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

[Kai Lord]

I think your question is a little analagous to "How can Verne Troyer become a great NBA player."

No it isn't. Game designers can't just make Vern Troyer into a 6'5" NBA all-star by simply writing it on a page. They can however mold the Dragonlance setting into the best version of itself, depending, of course, on what they and fans think the "best" version is. That's what I'm curious to see different people's points of view on.

Is the "D&D with More Dragons" contrast to Greyhawk even relevant or necessary any more? *Can* Dragonlance overhaul itself? Does it need to? Would a setting of cool dragonriding organizations and Tolkienesque adventure be better off without, say, the Heroes of the Lance, or such a focus on one tiny continent, or something else that has always been a part of DL, perhaps to the setting's detriment?

In Eberron, the aftermath of a great war is the fertile ground in which everybody adventures. It isn't about whoever the NPC's in that great war were, nobody really much knows and no one cares.

Is that what Dragonlance needs? A separation of PC's from anything related to the novels? A greater focus on the time in between the wars and cataclysms? A timeline that *never* advances after a certain point, so canon lovers will never be overshadowed or overwritten by events from future novels?

Again, just curious as to what other people, particularly those who find DL too lacking to play in, think on the matter. The responses thus far have been very interesting.

 

[Arnwyn]

I noticed poor old DL mentioned an awful lot on the "Least Favorite Setting" thread, so I'm curious as to whether or not those who have played it and disliked it have any recommendations on how to make it more appealing to today's gamers?

What does it need? Let's say there was no limit to what the current designers could do to improve the setting, what would you recommend?

A few things, for me at least:

- drop the metaplot, hard and fast. One big overriding story doesn't do the players any favors.
- kill the novel line immediately. As others have mentioned above, the relentless push of the storyline(s) and major characters isn't conducive to a good gaming world; which leads to:
- stop fricken' changing things. How many ages have there been? And the constant 'blowing up' of the world? Screw that.

However, as a few others have said, it's a lost cause, IMO. Too little, too late.

 

[rogueattorney]

Am I the only one who read the novels and didn't like them?

No. I thought they were complete junk.

To answer the original question, as others have said, the makers of DL couldn't do anything to the setting that would make me want to buy it without alienating their long time fans. It simply wouldn't be worth it to them to try.

R.A.

 

[Belen]

The setting needs to be driven away from the novels. Everytime I look at Dragonlance, I think about the books. I just cannot come up with a story line for it.

On the other hand, I LOVE to pull things from the setting. I have pulled the magic and mage orders, and the Knights of Solamnia into my homebrew.

Dave

 

[Belen]

Oh! Publish a bit more often may help. New books for DL come out at a glacial pace. By the time the next one arrives, I have lost interest.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Try to run in a different time period, and what do you have? Before the war of the lance: No clerical magic, thus no healing and preventing players from playing some of the major classes in the PHB. Either that or twisting history and the setting so that it isn't DL anymore.

I was going to disagree with you but I'm not sure I can. See, I run a DL-based game where I rewrote the history prior to the War of Souls and ignored everything past the first chapter of the 5th Age/SAGA book (Chaos came back, gods retreated). It *is* Dragonlance. But...it's not. 99% of the stuff in the DLA and TotD is correct and that last 1% is evenly split between my changes and conflicts within the books. I have kender, tinker gnomes, big scary dragons, etc but.....it doesn't quite feel like Dragonlance anymore. I can't say it ever did really.

The fact is that DL always has a bit of the railroad feel to it so the big events can happen. Take that away and it doesn't quite feel like DL anymore. Not bad. Just...different. Probably better. From what I've heard that's why the DLd20 stuff's done so well; less railroading and a "softer" focus on the events at large. That's hearsay though. I don't own the books because my 3E DL game's been running since 2001 and there's no way I'm going to Ret-Con the whole campaign.

In DL, the world is so focused around the events at the time that anything like a dungeon crawl or a simple, non-world spanning adventure feels out of place in the world and feels unimportant.

This, I think, is up to the DM. Set a game on Taladas and most of the Ansaloni events are rather unimportant. The islands north of the Istar are equally isolated and insulated. The big dwarven fortresses kept their doors closed for most of recent history so entire campaigns can be based there with little intrusion from the outside world. Same goes for a lot of the Elven lands. (I always wanted to start a campaign during the War where the PCs are elves, defending the forest during the evacuation. The PCs finally set sail but wind up being the group of ships that were blown to Taladas. The war becomes utterly irrelevant though still a major factor in the group's thinking.)

Even within Solamnia it varies with the local acceptance of the tales. Leave the areas where the war hit or that weren't visited by any of the Heroes and have at best an elderly Knight of Solamnia and you'll have a different experience. "Suuuuure, I can believe that Majere fellow split the Whitestone with a lance. Oh, yeah. Betcha it was just spring thaw that shattered it, don'cha know."

 

[Logan]

I think that's the problem, same with kender. You have a serious and dreadful world, and these two races are crammed up it's ass to provide comic relief. They are the square peg hammered into the round hole of Dragonlance.

Yes, that's it exactly. Well, that and the fact I like my settings "grim and pseudo-Medevial"
(you know, what the middle ages really were not but everyone thinks they were)
Tinker gnomes, with their elevators and steams enignes, really take me for a loop, and don't get me started on their ships..........

 

[Garnfellow]

No it isn't. Game designers can't just make Vern Troyer into a 6'5" NBA all-star by simply writing it on a page. They can however mold the Dragonlance setting into the best version of itself, depending, of course, on what they and fans think the "best" version is. That's what I'm curious to see different people's points of view on.

What makes you think you haven't /already/ seen the best version of Dragonlance -- and that version still wasn't good enough to convert the unbelievers?

It's not like TSR and WotC haven't thrown some of the best designers, artists, and editors in the business at this setting. And it isn't like the various Dragonlance teams haven't tried to shake things up . . . they must be on, what, their sixth cataclysm or so?

I don't think there are "Six Simple Things That Would Fix Dragonlance Once and for All Time" because the problems or limitations are inherent with the setting in all incarnations, just as Vern Troyer's 2' 8" height is fundamentally inherent to him. Suddenly adding githyanki or cybernetics or more dragons won't fix Dragonlance, nor will killing off all the Kender and Tinker Gnomes (however desirable I might find this might to be).

As plenty of other folks have already pointed out, the things that make one person love Krynn are the very same things that make other people hate Krynn.

So to me, it’s not like Dragonlance is a marginal case, where it just needs a couple of nips here, and few tucks there, and the BAM! 80% of the haters out there see the light. I think you would have to, for all intents and purposes, destroy the setting in order to appease the critics. So why bother? Maybe the very best thing to do with the setting is provide MORE of everything that the fans love and the detractors hate. More Kender! Double Tinker Gnomes! Three novels a month!

 

[Narfellus]

Eh, I'll pipe in. I read the Chronicles and Legends when i was a kid and loved them. Really really liked em. Even read alot of the spin off sequels but all paled to the first 6 books. Quit reading them for a long long time because the setting didn't quite do it for me. It didn't beg me to "PLAY ME" or "RUN ME" like FR did at the time (i've since quit playing FR too, but that's another story).

As someone else mentioned, the scope of DL is all about the War and Gods and Dragons. Anything outside this scope by lower level characters seems pointless. My favorite setting now is Midnight, and i'm drawing some comparisons. There's a major war here too. A continent spanning war where the good guys are on the decline. I suppose the whole gist of Midnight automatically put the PC's into the plotline in some fashion, but the difference (to me) is that there aren't novels for comparisons. There aren't well known Fizbans or Heroes of the Lance fighting Takhisis. There's no sense of humor or solace in Midnight. The built-in war of Midnight is bleak with a probably bleak conclusion but the heroes, no matter how small, become VASTLY important in their war against the shadow.

I haven't seen the d20 conversion of DL but from what i've read here it sounds interesting. But i wouldn't get it. I just don't have time to run it, not when there are 10 others setttings that want to be played first (like Conan!)

 

[Cam Banks]

It's not like TSR and WotC haven't thrown some of the best designers, artists, and editors in the business at this setting. And it isn't like the various Dragonlance teams haven't tried to shake things up . . . they must be on, what, their sixth cataclysm or so?

Okay, here's the part I think is becoming a little widespread and overemphasized for no apparent reason.

When the game line started back in 1984, it was set in a post-Cataclysm world, 350 years after the gods dropped a comet on the Kingpriest of Istar and left. So, that's one.

When the game line was doing poorly and the novels weren't really working out too well (or for whatever reason), Tracy and Margaret worked together with TSR and wrote Dragons of a Summer Flame, and that was the Chaos War. Widespread event, yes. When did this occur? 1996. Twelve years later.

And so, they introduced a new game line set after that event, with a new game system, and it did tolerably well and has many ardent fans. It suffered towards the end and TSR moved it into dual-stat for AD&D, but eventually when WOTC bought TSR the decision was made to cap the SAGA period off with another event and bring back many of the classic features fans were missing. That happened in 2001.

Currently the setting is enjoying a renewed surge of interest and is open to various eras of play, from the current post-War of Souls time period to the War of the Lance or back further than that. The gaming line supports a range of fan interest.

With all of this, the idea that Dragonlance is just constant change and destruction and rebooting and so on is a stretch, to me. It changes with every edition of the game, much like popular settings such as the Realms do. I don't see the frequency of upset that others do, I suppose.

Cheers,
Cam