Cam Banks said:
You absolutely can. This is why there's no Spelljammer port in Palanthas.
There is no Spelljamming port in Palanthas in the SJ novels, either. So you are talking of a case where one product conflicts with all other products. Picking a SJ product vs a DL product isn't really the best example. I think most SJ fans don't want a Spelljamming port in Palanthas either. Krynn is supposed to be a groundling world and groundlings are not supposed to know anything about wildspace. A Spelljamming port in Palanthas is bad for Spelljammer. It is probably worse for Spelljammer than it could ever possibly be for Dragonlance. But considering that Spelljammer got cancelled before much else was done with Krynnspace, I don't think we will find out where that line of thought was going until 4th edition Spelljammer* comes out.
* = I am expecting 4th edition Spelljammer to be far far less true to the concept of Spelljammer than MWP's Dragonlance was to earlier versions of Dragonlance. I can't see anyone from the original SJ team being involved or anyone from the fan community getting invited to contribute. I think the concept of groundling worlds (and using SJ as a transitive setting) might go totally out of the window. We could either have a bigger SJ port at Palanthas or WotC could even dump Krynnspace, to get rid of Dragonlance. I think a lot of SJ fans are dreading the new version of SJ.
You can blame Jean Rabe for that Spelljamming port in Palanthas. Considering that she is a talented Dragonlance novelist, and is much more familiar with Palanthas than most SJ writers, I think that it was a schoolboy error that should never have been put into SJR7. But for all I know someone at TSR might have ordered her to put it in there. There were a lot of TSR products that ripped off elements of Spelljammer and put them into other campaign settings (rather trashing the concept of groundlings that know nothing of wildspace). I think that somebody upstairs had some sort of Grand Unified Universe plan going on.
Anyway, this line of thought is getting very off topic. It is far easier to reboot an out of print monster than has a bad reason to be in a campaign setting than it is to retain a location that clashes with that setting. For example, I think that the
drow article at Dragonlance Nexus is a great example of a way to salvage the best elements of Wild Elves and use them with MWP stuff.
Cam Banks said:
All D&D settings feature retcons, revisions, updates, and corrections. They also feature numerous contradictions and poor choices. It's quite possible we made a few of the latter during our time shepherding Dragonlance, but we did have some pretty prominent figures providing us with leadership, and everything we did was approved by WotC. So it doesn't get any more official than that.
...until 4th edition Dragonlance comes along and somebody else tramples all over
your hard work.
(If that ever happens, I'll be having the same sort of debate with them. As far as I'm concerned all DL is sacred, even the bad stuff. And considering that MWP stuff holds up really well, my main criticism of it is that it isn't indexed properly.)
MWP DL stuff is of course official. But so is all the old TSR stuff. You
can't make things unofficial once they are in print, no matter how bad people think they are. So I say roll on with the conversions (including the ones that MWP didn't want to support), because somebody out there loves Kodragons and Wild Elves and all the other wonky DL stuff. And if just one person loves it, then they deserve a conversion.
Do you have any thoughts on any of the remaining Dragonlance Dozen? It would be nice to catch up Dark Sun. They are
only 8 monsters away from getting first place as the first campaign setting to have all its monsters converted to 3rd edition.
(Bad Dragonlance is still Dragonlance and needs your love as much as good Dragonlance!
)
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