Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Dragonlance comes to DMsGuild
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8854461" data-attributes="member: 5948"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="humble minion, post: 8854461, member: 5948"] 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. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Dragonlance comes to DMsGuild
Top