Okay so you hate Dragonlance, how can the current designers improve it?

[woodelf]

I run a dreaded "alternate history" of Krynn set in the War of the Lance. That means the Chronicles never happened - and virtually everything that followed them never happened. It's my world - and I can do with it what I want. I pick and choose, plain and simple.

I think all DMs should do this - but for some reason - (probably because the DL Chronicles have sold 20 million copies and have rabid fans who want to recreate them) a LOT of DL fans and DMs cannot bring themselves to do this.

Small wonder there are those who dislike DL. I'd hate it too if I had a crappy DM run FR Eberron or what have you for me too.

Interesting. Never ran into those folks. Back when DL was new, most of my gaming buddies and i read the first trilogy or two. And that was it. I bought the sourcebooks, but not the modules--but then, i've never really bought pre-written scenarios for any RPG. I never even bothered looking at the subsequent novels--the first two trilogies were good, maybe even great, but not good enough to merit buying subsequent books, and the library didn't have them. Why didn't we actually *play* DL? Two reasons, closely-related. First, everyone i knew played a homebrew setting. Even the one group i knew who nominally played in FR, pretty much used the map and that was about it. Secondly, DL just never grabbed any of us, especially as a settnig.

Like someone else said, having read the novels makes a HUGE difference to the game. It adds a whole different level of depth to campaigns, especially once you really get to know the world. And there are a lot of really good new novels being published (I don't like the current timeline ones, but there are a lot that take place in earlier eras of play). DL is, IMHO, the most richly developed campaign world out there (in terms of fluff, rather than crunch).

May be. I'm not gonna read a stack of novels to find out. Distill all that into a couple good-sized RPG books, without all the narrative and plot and characterization that go into a novel, and i'll eat them up. [It's actually one of my primary complaints with a *lot* of RPG settings: quit developing your setting through fiction, and give me gazeteers (or whatever you want to call them). I'm not interested in wading through a novel to get the setting info, even if it's a great novel; and even if i do, novels make lousy reference works when i want to look something up.]

One of the things that makes DL great is its uniqueness.

Agreed. However, it's just not *that* unique. At least for me, the uniqueness was what got my attention; the discovery that it actually wasn't all that unique was what turned me off. Well, the fairly vanillaness of thessetting, combined with the comic-relief races. I wanted something *more* unique.

A quick note on the eccentricities of DL (e.g. tinker gnomes, kender, the Heroes of the Lance, dragons, etc.). A lot of people get all caught up in these aspects of DL and "can't see the forest for the trees", so to speak. In my 3-4 year running DL campaign, the party has yet to meet a tinker gnome. And kender have been encountered in isolated incidents. The party has never met any of the Heroes of the Lance and those characters have had zero direct impact on the party. The only person of prominence they have met and interacted with was Dalamar. Yes, dragons are a theme of DL. But that's to be expected and the party seems to enjoy encountering dragons of all different colours (but, even then, fighting dragons has been rare). The party has had only minor encounters with draconians to date (though that will change soon!).

But at some point, what's the point? I mean, which elements *are* defining of DL? How many of them can you change before it's just another fantasy setting. You can't have it both ways--either the setting is worthwhile because it's unique, or it's worthwhile because it's familiar.

Anyway, i guess the DL setting never really grabbed me. It always seemed fairly vanilla, with a few twists, some of which i thought were really cool (the changes to magic), some of which a couldn't stand (the changes to races). Nonetheless, i *loved* the first two trilogies, and i actually think they're pretty good literature, not just good by game-fiction standards. But what made them good had precious little to do with the setting, and a great deal to do with the characters. There's a lot of good fiction out there that falls into the same category, IMHO. Frex, I would love to recapture what i love about Blake's 7, VR5, or Firefly in an RPG campaign. But what i'd want to recapture would be the character interactions--the settings, in each case, are fairly non-remarkable. I think that's part of why DL falls down as a setting: people fall in love with the novels because of the character interactions, and putting different characters into the same setting just doesn't do it.

 

[MrFilthyIke]

beginning next month with the novel Blades of the Tiger by Chris Pierson) I don't think it's the "Dragonlance solution" so to speak.

This will be the first DL book I read since 1992.

w00t!

 

[woodelf]

Ugh. That is so fundamentally NOT TRUE that I don't know where to begin. DL has NOT been about the Heroes of the Lance since the classic series so long ago. They haven't even re-created 3E versions of the original series. Yet people STILL think that it's all about Tanis and Raistlin and Sturm, etc., etc., etc. It's not. And it hasn't been for quite some time. Any real DL fan would know that.

Maybe. But then this thread is about how to convert the un-converted. By definition, they aren't going to be "real fans", and won't be particularly familiar with the nuances. Also, i suspect that sales of the first two trilogies significantly dwarfs sales of any given later book, skewing general perspectives about the world.

Also, per my other post, i think it *is* all about Tanis and Raistlin and Sturm and Kitiara and so on--that is, IMHO, what makes them great literature is precisely the characters and their interactions.

 

[woodelf]

You lose those and all you have is ... Greyhawk 2.0.

Which was sort of my point, though i might've been unclear. Now, realistically, there are quite a few other defining elements of DL, such as the wizardry and knightly orders, the ongoing dragon wars, the relationships between magic and moons and gods and priests, and so on. But, for every element i like in the setting, there's at least one that's just as tightly tied that i don't like. And i suspect that (1) that's gonna be true for most people who aren't fans of DL but could be potentially converted (that is, they don't hate every single element of it), and (2) which are which varies enough that you couldn't easily change the setting and please more people than now.

 

[Ranger REG]

Which was sort of my point, though i might've been unclear. Now, realistically, there are quite a few other defining elements of DL, such as the wizardry and knightly orders, the ongoing dragon wars, the relationships between magic and moons and gods and priests, and so on. But, for every element i like in the setting, there's at least one that's just as tightly tied that i don't like. And i suspect that (1) that's gonna be true for most people who aren't fans of DL but could be potentially converted (that is, they don't hate every single element of it), and (2) which are which varies enough that you couldn't easily change the setting and please more people than now.

Meh. DL is just one of many settings out there. If you like it, support it. If you don't, find another (or create your own).

The thread starter wanted to make DL more appealing and more attractive to more gamers so it is no longer the least attractive, but that is like trying to re-invent a longtime pop star into what many kids are into today: rap (much to my chagrin). Or worse, take a favorite sci-fi TV show and have professional wrestling superstars as guest stars to attract those kind of base audience.

In the end, it's all about flavor.

 

[Arnwyn]

Look, if people don't want to buy DL b/c they have plenty of other gaming materials, fine - no problem. But you don't need to rationalize it by trying to say DL isn't good gaming material. Maybe it's just not for you. And the worst is people who still talk about railroading; they clearly haven't kept up on things and don't know the product...

Dude... are you just refusing to pay attention? Maybe you need to be reacquainted with the thread title. Here it is: "Okay so you hate Dragonlance..." Of course people "clearly haven't kept up on things and don't know the product" - I thought that would have been glaringly obvious.

Look - it's all about perceptions. People who have been put off by the setting for whatever reason aren't going to "know the product" and certainly won't have "kept up on things"... why would they if they aren't impressed with Dragonlance? A quick cost/benefit analysis will quickly tell you that one isn't going to go back and research years of material, nor spend their precious time (not to mention hard-earned money) keeping up with something that they aren't interested in anymore (though, looking at your strange rant on the previous page shows me that you don't understand that concept...).

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I am not sure if there is anything that could be done to get me to like Dragonlance. I simply never liked the books or the setting. There were too many things that turned me off. So whereas it has nothing to do with the TSR/WotC game designers end, I just could never get into it. For instance, if someone told me they had the best recipie in the world for for squash, I would be unable to appreciate it as I don't really like squash. Nothing against the cook, more like a bias against the vegetable.

 

[Son_of_Thunder]

...Don't try to Improve it! The setting's not going to appeal to everyone, it just never will. The reason I left it was 5th Age. Yes, it was an innovative system, yes they had talented people on it but that(5th Age) was the reason I left. 5th Age killed everything I loved about the setting.

At the time I was dang bitter until I realized that I had a ton of Greyhawk stuff I'd never used. Now, when it was announced that Sovereign Press was going to be doing 3.x stuff I got excited, until I picked up the core book and took it back to the store where I bought it. Dragonlance didn't translate well to 3.5 for me.

To play a rose knight you had to have a total of five classes and prestige classes. Geography wasn't the same, 5th age saw to that, Towers of High Sorcery were moved and I could list even more.

The point is that nothing could make me want to come back to Dragonlance. Go after those who never played in earlier editions; market it to new players of the new edition.

My two cents worth.

 

[wingsandsword]

Some of my problems with Dragonlance. Now, I'm not a big DL hater, but I do have a few problems with the setting, not fundamental ones (IMO), ones that a GM could house-rule away but probably to the horror of DL fans, but ones that need to be mentioned.

If steel is so valuable that it's used in place of gold as the main currency, why does everybody have so much steel equipment? Orders full of knights in shining armor, swords, daggers, axes, chain mail all of steel. If people in a typical D&D setting had as much suits of solid gold armor, solid gold weapons ect people would be assuming that gold was heavily devalued.

The whole "wizards aren't allowed to use anything other than a staff or dagger" thing. It sounds like a very, very transparent bolting on of AD&D rules into novel setting.

Actually, the whole "3 orders of wizardry that all wizards belong to and must join or die when they reach 5th level" bit also puts me off a little. A rebellious, independent Chaotic Neutral wizard would utterly insist that someone he found join the orders or die. Highly chaotic characters who are loyal and dutiful members of a worldwide organization with strict and rigid regulations that must be obeyed to the death? A Lawful Good wizard who finds a young mage who learned some basics from a dying old man and is largely self-taught from his notes and spellbooks is encountered off in the wilderness and told "you will come with me and join my organization or die!" Hardly Lawful Good. The entire "Orders of High Sorcery" seems like a Lawful Evil organization: Every wizard in the entire world must join on pain of death, and the entrance test itself is potentially fatal.

 

[scourger]

...steel is so valuable...

...wizards aren't allowed to use anything other than a staff or dagger...

...3 orders of wizardry that all wizards belong to and must join or die when they reach 5th level....

Now that I'm reminded of these factes, I remember the few books I read and am more interested in the setting. Funny.