Drizzt v Raistlin

[hbarsquared]

With the discussion of Drizzt's role in Out of the Abyss, I got to thinking...

Drizzt and Forgotten Realms are argued to be the "most popular" and sell the most units. I don't know, and I can't argue one way or the other.

But, wasn't Dragonlance the most prolific novel-setting? Didn't it outnumber Drizzt and Forgotten Realms at one point, possibly even now?

What happened?

Why is Forgotten Realms the "core" setting whrn Dragonlance sold more novels?

When did Drizzt become more popular than Raistlin?

 

[RangerWickett]

Dragonlance is a story. Forgotten Realms is a setting.

You can only have a group of heroes find a long-lost artifact and kill the queen of dragons in order to save the world once. You can have Drizzt get into all sorts of problems, because he's never saved the world.

It's hard to have a sequel to saving the world. Buffy the Vampire Slayer being an exception (and a rule).

 

[Gadget]

To add to what RW said above, DL was really popular, and spawned a lot of follow on products, both RPG & novel. However, some of the things that are a major draw for the property, also hinder its usefulness as an RPG flagship product. It is more of an epic romance genre (in the old, classical definition of 'romance', not the modern 'twilight' definition) that is more story focused (thus making further add-ons and additions to the story seem to water the whole thing down), it is not a 'kitchen sink' type setting which limits flexibility (thus making it harder to add in the latest and greatest ideas, races, classes, etc.), and, most tellingly, there have been few products produced for it over the last decade or so; whereas the endless stream of novels, video games, etc. produced for FR is much greater.

If people complain about FR being 'blown up' by a new Edition release, you about have to practically obliterate DL to accommodate some things.

 

[Dog Moon]

Perhaps strangely, I like the Forgotten Realms better, but I like Raistlin better. Raistlin went from a sickly little Wizard to someone who actually became powerful enough to challenge the God of Evil [or something like that, my memory is a little vague it has been so long]. Drizz't was kind of neat for a while but I don't know, he sort of felt like he was always fairly powerful from the beginning and only progressed a little. Then again, maybe he did more than that; I haven't really read much of the new stuff. Driz'zt kicked ass, but he always seemed sorta boring to me despite that. The others he traveled with were more interesting, IMO.

But the Setting... Forgottem Realms and the plethora of information and the wide variety of races and monsters and organizations and just EVERYTHING always seemed to keep the Setting new and fresh whereas Krynn just seemed a lot more toned down and focused to me and after a while it just sort of became blegh.

And Kenders... I HATE Kenders...