New FR compared with Dragonlance 5th age

[amysrevenge]

Would you say that the Saga system was more gamist, or narritivist?

It was ALL narritivist, NO gamist.

I ran a SAGA campaign for about 6 months. The stories were the same - as good as the effort you put into them, but the game play portion was terrible. The cards were a neat idea, but in play were practically irrelevant as far as actually resolving actions (with a few exceptions, you either would always succeed or always fail at certain actions no matter how the cards were played*). It was fun for a while, but we were jonesing for a real game toward the end. Even 2nd Edition seems fair and balanced in retrospect (and I haven't cracked a 2E book since August 2000).

Big Mike

*For instance, a Hill Giant used the same statistic for "to hit", damage, (melee) armor class, and hit points. A giant who tried to attack any PC (of any experience level), no matter the cards in the player's hand, could not fail to a) hit every time, and b) kill the PC in a single hit (every time). Conversely, short of getting astronomically lucky with trump cards, a PC would never be able to hit the Giant in melee (but could never, even with the wort cards, fail to hit the Giant with ranged attacks).

**I should also note that it has been over 10 years, and my memory may have exaggerated the details - I seriously remember the above anecdote, but it may have been heavily spiced by years of turning over in my mind.

 

[Andalusian]

All changes in Dragonlance have been explained for the most part through cataclysmic events, meaning they changed the entire world, where in FR the changes only changed aspects. This is the first time in FR history where the changes change everything, including the world itself. That's the shake up. Time of Troubles was just a change to how magic worked for the most part, explain it by changing the goddess who controls magic. Major changes to magic, races, classes and every little thing is best described by a major cataclysm.

Well, the Time of Troubles was a bit more extensive than that. It also killed off three evil gods and replaced them with one lame one (Cyric), threw a bunch of wild magic and dead magic zones around the place, and (most annoyingly) killed off every assassin on the planet (to explain the removal of the assassin as a core class in 2E). I think that sort of qualifies it as a major cataclysmic event (on par with some of the Dragonlance ones), even if it's not anywhere near as world-shattering as this Spellplague business.

 

[Soulsong]

Do people think they're similar?

They are similar in flavor. FR has had Cataclysms in the past, but nothing (until now and the now revealed original separation) that was on the same scale, abruptness, importance, and effectiveness that Krynn has witnessed multiple times (7 - Cataclysm, WoL, Raistlin's Ascension, Chaos War, Stealing of the World, Coming of Alien Dragons, WoS) in a very short period of time (~500 years) now.

Dissimilar?

FR has never had nearly the problems/discrepancies with mechanics that DL has had. In FR canon, there may be some weak ties of flavor to mechanics, but it is extraordinarily easy to ignore these, and no one on the official side will bust you for it. Not so in DL. The ending of the official license has removed at least some of this heavy handedness of late. FR is actually going in the right direction in terms of separating Magic from the Divine with 4e (a reasonable and retroactive reexplanation of how Magic never really was dependant on a God) when DL went in the opposite direction with SAGA/3e (making Wizardly Magic completely dependant on the Gods, ie clerical or witch-like).

Was 5th age considered successful by Dragonlance aficionados?

Some liked it. Some didn't. The funny thing is those who liked it would just as easily have liked a new world with all of the new flavor of DL without the existing previous DL flavor. Many thought that the existing setting was a bit stagnant, but the changes were way over the top and changed the flavor of DL much more than needed to occur to revitalize the setting. Lets get rid of all of the gods. Oh, and magic too... And lets introduce Alien Dragons and change the geography, politics, and societies significantly. Oh and almost all of the old characters/nations are gone. Might as well just call it a new world, IMO. I might just have liked it as a new world, but it is no longer a DL I recognize.

Did it help the setting reach a wider audience?

No. It may be reaching a different audience, and I am sure some true believers will make the argument that it salvaged the existing audience, but it is extremely difficult to measure this versus other paths that were not taken (similar to measuring the cost of non-quality in manufacturing). My confident belief is that other paths could have been taken that would have retained more old fans as well as bringing in more new fans.

My general problem with both of these changes (DL and FR) is that they appear so artistically lazy. Instead of looking for changes that would be good for the campaign on there own, a certain threshold for significant change (to invalidate previous material enough to drive future sales without making it completely obvious that they are really introducing a new world while leveraging an existing world's name) was identified and driven artificially by some committee. These types of decisions limit the changes to a certain subset that then strain campaign integrity by there very nature. I understand that this is a business, but I expect a bit more creativeness and foresight. Quality will sell. With DL, it is a bit more complicated in that W&H actually tryed to end the world at one point, TSR turned it into a Frankenstein Experiment, and then W&H were given a chance to resurect it, only they chose to attempt a salvage of both original and frankenstein. In this, the patchwork of Abeir and Toril is reminescent of a similar flesh golem. I could like this idea more if it wouldn't have stomped so completely on so much that was previously the Realms (Shining South, Maztica). Additions and Explanations, I expect. Not Complete Replacements.