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

[Steel_Wind]

1E Kender were really interesting because of their defining traits and the larcenous mindset with no understanding of monetary value was one, but the complete, total and utter immunity to fear combined with an inhuman curiosity was another. Both of these made Kender play like they really were an alien from another planet.

Unfortunately, it also made it feel like it was the same alien, every damned time.

By choosing what proved to be over-whelming personality traits that emerged during play and chalking them up to biology, they ended up defining the same character, over and over (and over) again.

The disruptive elements of kender can be charming to read about. Another PC who keeps stealing your stuff and insulting everybody under the sun? Much less so.

Nobody says that Tasslehoff Burrfoot doesn't have to be like this. But what emerged over the course of just about every non- Tasslehoff campaign since 1984, is that if there was a kender in the party, Tass was nevertheless at the table. Every damned time. It became tiresome.

Remove these traits completely from kender and make them unique to Tass. The End.

 

[Steel_Wind]

To me this was black hats vs white hats. No moral ambiguity whatsoever. Takhisis bad heroes good. Draconians are basically magically created aberrations without any redeeming qualities. Think angry slaad.

The correct metaphor is angry abishai. It was the spirits of those devils that were literally put into the corrupted eggs that created the Draconians in the first place.

The original idea for using the abishai for this was drawn by the DL design team from Gygax's article in Dragon #75. It appears on page 11, here: https://annarchive.com/files/Drmg075.pdf When you read it, it kind of suggests itself, doesn't it? An easy fit.

To give Draconians any free will to be other than evil was a subsequent retcon which does fly in the face of the premise of how they were created.

That was canon from the very start. It wasn't mentioned in the novels though - only in the module. The secret and methodology behind the creation of the Draconians was one of the spoilers that was deliberately omitted from the Chronicles.

So unless you read the module or played through to the end of the classic campaign, that fact never likely came to your attention.

And as there was far more fans of DragonLance that came to the setting through the novels (where it was never explained) than from the modules, it was easily hand-waved and retconned more than a decade later.

 

[Don Durito]

You are, of course, entirely correct in this view and assessment of DragonLance.

But there is a reason for that and how that element emerges in the narrative of the tale. DragonLance is not simply a story that takes place in a setting, it is a story that involves characters with pre-existing relationships. It is "the Star Wars of D&D" because of the familial bloodlines and their pre-existing relationships. DragonLance is not just a story about the setting or the bad guys. It's a story about the good guys, in a way that no other Adv Path really has been since. And that's the problem.

There are a lot of gamers -- the large if not overwhelming majority of which -- find the idea of playing a pre-generated character to be anathema to their roleplaying experience. I cannot disagree with them about that. They are not wrong.

HOWEVER...

There is a reason that the romance and tragedy of DL can't be repeated without those pre-existing relationships. It's the lifeblood of the story; it is the bathwater you are trying to throw out. In order for it to work at its best, you need it. Yes, even if you hate it.

You don't have to do it with the pre-gens, but you are going to throw out that romance and tragedy without it. That's the part you need to square with and stop hand-waving it all away as if it doesn't matter. It does matter. It matters a lot.

For new players? The pre-gens work really well. The problem comes when they have read the novels and are making those choices; or FAR worse, when the DM has read the novels and is trying to force the PCs to make those choices. But if you stay away from those easy to avoid pitfalls? It works brilliantly for someone coming at it tabula rasa.

And that isn't us.

However, there are millions of customers who are not us. And it's been 37 years. Most new players? They haven't read them. At all.

No, it's not going to work for the vast majority of people reading this thread. But here's the thing: that's okay. The vast majority of us here are doddering old grognards. We are not the players to focus on. We're not the market for this 5e product.

We can, however, be DMs for it to those who are noobs, if we are lucky enough to find such an unsuspecting group to unleash it upon.

And if not? That's okay too. It's not about you; it's not about us. It's about the people who aren't reading this thread.

I don't see why Players who know nothing about the characters other than what is established in the pre-gens would have more romance and relationships between those characters in play than with characters they created and played themselves.

A lot more could be done to help character creation establish these backstories, subsystems can be created, you could use something along the lines of Backstory Cards, but better because it would be tailored to the setting.

But the only way I necessarily would bring more to playing Tanis Half-elven than I would to playing a character I made myself is if I'd read the books - but if I've done that and I then play the character I'm basically just engaging in fan fiction.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I don't see why Players who know nothing about the characters other than what is established in the pre-gens would have more romance and relationships between those characters in play than with characters they created and played themselves.

A lot more could be done to help character creation establish these backstories, subsystems can be created, you could use something along the lines of Backstory Cards, but better because it would be tailored to the setting.

But the only way I necessarily would bring more to playing Tanis Half-elven than I would to playing a character I made myself is if I'd read the books - but if I've done that and I then play the character I'm basically just engaging in fan fiction.

Because the pre-gens' background establishes:

Goldmoon and Riverwind are lovers with a tragic backstory that sets the stage for DL-1;
Caramon and Raistlin are twin brothers;
Tanis and Kitiara are ex-lovers;
Tanis and Laurana are ALSO ex-lovers;
Tanis and Gilthanas used to be best friends and foster-brothers, until, yanno, he boinked Gilthanas' sister, Laurana;
Solostaran is Tanis foster-Father -- who he now hates, because, boinking his little Princess wasn't cool;
Kitiara is Caramon and Raistlin's sister;
Kitiara is the sparring partner and good friend of Sturm;
Kitiara IS THE BBEG.

"Why are the pre-gens important; what do they add to the story that our own PCs could not add?"

Seriously?

There are 29 published FRPG Paizo Adv Paths where there are no pre-gens with a background. 32 if you include the ones from Dungeon. Perhaps you should go play one of those instead?

 

[Hussar]

@Steel_Wind - it's been a dogs age since I read the original Chronicles, but, I was pretty sure the whole "corrupted dragon eggs" thing was in the books. Or am I just mixing up what I read? Wasn't there a whole thing where Gilthanis and that silver dragon go under Nerika (sp) and find the good dragon eggs and learn where draconians come from?

But, yeah, if we keep draconians as essentially demons and not natural in any way, then all the problems with them go away. No one cares if demons are bad. They're SUPPOSED to be bad.

 

[Steel_Wind]

@Steel_Wind - it's been a dogs age since I read the original Chronicles, but, I was pretty sure the whole "corrupted dragon eggs" thing was in the books. Or am I just mixing up what I read? Wasn't there a whole thing where Gilthanis and that silver dragon go under Nerika (sp) and find the good dragon eggs and learn where draconians come from?

But, yeah, if we keep draconians as essentially demons and not natural in any way, then all the problems with them go away. No one cares if demons are bad. They're SUPPOSED to be bad.

You might be right - been more than 2 decades since I read DoWN as well (though I am re-listening to DoAT now though).

[Funny, it seems to hold up better in the new audio book version than the last time I read it -- which was 15 or so years ago and I remembered it as being far more awful than it sounds like now.

Don't get me wrong; GRRM or Rothfuss it isn't. And the first book, in particular, is poorly written. Weis gets better as she becomes a more experienced author. I am sure that if she re-wrote the original Chronicles now, they would be MUCH better.]

It might be the only thing that was omitted was Silvara and Gilthanas getting the good dragons back? To be honest - I might have misremembered that too. Anyways, we don't have to guess - there's a novel with that information inside it I'll probably get to it later this summer if someone doesn't authoritatively remind us both before that.

I'm pretty sure that Dracart's whole opening of the gate to the Abyss to let the spirits of the Abishai in was not in the novel though. shrug Well, maybe "sure" is the wrong word

Hmm. I do remember some text talking about a big blob of dragon spit though. I had thought that description was in the module, but I might be wrong about that, too. So many books -- so many years!

 

[Don Durito]

Because the pre-gens' background establishes:

Goldmoon and Riverwind are lovers with a tragic backstory that sets the stage for DL-1;
Caramon and Raistlin are twin brothers;
Tanis and Kitiara are ex-lovers;
Tanis and Laurana are ALSO ex-lovers;
Tanis and Gilthanas used to be best friends and foster-brothers, until, yanno, he boinked Gilthanas' sister, Laurana;
Solostaran is Tanis foster-Father -- who he now hates, because, boinking his little Princess wasn't cool;
Kitiara is Caramon and Raistlin's sister;
Kitiara is the sparring partner and good friend of Sturm;
Kitiara IS THE BBEG.

"Why are the pre-gens important; what do they add to the story that our own PCs could not add?"

Seriously?

Yes. It is perfectly possible for players to come up with these kind of backstories themselves. I've seen it dones. It is also possible to design subsystems to facilitate such.

There are 29 published FRPG Paizo Adv Paths where there are no pre-gens with a background. 32 if you include the ones from Dungeon. Perhaps you should go play one of those instead?

Look this is just a discussion about the hypothetical release of a future product. Please consider what you are trying to accomplish with this kind of tone.

 

[Don Durito]

delete - double post

 

[Steel_Wind]

Yes. It is perfectly possible for players to come up with these kind of backstories themselves. I've seen it dones. It is also possible to design subsystems to facilitate such. (And will generally work better and drive more engagement when they do).


Look this is just a discussion about the hypothetical release of a future product. Please consider what you are trying to accomplish with this kind of tone and attitude.

I have seen it done and I haven't seen it work. I have seen attempts, and they appear to be paying lip service to the premise -- it doesn't really address the underlying realities.

While your comment about tone and attitude is not wrong -- I would gently point out that you provoked it with the quote "I'm basically just engaging in fan fiction". If you can't see how that is throwing down the gauntlet, you might want to re-examine your own comments in the same light you have shone on my response and take some time to reflect.

I think the bottom line is that you don't want to play a pre-gen. I get it. I think the other bottom line is that the story simply isn't as good without them. You disagree -- and I think you're dead wrong about that and you are kidding yourself.

There isn't much that you are going to be able to say to convince me otherwise.

The other point, however, is that it doesn't matter much. There's no going back. If you've read it, you've read it. The campaign will never be the same as it otherwise could have been. The possibility to shoot that virgin bullet has left the chamber. It doesn't go back in the casing no matter what we might prefer.

That is, however, a very different point than the one I was making, namely, that WotC is better off aiming a new product at new players who haven't read it -- and just repackage what they have focusing on them. To the extent that old players might find it attractive to play a completely revised module using whatever character they want - they can go for it and do what they want to do.

But given the passage of time and the now large untapped masses out there who haven't been exposed to this property yet because they are new gamers (and weren't even alive in the mid-80s) -- keeping grognards happy shouldn't be a priority of WotC.

 

[Faolyn]

There is a reason that the romance and tragedy of DL can't be repeated without those pre-existing relationships. It's the lifeblood of the story; it is the bathwater you are trying to throw out. In order for it to work at its best, you need it. Yes, even if you hate it.

I can easily see the book including guidelines on creating relationships or even including random relationship tables.