What's the deal with Dragonlance?

[Derren]

I thought after the war of souls there would be a new age because there were so many changes.

 

[Henry]

There have been 5 ages in Dragonlance:
--SNIP--

Great outline. That really puts it in perspective.

A couple of points on Dragonlance in general:
-It's basic philosophy is balance, good neutral and evil need to be
kept equal and everyone has to have a choice between them

considering that the 1E dragonlance adventures book had a sliding scale for each character's moral alignment, that's a pretty accurate assessment.

-There are 14 types of dragon, 7 good metallic and 7 evil chromatic. And no they are not smaller than in other settings.

They must have added two types - I don't remember anything but the base 10 playing a role in the games and novels. Dead on about the size - the reason DL dragons are smaller is because 1E dragons were smaller.


It's funny an earlier poster used Lord of the Rings as comaprison, because that's just what I was going to do when I read the first post. There are so many parallels between the two that Weis and Hickman had to have been inspired by it.

-Rare but powerful magic, and very unique in its "non-cookie-cutter nature."
-Epic struggle to find an object (or objects) that will save the world from the hordes of evil.
-A beginning in a humble wooded village of traquility which is shattered.
-An evil wizard who at first seems good, but then turns evil.
-Ancient alliances between dwarves, elves, and men that it is up to the heroes to rekindle.
-a secret passage into a mountain to gain access. Tolkien's was written in Elven, Hickman's passage was made by elves...
-A mysterious wizard in the party with a spark of the divine (and the insane).
-Three times the amount of ruined cities that Tolkien had.
-A storyline that many people feel they cannot run a game in without major changes to it.

The feel is very Tolkienesque in its execution, in its following the Heroic Journey of Joseph Campbell. It's different in a way that other basic D&D worlds is not.

If GreyHawk is very Fritz Leiber inspired, Dragonlance is very Tolkien inspired, and Forgotten Realms is like Middle Earth, but without the overarcing plotline that dominates every scene.

 

[CrusaderX]

Our storyline involved stopping the death of the world, which was being brought about by a powerful vampire, who also happened to be a black robed wizard and a cleric of Chemosh (the god of death). We played for about 6 years to resolve this stoyline, which was run once per week. Every now and then, our PC had a brush with a powerful character from the books, but it was in no way an "Elminster Event" (where the powerful NPC swoops in to save the day). Mostly we either saw them or interacted with them briefly.

Now this sounds very cool. With a little creativity and imagination, the DragonLance setting is equal to any other setting in terms of exciting and dynamic roleplaying experiences.

 

[jonesy]

-There are 14 types of dragon, 7 good metallic and 7 evil chromatic. And no they are not smaller than in other settings.

They must have added two types - I don't remember anything but the base 10 playing a role in the games and novels. Dead on about the size - the reason DL dragons are smaller is because 1E dragons were smaller.

Hmm..sorry don't know what I was thinking there.
Just follow this link to information on all of the dragon types to have appeared in DL:
http://www.dreadgazebo.com/astinus/dragons.html

 

[Starman]

It's funny an earlier poster used Lord of the Rings as comaprison, because that's just what I was going to do when I read the first post. There are so many parallels between the two that Weis and Hickman had to have been inspired by it.

Margaret Weis has said that she and Tracy Hickman discussed LotR and what made it so cool before they began writing DL in an effort to give it the same quality. One of the things she mentions them discussing is Tolkien's rich history of Middle-Earth and how little hints of it are dropped everywhere which make the world come to life.

Starman

 

[Stormprince]

Man, sorry I missed jumping in on this thread earlier, but I do have to say that what's already been said pretty much sums things up pretty succinctly!

Me being me, though, now it's time for me to really jump in and say a few more things.

Dragonlance was originally created to be a counterpart to Greyhawk for Dungeons & Dragons. Greyhawk had the Dungeons pretty well covered, but dragons were rare creatures only fought in order to gain their hoards. Thus, Dragonlance was created in order to cover the Dragon aspect of D&D.

Dragonlance is a world that does contain many Tolkien themes:

* Unsuspecting heroes
* Mysterious magic beyond the ken of most mortals.
* The Towers of High Sorcery reflecting the different Towers where wizards gather to work their magic.
* Ancient evils that were not defeated, merely banished for a short time until they manage to rebuild their strengths.
* The ultimate triumph of good over evil.
* etc.

But more than anything else, Dragonlance is about the characters. Yes, there have been world-shaking events, but it is truly the characters that are the stars. Whether it's the characters in the novels or the characters played in the game. Because the early DL adventures tied directly into the events of the novels, including the use of Pregenerated PCs, for many people it seemed that unless you were a Hero of the Lance, what you did would have little effect upon the world. Well, some people do want to play the characters from the novels (lord and lady knows that I always wanted to play either Tasslehoff or Raistlin...), but many felt too confined by the setting. Some of those have been permanently burned by the thought that the PCs have no effect upon the world, that the novels are the only driving events.

Believe it or not, whether you liked the SAGA system or not, the Fifth Age did much to alleviate that. Suddenly, it was about the players again instead of the characters from the novels. But, things began to stagnate because to many, Dragonlance had always been a D&D world. They wanted their dice, not the cards...

So, this time around, we're taking a new tact. Completely and carefully constructed to take advantage of the revised core rules, we're working hard to create a campaign setting where the players are as important, if not more so, than the characters from the novels. We've had our Avatar Crisis (okay, so we've had more than one, be nice!), and now we are gleefully moving the world forward, revealing many things for the players to explore and deal with on their own! There are even going to be things that the players can do that will shape the world to come, both in the game and in the novels!

This is a great time to enter Dragonlance. We want this to be a game world not only for those loyal fans who have read the novels and loved the world for almost twenty years, but also a world that welcomes brand new players who have never before stepped foot into the world of Krynn.

To go once more with the Tolkien reference...consider everything before now the Silmarillion and the Hobbit, and now we are adventuring in the time of the Lord of the Rings trilogy!

Christopher Coyle

 

[Henry]

Thanks for the contribution, Chris. I myself are looking forward to the new setting book. If it goes even halfway to capturing the feel of the DL Adventures book from the 1980's, then it will be well worth trying to get my players to start a Dragonlance campaign, and surprise them by defeating all those preconceived notions they have about the world!

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I'm pissed at DL now. I bought "The Second Generation" too get up to speed before I finally started Dragons of Summer Flame and the War of Souls books. I pay 8.99 for the book only to find that most of it is reprinted from earlier DL books!!!! Three of the stories appear in the "Tales" volumes published after the Twins trilogy was finished. So I pay that much for a book that I've already got 75% of at home! Grrrrrr! The fact that it's reprints should be on the back cover or something.

 

[Ranger REG]

Well, I don't know about you, Flexor the Mighty, but it IS the "second generation" of the Companions of the Lance, or to put it simply, their children. So what if it's a reprint, plus two bonus stories (the love child between Sturm and Kitiara that introduces the Knight of Takhisis, and the child of Tanis and Laurana being swept up in the Silvanesti politics), it's a nice setup to the next book, Dragon of Summer Flame.

(Although the 5th Age, aka the Age of Mortal, is nothing more than a promotional tool to use the card-based SAGA system. I'm hoping to skip that age unless it is translated well into D&D/d20.)

 

[jonesy]

Although the 5th Age, aka the Age of Mortal, is nothing more than a promotional tool to use the card-based SAGA system. I'm hoping to skip that age unless it is translated well into D&D/d20.

You do realize that the War of Souls is still a part of the fifth age,
and that the upcoming sourcebooks will contain information for
playing in any of the previous ages?