Ogrork the Mighty
Explorer
Sounds like a bad DM ruined DL for you, not the campaign setting.
-
NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
Dragons of Despair - your experiences?
- Thread starter Quasqueton
- Start date
Steel_Wind
Legend
No two modules in the history of gaming have been novelized as faithfully, spoiled as thoroughly or have been read by as many players as has the novelization of DL1 and DL2 in Dragons of Autumn Twilight . It is a blow-by-blow account of both modules – and that is the problem with DL1.
I have played DL1: Dragons of Despair as a player and run it twice in PnP. In terms of having written and run our module code for this thing in house at DLA? Well. More times than I care to count.
I have spent the past two and a half years or so running a total conversion mod team designing a computer game version of this module for use in Neverwinter Nights under 3e.
I am a huge DragonLance fan and I love the War of the Lance setting. If there is anybody who has spent more time dissecting this module on an encounter by encounter basis and evaluating how it works and how it goes together than our mod team has well - I really, really, really doubt that. I don’t even think Cam Banks has spent as much time pouring over this module evaluating every little bit of minutiae as we have at DLA. I know this one backwards, forwards and sideways.
As it turns out, I am also now running a 3.5e version of the original War of the Lance campaign, albeit dramatically modified. And yes, the appearance of DL1 in some form in my campaign is coming up. And that’s the key: in some form.
Because I have to say – there are a lot of problems with this module. I would go so far as to call it deeply flawed. It not just that it needs serious updating in order to be a viable adventure for today’s 3.5e. Like much of the DragonLance saga, it suffers from a huge case of railroading. It’s not that railroading is necessarily always bad; sometimes, skillfull railroading can make for a great adventure series. But in the case of DL1, the railroad is ineptly done and makes *no sense*. The spirit of this tends to pervade later modules in the series as well – but never, ever, ever as badly done as it is in this module.
This is a module that has a very good last half and a dreadful first half. The second half requires reworking by today’s standards given the dramatic changes in mechanics and in dragons between 1st and 3rd edition. The first half should be, in my opinion, totally scrapped and rebuilt. It was *never* any good – put bluntly – it is iconically BAD game design. I’ll go farther: You would be hard pressed to find a worse example of adventure design if you tried.
While it is possible to use the pre-generated iconic characters from the novels/modules, my strong recommendation is not to do this. Spend some time crafting your WotL campaign. Spend 10-15 sessions or so working up the party from 1st level to about 6th level – the level they should be to take this module on in 3e and use that time to make the setting yours and to allow your players to make their characters theirs. By the time you get them into your version of Dragons of Despair, Weis and Hickman will be somebody else’s problem.
Above all - ignore the novels and even sometimes the module series direction frequently if not *often*. I am running a very successful WotL campaign right now with a group of gamers who have been playing 25 years plus. They are in their 30’s and 40’s and jaded as hell. But we are still enjoying the campaign a lot. It’s not that these modules are non-conducive to great play – far from it – but you *must* make them your own. You have to STOP letting Tracy Hickman and Marg Weis DM your campaign for you. I cannot say that often enough. For every player who rolls his eyes at DragonLance, I guarantee you there is a DM out there somewhere who railroaded the group and made his players choose their path “like the books”. Never a more boring campaign is one likely to ever play than with that style of DragonLance DM. But anecdotally, this appears to be more than rule than the exception to people's memories about DL.
No two modules in the history of gaming have been converted as faithfully, spoiled as thoroughly or have been read by as many players as has the novelization of DL1 and DL2 in Dragons of Autumn Twilight . It is a blow-by-blow account of both modules – and that is the problem. In order to rescue this campaign from the clutches of cliche and the utter boredom of been there, done that, you *must* put a lot of time and effort into redoing these 2 modules in particular. The rest of the campaign can be converted without THAT much trouble as they are rarely detailed in subsequent novels to a significant degree and the modules are themselves great fun and well designed (draconic problems aside). But the first 2 need to be overhauled in a major way to become playable again.
With respect to the mod series as a whole – the War of the Lance is one of the best epic module series ever done for D&D. In the mid-80’s it rescued TSR from a series of unfortunate events and made them a *ton* of dough. The novelization of the module series spawned about 150 sequels at last glance which continue to sell very well to this day.. With a distinctive adventure style, the switch to a more story centric emphasis on game play (away from iconic hack and slash) and some of the greatest maps ever produced for D&D (The Tower of the High Clerist remains the largest Castle Map TSR ever did) DragonLance was arguably TSR’s finest moment. The move to story based gaming and away from hack and slash set the trend for all of 2E which followed. The history of D&D is as thoroughly enmeshed in DL1 as it ever was in B2 or the Temple of Elemental Evil or GDQ1-7. This module series matters.
And unlike Greyhawk and Planescape, DL keeps going remarkably strong. Apart from the official DragonLance Campaign Setting by WotC for 3.5e, Sovereign Press, the RPG publishing company owned by Margaret Weis continues to produce richly coloured, hardcover DragonLance material for 3.5e. The first adventure campaign module for DL 5th age published by Sov Press *sold out* in an era where most companies are finding it hard to sell 1,000-2,000 modules. Frankly, virtually all of Sov Press’ 3.5e DL books have sold out and continue to do so. In an era of a glut of D20 products, DragonLance continues to sell very well. The 3.5e War of the Lance sourcebook is easily my favourite RPG game supplement ever and is exceptionally well done.
There tends not to be a whole lot of DragonLance talk on ENWorld – but that’s mainly as there are many other places where it is discussed by an active group of DL fans. http://dragonlanceforums.com is Sovereign Press’ official forum site. The DragonLance forums on WotC’s boards at http://boards1.wizards.com/forumdisplay.php?f=287 are the busiest of all the “other worlds” forums, threatening at time times to have more posts in that section than all other “other words” combined at times. The DragonLance Nexus http://www.dl3e.com/ provides 3e fan support and discussion for the game, along with conversions and fan rules and scenarios. The Tobril http://www.tobrilmagazine.com/ provides an ezine for DragonLance 3e content. And yeah, lastly, our own website at DragonLance Adventures http://www.dladventures.net/iB/index.php?act=idx provides new art in both 3d and 2d along, with discussions about DL in both PnP and NWN form. With about 1.8 million hits a month – we aren’t exactly slow either.
I have played DL1: Dragons of Despair as a player and run it twice in PnP. In terms of having written and run our module code for this thing in house at DLA? Well. More times than I care to count.
I have spent the past two and a half years or so running a total conversion mod team designing a computer game version of this module for use in Neverwinter Nights under 3e.
I am a huge DragonLance fan and I love the War of the Lance setting. If there is anybody who has spent more time dissecting this module on an encounter by encounter basis and evaluating how it works and how it goes together than our mod team has well - I really, really, really doubt that. I don’t even think Cam Banks has spent as much time pouring over this module evaluating every little bit of minutiae as we have at DLA. I know this one backwards, forwards and sideways.
As it turns out, I am also now running a 3.5e version of the original War of the Lance campaign, albeit dramatically modified. And yes, the appearance of DL1 in some form in my campaign is coming up. And that’s the key: in some form.
Because I have to say – there are a lot of problems with this module. I would go so far as to call it deeply flawed. It not just that it needs serious updating in order to be a viable adventure for today’s 3.5e. Like much of the DragonLance saga, it suffers from a huge case of railroading. It’s not that railroading is necessarily always bad; sometimes, skillfull railroading can make for a great adventure series. But in the case of DL1, the railroad is ineptly done and makes *no sense*. The spirit of this tends to pervade later modules in the series as well – but never, ever, ever as badly done as it is in this module.
This is a module that has a very good last half and a dreadful first half. The second half requires reworking by today’s standards given the dramatic changes in mechanics and in dragons between 1st and 3rd edition. The first half should be, in my opinion, totally scrapped and rebuilt. It was *never* any good – put bluntly – it is iconically BAD game design. I’ll go farther: You would be hard pressed to find a worse example of adventure design if you tried.
While it is possible to use the pre-generated iconic characters from the novels/modules, my strong recommendation is not to do this. Spend some time crafting your WotL campaign. Spend 10-15 sessions or so working up the party from 1st level to about 6th level – the level they should be to take this module on in 3e and use that time to make the setting yours and to allow your players to make their characters theirs. By the time you get them into your version of Dragons of Despair, Weis and Hickman will be somebody else’s problem.
Above all - ignore the novels and even sometimes the module series direction frequently if not *often*. I am running a very successful WotL campaign right now with a group of gamers who have been playing 25 years plus. They are in their 30’s and 40’s and jaded as hell. But we are still enjoying the campaign a lot. It’s not that these modules are non-conducive to great play – far from it – but you *must* make them your own. You have to STOP letting Tracy Hickman and Marg Weis DM your campaign for you. I cannot say that often enough. For every player who rolls his eyes at DragonLance, I guarantee you there is a DM out there somewhere who railroaded the group and made his players choose their path “like the books”. Never a more boring campaign is one likely to ever play than with that style of DragonLance DM. But anecdotally, this appears to be more than rule than the exception to people's memories about DL.
No two modules in the history of gaming have been converted as faithfully, spoiled as thoroughly or have been read by as many players as has the novelization of DL1 and DL2 in Dragons of Autumn Twilight . It is a blow-by-blow account of both modules – and that is the problem. In order to rescue this campaign from the clutches of cliche and the utter boredom of been there, done that, you *must* put a lot of time and effort into redoing these 2 modules in particular. The rest of the campaign can be converted without THAT much trouble as they are rarely detailed in subsequent novels to a significant degree and the modules are themselves great fun and well designed (draconic problems aside). But the first 2 need to be overhauled in a major way to become playable again.
With respect to the mod series as a whole – the War of the Lance is one of the best epic module series ever done for D&D. In the mid-80’s it rescued TSR from a series of unfortunate events and made them a *ton* of dough. The novelization of the module series spawned about 150 sequels at last glance which continue to sell very well to this day.. With a distinctive adventure style, the switch to a more story centric emphasis on game play (away from iconic hack and slash) and some of the greatest maps ever produced for D&D (The Tower of the High Clerist remains the largest Castle Map TSR ever did) DragonLance was arguably TSR’s finest moment. The move to story based gaming and away from hack and slash set the trend for all of 2E which followed. The history of D&D is as thoroughly enmeshed in DL1 as it ever was in B2 or the Temple of Elemental Evil or GDQ1-7. This module series matters.
And unlike Greyhawk and Planescape, DL keeps going remarkably strong. Apart from the official DragonLance Campaign Setting by WotC for 3.5e, Sovereign Press, the RPG publishing company owned by Margaret Weis continues to produce richly coloured, hardcover DragonLance material for 3.5e. The first adventure campaign module for DL 5th age published by Sov Press *sold out* in an era where most companies are finding it hard to sell 1,000-2,000 modules. Frankly, virtually all of Sov Press’ 3.5e DL books have sold out and continue to do so. In an era of a glut of D20 products, DragonLance continues to sell very well. The 3.5e War of the Lance sourcebook is easily my favourite RPG game supplement ever and is exceptionally well done.
There tends not to be a whole lot of DragonLance talk on ENWorld – but that’s mainly as there are many other places where it is discussed by an active group of DL fans. http://dragonlanceforums.com is Sovereign Press’ official forum site. The DragonLance forums on WotC’s boards at http://boards1.wizards.com/forumdisplay.php?f=287 are the busiest of all the “other worlds” forums, threatening at time times to have more posts in that section than all other “other words” combined at times. The DragonLance Nexus http://www.dl3e.com/ provides 3e fan support and discussion for the game, along with conversions and fan rules and scenarios. The Tobril http://www.tobrilmagazine.com/ provides an ezine for DragonLance 3e content. And yeah, lastly, our own website at DragonLance Adventures http://www.dladventures.net/iB/index.php?act=idx provides new art in both 3d and 2d along, with discussions about DL in both PnP and NWN form. With about 1.8 million hits a month – we aren’t exactly slow either.
Last edited:
TheAuldGrump
First Post
I have a love/hate relationship with DL1.
I played in a game run by a friend of mine who told us not to read the books.
Okay, fine, I can understand that, I wouldn't want the players to read the books beforehand either.
But he then complained that we weren't doing what the characters in the books did! In particular my version of Raistlin was leaning towards good, not evil, and told mister Fistandantalus to go pound sand. (Lawful good at that.) The DM wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted a complete railroad ride recreating the books.
Later I ran it and had a great time, but I don't know how well I would have done if I didn't have a very good idea of how badly it could be run.
The Auld Grump
I played in a game run by a friend of mine who told us not to read the books.
Okay, fine, I can understand that, I wouldn't want the players to read the books beforehand either.
But he then complained that we weren't doing what the characters in the books did! In particular my version of Raistlin was leaning towards good, not evil, and told mister Fistandantalus to go pound sand. (Lawful good at that.) The DM wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted a complete railroad ride recreating the books.
Later I ran it and had a great time, but I don't know how well I would have done if I didn't have a very good idea of how badly it could be run.
The Auld Grump
Nathan P. Mahney
First Post
Ah, DL1. Had a lot of fun in this module.
We didn't use the pre-genned characters, but went with our own. I vividly remember riding down and slaughtering Toede in the first encounter...
We didn't use the pre-genned characters, but went with our own. I vividly remember riding down and slaughtering Toede in the first encounter...
jasper
Rotten DM
Bought it. Read it. laugh at it. Threw on the shelf. IT wasn't a railroad. It was Southern, Northern, Union Pacfic, the Orient Express, and Grande Siberia Railroad.
My suggestion buy for a $1 for the map.
Q man. You mind if I post the Judges Guild modules I have and add to your series?
My suggestion buy for a $1 for the map.
Q man. You mind if I post the Judges Guild modules I have and add to your series?
diaglo
Adventurer
Olgar Shiverstone said:
funny i say the same thing about d02.
my halfling has a pony tail. gets +2 vs fear. and has favored class rogue. and is skinny and looks like a human child. and...(edit: and wanderlust instead of staying in one place like the OD&D hobbits)
and the useless cleric takes all of the best magic loot so he can remake it into something more kewl. but now he is in prison so we have to free him.
and the half-elven ranger died.
Last edited:
Henry
Autoexreginated
Same here: Cool concept, one of the best dungeon maps ever in a 1E product, but I'd have to modify it a bit if I wanted to run it. So many things depend on the players doing exactly what the "right" course of action is, and if they don't, Krynn's hope doesn't even get out of the starting gate (i.e. the module is screwed).
Xak Tsaroth the ruined city however, is awesome, and the first time I was exposed to a city being a dungeon in its own right, and the effects of the environment on a manmade structure. I've used the concept many times since then.
And don't even ask me to run this with the pre-genned characters - Raistlin will probably be bending bars and lifting gates that Caramon fails at, or something else to make me laugh uncontrollably.
Xak Tsaroth the ruined city however, is awesome, and the first time I was exposed to a city being a dungeon in its own right, and the effects of the environment on a manmade structure. I've used the concept many times since then.
And don't even ask me to run this with the pre-genned characters - Raistlin will probably be bending bars and lifting gates that Caramon fails at, or something else to make me laugh uncontrollably.
Similar Threads
