Dragonlance Dragonlance Lives

[Dragonhelm]

If I'm not mistaken, it was Margaret Weiss or might have been Tracy Hickman who created Ravenloft. I used to have the old Ravenloft module.

Ravenloft was written by Tracy and Laura Hickman.

 

[Dragonhelm]

In my role as the administrator of the Dragonlance Nexus fan site and the many years I have been involved in Dragonlance fandom, I have to say that this sounds all-too-familiar. Back when 4e was released, for example, we heard that Dragonlance lived straight from Phil Athans. Nothing came from that. So color me cautious. I don't want to get anyone's hopes up until I see more concrete proof.

I am glad that Dragonlance is on WotC's mind. Certainly, the Nexus will be there to support any effort WotC makes to revive the setting.

 

[Jester David]

WotC doesn't need a Dragonlance specialist, they just need to read the books MWP released during 3e.


I love Dragonlance. I helped me get into gaming, by renewing my interest in fantasy and teasing me with the existence of games like D&D.

Just the other day I gave away my copies of the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy. I have the annotated version so I'm not lacking, but I gave away the original copies I received for a birthday or Christmas back in 1991. There's a good reader at the elementary school where I work, and I thought he'd get more enjoyment out of the books now than myself. Maybe someday he'll discover D&D just like I did.


But Dragonlance as a setting... it's better left dead. It's better if the Dragonlance Nexus can just do their own thing with the world now.

The problem is the setting is just as fractured as D&D. You have the fans of the original stuff up until the Summer of Flame/ Chaos War. Then you have the fans of the 5th Age pre-War of Souls. Then you have the people who like the post-War of Souls world. It's all but impossible to make a product that would appeal to all fans of the setting.
The setting has undergone a nuking worse than the Realms experienced twice. There's very little in the setting fans who stopped reading after Legends would even recognise.

The easiest and likely most successful way to publish the Dragonlance would be a back-to-basics setting, that takes the world back to during or just after the War of the Lance when most people are familiar with the world. Like what they did with Dark Sun for 4e. But for the ardent Dragonlance fans, the War of the Lance has been done to death, so this has little appeal.
Or they could publish a reimagined Dragonlance as an Adventure Path. Recreate and reimagine the modules from the War of the Lance story, tweaking them based on modern game and adventure design to make them the best version of the War possible.

WotC should just update the races in Dragon and make sure all the sourcebooks are available online as PDFs, so people can just buy the 1e-2e Dragonlance book and use those with the new rules to get familiar with the world.

 

[Plaguescarred]

WotC doesn't need a Dragonlance specialist, they just need to read the books MWP released during 3e.

I agree, they don't need one. I see them wanting a setting "specialist" to give more creds to a product.

Ed Greenwood (Forgotten Realms), Keith Baker (Eberron), Ravenloft (?), Dragonlance (?) etc....

 

[Savage Wombat]

No matter how you feel about Planescape, you must admit Shemeska's absorption of the setting into her very bones.

 

[marleykat]

Good. Dragonlance is among my favorite settings. We never did use any of the modules just the setting and it was fun. I am intrigued as how it will fit into 5e.

 

[M.L. Martin]

David M. Ewalt also reported on Forbes that Chris Perkins says Ravenloft support is coming soon.

I can't believe Ravenloft would be more of a "key" setting than Dragonlance.

Ravenloft ran almost steadily for 14 years (and was really cut short by the 3.5 transition, else it might have sustained a year or two more) and was slated for revival just before WotC made their radical direction change in 2011. Indeed, a couple comments by the developers over the years have suggested to me that issues with trying to adapt 4E to Ravenloft were part of the impetus to move ahead with Next.

Dragonlance had a bigger but arguably less sustainable success, and is intertwined with history and personal issues that make it harder to work with. Skepticism about its sustainability goes back to the mid-80s and the launch of the Realms.

And they can do Ravenloft without having to get Weis & Hickman on board, or at least receiving their blessing. (Indeed, Hickman doesn't like the setting, but most fans just shrug and move on. )

 

[DM Howard]

I don't know if I care enough to see Dragonlance brought back into the light. In my mind, it is a great setting for the stories that have been done, but much like Middle Earth, I don't want to see anything more done with it to possibly "tarnish" the gem. That's not to say that I wouldn't buy such a product, but my mind has always been limited on what I could really do and make it matter in a setting like Krynn. On the upside for Dragonlance diehards, it would be a super easy expansion for the D&D: Attack Wing Game.

 

[Semi-Retired Gamer]

To me as well Dragonlance is an important part of what D&D is. If there's a 5e Dragonlance setting book that that's another reason for me to get the core books. Right now I'm on the fence and if there is a Dragonlance book then that's a HUGE plus in my book.

I haven't read the entire thread yet but that echoes my thoughts exactly.

After reading the entire thread I'm not as optimistic due to the 4E absence.

I would still love to see DL but I want the right people in charge of the line.

 

[JeffB]

I am not really sure how I feel about this.

BITD, I had about given up on D&D (moving on to other RPGs) , by the time DL1 rolled around. I remember buying a copy when it showed up, reading it, and thinking it was a novel TSR wanted me to run as a D&D adventure. I filed it away and eventually it got sold in a big lot with 90% of my other gaming materials.

In the mid 1990s as I got back heavily into gaming, I picked up the the original novels, and enjoyed them. Much moreso than the FR novels I purchased (Avatar Trilogy, Prince of Lies, and some godawful thing I could not get past 2 chapters from E. Cunningham). Eventually I decided to grab some DL gaming materials. I liked SAGA. That Bestiary is STILL my fave monster manual ever. Game was good, and different. I did not have much in the way of pre-conceived notions or expectations of what DL was "supposed" to be about, and so I took SAGA at face value. I then bought the TotL boxed AD&D set. Also good, but seemed a bit all over the place as a product...just poorly organized and seemed incomplete. I played a session or three of SAGA and enjoyed it, but the group I was part of was more into Champions and Rolemaster. Finally a few years later I purchased the WOTC DL 3.x book based on the very good job they did with the FRCS. That DLCS was the most bland uninspiring setting book I have ever purchased, along with Kingdoms of Kalamar. It totally ruined any enthusiasm I had previously. Like the LGG, it seemed mostly centered on History/Ages (and Novel characters), and there was precious little "plot hooks/adventure seeds and other useful things to use at my game table tonight" material.

Much like FR, DL seems to have so much baggage, that as a newcomer it makes the setting unappealing once you are exposed to it. Thus why I stuck with OGB FR and ignored nearly everything afterwards. with DL, I feel like I would have to buy a bunch of old stuff and then sift through it all to hopefully find the version I like. Maybe I should just try to score a copy of that old Bestiary and SAGA again(?)