Why do Dragonlance campaings never work?

[Cam Banks]

Trust me, it can be arranged. Soth deserved better.

No, he didn't. That was the perfect way for that character to go out. I think his particular story should have ended a long time ago, but then I constantly amaze Soth fans with my apathy about any potential they see in him.

Bring on Ausric Krell!

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Nightfall]

Your opinion Cam. Soth is like as much a part of Ravenloft as St. Kazgoth is for some Greyhawkers. So his demise didn't help much for me. Just should have sent him back to Ravenloft.

 

[talinthas]

i think that the fifth age was good for dragonlance, in terms of shaking up the setting, and finally starting to sever ties with those overplayed heroes of the lance. and now, especially in the post war of souls era, dragonlance is more playable than it has been in any time since 1987. The whole world is finally opening, with not a controlling railroaded storyline in sight =)

 

[Nightfall]

True but they still should have kept Soth. OR been nice and sent him back to Ravenloft and said "hey you can keep him!!" He was a great Death Knight.

 

[talinthas]

man, if only they had gone with the original fifth age version of the war of souls, where soth and his legions of undead blew up out of nightlund and basically took over ansalon... now that would have been a fiery finish =)

 

[DragonLancer]

At the end of the day, TSR stole Soth from DL to add something to RL and perhaps draw DL fans to it. Soth should have stayed put on Krynn.

 

[Henry]

I do think War of Souls returned some stability back to Krynn - but I like my Wizards' test and the Towers of High Sorcery! I hated the whole "different system of magic" theme introduced, though it did have possibilities. I just hope the "lack of a railroading storyline" stays that way, because it may entice me to entice my players to come back to it.

 

[mmadsen]

If we compare running an RPG campaign to writing a story -- obviously there are differences, but work with me here -- then it's pretty clear that even Weis & Hickman couldn't/didn't work within the confines of the canon they established in Chronicles; each series moves to another time or another place.

It's very, very difficult to tell an interesting story in the same time and place as another epic story. You have a few choices:

• Tell the same story from a different point of view. I'm not sure how you'd do that in an RPG, but in a less interactive medium you can tell Beowulf from Grendel's point of view, the Wizard of Oz from the wicked witch's point of view, or Hamlet from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's point of view.
• Tell a what-if variant of the original story. What if Gandalf took the One Ring? What if our heroes led the War of the Lance? This option is natural for RPGs, but it doesn't work well if everyone knows the original stories; they also know all the original challenges too.
• Tell a small-scale story that can fit into the background. You can play a group of Rangers skirmishing against Sauron's Orcs in the north. You can play a band of smugglers in the Star Wars universe. You can play an all gully-dwarf campaign. Obviously the "heroes" of such a small-scale background story operate in the shadows of the "real" heroes winning the war against evil.
• Tell a story not quite in the same time and place as the original: Middle Earth's Fourth Age, Star Wars' Old Republic, etc.

 

[Felon]

At the end of the day, TSR stole Soth from DL to add something to RL and perhaps draw DL fans to it. Soth should have stayed put on Krynn.

Hickman has said as much at conventions. At DragonCon, he likened Soth's appearance in DragonLance to the Fonz guest-starring in an episode of "Laverne & Shirley" just to give the ratings a boost.

 

[Cam Banks]

Hickman has said as much at conventions. At DragonCon, he likened Soth's appearance in DragonLance to the Fonz guest-starring in an episode of "Laverne & Shirley" just to give the ratings a boost.

So, a sort of "C'mon over here, Dragonlance fans! We got Soth!" Indeed, I think that was probably every bit the reason to include him. Marketability. Crossover potential with the most Ravenloft-appropriate character from the DL setting, aimed at DL fans.

Cheers,
Cam