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dwarf74 posted:Dragonlance got expanded a ton in novels, but it has never been a premier RPG setting except for a few minutes during the late 80's or whatever. It's much more well-known for its books. It has some clever bits that were atypical for its era, and it prided itself on being a deep, dramatic setting, but it's still an Extremely Generic Fantasy World. Yeah, it never really took off. They tried, though. In the late 80's/early 90's they even released a campaign setting for a completely different continent in Dragonlance, called Taladas (main continent is Ansalon.) Somehow, it ALSO had a cataclysm at the exact same time as Ansalon, but instead of the continent shattering and creating a new ocean and whatnot, it created a GIGANTIC LAVA OCEAN in the middle of the land.  The Tinker Gnomes who lived in Taladas even made little lava boats to traverse it.
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Jul 19, 2019 19:40
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Rhandhali posted:I had the companion books they made - Leaves From the Inn of the Last Home and More Leaves From the Inn of the Last Home. More songs, more (probably terrible) poetry and recipes. Many recipes. I'll see if I can't dig them up somewhere. Always tried to get my mom to cook the spiced potatoes but could never get her to go along with it. As I was a giant nerd, I got my mom to make the spiced gingerbread pudding from More Leaves once. It's really good. Like good enough that it got copied out of the Dragonlance book and into her regular recipe collection and served to other people. @Xiahou Dun: Shave the sides and then make a high ponytail at the top.
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Jul 19, 2019 19:43
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DrBouvenstein posted:Yeah, it never really took off. They tried, though. In the late 80's/early 90's they even released a campaign setting for a completely different continent in Dragonlance, called Taladas (main continent is Ansalon.) All that map needs are fingers and a ring...just saying...
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Jul 19, 2019 19:49
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:All that map needs are fingers and a ring...just saying...
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Jul 19, 2019 19:54
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W.T. Fits posted:+1 to the list of "read a bunch of this poo poo in high school/college" pile. Been years since I read any of my old books that are packed away in storage, save for my well-worn copy of The Legend of Huma by none other than the WoW Lore Thread's favorite And what's the first DL novel TSR releases that's not by Weis and Hickman? You guessed it...
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Jul 19, 2019 19:57
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DrBouvenstein posted:Yeah, it never really took off. They tried, though. In the late 80's/early 90's they even released a campaign setting for a completely different continent in Dragonlance, called Taladas (main continent is Ansalon.) If I remember my box set correctly it was the same cataclysm. The whole world was going to drown in starfire but then somebody was like "wait there's like three continents of completely innocent people here" and the gods tried crashing all the meteors into each other to minimize the damage. It didn't work so well.
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Jul 19, 2019 20:06
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dwarf74 posted:IIRC, when Weis and Hickman handed over the reins to write, like, Darksword or whatever they told TSR, "Here you go, run with it, but please keep your drat hands off of all these things which are supposed to remain mysteries forever. #1: Huma and his legend. #2..." Given the adversarial relationship Weis and Hickman had with TSR regarding Lord Soth and Ravenloft, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Also, The Legend of Huma and all of Knaak's stuff involving minotaurs ruled, and I will die on this hill. Fight me.
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Jul 19, 2019 20:14
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FWIW, I put myself through all the mainline Dragonlance books ("Dragons of such and such" series), even the gillion-page one where Daddy Chaos shows up and does everyone the favor of stepping on the kender, Sturm's son is a Sith, and Raistlin is a Force ghost. I also read the Verminaard book. I barely remember any of them. It always felt like Dragonlance was trying so hard, and then I read the Forgotten Realms book Death of the Dragon, it was way more pulpy and hyperviolent, and felt like I had been missing out on books that knew what weight they were supposed to punch at. Meanwhile, in Dragonlance, quote:Dragonlance's system of magic alone is hilarious and the most D&D thing ever, more D&D than anything Ed Greenwood could put together. A sorting hat figures out whether you are good, ambiguous, or evil, and then the evil wizards are not only allowed to exist at all ever, but in the middle of a city with a haunted lawn. This is the 200th dumbest thing about Dragonlance.
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Jul 19, 2019 20:38
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I'm pretty sure that despite playing some BESM and AD&D, then 2nd edition, then 3rd, then 3.5, and finally 4th edition over the span of 30 years, that I mentally conflated dragonlance and forgotten realms into being one thing for basically all of that time. Specifically, one thing I didn't know or care anything about. It'll be interesting to learn all about this legendary D&D setting for the firs time in this Let's Read. Which one has drizzt the emo dark elf?
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Jul 19, 2019 20:49
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Leperflesh posted:I'm pretty sure that despite playing some BESM and AD&D, then 2nd edition, then 3rd, then 3.5, and finally 4th edition over the span of 30 years, that I mentally conflated dragonlance and forgotten realms into being one thing for basically all of that time. Specifically, one thing I didn't know or care anything about. That's Forgotten Realms. At about the point that 3E happened, WotC began to abandon virtually every setting except Forgotten Realms, and by 4E everything was by default Forgotten Realms (3E started with Greyhawk, Gary Gygax's campaign setting, which was quickly abandoned).
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Jul 19, 2019 20:58
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The Dragonlance D&D settings also assume that your group is tracking time well enough to track moon phases so you can know which wizards are the best at any given moment. Which makes me laugh, and laugh.
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Jul 19, 2019 21:03
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I don't recall there being much "setting" in the 3/3.5 core books, and by that time I was never buying campaign settings or adventures. I guess there's the pantheon provided. And which races are in the PHB and monster manual?
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Jul 19, 2019 21:03
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The default in 3.X was supposed to be Greyhawk, which was the most generic fantasy world possible.
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Jul 19, 2019 21:10
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Evil Mastermind posted:The default in 3.X was supposed to be Greyhawk, which was the most generic fantasy world possible. And it's not really overt about it, but you can tell from things like the sample dieties in the 3E PHB. Pelor ain't from no Realms I ever heard of!
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Jul 19, 2019 21:28
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dwarf74 posted:The Dragonlance D&D settings also assume that your group is tracking time well enough to track moon phases so you can know which wizards are the best at any given moment. There was a series of D&D video games from SSI in the late 80s (pool of radiance etc) and the one set in Dragonlance was great. One of the things it did was have the three moons waxing and waning across the top of the screen all the time and your wizards power would wax and wane automatically with them.
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Jul 19, 2019 21:52
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Evil Mastermind posted:The default in 3.X was supposed to be Greyhawk, which was the most generic fantasy world possible. And yet somehow it's not as bland as Kingdoms of Kalamar, which wouldn't even have had magic and demihuman races where it not for bolting itself to the D&D ruleset.
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Jul 19, 2019 21:53
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Those who keep to the Old Ways know that turning Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Birthright variously into a small smattering of light-weight sourcebooks or nothing at all was a great crime, which will never be forgotten or forgiven. Even the small-scale revivals carried insults, like a Dark Sun dungeon map that featured a stream of water.
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Jul 19, 2019 22:31
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Those who keep to the Old Ways know that turning Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Birthright variously into a small smattering of light-weight sourcebooks or nothing at all was a great crime, which will never be forgotten or forgiven. Mystara/Hollow World was also a batshit wonderful setting.
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Jul 19, 2019 22:34
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I have a soft spot for Al-Qadim.
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Jul 19, 2019 22:38
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The closest they ever did to rebooting Spelljammer was doing it as a Victorian-style mini-setting in an issue of Polyhedron magazine. e: Issue 151 for those who're interested.
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Jul 19, 2019 22:51
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah thinking back I think I only ever really completed the Chronicles. I also read the Moon book at some point, because I was hoping it was Spelljammer, and IIRC I was kinda disappointed. I have not yet the novels myself, but own like a ton of their gaming sourcebooks from both AD&D and 3.X days. I'd be happy to lend a hand, that is if I get enough free time. I'd also like to mention that the 3rd Edition updates by Sovereign Press/Margaret Weis Productions made some small changes to the adventures here and there. I cannot recall offhand at the moment, it's been a while. I did write up some GMing advice section on converting the Chronicles to more modern gaming groups. Mostly system neutral, though.
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Jul 19, 2019 22:54
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Mr. Humalong posted:I’m definitely a latecomer to D&D (never played until 2017), but what’s the general opinion of the Dragonlance setting? I know next to nothing about any of the settings besides Forgotten Realms (seems like a kitchen sink setting) and Eberron (rules imo). It's not much of a setting outside of the first few novels. It's very approachable because the dragons are integral to the plot, there's very clearly defined good guys and bad guys, and the central characters in the books are a diverse party of adventurers from all walks of life, and they go on a world tour where they interact with basically each major culture and convince them to stop being isolationist dinguses and fight for the greater good. But hardly anyone ever uses it to actually adventure in because there's just not that much to it. But unless you're directly interacting with Raistlin or whatever, there'd be no real difference to running a campaign in Dragonlance than in like Greyhawk or a nameless generic D&D setting.
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Jul 20, 2019 00:38
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The first trilogy is very bad for a variety of reasons, and he Twins trilogy that follows it is only slightly better, but I will stan for it forever over the fact that they made co-dependent relationships the real ultimate final villain after all.
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Jul 20, 2019 00:38
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Did Dragonlance invent Tinker gnomes, because if it did that might be its greatest crime of all.
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Jul 20, 2019 00:43
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Lurdiak posted:Did Dragonlance invent Tinker gnomes, because if it did that might be its greatest crime of all. Yes. And kender, so don't undersell it.
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Jul 20, 2019 00:47
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Tinker gnomes are much, much worse than kender.
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Jul 20, 2019 00:49
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Gully Dwarves
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Jul 20, 2019 00:52
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Lurdiak posted:Tinker gnomes are much, much worse than kender. Disagree. Kender are actually okay in the books, sometimes, but they’re the worst at a gaming trouble.
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Jul 20, 2019 02:15
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A tinker gnome PC can at least give you cool stuff. Like a wizard whose spells are reflavored super-science, or an excuse to break out classes like Alchemist or Artificer depending on the edition/retroclone you're using. Kender have a customized "borrowing" random item generation table, the value and utility of collected trinkets going up based on the kender's class levels. Gully dwarves...have nothing like that.
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Jul 20, 2019 02:27
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Kender are great except when people actually play them, because they're universally just played as 3 foot tall fishmalks with hoopaks and topknots
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Jul 20, 2019 03:24
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Kender, Gully Dwarves, and Tinker Gnomes are the trifecta of lovely gaming races from the late 80's. The Dragonlance Adventures hardcover from AD&D 1e has a ludicrously complex set of rules for Tinker Gnome inventions, btw.
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Jul 20, 2019 03:32
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On the plus side, tinker gnomes did have power armor.
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Jul 20, 2019 03:34
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What's wrong with tinker gnomes, aside from ubiquity? Before those, gnomes were "essentially dwarves, but you'll only ever meet one, and they'll be an illusionist."
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Jul 20, 2019 12:37
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homullus posted:What's wrong with tinker gnomes, aside from ubiquity? Before those, gnomes were "essentially dwarves, but you'll only ever meet one, and they'll be an illusionist." When Dragonlance says "tinker" they don't mean "Oh cool, sweet clockwork contraptions that do things!" they mean "Insane corrupted dwarves who will build whatever comes to mind except it never, EVER works right, and the only reason they're not exterminated is that it's too loving dangerous to attack their homeland because of the constant explosions."
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Jul 20, 2019 13:06
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Kender were 95% jerks who got their jollies by robbing the party constantly, and 5% people who wanted to play halflings and didn't know the difference. Tinker Gnomes were 100% jerks, 99% because they loving hate that rear end in a top hat playing the Kender "Oh no! Hassleboff pickpocketed the "fancy watch" I kept looking at once an hour on the dot, but that was actually a bomb with a switch I had to press once an hour to keep it from exploding that killed him (and the wizard, whoops)!" and 1% because they wanted to PK in a party where the GM has banned PKing "I didn't mean to blow them up, honest! How could I have known this device with a 85% failure chance would explode right at that exact critical moment?" TLDR: Everyone in the party is playing D&D except the Tinker Gnome who's playing Paranoia. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Jul 20, 2019 |
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Jul 20, 2019 13:36
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Tinker Gnomes are the PG version of Oglaf's Fukken' Dwarves.
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Jul 20, 2019 15:52
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You'd think that people would have had enough of silly tinker gnomes; I look around me and I see it isn't so. Some people want to fill the world with silly tinker gnomes. What wrong with that? I'd like to know.
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Jul 20, 2019 16:06
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Meinberg posted:Disagree. Kender are actually okay in the books, sometimes, but they’re the worst at a gaming trouble. Tasselhoff was okay in the book (for some version of okay anyway). Kender as a species were all clones of that one slightly annoying PC but without the character arc. Tinker Gnomes had the seed of a good idea - but they were badly executed and too much of a one note joke.
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Jul 20, 2019 16:55
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PoptartsNinja posted:TLDR: Everyone in the party is playing D&D except the Tinker Gnome who's playing Paranoia. Which is still more fun than playing with the Kender, who's basically using his race as an excuse to play the absolute worst kind of Rogue/Thief (one who derails the game for everyone constantly by having a pathological need to steal nonmagical items and pocket change) At least the Tinker Gnome is being annoying with the party
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Jul 20, 2019 17:14
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No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:Which is still more fun than playing with the Kender, who's basically using his race as an excuse to play the absolute worst kind of Rogue/Thief (one who derails the game for everyone constantly by having a pathological need to steal nonmagical items and pocket change) What about Gully Dwarf PCs? Do those actually exist?
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Jul 20, 2019 20:44
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