Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kai Lord" data-source="post: 804913" data-attributes="member: 3570">Dragonlance was the first and still best, IMO, campaign setting to really make a concerted effort to cross the line from "game" to "novel or film that you're the star of."Fantasy highlights of the setting are of course the prominent dragons and their sweeping dragonfear, Solamnic Knights, and Wizards of High Sorcery.But its the context they're presented in.  Compelling archetypes and bittersweet melodrama.  Nefarious villains and a fantasy world you'd actually want to visit, live in, and fight for.People complain about having been "railroaded" and "living in the shadows of the Heroes of the Lance" in 1st Edition DL, but I applaud the designers for the labor of love to bring that kind of adventure to consumers.How do you provide a setting tailored to much more than looting crypts and smashing wandering monsters?  How do you combine the satisfying drama of a tightly scripted novel with a free form role-playing system?  One approach is to provide an example of DL-specific adventure and they did that with the novels.Most game systems stop there.  Win fans with a (usually already established by someone else) popular story, then just give them a box of maps and city names to let them play however they want.The DL team went beyond that.  With the modules they were providing a template for gamers to experience the very adventure that everyone fell in love with in the first place.  Was it quite linear?  Sure.  Most stories are.  This wasn't Davidlynchlance or Mementolance.  It was Dragonlance.  But only the slightest amount of creativity was needed to tailor the modules to each group.  I know, because a friend of mine ran the War of the Lance using the novels as the modules, and its impossible to get anymore linear than that.  Our player characters replaced some of the companions, but we pulled it off, and made the story our own, almost going chapter by chapter!As for living in the shadows of the heroes from the books, all I can say is I can't count the number of times we as players relished the possibility of actually meeting one of those heroes as an NPC.  They were great characters, and good benchmarks with which to compare our own characters.  They were a part of the world, and we enjoyed recognizing that.I think with some of the info shared on these boards by Christopher Coyle, DL will only get better.  I'm glad they're staging the new three-part mega adventure six months after the most current novel release.  It gives everyone a fresh start and opens endless possibilities for adventure.Retaining the services of Matt Stawicki will only ensure a greater level of presentation; beautiful, compelling, and totally consistent with the quality of the novels.</blockquote>

Verification