Lets talk Dragonlance
Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2014 12:37 am
So, lets talk Dragonlance for a little bit:
Dragonlance, like Greyhawk and Blackmoore was not actually built as an organized campaign setting. Instead it was built as the backdrop to a series of linked adventures that just happened to be some of the first (TSR) adventures to be written with an event based style instead of a location based style.
Based on things that Hickman has said about his working with TSR in the 80s, the original intent of these modules was to increase the visibilty of dragons in D&D modules as the namesake monster had not really had a major role in any of the other "classic modules."
Hickman has also made comments to the effect that he was asked to put together some game materials that would come across more like arthurian legend or LOTR than like the more Robert E. Howard/Fritz Lieber style of games/adventures that Gygax felt was more typical of D&D. While I cannot find anything to confirm it I have a suspicion that Hickman (especially when he was pared with Weis ) were STRONGLY influenced by David Eddings. Regardless of what you may think of Eddings, especially now in the era of the gritty reboot, Eddings was the GRRM of the 1980s. The first 14DL modules and their associated novels, have a lot of similarties in tone, writing style, philosophy, and even the humor used.
DL1-14 are, for pre-written modules, quite good. While they sometimes can veer into railroad territory, the players are asked to participate in events that clearly matter. Further, it is one of the few adventures where a player being a hidden prince, or getting a powerful artifact at low level, or being a one-of-a-kind super special snowflake is not a hindrance to the game but can easily be turned into a motivating factor.
The modules do have some issues. Gully Dwarves are a problem. The "barbarians" who have Native American culture are a problem, although they do get points for not making them some evil demi-human (On this I sometimes wonder if they were included because everything in the US in the 80s included some Native American to show they "understood the issues." The fact that it basically became cultural appropriation didn't matter till 1991). The particular thing that annoys me the most is that the whole setting is almost ruined by the D&D alignment system, especially the late 70s/early 80s version of it where "neutral" is written to mean "balances good and evil" instead of something remotely sensible like "decides based on factors at the time and reasonable self interest." Gygax's post vietnam era highschool dropout philosophy was dumb when he made it the guiding principle of the circle of 8. It was cosmically stupid when they tried to squeeze that crap into the background of the campaign about an cosmic war between good and evil. Here is a hint, if two groups are in an existential total war being the person who says "what we really need is for these two group to be balanced so that they are eternally deadlocked" makes you seem like a giant ass hat.
The whole campaign setting is built around creating a world that is at just the right point to run these adventures. Setting further adventures after DL1-14 of course works....however the conceits of the setting start to fall apart the further you get from the War of the Lance. The games whole campaign was built up to run a particular sequence of adventures and when that sequence is done things after it feel less important. The setting is also not helped by 20 years of crappy novels adding in all kinds of weird shit. Comparing the 1E and, to a lesser extend the 2E settings books for Dragonlance to the 3E shows is something that really puts this in sharp relief.
The 1E and 2E books are able to quickly explain the history of the setting, the gods, and the state of the games nations (both before and after the war of the lance) as a dramatic narrative that you could explain to new players quickly.
The 3E book has to deal with both the expansion of detail in the historical events, the nature of the deities, and then the rapidly increasing rate of "dramatic" events after the war of the lance. The sad fact is that all of this detail represents 20 years of dead weight.
The original 14 DL adventures were repackaged for use with D&D 2E, and again for 3E. I have no doubt that if 4E had lasted long enough for WOTC to end their fighting with Margariet Weis they would have republished them again for 4E. Since 5E is setting out to b nostalgia edition I will be fucking flabergasted if they don't reprint these modules for 5E and I would guess sooner rather than later.
The end result is that anything that occurs after the DL1-14 series modules basically DOES NOT MATTER. The campaign setting exists to support these modules and people who end up playing dragonlance do so to play these modules.
The forgotten realms is basically the same way. Its at its best either during or shortly after the time of troubles because that event has worked better and was more interesting than anything else they have EVER done with the setting. The further they have gotten from that the more "who cares" the setting has become. If I were more familiar with Dark Sun I bet there was a point where the setting stopped being what it was billed as and I am certain that once Ebberon has 20 years of crappy novels behind it all the novelty will be drained from that setting to.
The point of this is:
We have discussed how a setting backed by crappy rules can drive a game and keep it going. However, there is another aspect to this. A setting can be good for telling a PARTICULAR story. Once that story has been told it may be better to move on to another setting than to try and keep pigeonholing more and more stories that dilute your original theme. Especially if your rules is not so fundamentally tied to your setting that you can't develop other settings without having to rewrite large swaths of rules.
D&D settings need to be turned over and added to all the time because honestly most of their settings have only 2-3 really interesting stories to be told in them. After that its star wars prequels all the way down.
Dragonlance, like Greyhawk and Blackmoore was not actually built as an organized campaign setting. Instead it was built as the backdrop to a series of linked adventures that just happened to be some of the first (TSR) adventures to be written with an event based style instead of a location based style.
Based on things that Hickman has said about his working with TSR in the 80s, the original intent of these modules was to increase the visibilty of dragons in D&D modules as the namesake monster had not really had a major role in any of the other "classic modules."
Hickman has also made comments to the effect that he was asked to put together some game materials that would come across more like arthurian legend or LOTR than like the more Robert E. Howard/Fritz Lieber style of games/adventures that Gygax felt was more typical of D&D. While I cannot find anything to confirm it I have a suspicion that Hickman (especially when he was pared with Weis ) were STRONGLY influenced by David Eddings. Regardless of what you may think of Eddings, especially now in the era of the gritty reboot, Eddings was the GRRM of the 1980s. The first 14DL modules and their associated novels, have a lot of similarties in tone, writing style, philosophy, and even the humor used.
DL1-14 are, for pre-written modules, quite good. While they sometimes can veer into railroad territory, the players are asked to participate in events that clearly matter. Further, it is one of the few adventures where a player being a hidden prince, or getting a powerful artifact at low level, or being a one-of-a-kind super special snowflake is not a hindrance to the game but can easily be turned into a motivating factor.
The modules do have some issues. Gully Dwarves are a problem. The "barbarians" who have Native American culture are a problem, although they do get points for not making them some evil demi-human (On this I sometimes wonder if they were included because everything in the US in the 80s included some Native American to show they "understood the issues." The fact that it basically became cultural appropriation didn't matter till 1991). The particular thing that annoys me the most is that the whole setting is almost ruined by the D&D alignment system, especially the late 70s/early 80s version of it where "neutral" is written to mean "balances good and evil" instead of something remotely sensible like "decides based on factors at the time and reasonable self interest." Gygax's post vietnam era highschool dropout philosophy was dumb when he made it the guiding principle of the circle of 8. It was cosmically stupid when they tried to squeeze that crap into the background of the campaign about an cosmic war between good and evil. Here is a hint, if two groups are in an existential total war being the person who says "what we really need is for these two group to be balanced so that they are eternally deadlocked" makes you seem like a giant ass hat.
The whole campaign setting is built around creating a world that is at just the right point to run these adventures. Setting further adventures after DL1-14 of course works....however the conceits of the setting start to fall apart the further you get from the War of the Lance. The games whole campaign was built up to run a particular sequence of adventures and when that sequence is done things after it feel less important. The setting is also not helped by 20 years of crappy novels adding in all kinds of weird shit. Comparing the 1E and, to a lesser extend the 2E settings books for Dragonlance to the 3E shows is something that really puts this in sharp relief.
The 1E and 2E books are able to quickly explain the history of the setting, the gods, and the state of the games nations (both before and after the war of the lance) as a dramatic narrative that you could explain to new players quickly.
The 3E book has to deal with both the expansion of detail in the historical events, the nature of the deities, and then the rapidly increasing rate of "dramatic" events after the war of the lance. The sad fact is that all of this detail represents 20 years of dead weight.
The original 14 DL adventures were repackaged for use with D&D 2E, and again for 3E. I have no doubt that if 4E had lasted long enough for WOTC to end their fighting with Margariet Weis they would have republished them again for 4E. Since 5E is setting out to b nostalgia edition I will be fucking flabergasted if they don't reprint these modules for 5E and I would guess sooner rather than later.
The end result is that anything that occurs after the DL1-14 series modules basically DOES NOT MATTER. The campaign setting exists to support these modules and people who end up playing dragonlance do so to play these modules.
The forgotten realms is basically the same way. Its at its best either during or shortly after the time of troubles because that event has worked better and was more interesting than anything else they have EVER done with the setting. The further they have gotten from that the more "who cares" the setting has become. If I were more familiar with Dark Sun I bet there was a point where the setting stopped being what it was billed as and I am certain that once Ebberon has 20 years of crappy novels behind it all the novelty will be drained from that setting to.
The point of this is:
We have discussed how a setting backed by crappy rules can drive a game and keep it going. However, there is another aspect to this. A setting can be good for telling a PARTICULAR story. Once that story has been told it may be better to move on to another setting than to try and keep pigeonholing more and more stories that dilute your original theme. Especially if your rules is not so fundamentally tied to your setting that you can't develop other settings without having to rewrite large swaths of rules.
D&D settings need to be turned over and added to all the time because honestly most of their settings have only 2-3 really interesting stories to be told in them. After that its star wars prequels all the way down.