things happen. People do it all the time in Forgotten Realms and there are tons of books written about that world.

Dragonlance was the first books I read that were set in a gaming world and they made me want to game.

There is so much I like about the setting. The wizards, I like that their power is linked to the moons and that only black robed wizards can see the dark moon. I like the whole poltical set up of the wizards and the fact that even a good wizard can be hunted down if they don;t take the teat and join.

I like the differnt races one of my favorite are the Irda. I played one and it was a good six months until the rest of the party realized they traveled with an Irda.

I played in a game where the Gods had just come back and I was called my one to be a cleric. It was a great role play oppernunity getting the chance to try and prove the gods were back so many people did not believe in the gods or clerics one of my party members role played it great and refused healing from me for the longest time because he did not believe or know where the power game from and was afraid that if it did come from the gods then accepting healing meant some kind of unwritten contract to that god. It was great role playing.

I have played in the Realms , Greyhawk, Kalamar , Dragonlance and several home brews and it is my experiance that it is the players and the DM that can make a setting good or make it bad.