Why no love for Dragonlance? [slightly rantish]

[Zappo]

Re: Re: Why no love for Dragonlance? [slightly rantish]

Stopped reading here.

Hey, thanks. This sentence right after the quote allowed me to better focus on what I dislike about Dragonlance.

Any heroic setting that has to be tweaked in order to allow the PCs to be the central heroes has issues.

 

[Largomad]

Well the main problem about the setting is that just even loving the old novelds, i find the whole setting boring and plain bland.

I know lots of ppl would disagree with me, and i hope nobody takes this as offensive, but this is exactly how i feel towards DL.

Just my two cents

Best regards.
Largomad.

 

[HellHound]

My personal dislike for DragonLance came from being a player in the biggest railroading modules of all time, the DL series of modules.

Ok, I'm exagerating here, I'm sure there are modules that railroad more than the DL modules did, but I never played in them. I, however, DID slog throught he DL modules and found it to be some of the most memorable gaming of my life...

Memorable because EVERY time I tried to rolplay something, I was coralled off in another direction by the storyline.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I agree with Hellhound on this.

That and having read the original Chronicals, I didn't really find the setting to have much appeal. I tried reading the Preludes, but after the 10th contradicition with the Chronicals*, I turned away and never looked back (except, of course, for the Monstrous Compendium and Minotaurs of Taladas supplements).

I do, however, use some Dragonlance elements in my campaign (particularly sea-faring Minotaurs, a degenerate race of Dwarfs, Yaggol and a few other critters like the Wyndlass), but that's about it.

*The two I remember most: Sturm knowing about the Dragons and Tass meeting Gnomes after DoWN specifically stated that he'd never seen a Gnome before. There was also an implied "falling out" between Kitara and Tanis in DoAD, yet in Preludes Kitara didn't travel with Tanis for the falling out to occur. Very disturbing and only resulted in me not having an interest.

 

[Deedlit]

Personally, I'd have to say I like dragonlance a lot(Of course, it's hard for someone to run the only game on the IC board set in Krynn without liking dragonlance), and partly because of the reasons many others hate it. Kender are among my favorite races, their odd ways appeal to me, and I formed the kender game partly because even in many DL games, kender PCs aren't allowed, and I wanted to showcase kender and how different they can be. Gnomes can also be very interesting, and I don't mind a bit of comic relief in my game, which their inventions are sure to provide. As for the existence of other heroes, this is something DL does really well IMO, showing that there are other heroes in the world besides the party, and creating very memorable NPCs.(Of course, they are often too busy with political intrigue to actually do much of anything.) I've never bought published modules, DL or not, so I don't have any reason to hate DL for that either. Aghar are annoying though.

 

[Endur]

DL14 War of the Lance was excellent

DL14, the War of the Lance module, was excellent.

This was actually a board game with counters released as part of the Dragonlance module series.

An awesome boardgame and playable within a day or two.

Similar to the old War of the Ring boardgame from SPI.

i.e. You had armies, dragons, and heroes. You could use your heroes to lead armies, go on quests to find artifacts, or to recruit allied countries.

Tom

 

[evilbob]

Everyone is aware that there will be an upcoming Dragonlance game set in d20 coming out real soon, right? It's published by Sovereign Press and actually created by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

http://www.dragonlance.com/news/features.asp?id=503

and again here:

http://www.sovstone.com/dragonlance.htm

 

[blackshirt5]

I'm picking that book up when it comes out for all of the neat crunchy bits that are sure to be included.

 

[Cedric]

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?

This won't win me any popularity points, but I just don't like it. The setting, the creatures, the npc's, the whole nine yards...ever since I've read the first novels Dragons of whatever, whatever I've never cared for the idea of Dragonlance...I don't even like the name.

Cedric

 

[Mouseferatu]

Oh, boy, good thing this is tucked away in a DL thread. If the SL fans see this...

I saw it, but I didn't draw attention to it. I don't feel it's polite to point out other people's emotional problems.

(For the record, that was a joke. He is, of course, absolutely entitled to his opinion.)

Back on topic...

When I first read Dragonlance, I was in middle school, and had only been into D&D for about, two years. I read it and reread it multiple times, and really enjoyed it.

I picked it back up again years later, when both I and my tastes had matured. And frankly, I wasn't impressed.

The setting isn't "traditional," IMHO, so much as it is dull. It's got very few elements unique to it, and those it does have are, for the most part, relatively silly. Magic based on the moons is a fine idea. But I can't get past the notion of mages wearing robes colored to match their alignment!!. That is, I think, the single most ludicrous cultural detail I've seen in a fantasy setting in--well, a long time. Even in the average D&D setting where good and evil are far more concrete forces than in the real world, alignment is, so far as I'm concerned, a metagame concept. Nobody is aware that they have an alignment, or what it is. And even if they were, they certainly bloody well wouldn't announce it.

The plot... Well, there was nothing wrong with it, but it didn't particularly jump out at me either.

I also feel that most of the characters are one-dimensional stereotypes. The honorable knight with a tarnished past, the bitter but wise and caring outcast/halfbreed, the noble savages, the power-hungry wizard, the gentle giant... Gyeesh. It's okay to have these character types in fantasy--they're traditional for a reason--but to pile them all together into a single book is just lazy.

Again, I want to stress that all this is IMO only. I begrudge nobody the right to love the stories and the setting all they like. Nor do I feel Dragonlance is worthless; it's got a lot of good details hidden in amdist the chaff. But as I see it, there's enough good stuff to borrow for other settings--not nearly enough to play in this one.