Dragonlance: Our LotR?

[Reynard]

Eh, even so, I think the LotR of gaming is still just LotR.

I have this wierd suspicion that 90% of the people who say they have read the LotR haven't. It used to be closer to 75%, but after the movies the BS rate went up do to familiarity.

(Not accusing you, btw -- just pointing out that it is a hard book to read, and not as "fun" as many fantasy adventure novels, DL included , and therefore I think a lot of folks would like to have read, feel like they've read it, and assume they get "honorary credit" for reading it after seeing the movies 10 times and listening to all the director commentary. put simple, I don't think the LotR is actually the LotR for most people).

 

[Mallus]

I will say that Dragonlance was DEFINITELY easier to read than Lord of the Rings.

Maybe for you. I found that LotR, for all its sprawling discursiveness, is still an easier read than Weis and Hickman's prose, which is pretty much my working definition of bad fantasy writing. Florid and dense, like an overdecorated fruitcake.

(which isn't to say that W&H didn't create a few good characters, because I think they did, despite the cruel use they put the English language through...)

I'm not that much older than 32, and my formative gamer years where spent reading Tolkien, Moorcock, Donaldson and Julian May's Saga of the Pliocene Exile.

 

[Henry]

Huh. Really? I always kinda considered LotR to be "our" LotR. I think more people get turned to to fantasy gaming by reading that still than by reading D&D novels. You've got to already be a D&D player to even consider reading those, for the most part.

Plus, now with the recent movies, LotR was bumped up again as the definitive epic fantasy for at least another generation.

Well, consider how many people like me that Middle-earth didn't connect with, and consider that its surge in popularity was when there WAS no D&D (back in the 1960's).

But yeah, Lord of the Rings movies brought back how cool that fantasy was to generations who had no clue. I wonder how many teenagers saw the movies, found how cool they were, and then bought the book, and put it down in 100 pages?

 

[Odhanan]

Not me. LotR is my LotR.

Same thing here.

 

[Zaukrie]

May's Saga of the Pliocene Exile


oooh, great books - I've read them 2 or 3 times at least.

And, Elric certainly influenced how I thought about fantasy, as I received these as gifts one year when I wasn't really a reader, which they helped turn me into.

 

[Zaukrie]

I wonder how many teenagers saw the movies, found how cool they were, and then bought the book, and put it down in 100 pages?

I have no evidence other than anectdote - but lots.

 

[Mark Hope]

May's Saga of the Pliocene Exile


oooh, great books - I've read them 2 or 3 times at least.

Hell, yes. Another great series that I need to dig out and re-read. I still see their influence all over the psionics rules, and they definitely inform how psionics work in my DS games.

In relation to the OP's questions and the relevance of these books to gaming, I'd say that there are a group of fantasy (and some sf and horror) novels that are at the heart of my gaming canon. Oddly enough, while I enjoyed reading them and quite like the Krynn setting, the DL books are not among them. (And nor are the Shannara books, which I found quite bad).

 

[Blood Jester]

Not even close in my estimation.

There is a certain camp of diehard DL loyalists who think it was the greatest series ever written, but my experience reading it was...different.
As an avid Fantasy and SciFi junkie, who has whiled away countless hours of my life reading across both genres, and who has a tendency to want to enjoy any book I read (so I tend to be very forgiving), I found DL to be well below par.

It just failed for me on so many levels.

So to me, JRR still reigns supreme.

{And the above is presented as my opinion only, in response to the original question.}

 

[Henry]

Maybe for you. I found that LotR, for all its sprawling discursiveness, is still an easier read than Weis and Hickman's prose, which is pretty much my working definition of bad fantasy writing. Florid and dense, like an overdecorated fruitcake.

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.

 

[pawsplay]

By the time I had read Dragonlance, I had already read The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Howard's People of the Black Circle, Watership Down, The Three Musketeers, Glory Road, Witchworld, The Hero and the Crown, and a version of Malory's Arthur. not to mention To Kill a Mockingbird, Treasure Island, Brave New World, 1984, Tales of a fourth Grade Nothing, Rascal, Lassie, a dozen or so Hardy Boys books, and the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

So it probably didn't read for me that same way it did for someone encountering a "book" for the first time.