D&D General What Are Dragonlance's Weis & Hickman, and Actor Manganiello Cooking Up?

Actor and D&D superfan Joe Manganiello and Dragonlance co-author Tracy Hickman have both posted a cryptic image on their respective social medias showing themselves, along with Margaret Weis standing together in front of a large dragon statue at Wizards of the Coast's offices in Renton, Washington.

Hickman's image was accompanied by the words "Something is coming...", and in Manganiello's case "WE'RE BACK", to which Wizards of the Coast replied "Welcome back to the table!" A later photograph from Weis also included Laura Hickman and Dan Ayoub, who was named head of Dungeons & Dragons back in July of this year.

The posts have sparked speculation as to what they might mean, with guesses ranging from a revival of Manganiello's Dragonlance TV show project--which was no longer in development after he stated in February 2024 that "Dragonlance is not a property WotC are interested in developing further currently"--to a new Dragonlance-based D&D adventure.

Weis and Hickman co-wrote a new Dragonlance trilogy in recent years following a legal dust-up with Wizards of the Coast which was ultimately dismissed without prejudice, so it would seem that any bad blood from the dispute has been left in the past.

The question now remains--what are they all cooking up this time?

 

[Scribe]

Trust me, the internet is barely representative of real fantasy enjoying communities out there. People in the real world love mature fantasy. Modern viewers are much, much smarter than people give them credit for.

Oh I know. The online discourse is wildly disconnected from reality.

 

[Dire Bare]

so if Spock and Kirk were different actors of different colors and genders in each episode, that would be perfectly fine because they are fictional and have no identity?

Dude, you keep straying into ridiculous territory. Nobody is arguing that we should have different actors per episode or anything like that. Make some real arguments.

 

[Dire Bare]

As a long time comic reader and this question spiraling from that and into the current discussion, which props to the people active in this thread keeping things civil and respectful, what do we think the discourse would be in 15-20 years if Marvel decided to recast or do a new origin story for RiRi Williams in the Iron man story verse? She’s portrayed as an African American in both the comics and the disney plus tv show currently but in the future went Asian, white, Native American, etc? Would the fans care, would social media be active in the discussion of changing of a colored character?

More of a thought experiment and if it’s been discussed before in other threads, sorry as I must have missed out on that discussion.

Context matters.

When doing a new adaptation of existing material and deciding how to cast the characters . . . is the character's ethnicity an important part of their story? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Not only that, but ethnicity swapping can be neutral or it can punch down. It blows my mind how folks don't see this.

For a very long time and even to this day, movies and TV in the US have been very, very white. We're getting better, but Hollywood is still a very white place. Ethnic groups that are marginalized in society are also marginalized in casting. It's why casting a new show, original or an adaptation, with a mostly white cast is problematic. It doesn't represent modern society, and it perpetuates racist ideas, tropes, and practices, even if unintentionally.

Casting Laurana with an actress of color is an ethnicity change that helps breaks barriers. It's not important to Laurana's story that she be a Euro-coded elf, regardless of how many times she has been described as pale versus "woodland brown" in the original books.

Casting RiRi Williams with an actress who isn't of African descent would be insulting and punching down, not to mention that a large part of her story would no longer make sense. It shouldn't be hard to see the difference.

 

[...m...]

...at this point any competent executive producer can point to vox machina as exhibit A that there's a legitimate market for respectfully-produced mature animated fantasy; that's the greatest change since joe's dragonlance initiative last sputtered out...

...in whatever case, a sustained good-faith dragonlance publishing initiative is probably the one thing which could give me pause to reconsider 5.24; otherwise i'm done with D+D after 5.14...

 

[AnotherGuy]

...at this point any competent executive producer can point to vox machina as exhibit A that there's a legitimate market for respectfully-produced mature animated fantasy; that's the greatest change since joe's dragonlance initiative last sputtered out...

...in whatever case, a sustained good-faith dragonlance publishing initiative is probably the one thing which could give me pause to reconsider 5.24; otherwise i'm done with D+D after 5.14...

That's a strange hill for a cemetery IMO

 

[AnotherGuy]

White elves doing bad things is fine. White elves doing enslavement to brown elves is a dogwhistle that will attract racists. They will see the depiction and they will cheer on it and meme it.

By that metric Django and Inglourious Bastards failed.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Do you remember the casting of "Rings of Power"?

Even with the best efforsts the cinematrographic production will be not 100% faithful to the original novels, (let's remember the changes in "Games of Thrones") among other reasons the visual style of the clothings. We are very used to imagine them according the pictures by Elmore and others.. and I suspect the look of the dragons will be not like the ones from 2ed. I suspect it will be the 2024ed style.

The production will be not for the readers of the original books but for all audiences who don't know it.

It shouldn't be too violent, but level Star Wars or Indiana Jones. Other option could be a PG7 and PG13 optional version. You would choose want to watch.

Maybe there is some independient story about alternate timelines. Something style the short story “There is Another Shore You Know, Upon the Other Side” by Roger E. Moore from the novel "Dragon of Chaos". Other story could be lord Soth travel to the past, avoid the cataclysm and he saves the day, earning his "happy end" with his second wife and son... but all was a dream, a trick by Takishis to torment him.

Other point is without divine spellcasters in the age of despair the healing magic was possible by other ways, for example crafting magic bandagges or the sorcerer subclass "favored soul".

* I would bet the Krynnspace could be retconected, at least to explain the origin of "new" PC species.

* What if Kitiara's soul is trapped within a magic gem, and this is is installed in a magic construct to be used like a undead-slayer?

* If the alternate timelines are canon in D&D multiverse let's imagine Krynnish chronomancers in the middle between the "god" Beldinas Pilofiro and god Raistlin, causing these a post-apocaliptic Krynn space style Dark Sun.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

No because the people doing it, the white elves, are generally beautiful and admirable. Their flaws are basically, "we're too perfect so we're arrogant". The people who like their abhorrent behavior won't see them as bad people. We've seen the same thing happen in many entertainment properties. You portray evil but it looks kind of cool, and thus you actually just end up strengthening the ideas among some of the audience.

It's unlikely that this subplot, or even different species of elf, will make it into a TV show. However much folk obsess about being novel-accurate, you are talking about converting 20 hours of novel (DoAT audiobook) into 10 hours of TV. A lot of subplots inevitably get cut in any novel to TV adaptation. And that's before you understand that a TV show spends a lot more time on dialogue and action than it does on lore dumps. Different media are different.

But elves getting away with stuff because they are sexy is a much broader fantasy trope than Dragonlance. Terry Pratchett called it out in Lords and Ladies in 1992.

"Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad."

-Terry Pratchett​

This realisation may be why elves are often depicted as victims in more modern fantasy, such as Dragon Age, The Witcher and (to a degree) Game of Thrones.