Dragonlance: Our LotR?

[Rackhir]

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

It's actually far worse than if it were just a pastiche at least it might have some originality then. It's litterally Tokien dumbed down. I'm fairly certain what the author did was go through LotR and write up an outline of the plot. He then went back and wrote the book using simpler vocabulary and sentances. There's too many events and characters that are exactly what was in LotR.

 

[carmachu]

Dragonlance, at least the chronicles and legends, are my Lotr. Actually I love them a bit more than Lotr, as their an easier read. And I can empthize with the characters.

take it over Lotr any day. *shrug*

 

[Lot]

Please excuse the metaphor, but Dragonlance is literary comfort food for me. I've had some great meals in my time with complex flavor combinations and unique and imaginative textures. But sometimes, I want a big pot of macaroni and cheese and DL comes through in a big way.

I read the Chronicles and Legends when I was in middle school, so the haze of nostalgia has preserved these books very well for me. That being said, I re-read the Chronicles a few years ago and, despite my awareness of some less than stellar prose, I was still impressed by the handling of characters. Having that many unique characters and side-plots while still keeping the story moving is still impressive to me. Tanis and Laurana. Flint and Tasslehoff. Caramon and Raistlin. Flint and Tanis. Kitiara and Tanis. I honestly feel that despite the derivative nature of DL, the characters elevate the original novels to an important place in my heart.

Then again, I always loved Kaz the Minotaur just because because I'm a big dork and the minotaurs of Taladas are cool. At least to a 14-year old.

 

[Banshee16]

The other part that kind of made me a bit teary or sad was Laurana giving back Tanis the engagement ring (promise ring, whatever it was called). Her shattering of innocence was a pretty cool part, and was pretty moving to me.

I'm a sissy, I know.

I couldn't believe it when Sturm died. The part that choked me up, and that I sometimes re-read just to remind myself, is the final scene in the Abyss, between Caramon and Raistlin, when they have their last talk, and Caramon leaves him.

Banshee

 

[Cam Banks]

I would never consider the Dragonlance novels to be great literary works, just as my friend Jim wouldn't call his Dresden Files novels examples of high art. They're entertainment, "comfort food" for gamers as Lot says, with moments of stark beauty and filled with homages to all the great fantasy epics of a previous generation.

I didn't cry when Sturm or Flint died - this makes me a bad Dragonlance author, apparently - but I got angry when Tanis was killed by some random bad guy in Dragons of Summer Flame. Because, dammit, he ended up married and a dad and a mentor to a new generation, and never got to have the kind of epic final scene as any of the others did.

All that aside, I may not be an obsessive Dragonlance fanboy, but I adore the books, the setting, and the creators who brought it to us. Plus, hey, I can always tell my boys when they're older than Dragonlance helped me put them through daycare.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[thedungeondelver]

Mystara is D&D's Middle Earth, and Greyhawk is its Hyperborea.

Wait, I thought THE WORLD OF GREYHAWK was D&D's Lankhmar.

 

[Desdichado]

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).

Indeed; I didn't think you were accusing me personally. I lost count of how many times I had read LotR sometime around 15, back when I was a teenager. While I don't read it as often now, I'm sure I've doubled that since then. I kinda like the idea of Christopher Lee, who says he reads it once a year.

I discovered LotR completely independently of any love of gaming, or any surge of popularity of the works and immediately loved it. If anything, I can credit LotR for doing two things for me vis a viz D&D: 1) making me seek out this weird game that some friends of mine had tried to get me interested in a few years earlier but which didn't "take" yet and try it out seriously this time around, and 2) get quickly discouraged by the rampant D&Disms even in 1e and the BD&D days that didn't allow me to come up with games that I thought resembled LotR much.

 

[Desdichado]

OMG - please tell me you aren't serious...

Why wouldn't he be serious? I mean, I don't agree with him, but Miyazaki is a very well respected artist and Tolkien does get some common complaints from a wide variety of people who don't dig some of Tolkien's rather eccentric interests.

In any case, I haven't read the DL trilogy recently, but when I read it a few (8-9?) years ago, I thought it had held up relatively well. I still put it a notch or two below "unofficial" D&D pastiches like Ray Feist's Riftwar novels, though. And those are definately subpar compared to Tolkien to me, but no epic fantasy author since Tolkien has approached him to date, IMO.

In fact, if I were to write a fantasy novel--a dalliance that I play around at from time to time--I would purposefully avoid epic fantasy and strike out in a different direction than the trail blazed by Tolkien. Nobody else following in his footsteps has compared favorably to him IMO.

 

[Reynard]

Indeed; I didn't think you were accusing me personally. I lost count of how many times I had read LotR sometime around 15, back when I was a teenager. While I don't read it as often now, I'm sure I've doubled that since then. I kinda like the idea of Christopher Lee, who says he reads it once a year.

I have read LotR twice. Once when I was 17 or 18 (a senior in HS) and once in 2001 (I took it on my honeymoon because my wife wanted a beach vacation in Dominican, which means you can a) drink, b) read and/or c) check out topless Europeans. I did D). I was bowled over by it at 17, but more recently I was impressed with its literary quality. I have been meaning to read it again, but haven't had the chance/motivation -- I want to see if I can find the balane between the two.

But what prompted this thread -- other than nostalgia -- was the fact that once the word came out, I felt this pit in my stomach. Even more than Dragon or Dungeon, which i read on occassion, I felt really wierd about DL getting "the shaft" (note: I realize we have no idea if that is true, and it probably isn't, because it is a cash cow for WotC) and realized how much I loved DL and identified it with my love of fantasy and D&D. That's what I mean by "our LotR".

Tangent: my "annual read" is Alan Moore's Watchment. Not only do I love that book, not only do I appreciate it from a literary perspective, but I find something new in it every time I read it, even though I have read it at least a dozen times.

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah, I see what you're saying. I just don't think that DL is even that iconically D&D, honestly. They really got the novel producing machine from TSR rolling, and it was an interesting setting and story to me, but I always saw it as something a bit apart from D&D--related, but different. Like first cousins, maybe, or something like that. I enjoyed it well enough--especially the first time I read it--but I don't have any additional particular love or association with it.

To continue your tangent, my annual read is a bit bizarre: almost once a year I read J. P Mallory's In Search of the Indo-Europeans and then that usually prompts me to want to read his other book co-authored with Victor Mair The Tarim Basin Mummies. :shrug: Weird--and probably very nerdy--I know.