Re: 40 Years Ago: Dragonlance Catches Fire

On Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:06:16 +0100, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

Source:
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2024/11/40-years-ago-dragonlance-catches-fire/
>
40 Years Ago: Dragonlance Catches Fire
>

Dragonlance really was a ground-breaking adventure back when it
released. It helped transform the game from adventures that were
little more than dungeon-crawls for murder-hobos into a tool that
could be used to tell epic stories. For millions of players, it
transformed how they played the game. It added drama, and characters,
and gave their adventures a feeling of having real weight and meaning,
something that was often lacking in earlier adventures.

Going back and re-reading the modules, it's hard to imagine it was so
revolutionary. The adventures are... not good. They make a lot of
assumptions, lack a lot of necessary detail and world-building, and
this results in a lot of railroading. Not intentionally, but just
because the DM -lacking any other options thanks to the dearth of
information- _has_ to force the players on the only path available to
them.

But I don't think this was as much as a problem as it first seemed.
The modules were released with the novels, and I think the expectation
was that a lot of the players would already know what the story was
about. In many respects, the original Dragonlance novel trilogy _was_
the game's 'campaign sourcebook'. Certainly that was the case with our
group when we played it; I can't remember if _everyone_ had read the
books prior to our adventures, but certainly the majority of us had.
And despite our foreknowledge of where the game was going, we still
had fun. We were replaying our own "Lord of the Rings" epic-style
adventure, and just putting our own personal touch on it. It was
great.

Later "Dragonlance", though, not so much. The original epic ended
rather conclusively, and attempts by TSR to keep the story going
afterwards never rang very true. The story just didn't support it,
anymore than going back to Middle Earth after Sauron's defeat would be
much fun.

    [I always felt that TSR would have been better served by
     going back in time to the pre-war period for its adventures,
     fleshing out the world that way, rather than trying to
     stretch the story on beyond the end. Still, I'm not sure
     that would have worked either. TSR always had a fascination
     with adding new monsters and complexities as selling points
     even when it weakened the story overall, and I think any
     attempt to extend Dragonlance past that first epic trilogy
     was fraught with difficulty]

Other games -and settings- would take the ideas introduced by
Dragonlance and present them with more polish and care, until the idea
that you could run long, story-driven campaigns of connected
adventures with strong characters became normalized in the industry.
We can see it in stuff like WOTC's various "Adventure Path"
collections like "Avernus Rising" or "The Sundering" series. It's
_expected_ now, and -after forty years of practice- done a lot better
than those early modules. In comparison, "Dragonlance" feels old,
rushed, and just not very good. It's easy for people to wonder why it
caused such an uproar all those years ago?

But at the time, it really was a breath of fresh air.