Why no love for Dragonlance? [slightly rantish]

[Kai Lord]

On the best/worst settings thread, I noticed many chose Dragonlance as the worst, primarily because:

1. The NPC's from the novels can't be overshadowed
2. Tinker Gnomes
3. Gully Dwarves
4. Kender

First off, anyone who can't tweak the setting to make their group's PC's the central heroes of the campaign is simply a novice. Period. You don't even have to make them save the world to trump the Heroes of the Lance. Just have the forces of good and evil in a major stalemate, regardless of the time period you play in. All out war doesn't *ever* have to break out if you're not interested in that. Just like any other fantasy setting.

And for all those touting Dark Sun as being so great (which it was), at the expense of Dragonlance, remember, your characters faced the shadows of Rikus, Agis, and Sadira, just like Dragonlance.

So the "PC's can't outshine the NPC's" is just silly bunk that, even if it were a problem, is in no way unique to Dragonlance.

Which brings us to the gnomes, gully dwarves, and kender. Tinker gnomes and gully dwarves are so far removed from the main realm of adventuring that complaining about their inclusion in the campaign is also silly. But again, perhaps the complainers simply don't have much experience in playing quirky or filthy races, or simply taking control of the worlds they play in by highlighting their favorite elements and diminishing the others.

You don't have to put a gully dwarf sidekick in every Dragonlance party and play it like Jar Jar Binks. Sheesh. Did the novels do that? No, they didn't.

Gnomes can indeed lend themselves to comic relief, but in a very Terry Gilliam "Time Bandits" kind of way. Classic. And gully dwarves are just dirty stupid creatures that live in dark and grimy tunnels far from society.If you don't like them, don't focus on them. Try Draconians, or the Minotaur League, Wizards of High Sorcery, Dragon Highlords, or the Kagonesti elves.

Same with Kender. Tasslehoff in the first six Dragonlance novels was much more than the childish annoyance a lot of people attribute to Kender. These are people with no fear and simply like to wander. A level of absentmindedness leads to their thievery, but again, if you don't like this, its not like you aren't playing Dragonlance if you just shift focus to other areas of preference.

I don't like rust monsters. I think they're stupid. But instead of claiming the 3E Monster Manual is the worst monster book ever made because it has rust monsters, digesters, and a couple other stupid creatures I.....don't use those things in my games!

I find Dragonlance to be a very interesting Tolkienesque world with some fantastic unique elements (the previously mentioned Draconians and such) and a package that lends itself extremely well to compelling fantasy melodrama. So where's the love?

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

It's an OK setting, and there's been some decent fiction set in it (better, on average, than the FR stuff IMO).

I've got a bad taste in my mouth about Dragonlance from the railroad-the-PCs-with-draconian-armies approach that was taken in the original Dragonlance series of adventures. Not really the fault of the setting, but experiences like that tend to jaundice your ourlook.

 

[DDK]

Yeah, what Kai said.

Unless you start talking about 5th age, then I'm all cotton in the ears.

 

[Kai Lord]

It's an OK setting, and there's been some decent fiction set in it (better, on average, than the FR stuff IMO).

I've got a bad taste in my mouth about Dragonlance from the railroad-the-PCs-with-draconian-armies approach that was taken in the original Dragonlance series of adventures. Not really the fault of the setting, but experiences like that tend to jaundice your ourlook.

Fair enough. TSR's early attempts at a cinematic homebrewed Lord of the Rings "save the world" mega-adventure did feature heavy railroading.

But that was 20 years ago, and while I do concede to losing interest and turning from the novels after the first two trilogies (and the Tales anthologies), the setting itself is remarkably sound, and a fantastic arena for high adventure.

Even the claustrophobic central continent of Ansalon simply allows DM's free reign to create much greater homebrewed lands on other sides of the world, Taladas-style.

 

[Ranger REG]

I got no problem with the Dragonlance setting. It's the same with Middle-Earth. It's more of a thematic game setting than Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms, but you can still do all those basic dungeon crawling. Gawd knows how many artifacts of elven and dwarven design have yet to be unearthed, as long you don't run into Balrog, or Goblins that crawl up the wall like roaches.

 

[seasong]

I didn't post about not liking DragonLance in the other thread, but I don't. It's got a lot to do with the gully dwarves, kender and tinkergnomes, and I stand by that.

No, they don't ruin the setting for me. But the setting isn't particularly strong to begin with, and the unique things about it are: draconians, moon-based-mages, and, you guessed it, the aforementioned irritants.

The draconian idea, while cheesily expressed (hey, let's think up a completely unrelated death effect for each and every one!), were a cool idea. Props for that.

The moon-based mages were a bit heavy-handed on the whole alignment issue, but they were okay.

So what else is there? The most creative part of the whole setting was the irritants, so I think it's perfectly valid to dislike the setting if they irritate.

For what it's worth: I don't think it's a bad setting, just not very interesting.

 

[Ranger REG]

Are you kidding? I love playing those so-called "irritants." They got more personalities than previously played PC races prior to the debut of Dragonlance back in the 80's.

 

[Gumby]

There's nothing really terribly interesting about the setting, other than the series of novels that the setting was based on. Everything different about the setting was there solely to affect the books, not make for a better setting. Three comic relief races may brighten up an otherwise dark series of books, but it doesn't do anything for people wanting to make up characters. Why would anyone want to play a kender, besides wanting to seriously annoy his/her gaming buddies?

The books are fine (and I'm not going to get into which series is better than which), but it doesn't really make for a good setting to base a campaign around, compared to Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, etc.

 

[Wayside]

First off, anyone who can't tweak the setting to make their group's PC's the central heroes of the campaign is simply a novice. Period. You don't even have to make them save the world to trump the Heroes of the Lance. Just have the forces of good and evil in a major stalemate, regardless of the time period you play in. All out war doesn't *ever* have to break out if you're not interested in that. Just like any other fantasy setting.

I voted against Dragonlance as a good world to play in because I like Chronicles and Legends so much. It has nothing to do with not being able to tweak; it has everything to do with not wanting to. Sure you can play in it, but I have no interest in changing anything. I'd rather run mostly unmined territory like Dark Sun and Birthright. That's not entirely accurate either though, it's really just the appeal of Highlander style combat between the blooded and Defiler magic, and the cool abominations of Azrai. I always thought a magic system that combined Defiler Magic with Spellfire would make a lot of sense too.

Dragonlance is great, I just like it the way it is: as stories. And, to be fair, if we were casting ballots, my vote for absolute worst setting would actually go to the Scarred Lands.

 

[Dragongirl]

Yeah, what Kai said.

Unless you start talking about 5th age, then I'm all cotton in the ears.

I agree here. I used to enjoy reading the Dragonlance novels, but once they got to 5th Age my interest just dried up.

Personally I love gully dwarves, even wrote a little parody story with them as main characters. Tinker gnomes don't do much for me, except I enjoy unleashing gnomespeechonpeoplesometimesasitcanbeeitherannoyingorfunnydependingonhowsomeonetakesit.