Dragonlance [+] Why do you love Dragonlance?

[hejtmane]

I really enjoyed the story line and character growth from the first two Dragon Lance Trilogy's after that I never really read any more of that world.

From the 1e game side Kinders come off as a halfling to me that has a different disposition than your traditional halflings. That is just me anyways never really did any of the Dragon Lance campaigns we were a custom campaign group.

I guess my issue boils down to I love playing the D&D game I just do not care about the realm lore when I am playing. That may come from I have read more non D&D fantasy books than I have D&D realm books so in game lore Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragon Lance etc has no bearing on my game play or what I implement because I am not a guy that use the traditional realms.

I am not a Tolkien influenced fantasy guy while I have read his books they were way later in my fantasy readings.

I guessing most the young people on the board probably never read or heard of half the books I read with the fantasy genre

 

[Irda Ranger]

So, why do you love Dragonlance?

So many reasons! (see my user name and avatar)

The Novels / Heroes of the Lance

I encountered the Weis and Hickman novels early in my fiction-reading career and they were formative. I loved the characters. I mourn for Sturm and want to have a beer with Caramon and Tasslehoff. I respect and fear Raistlin.


The Towers of High Sorcery / Orders of Magic

The ToHS remain to me the perfect magic-user organization that other D&D settings fail to live up to. The idea of the Towers as a place of official neutrality but also deadly politics. The three order standing in tension to each other, but also standing together against the world of non-magic users. The thousands of years of knowledge and lore.

The Towers are like a combination of the monasteries of Europe during the Middle Ages (trying to safeguard and pass on hard won knowledge nearly lost to the collapse of the old empire) and also the Artisan Guild politics of the same era.


Post-Apocalyptic Setting

Like many people I imagine, I like post-apocalyptic settings (even if I wouldn't want to live in one myself). There's a rawness to them, and the DL books and adventures put that front and center. The DL setting is often put in the "high fantasy" bucket, but it's also a hard scrabble setting. Much more so than Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. I'd say it's second only to Dark Sun in conveying that the world is broken and a pale shadow of what it used to be.

But this also leaves a lot of room for PCs to be heroes. You can focus on saving what's left, and also on rebuilding.


Ansalon

I just like the map and the nations of the Age of Despair era. (The pre-Cataclysm map is a lot more boring) Also there's some discrepancy in the canon on just how big Ansalon is, so I always interpret it using the largest settings which allows you to imagine the vast distances involved and helps you realize just how cut off the various pockets of civilization are.

Also I find that the amount of information you have regarding the various kingdoms and lands if "just right" for running a campaign. I don't want exhaustive encyclopedic knowledge of a campaign setting; I want just enough inspiration to get the ball rolling, then make it my own. Krynn provides that.


Distinctive Monster Palette

No orcs or giants. Making ogres the Ur- bad monsters. Relying heavily on goblins. Draconians.

Even if you don't like all those choices, they're choices. It's not just a "everything under the sun" setting. Dragonlance has its own feel and I like what it has to offer.


Adventurers with a cause

The DL adventures and novels offered an alternative to 'kill things and take their stuff'. The adventurers had a reason for going on adventures that was deeper than gaining wealth. They weren't murder-hobos. And this helps with player expectations too, IMO. When you play in DL you know you're going to have higher cause.


Disclaimers. Below are not reasons I love Dragonlance-

1. The original adventures. They're great novels. I don't run the War of the Lance as a campaign though. Too restrictive. Ansalon is big enough to find your own adventures.

2. Gully dwarves/Tinker gnomes/Kender. Too silly as written.

 

[BookBarbarian]

I read dozens of Dragonlance novels Decades before playing my first game of D&D, I've still yet to play a game set in Krynn, but I'd like to.

Why I love Dragonlance?

6 really good books.
My favorite D&D pantheon because...
Gods of Neutrality - I know they exist in other settings, but here they are actively working to preserve the balance between good and evil which leads too...
The idea that too much "Good" can be bad and apparently bring about cataclysms.
No Orcs made it feel very distinct
Draconians - awfully scary
Laurana - An Elf Woman leading the armies of a xenophobic patriarchy AND becomes their best general ever? Gold just gold.
Kitiara - the flip side to Laurana
Tanis' struggle with the his dual nature, not just the Elven and Human side, but the two women he loves, and the light and darkness within him.
Raistlin being a snarky know it all who will do (almost) anything to gain personal power, but remains an interesting if not likable in his own way character.
Sturm confronting the prejudice of his own people, and teaching them what Honor actually means (sob)
Flint being dwarf that would rather carve would than forge metal or cut stone

Dragonlance is in may ways a study of contrasts and a balance between opposing forces. And... now I'm probably going to go read them again.

 

[ScaleyBob]

Dragons, lots and lots of Dragons.

For a game called Dungeons and Dragons, there often is a distinct lack of Dragons, especially at the time when DL came out. Putting them front and centre in a series of Modules was great.

Playing around with the basic tropes of the game. No Clerics, no Orcs.

The Art. Although the very definition of 'Choclate box fantasy' a lot of it was very good.

Although I have some issues with Dragonlance (as seen in another thread) it did have a lot of good effects on D&D at the time. I reread the books several times, although not for many years, and I wouldn't have done that if I didn't enjoy them. I suspect we wouldn't have seen Dark Sun, or Forgotten Realms if it hadn't been for Dragonlance.

 

[Henry]

However, there are some things about the setting that I do really like:

Magic influenced by the moons.
Knightly orders.
Centaur PCs.
Tinker Gnomes.

Ditto to the above - the mage orders and knight orders, these being the DL Adventures hardcover special ability "prestige classes" (very much their 3rd edition forerunners) absolutely captivated me in my teens.

That, and it was the first campaign for me that had EVER displayed the lore, the songs, the recipes, etc. -- stuff that I didn't know Middle Earth had done years before, but were new concepts to me, and just IMMERSED me in that setting. It made me want to live in Solace and find Tas and Flint to go fishing.

 

[Soul Stigma]

I never ran or played D&D using the Dragonlance setting, but the chronicles were fantastic to me.


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[Sotik]

The twins triliogies. Reading those were such an awesome experience in my opinion. I liked all of the trilogies, even the ones not written by the original author's. Reading them always took me to an amazing magical world.

 

[Soul Stigma]

The twins triliogies. Reading those were such an awesome experience in my opinion. I liked all of the trilogies, even the ones not written by the original author's. Reading them always took me to an amazing magical world.

There was a particular album I would play while reading back then. Even today (like almost 30 years later), I'll hear a song from it and I feel like I'm back in the world of Krynn.


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[Ath-kethin]

The twins triliogies. Reading those were such an awesome experience in my opinion. I liked all of the trilogies, even the ones not written by the original author's. Reading them always took me to an amazing magical world.

The twins trilogy was so far beyond the quality of the Chronicles it was amazing, and they remain my favorite DL series. And not only because it was the last work Weis & Hickman wrote before they started using the same basic plot framework for every single series they wrote. Don't get me wrong, hey have written a huge number of awesome books (Rose of the Prophet remains my personal W&H favorite), but holy crap, enough with the "two-bitter-enemies-who-must-join-forces-to-face-a-more-powerful-3rd-party stuff. 30 years of it is enough.