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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gadget" data-source="post: 4808032" data-attributes="member: 23716">I think Dragonlance, more than any other RPG setting, incorperates, inspires and draws upon the classic Romantic High Fantasy tropes.  No other setting has piqued my imagination and desire to play like Dragonlance.  The Wizards of High Sorcery made traditional vancian D&D wizards come alive for me with it's magic phases of the moons and spellcasting wearies the mage flavor.  The Knights of Solomnia took the paladin/knight in shining armor cliche and made it flawed, real and cool at the same time.  The villians: Lord Soth, tragic Death Knight extrodinier; Draconians, dragon men done right with a cool origin story and special abilities that made you think twice about crossing them; Armored Dragon HighLords that want to conquer and destroy.  Not to mention subtle and menacing black-robed wizards, self-righteous and misguided king-priest tyrants.  The whole setting just oozed flavor and high Fantasy while still being a somewhat recognizably medieval and down to earth setting.  It didn't need upteenth level tarrasques and Demon lords to be cool and baddass.That being said, perhaps the setting made a better novel platform than open ended campaign, as it was somewhat tightly scripted.  I have always felt that the novels where there (other than the few that were a good read in and of themselves) mainly for ispiration and flavor, not something I was bound to adhere to in play, YMMV.  There was also the much maligned kender, gully dwarves, and tinker gnomes that needed to be dialed down a bit (or more than a bit).  Although I never had a problem with the pantheon per se, they were a bit too hands on and involved for my taste.  I prefer a more hands off abstract approach to great powers (Though Fizban the Fabulous is, well fabulous if not overused).  Also, the setting became a bit of a victim of its own success:  they produced so many novels for it, many of dubious quality, that it began to collapse a bit under it's own weight (though this is nothing compared to what later happened to Forgotten Realms).  Then it later, IMHO, fell victim to the 'forced symmetry bug'.  Hey, draconians were cool and popular, lets intoduce a race of 'good' draconians.  The Knights of Solamnia worked out well, lets make a corresponding organization of 'evil' knights, etc.</blockquote>

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