I'll address each point in turn:
Cam Banks said:
The revised Classic adventures we're producing now (Dragons of Autumn was the first, and I'm working on Dragons of Winter at the moment) use the concept of character archetypes to frame the narrative. The original pregens are included (Tanis, Caramon, etc) and assigned an archetype, but we expect people to create their own characters to fill those archetypes if they don't want to walk in the footsteps of the novel characters.
Cheers,
Cam
And you do a great job of it. I love Dragons of Autumn, especially given that you don't cut things out just because they didn't appear in the novels. Your idea of archetypes is also a very good one, striking balance between those who want to play as the Companions and those who don't, and also offering some new twists, like the Sage's bond with Whisper.
Xvanthon said:
I guess my fantasy leanings are still a mixed bag as far as literary worth goes. Frankly, I don't put much stock in what accademics and critics say has more merit.
Good for you. I feel the same way about pretentious, snobby music critics who think they have some god-given right to arbitrarily decide what consists of "good taste" in music, and savage anyone who dares to disagree with them.
mhacdebhandia said:
Seriously, though: why shouldn't people who dislike The Lord of the Rings feel comfortable in expressing that opinion?
I don't consider Tolkien's work to be important to what I value in fantasy fiction, except inasmuch as some of the writers I do admire were reacting against his influence in the genre. Why should I not make my opinion known?
Chances are because of the backlash against the standard dwarves and elves, now regarded as cliched and overdone: Tolkien suffers because his work was what inspired that. I personally think that notion is ridiculous, and I won't play in a gameworld that has no dwarves or elves, but QFT.
Krolik said:
Dragonlance taught me about role-playing rather then the roll-playing I had been doing for years. Until Dragonlance I never really saw how stats could influence how you played the character. If you had a low CON then you just didn't get Hit Point bonuses. If you had a high INT you got more spells. If you had a high STR you hit harder. I never thought about a low CON being sickly or a high INT making you frustrated by those around you with lower INT, etc. Dragonlance took me from playing a miniature battle and occasionally speaking in character to looking at the character and write-up as a whole and developing them in a way that was more then just me playing myself.
That's the funny thing about some of the DL stats, though: the game stats don't always seem to reflect the public persona of the character. Flint has a CON of 18, and yet he has rheumatism, old age, and dies of heart disease. His INT is only 7, which should make him as dumb as a box of rocks, but he still seems brighter than Caramon. Arman Kharas's WIS is only 6, which would seem to make him a pretty bad ruler if he were ever to become High King of Thorbardin, and yet he doesn't seem to make rash, stupid decisions. Neither does King Lorac, whose WIS is only 7. That doesn't exactly mark him out as a great statesman. So how did he last so long as king of Silvanesti when he was such an idiot?
Aaron L said:
The fact that the the "absent minded tinker" replaced the 1st Edition gnomish culture and became a standard for gnomes in D&D and elsewhere since then (even frigging EverQuest and World of Warcraft!) still infuriates me to this day, and I strip it out of the race in every game I run.
Trust me, you're not alone. I was both confused and annoyed by the depiction of gnomes, wondering how the hell they managed to survive as a race if none of their inventions ever worked right. How have they avoided blowing up Mount Nevermind, much less managed to construct a viable society, if their inventions are always failing?
1E gnome culture all the way, man. Although, now I make gnomes master engineers, so that while dwarves are better craftsmen, no one can beat a gnome when it comes to design and execution.
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