Dragonlance: Our LotR?

[Delta]

Dragonlance: Our LotR?

For this, and D&D players, I would pick the GDQ Giants-Drow-Queen of the Spiders adventure series. I hypothesize that more people played that than Dragonlance.

 

[broghammerj]

It's amazing how perceptions differ. Me, all I can remember was Tolkien going on for three pages about the predilections and tendencies of Hobbits, and Hobbit communities, and the plans for the party, etc. With Dragonlance I think of Fizban's setting up the Inn, of Flint and Tanis' reunion, of how damned scary Raistlin was portrayed in one or two pages, and how everything fired off with a BANG! within one or two chapters.

As much of it is colored by WHEN we read it as much as anything. Dragonlance was my first long-novel fiction (age 13 or so) whereas prior to that the biggest thing I had read was a comic book anthology. it was Dragonlance that spurred me into reading, not any of the works that school had assigned, or any of my teachers.

I was pretty similar to you and I think age has a lot to do with it. I had played DND a few times with my cousin but really wasn't interested. A friend introduced me to Dragonlance and I was hooked. I then started back into DND with a passion.

Tolkien can goes into amazing detail to set a scene. The problem is it goes something like this:
Page 1: The grass
Page 2: The leaves
Page 3: The wind
Page 107: Our protagonists finally encounter an antagonist.

I always felt that the Dragonlance characters were much more interesting and the action more rapid. When I read LOTR I always felt like I was slogging through a swamp. Now don't get me wrong, on a re-read I was much less enamored with DL. The quality of writing was not spectacular so nostalgia does go a long way. Unfortunately, I have never read Return of The King completely because I could never complete the series as a group. I have probably started and stopped the trilogy 5 times.

The Hobbit on the other had is something entirely different. It takes great characters, epic adventure, and carries on at a good reading pace. It's better than DL or LOTR. I have read it at least a dozen times.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

In some ways the first two Dragonlance trilogies were responsible for really getting me into D&D - I'd gotten into Dragonlance because of the "red box" Basic Set, but it wasn't until I got into the Dragonlance setting through the novels that I really got into D&D in a big way.

On the other hand, though, I can honestly say that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and American Ninja and its sequels sparked my interest in martial arts and Eastern culture when I was ten or so, and even though that interest survives, my affection for those things sure doesn't.

I'm interested in the upcoming animated film, but more out of a sense of curiosity than any real nostalgia, loyalty, or affection.

 

[The Human Target]

As for Dragonlance:

Dragonlance was indeed my "Lord of the Rings." It was only years later, when I got to actually read Tolkien, that I realized how many conventions and themes had been borrowed from Tolkien in Dragonlance. Heck, the stories even have hundreds of parallels, from Ruined dwarf cities, to tragic heroes, to a magic Macguffin, to a Sauron-entity, to the gods of good interacting through old wizards (though Fizban could be seen as Gandalf and Tom Bombadil rolled into one) -- there's a ton of Middle-earth hidden in Dragonlance's tale, whether accidentally or intentionally.

Yeah, I'm 23 and the DL books were my first "real fantasy" books. So they got me into gaming rather than LotR, which I didn't read until a few years later.

And actually, I read Dennis L. McKiernan's The Iron Tower series before I read the LotR as well. And that book is a blatant and admitted reworking of LotR.

So by the time I did read Tolkien, I felt like I had read those stories already, and in a better format/style.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Bashing Tolkien is apparently the New Black(TM).

 

[The Human Target]

After having read everything else, I will say this.

I have no desire to ever reread The Lord of the Rings, or the Hobbit. I will probably crack open the Silmarillion again at some point, as I enjoyed reading it like a mythology book. When I read all of Tolkien's books, it was like doing my nerd homework. I didn't have a lot of fun, but I learned a little something.

I will probably reread the original Dragon Lance trilogy in the next few years. I just reread them maybe two years ago. To me, they still hold up fine without any sense of nostalgia built in. They had a quick pace, and fun/interesting characters, and are a really good look at how to build a DnD epic adventure campaign.

 

[Drowbane]

Bashing Tolkien is apparently the New Black(TM).

People have been bashing Tolkien longer than I've been alive.

[opinion]I love the big picture he painted... but his books are dry and rather dull to read.[/opinion]

 

[Fenris]

I have never read, much less opened a DL book, or any other material, and have zero knowledge of the world. I am only a few years older than the OP. Many of my friends read them. They held no interest for me. Nor did DL or any other D&D derived world.

Tolkien, Lieber, Howard. Them's my boys.

 

[Herobizkit]

To this day I have yet to read Sword of Shannara because I have been told it is a terrible Tolkien pastiche.

I read the Sword of Shannara, and just about every book thereafter. IMO, The Sword is the WORST of the bunch. It is terribly dry (much like LotR), a lot of narrative in between the juicy bits (like LotR), and way more "world history" than is necessary to tell the story (again, like LotR)... oh yes, and it also has One Man That Does It All (like LotR) and the quest for the maguffin that doesn't do a hella lot but is Very Important To The Plot (... you guessed it). All the books thereafter have their own maguffins and devices and I found each story all the more interesting how they tie in the world history to each other book.

As for DragonLance, I don't see what people love about it. I got tired of hearing about Dragons arount the 2nd or 3rd year I ever played D&D... and while some of the character concepts were cool (like the Irda, the Minotaurs, the three "schools" of magic, and especially the "next generation" of the Knights of Takhisis) I just didn't enjoy much of the material. To each their own.

 

[reinbowarrior]

Thoughts

Apart from the arguing over font colour (why are so many people on EN world arguementative for the sake of it?) this is actually a fairly highbrow academic discussion, which occassionally ends up as setting wars. "NO! FR rules!" "No! DL rules!" "NO! LoTR rules!"

You seem to have missed that D&D itself is LotR influenced, therefore ALL D&D campaign settings will follow somewhat the stereotypes in the LotR books.

However it is good to know that there are people like me, who just adore the setting and grew up with it. DL chronicles will certainly be on my son's reading list before LotR. In fact I might even start reading them to him now. If only to relive the joy myself and to hear it out loud.

To me a ranger is Tanis, not aragorn. A wizard is a Fizban or a Raistlin. A rogue a certain kender Handler, a fighter Flint Fireforge, a knight - well Sturm's final stand on the tower had tears rolling down my face. And the well characterised non-sterotypical villians really made the setting. Kitiara, Soth, Verminaard and Skie are as well developed as any of the Heroes.

I'm ranting. Stop it o'brien. Anyway...

A final word. More than other books, a simple gaming incident of hilarity can turn into the salvation of a benighted soul. I still get choked up whenever I read "look Raist, Bunnies..."

(I'm not saying I don't like LotR, still read them, but they don't make my heart beat faster like DL does...)