Why do Dragonlance campaings never work?

[MarauderX]

The problem with DR from a campaign standpoint...

2) Weiss and Hickman keep blowing the world up.

Yup, that's what does it for me. That and it keeps 'evolving' around every book that's released. I have read a pile of the series, but not every one of them, so I don't even realize how often it has happened until reading past events. Then have a bunch of players that have read less of the series than I have and explain to them the War of This, the War over That, the Time of Blah... too much to bother with explaining when I can whip out a homebrew and let the players discover the new lands for themselves.

 

[DragonLancer]

The idea that the main heroes from the Chronicles leads to railroading is utter rubbish. Just because Tanis and Co did their thing doesn't mean that your characters can't do yours. Its not railroading to use events from the novels as flavour, otherwise you have to accuse FR of the same.

Whether your campaign is set during the War of the Lance, the Summer of Chaos or post War of Souls, don't worry about what the current novel heroes are doing and run your own game. Let those heroes do what they do and let your players do whatever the campaign lead them to. Palin may have been instrumental in the defeat of Chaos but that doesn't mean that your players haven't been just as important in that timeline, they just don't have a novel based on them.

The original modules were heavily railroaded, and it has become the bugbear of the setting and now everyone looks at DL in that light. Its not true and it hasn't been since those initial modules. Dragonlance is a great setting if you want something other than dungeon of the week.

Someone mentioned the races of krynn as a paiin in the backside, well thats not true either. They add flavour. Kender do not steal everything, and if a player portrays a kender correctly he won't be borrowing from his friends. Thats just a flavour trait, you don't see if turning up in game other than perhaps as a roleplay aide. Same with tinker gnomes.

Those who hate DL need to take a look at the setting without the tinted glasses.

 

[mmadsen]

Dragonlance campaigns "never" work for the same reason that Middle Earth campaigns "never" work: if you try to run a campaign in the same time and place as the novels, the players aren't the heroes. On top of that, the DM is handcuffed to the "real" story -- which the players likely know backward and forward -- and can't easily adapt and adlib without breaking canon.

The "trick" is to run a campaign in not quite the same time and place as the source material, or to simply run a campaign inspired by the source material, where there's no canon to break.

 

[DragonLancer]

Forgive me but I think you are missing the point.

Just because canonical characters are fulfilling certain events in the world, doesn't mean that your PC's don't have just as big a part to play. They just arn't involved with the storyline that is follwoed in the novels.

It doesn't matter that the chronicles heroes were instrumental in winning the War of the Lance, it matters what your heroes do. They could be fighting elsewhere on Krynn. They could working alongside the Solamnic Knights. Whatever. What matters is the game and story you are telling.

This applies to any setting with novels, not just DL.

 

[Wolffenjugend]

Sounds like a lot of these posters don't know very much about Dragonlance at all. It's hasn't been about the Chronicles and the original Heroes in a long time. There has been no official 3.5 (or 3.0) conversion of the original modules. The Dragonlance world has evolved far past that point. The storyline is something like 75+ years down the road.

When I started our current DL campaign, my players were worried about rail-roading and didn't like the idea of playing the original heroes. That was fine b/c I had no intention of doing either. Our campaign takes place right after the War of the Lance and I'm happy to report the P has never met any of the Heroes (the only famous people they've met have been wizards of high sorcery, i.e. Dalamar, Par-Salian). The party has been all over Ansalon. A campaign is what you make of it. If you tie yourself to the original storyline, then that's what it will be. But if you use the world and it's history as a setting and your players as the actors, then the sky's the limit.

I should mention, however, that DL is not a power-gamer world and I'm sure that plays something of a role in some peoples' distaste for the setting. DL places a MUCH stronger emphasis on role-playing and story than it does on combat encounters and gaining levels.

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

I think it just takes the right DM. I played in a 2e Dragonlance game that was one of the funnest games i've ever been in. The DM had our group replace the heroes of the lance and ran through homebrew adventures untill we were the proper level to start the "chronicles" mods. He had a good understanding of the story and knew the mods inside and out, so things didn't seem all that railroaded, he simply adapted and made nessasry changes based on how our group handled things. It was a blast. As a matter of fact it was fun enough that i'd love it if he'd run a group of 3e characters through those mods. Ithink if the DM and the players work together and are flexable about things even the so called "railroad modules" are fun.

On a side note the same group that had fun going through cronicles hated going through the avatar trilogy mods. The same DM, but he wasn't familiar with the realms and hadn't read the novels.

 

[Desdichado]

I should mention, however, that DL is not a power-gamer world and I'm sure that plays something of a role in some peoples' distaste for the setting. DL places a MUCH stronger emphasis on role-playing and story than it does on combat encounters and gaining levels.

Y'know, that comes across as a veiled insult.

 

[Wolffenjugend]

Y'know, that comes across as a veiled insult.

It wasn't intended to. It's just a fact of the setting. Characters were limited in maximum level advancement (I dunno if they still are in 3.5) and the whole SAGA disaster was an attempt to take the role-playing aspect of the setting to a whole new level (its failure, in no small part, was due to a new system of game mechanics that didn't mesh well with D&D).

 

[Desdichado]

It wasn't intended to. It's just a fact of the setting. Characters were limited in maximum level advancement (I dunno if they still are in 3.5) and the whole SAGA disaster was an attempt to take the role-playing aspect of the setting to a whole new level (its failure, in no small part, was due to a new system of game mechanics that didn't mesh well with D&D).

I didn't think it was meant to be, but it does sound like it. I don't see how the setting itself facilitates this, though, or has anything whatsoever to do with this, for that matter. Not that I'm a big-time DL sage or anything, but the books I've read, and the modules I read in the past, and the new setting book, which I've flipped through, all seem to use fairly standard D&D rules as the basis of the setting. The SAGA experiment aside, when has the setting ever done anything specifically to encourage roleplaying and sideline "traditional" D&D gameplay? More to the point, what does the current incarnation of the setting do to encourage roleplaying over any other setting?

 

[Davelozzi]

More to the point, what does the current incarnation of the setting do to encourage roleplaying over any other setting?

I haven't read it in several months, but I'm pretty sure the new DLCS book does have a section that encourages roleplaying. Specifically, I think that they strongly recommend that the GM make use story awards mentioned in the DMG.