Looking back on my Dragonlance reviews...

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Libertad
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Looking back on my Dragonlance reviews...

Post by Libertad »

So I've been looking over what I've done for Dragonlance these past near 2 months. And the funny thing is, I did more than I thought.

For Dragonlance's 3.5 era, there were 11 sourcebooks (discounting a revised printing) and 6 adventures. I already reviewed the core setting sourcebook back in 2003, and the Dungeon Master's Screen is nothing special (screen with tables plus 32 page sourcebook of various NPC stat blocks). Additionally, the 3rd Edition revisions of the original Chronicles I'm doing for someone else's review on FATAL & Friends would add another 3 (Dragons of Spring still ongoing) to my 5 already done sourcebooks. I also reviewed Key of Destiny Adventure Path, but stopped midway through the second sourcebook and plan to re-review the entire thing someday. It was my first ever review of a tabletop RPG product done in the OSSR style, but a lot of the posts have sources to abandoned forums now filled with malware.

So where does that leave me with the remaining Dragonlance sourcebooks?

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Age of Mortals: Detailing Dragonlance's current Fifth Age, after the deaths of all but one of the Dragon Overlords and Takhisis dying for good. It is not a well-designed sourcebook, with an inaccurate table of contents and some odd font choices. It is novel for having stats for all of the Dragon Overlords and some new Colossal+ size categories for them, but is the worst of the sourcebooks.

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Holy Order of the Stars: Covers the gods and religious orders of Ansalon. Would've been my next review, and was notable for having 18 prestige classes representing specialized worshipers for all but the Gods of Magic.

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Knightly Orders of Ansalon: Would have covered the Knights of Solamnia, the Dark Knights, and the Legion of Steel. Also would've covered the more minor knighthoods from web enhancements.

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Races of Ansalon: A sourcebook on new mechanics and role-playing notes on the major races. And some minor ones, including an entire chapter on goblins, and some mini-systems like designing gnomish inventions and a kender pouch contents 1d100 table.

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Bestiary of Krynn: The "monster manual" for Dragonlance. Oddly this one didn't wow me as much as other setting-specific bestiaries. It did have some rules in back for monstrous PCs and how various societies would respond/treat them.

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Lost Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home: although published during the D20 era, is completely rules-neutral. I can't really review it given its contents, and I'm a terrible cook so I don't know if I can do the real-world "Ansalonian-inspired recipes" justice. We also learn from this sourcebook that the Wizards of High Sorcery invented and preserve ice cream with cold magic.

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Key of Destiny AP: The Age of Mortals' Epic Quest to Save the World Equivalent. But this time not based off of any existing PCs or novels.

Earlier Edition Stuff:

Interestingly when looking at prior Edition sourcebooks, they were quite heavy on adventure content over proper sourcebooks; the latter category was more or less a few specialized boxed sets. SAGA is the exception, which was the first system to do a proper city sourcebook on Palanthas. But 2nd Edition had a few such as the Otherlands and a write-up on Taladas' Minotaur League.

And since 3e Dragonlance copies and inspires content from the SAGA-based Age of Mortals, I feel confident in saying that we got a very deep look into the world of Dragonlance so far.

I may be crazy in saying this, but I feel as though I can review the rest of the Edition (minus Lost Leaves) in due time once I properly rest and recuperate.
Iduno
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Post by Iduno »

I love that the way stats are printed is always "well, I guess we'll put it here, next to the declaration that the age started with them all dying." Not just Dragonlance. Important NPCs only seem to get stat blocks once they're declared dead.

Also, thank you for letting us razz your favorite setting a bit. It was, at least, better than it could have been. "Mormon D&D setting" could reasonably be quite ham-fisted.
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Libertad
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Post by Libertad »

Iduno wrote:I love that the way stats are printed is always "well, I guess we'll put it here, next to the declaration that the age started with them all dying." Not just Dragonlance. Important NPCs only seem to get stat blocks once they're declared dead.

Also, thank you for letting us razz your favorite setting a bit. It was, at least, better than it could have been. "Mormon D&D setting" could reasonably be quite ham-fisted.
I dunno if I'd say it's my favorite; I don't think I actually have one. But Dragonlance is one I'm quite fond of, and kind of wish it could've been cooler in places.
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Woot
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Post by Woot »

Can I just chime in and say I think you're doing fantastic work with these OSSR reviews, Libertad?

I've actually been inspired to pull "Dragons of Summer Flame" off the shelf and re-read it, so thanks!
angelfromanotherpin wrote: My space-castle has a moustache, your argument is invalid.
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Libertad
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Post by Libertad »

Woot wrote:Can I just chime in and say I think you're doing fantastic work with these OSSR reviews, Libertad?

I've actually been inspired to pull "Dragons of Summer Flame" off the shelf and re-read it, so thanks!
Thank you for the kind words. It's good to know that my efforts are not in vain!
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