Dragonlance Dragonlance comes to DMsGuild

[Steel_Wind]

Remember that for a very long time, going back to TSR days, the novels were the horse and the game was the cart.

And then there's the fact that if the game is the horse, there's been no horse for ages. Since WotC took over D&D in 1998ish, they've done nothing with the Dragonlance game line other than licence it out to Sovereign Stone. that's 20 years of zip on the game front, but they've still been releasing novels in that time (the Lost Chronicles series which I'm currently reading, probably most notably). If the horse spends 20 years dead, while the cart keeps merrily trundling along, maybe the conventional wisdom of the drivers of the setting have to be rethought?

In a word: No.

The original DragonLance Chronicles were a new form of marketing tie-in support to sell a module series. And that module series SOLD RIDICULOUSLY WELL. TSR didn't have to share that money with Random House - it was theirs. And that money saved TSR for many years.

The mid-80s was a DL bonanza. The novels sold well, especially the Legends Series where the authors were no longer "constrained" by the adventures they were trying to depict.

But the setting was created to tell a specific tale and as a generic AD&D campaign world, it never worked all that well. Once DL's principal story was told? It was difficult to tell others set in that setting. It became a dumping ground for cheap adolescent gaming fiction.

And there, the problem became the novels. Moving people beyond them was very hard. When editions changed and there was hope to do more with it -- again -- the novels were a hindrance, not a help.

These DL fans who came to DL through the novels first have no appreciation why things were written as they were (i.e., to reflect the rules of AD&D 1st Ed). The classes are constrained by weapon choices -- and so they are in the novels, too.

But when the underlying rules changed, these fans could not accept it. Cries of foul and "too much retconning!" were the buzzwords of the day.

And the resistance was at every turn, too, and for foolish reasons. When DL1 started a brand new module series and setting at 4th level, it was assumed characters would often be transferred in from ongoing Greyhawk/homebrew campaigns. In order to provide some control over the wealth level among PCs in March of 1984, it was decided that instead of stripping gold from then existing PCs, they would just make gold worthless on Krynn instead. Problem solved. And so the "steel piece" was born.

It was a dumb idea at the time, imposed for meta reasons; as time progressed, it became even stupider. The modules throw MILLIONS worth of steel at the PCs if they want to retrieve it. It never made any sense. But the novel fans cling to it as something "distinctive" about DragonLance.

In fact, it would be fair to say that every change is clung to, and reason is sacrificed on the altar of maintaining that "distinctiveness" and to maintain "canon". And that even extends to Weis and Hickman now. In Dragons of Deceit, released just this past August, the authors made a plot point about the fact that the heroine, Destina, wanted to be a Knight of Solamnia -- but that aspiration could never be met as women were not allowed to be Knights of Solamnia.

SotDQ makes it pretty clear that yes they can. That's because this game needs to appeal beyond white suburban males. There must be change in order to breathe new life into this thing.

But much of this DragonLance fanbase resists change at every step. Some of this fanbase, to my eye, is outright toxic as a result. I can't blame WotC for abandoning it under those circumstances, I really can't.

So here we are with a chance to build the brand and breathe life into it again as an ongoing gameworld... and they are right back at it with retreading the same old, same old.and crying foul at changes to the game required by 5e and a more modern and inclusive setting. Some of that appeal is inevitable and I get it; I do. I'm a longtime hardcore DL fan, too.

But no, I'm not on the authors' side about this. In order for DragonLance to live again and be relevant -- this brand must be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century and into 5e. The game MUST come first. Dragged kicking and screaming into a setting where women CAN be Knights of Solamnia, where Gully Dwarves are not depicted as genetically stupid small people to revile and laugh at (not with -- laughed AT). These things require changes - whether part of that fanbase likes it or not.

The horse is the game. The game has returned in the form of a new book for 5e published and supported by WotC in an attempt to make something NEW. Jump on and ride it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, I'm... I'm not on board with Weis on this.

To be blunt, if DragonLance is going to survive and for us to see new game products? It needs to move past some of the decisions that Weis and Hickman have made in the past.

Yes, there are novel fans who worship them -- but those fans aren't the main audience for SotDQ. And if you take a stroll through the Dragonlance subreddit, it doesn't take too long to determine why that is. Most of those posters are novel fans first, gamers a distant second (if at all).

The game is the horse, the novels are the cart. Once you get confused about that? It's time to step aside.

DmsGuild literally just gave me the products I needed. I don't have to move past anything.

 

[humble minion]

In a word: No.

The original DragonLance Chronicles were a new form of marketing tie-in support to sell a module series. And that module series SOLD RIDICULOUSLY WELL. TSR didn't have to share that money with Random House - it was theirs. And that money saved TSR for many years.

The mid-80s was a DL bonanza. The novels sold well, especially the Legends Series where the authors were no longer "constrained" by the adventures they were trying to depict.

But the setting was created to tell a specific tale and as a generic AD&D campaign world, it never worked all that well. Once DL's principal story was told? It was difficult to tell others set in that setting. It became a dumping ground for cheap adolescent gaming fiction.

And there, the problem became the novels. Moving people beyond them was very hard. When editions changed and there was hope to do more with it -- again -- the novels were a hindrance, not a help.

These DL fans who came to DL through the novels first have no appreciation why things were written as they were (i.e., to reflect the rules of AD&D 1st Ed). The classes are constrained by weapon choices -- and so they are in the novels, too.

But when the underlying rules changed, these fans could not accept it. Cries of foul and "too much retconning!" were the buzzwords of the day.

And the resistance was at every turn, too, and for foolish reasons. When DL1 started a brand new module series and setting at 4th level, it was assumed characters would often be transferred in from ongoing Greyhawk/homebrew campaigns. In order to provide some control over the wealth level among PCs in March of 1984, it was decided that instead of stripping gold from then existing PCs, they would just make gold worthless on Krynn instead. Problem solved. And so the "steel piece" was born.

It was a dumb idea at the time, imposed for meta reasons; as time progressed, it became even stupider. The modules throw MILLIONS worth of steel at the PCs if they want to retrieve it. It never made any sense. But the novel fans cling to it as something "distinctive" about DragonLance.

In fact, it would be fair to say that every change is clung to, and reason is sacrificed on the altar of maintaining that "distinctiveness" and to maintain "canon". And that even extends to Weis and Hickman now. In Dragons of Deceit, released just this past August, the authors made a plot point about the fact that the heroine, Destina, wanted to be a Knight of Solamnia -- but that aspiration could never be met as women were not allowed to be Knights of Solamnia.

SotDQ makes it pretty clear that yes they can. That's because this game needs to appeal beyond white suburban males. There must be change in order to breathe new life into this thing.

But much of this DragonLance fanbase resists change at every step. Some of this fanbase, to my eye, is outright toxic as a result. I can't blame WotC for abandoning it under those circumstances, I really can't.

So here we are with a chance to build the brand and breathe life into it again as an ongoing gameworld... and they are right back at it with retreading the same old, same old.and crying foul at changes to the game required by 5e and a more modern and inclusive setting. Some of that appeal is inevitable and I get it; I do. I'm a longtime hardcore DL fan, too.

But no, I'm not on the authors' side about this. In order for DragonLance to live again and be relevant -- this brand must be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century and into 5e. The game MUST come first. Dragged kicking and screaming into a setting where women CAN be Knights of Solamnia, where Gully Dwarves are not depicted as genetically stupid small people to revile and laugh at (not with -- laughed AT). These things require changes - whether part of that fanbase likes it or not.

The horse is the game. The game has returned in the form of a new book for 5e published and supported by WotC in an attempt to make something NEW. Jump on and ride it.

I'm not even arguing with most of that. DL has always been hampered as a gaming setting by the shadow of Tanis et al hanging over it almost since its inception, and in 2022 there's no reason that the Solamnic knights hang up a No Gurlz Allowed sign across the door at Sancrist Isle, among similar updates and cleanups.

The point I'm trying to get across is that in 2022, to most people who'd heard of Dragonlance before SotDQ, they'd think of it as 'that setting with the novels that had Sturm and Tasselhof and Raistlin' and not 'that setting that the DL1-4 modules were set in'. WotC has an open run to sell an updated Dragonlance to the new generation of D&D players who don't carry the 80s/90s baggage us oldies do, and good luck to them. But on a broader cultural name recognition basis, the novels (for all their undoubted flaws) have the old modules beaten six ways from sunday. If you're rebooting or reinventing or resurrecting Dragonlance as a game setting, the novels have to be your starting point because that's what people have heard of. But the novels are also where some of the most problematic stuff (like the portayal of gully dwarves) are from, and the novels are where the Heroes of the Lance sit, like an elephant in the room, hogging ALL the big turning points of the war from bringing back the gods to rediscovering the Dragonlances to freeing Silvanesti to killing Verminaard to discovering the truth about the origin of draconians and bringing back the good dragons, to sneaking into Neraka and sticking a sword in Ariakas.

That's the dilemma WotC has to navigate. For what it's worth, I bought SotDQ and from what I've seen it looks pretty solid, though of course I've got minor quibbles here and there. From what I've seen (I stopped reading after the first scene because a possible opportunity came up to play it and I don't want to spoil myself), it looks to exist in an ambiguous shadow-canon that doesn't quite commit to explicitly following novel continuity or throwing it out the window but also makes some clean and understandable retcons to keep it player-focused by ensuring the viability of PC concepts like clerics or female Knights, or Thorbardin dwarves pre-reopening. It's ... kinda avoiding a lot of the issues (gully dwarves, Plainspeople as native American ripoffs, the morality or otherwise of the gods' actions in the cataclysm, whether or not to keep the novel characters central to the main plotline of the war) in service of telling a single smaller focused story. Which is fine. It looks like a thoroughly solid product in isolation (from a partial read), and I really hope i get a chance to play it. But if it's a huge hit and WotC wants to expand the setting (as they did with VRGtR after the success of CoS) then those are nettles that they're going to have to start grasping. And the novels, rather than the old modules, will have to be at the forefront of their minds when they do.

Edit: I'm not saying DL doesn't need to be changed and updated to be a setting that the 2022 D&D customer base will embrace. Clearly it does. It's just the devil in the detail of how those updates are handled.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

We bought the third novel, the queen of darkness, when D&D was totally unknown in Spain. When I started to read the books, I haven't watched the art, I didn't know the true image of the characters. Later I bought some gamebooks, the first of them was "lord of the doom" with Gilnathas, Laurana's brother, as main character.

When I was in the university I could read a lot of books of Dragonlance in the public library.

In my mind the companion of the lance are the most D&D iconic characters....

...but in my tabletop the coherence with the novels have to be sacrificed totally for a more flexible gameplay. If I want psionic powers in Krynn, then there are, maybe by the order of the seekers, or there are martial adepts (crusaders, warblades and swordsages). Or there is a "multiversal war" between the different alternate timelines of the Krynnspace.

 

[fjw70]

I think the way WotC handled DL was great. We have probably got the on,y product we are going to get for DL (at least for a great while) and it is set in an area that doesn’t conflict with the established story and can run in parallel. Then 3rd parties can publish on DMs Guild for more info on what ever they want. So if you want a new official adventure (and some setting stuff) for DL you got it. If you want more campaign materials focused on the established story then you git it.

It seems like a win-win to me.

 

[Velderan]

Dragonlance has also been something that to me brings me back to the early days of playing D&D and the biggest struggle I had in those early days is getting people to understand we're playing a game and not reenacting the novels. The novels can be good sources of inspiration but people need to remember the game is a game first and foremost. As an example, looking at the previous threads discussing how the gods are reintroduced shows that struggle is still alive with responses ranging anywhere from WotC needs to have the Companions killed in the opening scene by Lord Soth to establish this is a new story to it being critical that Goldmoon still be the first true cleric. Neither of these things should matter if you're playing a Dragonlance game imo. The setting should just be a backdrop where adventures can take place and it shouldn't be too hard to drop in whatever characters a player wants to play. In that regard, I think WotC did a good job and the supplemental DMG material just picks up where WotC left off with opening up new options for play.

 

[fjw70]

Dragonlance has also been something that to me brings me back to the early days of playing D&D and the biggest struggle I had in those early days is getting people to understand we're playing a game and not reenacting the novels. The novels can be good sources of inspiration but people need to remember the game is a game first and foremost. As an example, looking at the previous threads discussing how the gods are reintroduced shows that struggle is still alive with responses ranging anywhere from WotC needs to have the Companions killed in the opening scene by Lord Soth to establish this is a new story to it being critical that Goldmoon still be the first true cleric. Neither of these things should matter if you're playing a Dragonlance game imo. The setting should just be a backdrop where adventures can take place and it shouldn't be too hard to drop in whatever characters a player wants to play. In that regard, I think WotC did a good job and the supplemental DMG material just picks up where WotC left off with opening up new options for play.

I guess I am glad I started playing the DL game before (or at least around the time) the novels were released. So my players had t read the novels when we played.

 

[stevebull]

Hi everyone. I'm Steve, the creator of the Aesthetics Guide to Ansalon. Whilst perusing to see the reaction to my work I noticed some of you had mentioned it so thought I would swing in and say hi.

I've seen some mention that my books don't change much - which was exactly the intention. It's just an update, and the main focus was just to collect all the location information I could top provide the most comprehensive setting for anyone to enter the world for the game.
With that in mind, the next three locations guides should be out this week!

If anyone has other comments or questions about the Aesthetics Guides I'd love to hear and answer them!

 

[Steel_Wind]

Hi everyone. I'm Steve, the creator of the Aesthetics Guide to Ansalon. Whilst perusing to see the reaction to my work I noticed some of you had mentioned it so thought I would swing in and say hi.

I've seen some mention that my books don't change much - which was exactly the intention. It's just an update, and the main focus was just to collect all the location information I could top provide the most comprehensive setting for anyone to enter the world for the game.
With that in mind, the next three locations guides should be out this week!

If anyone has other comments or questions about the Aesthetics Guides I'd love to hear and answer them!

I have them and find them useful, but to be candid, more crunch and 5e stat blocks for the encounters in the classic DL campaign for the WotL is what I am still missing. There are some community efforts already aimed at that -- and of course, I can do them as well.

Still, that would be my largest "need". Nothing else comes close, really.

 

[Zaukrie]

Still no dedicated Creatures of Krynn book (lots of books have some monsters, but lots of other stuff). I admit real surprise.