Dragonlance (+) What Would You Want From 5e Dragonlance?

[doctorbadwolf]

Not really. Not in the books they didn't.

You mean not in the first books, perhaps?

Did you not know about the books where draconians are shown to be thinking creatures and some of them abandon thier masters and seek out a way to reproduce, or were you just pretending that something you don’t like isn’t part of the setting?

Either way, yes, they are as @Micah Sweet described. Have been for what folks call “a long time”.

 

[Steampunkette]

Same guy whose saying we need to add in all the races and make the setting a kitchen sink so it can be "Gonzo" for him... thinks Draconians having Free Will "Waters things down".

Honestly, it's more amusing than anything at this point.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Same guy whose saying we need to add in all the races and make the setting a kitchen sink so it can be "Gonzo" for him... thinks Draconians having Free Will "Waters things down".

Honestly, it's more amusing than anything at this point.

Yeah that raised my eyebrows too.

I’m normally a proponent of allowing all races, but Dragonlance is a much…simpler, setting in terms of its peoples. At least on Ansalon.

I would be fine with everything existing in that other far off continent that is basically its own setting, though, for DMs and groups that don’t care about this element.

 

[Steampunkette]

Yeah that raised my eyebrows too.

I’m normally a proponent of allowing all races, but Dragonlance is a much…simpler, setting in terms of its peoples. At least on Ansalon.

I would be fine with everything existing in that other far off continent that is basically its own setting, though, for DMs and groups that don’t care about this element.

Taladas, yeah. But it's largely unexplored in the Canon.

I mean it had it's own boxed set, but even that was pretty loosey goosey with solid information and largely revolved around the Dark Queen and later the Minotaurs from Taladas.

You'd think 4e would've latched on to Taladas like crazy to play up their kitchen-sinky-points-of-light setting concept, but even then it went largely untouched.

Wasted opportunity, really.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Taladas, yeah. But it's largely unexplored in the Canon.

I mean it had it's own boxed set, but even that was pretty loosey goosey with solid information and largely revolved around the Dark Queen and later the Minotaurs from Taladas.

You'd think 4e would've latched on to Taladas like crazy to play up their kitchen-sinky-points-of-light setting concept, but even then it went largely untouched.

Wasted opportunity, really.

Yeah very wasted!

I wish they had done more in 4e, but at least they did Draconians and a few other little bits.

 

[Hussar]

Wow. Just wow.

Let's look at the descriptions of draconians in MC4 Monstrous Compendium Dragonlance Appendix (affiliate link), published in 1990, and compare them to language describing real-world minorities.



"Acts of racial violence were justified and encouraged through the emphasis on this stereotype of the Savage." -Laura Green, Negative Racial Stereotypes and Their Effect on Attitudes Toward African-Americans.



"The driving concept in the book is that African American men are depicted as 'Black demons' by U.S. media. As 'Black demons,' African American men are stereotyped as prone to criminality and violence and unable to fit into society." -Book review, Black demons: The media’s depiction of the African American male criminal stereotype.



"White Americans value self-reliance and object that blacks fail to demonstrate self-discipline." -Michèle Lamont, Who counts as “them?”: racism and virtue in the United States and France.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. To say that there's no coded language in classic depictions of draconians - to say nothing of objecting to more recent depictions of them as individuals rather than being racially evil - is problematic in the extreme.

Normally I agree with this sort of stuff, but, this seems to be reaching pretty hard. But, this is not really the place to discuss this, so I will simply agree to disagree here.

 

[Hussar]

There is literately a book about them having free will and having previously been forced into their army position despite the manner of their creation?

Like, I know I go -hard- against certain aspects of Dragonlance (do not get me started on my 'Elves act evil' tangent we'll be here for days) but this is just, not supported by the books at all. Draconians have free will and the moment they got out from the oppressive structure of the Dragonarmies, they very quickly told evil to go and shove it and went off to live their own lives

I did state that I largely stopped reading the series after the first twenty or so, and didn't read anything set much after the War of the Lance. I did clearly state that.

So, I'll admit I've never read this book. It retcons everything that came before, apparently, and it's exactly what I was talking about how they later changed the setting, watered it down and largely piddled all over floor. The notion of draconians being "forced" into anything is a complete 180 from how they were originally presented and something I think was a very large mistake.

Pretty much anything published during or after SAGA was, IMO, garbage.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah that raised my eyebrows too.

I’m normally a proponent of allowing all races, but Dragonlance is a much…simpler, setting in terms of its peoples. At least on Ansalon.

I would be fine with everything existing in that other far off continent that is basically its own setting, though, for DMs and groups that don’t care about this element.

Ok, I gotta ask. This is a setting with walrus people. This is the setting that gave us playable minotaurs at a time when Drow were considered extreme. Saying that the DL modules were considered gonzo at the time is hardly a major stretch, is it? Granted, by today's standards, maybe not, but at the tiem? Heck, Dragonlance Adventures, at the time, was far, far more gonzo than anything for the system. Casters were upgunned. Remember how you got bonus caster levels depending on the phases of the moons? Never minding the cheese that was Solamnic Knights. Wahoo instant weapon specialization every time you got a new weapon prof. Every one of the Heroes of the Lance were wandering around with +3 or better weapons at pretty low levels and an actual GOD was an NPC.

Are you saying this wasn't a gonzo campaign?

 

[Steampunkette]

Oh, hey. Hussar is back!

Y'all have fun with him!

 

[Mecheon]

It retcons everything that came before, apparently, and it's exactly what I was talking about how they later changed the setting, watered it down and largely piddled all over floor.

Does it retcon everything prior, or add further depths to it? Its also hardly watering anything down. "Your enemies are as human as you and you are only fighting due to being on the wrong side at the wrong time. In another world, you could have been friends". Gimme that grimness and moral ambiguity, mmmmm

Mind, my own interpretation of how Dragonlance handles good and evil generally starts with "Kill the gods and shatter their thrones" so....

Saying that the DL modules were considered gonzo at the time is hardly a major stretch, is it?

Mystara was around at the same time, plus Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

It might be gonzo by today's standards, but this was in an age where Greyhawk had a crashed spaceship as a dungeon and by comparison to Mystara, it was barely anything.