Dragonlance New Dragonlance AP

[cbwjm]

I guess I did. I focused mainly on the spelljammer ship.

 

[Lost Soul]

Zard, go easy on the kender. They are fun comic relief. I always laughed at Tasselhoff's exploits in the books. Have I played with people who tried to manipulate kender innocence to murder hobo, steal and cause general mayhem in my games. Of course, because that is what PLAYERS do! It is a lot of fun though to play kender flaws back on them such as placing a big purple crystal of junk next to the large chest of gold (should be steel I know but I don't buy Hickman's view on that) or having the kender run into a massive ball of string while being chased by the authorities for theft and suddenly stopping, mesmerized by its total awesomeness. Good times..good times

 

[Zardnaar]

Zard, go easy on the kender. They are fun comic relief. I always laughed at Tasselhoff's exploits in the books. Have I played with people who tried to manipulate kender innocence to murder hobo, steal and cause general mayhem in my games. Of course, because that is what PLAYERS do! It is a lot of fun though to play kender flaws back on them such as placing a big purple crystal of junk next to the large chest of gold (should be steel I know but I don't buy Hickman's view on that) or having the kender run into a massive ball of string while being chased by the authorities for theft and suddenly stopping, mesmerized by its total awesomeness. Good times..good times

Kender, Gully Dwarves and the Elven KKK has kept me avoiding DL for long time. Had fun in 1 game with the 1E DL Adventures book, the 2E boxed set was kind of terrible (bought May 1996, mates birthday downed a bottle of Sambuca) .

 

[GreenTengu]

I get that you hate the Kender, but I think your hatred has made you irrational and blind.

Everything in Dragonlance sucks if you put too much thought into it. The truth is, it was basically like the early 80s Saturday Morning cartoon D&D. And we are talking a really bad, pretty brainless and certainly unsophisticated Saturday morning cartoon here. It had its heroes and it had its metaplot and well.... that all got resolved. There was a set bad guy for the whole setting, and the bad guy was defeated and everything in the world was good.

Honestly, I can't see why anyone was hanging their hats on the setting. I recently watched the cartoon for the Dragons of Autumn and it reminded me of just how trash the setting and the stories set in it really were. The most cliched, face-palming garbage I had ever had the displeasure of sitting through. It literally comes across as though it were written by a 6th grader who just hadn't encountered very many stories, either literary or cinematic.

Honestly, high school me could have written a far superior story than the embarrassing trash that served as the lynchpins for that whole damn setting.

Kender were by far the least of Dragonlance's problems. Your obsessed hatred of them is utterly misplaced because they were more symptomatic of the settings own wider issues rather than something that one should spend their time reveling in the destruction of.

If there is anything at all to salvage about Dragonlance, it would be to have an embarrassingly childish and simplistic setting for some sort of basic D&D version meant to be marketed to elementary and middle school children. In which case the Kender are totally fitting as part of the setting. But if you have moved on beyond that, be glad you need not use the Dragonlance setting and stop putting any thought into Kender as a thing at all.

 

[Zardnaar]

I get that you hate the Kender, but I think your hatred has made you irrational and blind.

Everything in Dragonlance sucks if you put too much thought into it. The truth is, it was basically like the early 80s Saturday Morning cartoon D&D. And we are talking a really bad, pretty brainless and certainly unsophisticated Saturday morning cartoon here. It had its heroes and it had its metaplot and well.... that all got resolved. There was a set bad guy for the whole setting, and the bad guy was defeated and everything in the world was good.

Honestly, I can't see why anyone was hanging their hats on the setting. I recently watched the cartoon for the Dragons of Autumn and it reminded me of just how trash the setting and the stories set in it really were. The most cliched, face-palming garbage I had ever had the displeasure of sitting through. It literally comes across as though it were written by a 6th grader who just hadn't encountered very many stories, either literary or cinematic.

Honestly, high school me could have written a far superior story than the embarrassing trash that served as the lynchpins for that whole damn setting.

Kender were by far the least of Dragonlance's problems. Your obsessed hatred of them is utterly misplaced because they were more symptomatic of the settings own wider issues rather than something that one should spend their time reveling in the destruction of.

If there is anything at all to salvage about Dragonlance, it would be to have an embarrassingly childish and simplistic setting for some sort of basic D&D version meant to be marketed to elementary and middle school children. In which case the Kender are totally fitting as part of the setting. But if you have moved on beyond that, be glad you need not use the Dragonlance setting and stop putting any thought into Kender as a thing at all.

I am not a fan of Dragonlance for most of those issues you listed. I treied rereading the original trilogy and it is bad. The 1E DL Adventures book is OK. It has not aged well and they kin of blew the setting up.

To give it credit though it saved D&D. Without it no 5E (or 4E or 3E or whatever you like).

 

[discosoc]

Sounds like an improvement over Tyranny of Dragons.

You should pitch it to Mearls.

To be fair, the concept of ToD was pretty good. The execution just sucked.

 

[GreenTengu]

I am not a fan of Dragonlance for most of those issues you listed. I treied rereading the original trilogy and it is bad. The 1E DL Adventures book is OK. It has not aged well and they kin of blew the setting up.

To give it credit though it saved D&D. Without it no 5E (or 4E or 3E or whatever you like).

Wow, looking back at my post I totally probably even deserved hate for for generalizations and lack of examples to back of my claim. I hardly expected one to agree with me.

Yeah, I remember of all the D&D stuff, when I was in elementary school, it got across to me in a way that probably none of the Forgotten Realms and such could.

But, when I saw it played out before me...

The characters all seemed flat and weak.

The main romance seemed to have been written by a horny 13-year old who'd never even talked to a girl (and one could not further stress that this was the only female in the first 3rd of the narrative).

The "plot twists" came across as totally random and unreasonable.

And the villain was motivated solely by "I am being evil because being evil is k3w1!" and got defeated with virtually no effort by the protagonists. Hell, the villains literally made entirely irrational decisions in order to make their defeat all the easier.

Really, Dragonlance as a setting was and is totally built upon this writing that was only superior to the average fanfic/creepy pasta trash in the case that the person did come up with unique characters (as crap as they all might have been) and that they found someone to publish and someone to read their books.


But, the wider point I was trying to make was... how is it worth hating on and creating a whole adventure in order to reveal in the genocide of the concept known as "Kender" given that Kender are more symptomatic of the general poor quality of the world they were invented to exist within rather than the sole concept that is holding the setting back from greatness as the OP seems to imply.

 

[LordEntrails]

Really, Dragonlance as a setting was and is totally built upon this writing that was only superior to the average fanfic/creepy pasta trash in the case that the person did come up with unique characters (as crap as they all might have been) and that they found someone to publish and someone to read their books.

MY understanding is the Hickman and Weiss pretty much wrote the DL story while driving across country to their first day on the job at TSR.

Don't know how true that is, but it fits with your assessment (which I agree with).

 

[Coroc]

I disagree with your point of view for many reasons.

First of all you seem to apply more modern expectations unknown to the times back then. To judge dragonlance properly use the normal knowledge and expectations back then, in 1st or 2nd edition, what was normal at these times.

The concept of moon dependant magic strength was good
The concept of dragonlances was awesome for 2nd ed players
The solamnian order as a very good implementation of a knightly order with a good backstory and motivation, it is far better than greyhawks knights of the shield or FRs knights of myth drannor, far, far better.
The one big problem with DL is, if you want to run that setting, best put your players in the roles of the heroes of the lance, and it is an adventure path so it is eventually a bit railroad and when you are done with Takishis aka Tiamat there is nothing left to do.
But
Riding dragons = awesome
Did you ever play dragonstrike on your C64 (I think you can get a PC version for Dosbox at abandonware or such)
It was a realistic dragonflight simulator with breathweapon and lance awesome!
The first books were quite good also some later ones describing Raistlins backstory.
The later books after the war of the lance were crap on that I agree.

 

[Zardnaar]

I disagree with your point of view for many reasons.

First of all you seem to apply more modern expectations unknown to the times back then. To judge dragonlance properly use the normal knowledge and expectations back then, in 1st or 2nd edition, what was normal at these times.

The concept of moon dependant magic strength was good
The concept of dragonlances was awesome for 2nd ed players
The solamnian order as a very good implementation of a knightly order with a good backstory and motivation, it is far better than greyhawks knights of the shield or FRs knights of myth drannor, far, far better.
The one big problem with DL is, if you want to run that setting, best put your players in the roles of the heroes of the lance, and it is an adventure path so it is eventually a bit railroad and when you are done with Takishis aka Tiamat there is nothing left to do.
But
Riding dragons = awesome
Did you ever play dragonstrike on your C64 (I think you can get a PC version for Dosbox at abandonware or such)
It was a realistic dragonflight simulator with breathweapon and lance awesome!
The first books were quite good also some later ones describing Raistlins backstory.
The later books after the war of the lance were crap on that I agree.

I tried rereading them last year, they were bad although I enjoyed them in 1993.