The details given in the lawsuit suggest that Weis/Hickman's view of the franchise and WotC's vision of it are (or were) dramatically out of step with one another.
Not really. WotC approved all of it -- until they had a PR bomb go off with hiring practices within WotC on the M:TG side, contracting with a nutbar Qanon artist, and otherwise with their racial depiction of drow within D&D. It had nothing to do with DragonLance. But by that time, they had already approved
Dragons of Deceit. WotC apparently did not want to unapprove it and make further changes -- instead, they wanted to prevent it from being published for all time.
The details of the lawsuit - as well as the post-law suit announcements tell us that the trilogy of books that are to be released by Weis and Hickman will begin with Vol 1 - "
Dragons of Deceit".
Some Speculation Follows Below:
If that title sounds familiar to you - that's because it is. That is also the name of the module DL-9 by Doug Niles. This module covers the story where the original Chronicles did not - and broke away from that aspect of the story for "spoiler" purposes. It deals with Gilthanas and Silvara's convincing of the good dragons to join the war, recover their dragon eggs et al. from the Queen of Darkness's forces.
Together with the press release which confirms the subject matter and characters of the new novels are the original characters, it is plain and obvious that the subject matter of the trilogy is the War of the Lance and that the forthcoming trilogy will be the
Second Lost Chronicles, to be published by Del-Rey. That isn't really speculation. That looks balls on accurate to me.
The speculative part now follows:
Dragons of Fate is the second book planned in the trilogy. There are no details about that other than the title, but when combined with the publication order of
Dragons of Deceit as Vol 1, we can expect Vol 2 and Vol 3 will be later in the tale -- but before the end of Dragons of Spring. So we can sort that out easily enough. Look at what parts of the story of the initial War of the Lance campaign in the modules are left to tell in novel form. That suggests that Vol 2 and 3 will be a further novelization of DL12/ 13 and part of 14. They already re-visited parts of that in the
Dragons of the Highlord's Skies and
Dragons of the Hourglass Mage (vol 2 and 3 in the First Lost Chronicles). This time, they'll go back to the main characters (as they have told us they will in their press release).
The part I find remarkable on this is that WotC decided that the content of these novels was
so harmful to their reputation that they would rather they never,
ever came out. The only thing I can think of which would merit drowning of the DragonLance baby in the bathtub for negative PR has to be the ongoing inclusion of Goldmoon and Riverwind in
Dragons of Deceit's approved storyline. I can't think of anything else which would have caused them to want to otherwise pump the brakes on the whole thing.
It's weird. There is absolutely nothing inherently offensive about Goldmoon and Riverwind. News Flash: it turns out, the tribes of Germania provide a thousand years+ of real world precedent for barbarians -- yes, blonde and blue-eyed hotties, too. Indeed, they ARE the real world analog precedent for almost all "barbarians" in FRPGs. The only time they aren't is where that definition is broadened here and there to sweep up other European groups into it, too.
The problem with Goldmoon and Riverwind was not that barbarians were white, or that she was blonde haired and blue-eyed; rather, it was that their garb was artistically represented to draw heavily upon the traditional garb and ornamentation of "American Indians", the First Nations of the central plains. That's not really anywhere in the novels themselves or even in the modules. That's Larry Elmore doing that. In traditional leathers and furs, Goldmoon is just a Germanic barbarian. But with her beads and feathers, she became the Archetype for cultural appropriation and the white-washing of aboriginal culture.
The solution is not to write Goldmoon out of history, but to deliberately change her clothing so that she looks like the Germanic barbarian she clearly was -- and skip the Faux-aboriginal clothing style. How hard can that be? You do so overtly and with a loud and public apology. The End.
So, I don't get it. I guess WotC decided there wasn't really enough money left to make on DragonLance. At least, not enough to be worth the negative PR. If they thought there was, they'd publish the books themselves. Instead, they licensed out the novels to W&H to flog on their own at Del-Rey.
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