Why is Dragonlance Your Least Favorite Setting?

[Frosty]

I liked the DL dragons too. I don't see the need for inflating the power of dragons all the time. A dragon is not a demi-god - a dragon is a monster. Have you heard about St George and the Dragon?

As told by a young girl (my translation):

In a town where a king lived with his only daughter, who was a princess, there also lived a dragon. Every day the dragon demanded two sheep to eat. Alas one day all the sheep had been eaten so the people had to draw straws to determine who would be eaten instead. One day the princess drew the shortest straw. The king offered the dragon gold, silver and half his kingdom in exchange for the princess. Only, the people of the town said: "No, now it is your turn to sacrifice your child as we have done."

When the princess stood by the lake St George came riding. "Why are you standing heare all by yourself?" St George asked. The princess replied "Leave if you don't want to die!" Yet, St George stayed. When the dragon arrived St George charged it and ran his sword through the beasts neck.

St George lifted the princess onto his horse and dragged the slain dragon back to town and told everybody "You don't need to be afraid anymore. I've slain the dragon so you don't have to sacrifice yourselves anymore." The king was overjoyed and offered to St George whatever he would ask for but St George said to give it to the poor instead.

The princess asked "Where do you come from?" St George replied "I come from my lord Jesus Christ, he sent me here. You will now believe in Jesus and be baptised." The king and the people became christians and St George kissed the princess and rode off.

The above is a dragon in folklore, the very template for fantasy adventures.

 

[Wolfen Priest]

Predetermined stories are boring to play.

The whole DL series was nice to read, but playing it is pretty much the same as reading the books.

Playing in the Dragonlance world is slightly different, but the argument Gargoyle brought forth holds true for me too.

Bye
Thanee

See, this is really an argument I don't get. A lot of us played the older (pre-prequels) Star Wars RPG, and doesn't this argument hold the exact same quantity of water p) for that setting? Yet people still seem to love the old Star Wars RPG (myself included).

 

[jasper]

flint fireforge where my money
Um Me had to make sword and plow out of it.
Steel money because steel is so rare but no mention of other values. Not orginal
yes coinage in the middle ages varied with the king and mint. in fact some coins had greater precious metal content so you did not need 240 coins to be a pound.

Ok taking the early trilogies and other books. Gee junk fiction with a nice icing layer of D&D on top. No original characters. Some sterotypes becoming races in themselves. Plus overexposeure of the "New" races. the modules were just the books with notes tell the dm to cheat if VIP died.

Why it became a campaign world stills leave me wondering.

I chose other because I could not select more than one and all of the above did not fit either.

I quit picking up the authors because I could be better junk fiction from asprin or star trek or star wars.

 

[Ravellion]

Ok taking the early trilogies and other books. Gee junk fiction with a nice icing layer of D&D on top. No original characters. Some sterotypes becoming races in themselves. Plus overexposeure of the "New" races.

I have to disagree with you here - the books leave me with ample material to write essays of literary criticism on. The novels definitely are more than just entertainment value, and have intertextuality with some classic works, they have plot as well as story, and the characters are not flat, though sometimes a bit stereotypical.

Rav

 

[Kai Lord]

I actually like the DL dragons: Smaller and affected by the world at large. They should just all have the following ablity IMO:

Dragon Immunity (SU): Can not be hurt by weapons of any kind, with the exception of the natural wepaons and breath weapons of other dragons, and Dragonlances.

Sturm was able to injure a blue dragon in the second Chronicles book using his father's magic sword. Also in that same book, Laurana and her brother caused a white dragon to veer off by firing nonmagical arrows into the membrane of its wings.

 

[Kibo]

Economic choices aren't without rhyme and reason. Gold, silver, and copper were used in RL because they're not very good metals for other purposes. They're too soft. That also makes them easy to mint, and in a midevil society, you aren't going to have a big group of smithy class people to spend time making steel to make coins. If nothing else, iron would be a better material to make coins out of. It's naturally occuring, easier to mint, and requires less skill and technological know-how to work.
[/B]

Gold silver and copper also don't corrode easily. With steel...well it seems like a pain in the asterisk to oil all your money every day. Stainless steel requires chromium, or at least vanadium.

 

[jollyninja]

um, jasper, could you please give me some signifigant examples of how the characters in chronicles are unoriginal? remember that they were written in the early eighties so alot of the stuff that you have read or heard of with similar characters is ripping off chronicles not the other way around. i would call chronicles the most influential fantasy literature since LotR. whoever your favorite fantasy author may be, they can't claim half the fanbase of Weiss and Hickman. and they probably were at some point one of the millions who read the Chronicles series. and considering the fact that you apparently do not like dragonlance, you sure seem to have read alot of the books, why is that? or are you one of those people who just insults things they have not seen or read?

 

[Sigma]

I have to disagree with you here - the books leave me with ample material to write essays of literary criticism on. The novels definitely are more than just entertainment value, and have intertextuality with some classic works, they have plot as well as story, and the characters are not flat, though sometimes a bit stereotypical.

Rav

I see... So you're telling me that if you were in a class, and the teacher/prof gave you an assignment to do an analysis of a 'work of literature' you'd turn a 12 page paper on the Dragon Lance series? If you do ever do such a thing, please post back with the grade you get and a description of the look on the teacher's face when you asked for an explanation.

I agree with jasper's opinion, but it's only an opinion. Simmer down jollyninja, it's much better when you're jolly. Otherwise, you'll have to change your name to bitterninja.

Edit: fixed some grammer and such.

 

[Squire James]

Dragon Immunity (SU): Can not be hurt by weapons of any kind, with the exception of the natural wepaons and breath weapons of other dragons, and Dragonlances.

But then everyone would just cast Antimagic Field, and then the dragon is susceptible to any weapon. It (and the breath weapon) needs to be an Exceptional ability.

Nah, just replace those weak 1e dragons with 3e dragons. Only size L or bigger can hold human riders, so they'll be bad enough!

As for why dragons accept puny humans riding them, well, first of all the Queen of Darkness told them to! Secondly, maybe the dragons get kinda bored sitting on their big piles of now-worthless money, and need a little action to stir their blood. Those mortals may be idiots, but even a dragon can't deny that the stuff they're doing is interesting...

 

[vrykyl]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Dragonlance for D&D3e/d20

That's good to hear. So does that mean Sovereign Press or WOTC will be providing the artwork? I hope its the latter. The art in the Forgotten Realms sourcebooks blows the doors off of anything I've seen from Sovereign Press. If you guys are taking care of the illustrations, I sure hope you spare no expense in getting the best artists possible. Nothing in all of 1st Edition AD&D could compare to the art in the old DL. Aspire to be the best.

Sovereign Press is designing and writing the Dragonlance Campaign Setting book, but the Wizards of the Coast team will be editing the book and handling art, graphic design, and layout. That said, I think the "look" will be different than the Forgotten Realms, with a completely different style of art. But it should be equally gorgeous to the Forgotten Realms hardcover!

Jamie Chambers
Managing Editor
Sovereign Press, Inc.