Dragonlance Thoughts

[sarlinspellweaver]

I've played in a Dragonlance campaign several times, and enjoyed the setting thoroughly. Not withstanding the valid points about "irritating" racial stereotypes for all the short people, and the metanarratives (although really, a DM doesn't *have* to present an end of the world situation, any more than an FR DM has to have the involvement of Elminster or Drizzt in every campaign...), it's brilliant!

Personally, I think its strength lay in the fact that it was different from other 3e settings - high magic but lower medieval feel than FR. I personally don't like how it was forced to include Sorcerers/Mystics etc. (although I have nothing against the rules - it's just a fluff-based objection) in the 5th Age. I preferred it when wizards were wizards.

Fortunately, the Dragonlance setting is very fond of time travel and alternate time lines, and there is an excellent source book (Legends of the Twins? something like that...) which covers settings in which the Chaos War, the War of Souls etc. did not happen - so you can keep the "old" setting if you prefer.

Oh, and as others have said - there is some excellent material for DL, IMO better than much of the WotC campaign-specific stuff. If you don't fancy searching ebay for hard back copies there are plenty of knocked-down pdfs out there to get at very reasonable prices.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Kender are interesting because they're different as well. They're not like any of the core race templates- not like halflings, not like gnomes, not like dwarves. Sure, they're annoying to deal with in-character, but that's part of the charm. (Although I have never quite understood why Dragonlance feels it necessary to exclude halflings in favor of kender.)

3E halflings as per the PHB are very, very close to less-manic kender. I'd say Dragonlance has won this round. (Yes, later on, Races of the Wild took the worst stereotypes from World of Darkness: Gypsy and stuck it into D&D. That's not a core element of the race and, frankly, is way more offensive than anything that kender are ever accused of doing.)

But yeah, originally, kender were different from 1E halflings-as-hobbits, which was probably the point.

 

[Quartz]

For me, it seems that the optimum period to run a campaign in Dragonlance would be between the founding of the Solamnic Knights and the rise of Huma.

 

[jdrakeh]

The original modules were enough to ruin Dragonlance for me. I wish I'd been introduced into the setting via the novels, but the modules put me off of those, as well. They're great portfolio pieces, but as adventures to actually be played? Not so good.

The above having been said, I've been interested in the new DL stuff because Cam Banks was involved (and only because he was involved). Unfortunately, that old DL experience has still beat out said curiosity.

 

[lrsach01]

One weird thing I've noticed: in the books, gully dwarves are universally pathetic. However, if you made a gully dwarf rogue (their favored class), they would actually be quite boss.

My brother-in-law was in town and joined our regular as a guest one night. He played a gully dwarf barbarian named Fern (Fern Gully Dwarf...if you don't get it I ain't explainin'). Any way, he made it a great character and had lots of fun running right into battle without regard to any danger...of course Fern's intelleigence was too low to even understand danger.

 

[Odhanan]

One thing that gets brought up frequently is the idea of "railroading" in Dragonlance.

Agreed. I think that my major problem with Dragonlance is the overarching metaplot going on with the Heroes of the Lance and so on. In early versions of DL, if you wanted to just run your own version of the War of the Lance, everything was fine, you could just go with it and still use the sourcebooks and modules.

You can still do it now, but the recent history of the setting is closely tied with the novels, the war of the twins, war of souls, legacy of the heroes of the lance etc etc. If you played your campaign with other heroes and had a completely different outcome from the original module, you're stuck with the basic material and can't use a big portion of the present flavor.

It's like the DL setting is railroading the DMs themselves ! That's what I don't like about it.

I like DL's flavor. I love the old AD&D campaign book. I disconnected with the metaplot just prior to the War of Souls. Now, I just don't want to make the effort of catching-up anymore.

 

[Friendless]

DL1 was a railroad job when run as written. I swore off DL for years, and have never read any of the novels..

Me too. It's been 20 years and I'm still bitter.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

... Conan would be quite lost and confused among the generally benevolent societies and religions of Ansalon.

Depends on the era and location of the campaign. Playing in ancient Ergoth (i.e., in the time period of the Ergoth Trilogy novels) is very much like Conan's world. And with the Legends of the Twins sourcebook (that deals with alternate campaign eras) and the trilogy of novels mentioned above, you'd have all the info you need.

The way I see it is that Dragonlance is what the DM makes of it. If he railroads the PCs, then the campaign will be a railroad. If he doesn't, it won't be. Even the original modules allowed for alternate characters.

Dragonlance is a very story-based world. In other words, it tends not to be a free-flowing, "let's wander around and kill stuff" type of world. There is usually a greater story going on. A lot of people confuse that for railroading. But hey, if you don't want to participate in the story but would rather just hunt goblins, you can do that too.

Personally, I think Dragonlance railroads are overexaggerated. But it's the one thing that eveyone who otherwise knows next to nothing about Dragonlance can chime in on.

 

[Crothian]

I just reviewed the first few classic adventures they redid for 3.x and they were pretty good. I never played through them back in 1e so I don't have the baggage people seem to have with them. I've been pretty impressed with the new DL books.

 

[Cam Banks]

We have the "railroad" issue foremost in our minds at all times when planning adventures for Dragonlance. In Key of Destiny, there's a fair amount of "here's a prophecy that tells you where to go" stuff, but the heroes have a huge amount of freedom in what they do, and when I ran it I modified it a fair bit. Spectre of Sorrows, which is where I took over the lead writing, has at least two overland routes toward the end chapter, with many side treks and encounters ready to drop in. Price of Courage is the most flexible of the three, and since it's such a high level adventure its very hard to plan ahead for what the heroes can do, so my approach became one of letting the heroes make the big decisions and become movers and shakers.

Our revisions of the classic modules are an attempt at preserving the storyline of the originals without eliminating any freedom on the part of the heroes. I think Clark and Sean did a fantastic job of that in Dragons of Autumn, and I hope to continue that with the next two.

I think Dragonlance works best when you have story arcs that draw on elements of the setting and let the heroes feel as if they are accomplishing something. You can run a campaign from 1st level to 20th and beyond just with our Age of Mortals adventures, or use them and the other sourcebooks to come up with shorter campaigns. The metaplot becomes a canvas, rather than a straitjacket.

Cheers,
Cam