Unfucking Dragonlance

[Thaluikhain]

Paladine and Takhisis are here, but instead of being gods they’re basically the head dragons. Paladine was the main dude, but his reactive stance towards istar led to a near genocidal purge of their kind. He fell out of favor and Takhisis took over promoting a much more proactive stance. Now if your empire gets too big and powerful the dragons will come fuck you up, either through subterfuge or dragon armies.

Does that mean you are going to get rid of colour coding dragons as being for one side of the other? And you've got legitimate political factions rather than good vs evil?

[JonSetanta]

Ive read a few Dragonlance novels in middle school.
They were all crap, full of racist, classism, sexist nonsense and, naturally, lorewank about things you don't encounter in the fucking novel you're reading in hand because it's a goddamn neverending seeeeeerrrriiiiieeeessss...

Saw the movie/cartoon.
Only thing that was entertaining about it was Keifer as Raistlin.

And yes, Gully Dwarves are a genetically inferior dwarf subrace because Weiss and Hickmann are, indeed, racist.
I read a Star Wars novel that had some double crosser "redneck guy" that snorted phlegm and had a weak chin and was "shifty" and, yes, led Dash through the sewers to an Imperial trap.
I stopped reading at that point because whatever experiences the "authors" had or continue to have with West Virginia, Virginia, regions of Maryland, or maybe even further south, it shows.

Maybe I should write a magical fantasy setting with two ugly, aging, solipsist, flabby, shit-writing wizards that get punished by an angry mob of impoverished, genetically smoothbrain, cowardly dwarves that decided they have had enough maltreatment.

[Bigdy McKen]

Does that mean you are going to get rid of colour coding dragons as being for one side of the other? And you've got legitimate political factions rather than good vs evil?

Yes.

Same with the tower of High Sorcery.

[Bigdy McKen]

Maybe I should write a magical fantasy setting with two ugly, aging, solipsist, flabby, shit-writing wizards that get punished by an angry mob of impoverished, genetically smoothbrain, cowardly dwarves that decided they have had enough maltreatment.

Sounds more like a novella than a setting, but yeah OG dragonlance was full of this shit.

[JonSetanta]

Maybe I should write a magical fantasy setting with two ugly, aging, solipsist, flabby, shit-writing wizards that get punished by an angry mob of impoverished, genetically smoothbrain, cowardly dwarves that decided they have had enough maltreatment.

Sounds more like a novella than a setting, but yeah OG dragonlance was full of this shit.

... Shit. You're correct, it would make a better short fiction piece.

[Bigdy McKen]

... Shit. You're correct, it would make a better short fiction piece.

Would read.

[JonSetanta]

I did enjoy an earlier comment stating the Gully Dwarves just play the part of a fool and coward to outsiders.

That would genuinely be mastered deception skills.

I'll be implementing that.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I like the idea that the most respected and influential guild in Gully dwarf society would be SAG.

[JonSetanta]

Well, I was intending on twisting the Gandalf trope of "looks like a humble old person" and when the big shots aren't looking they whip out the magic powers.
Like some kind of Masquerade of the Dwarves.

Those random sticks and rocks strewn around their habitats?
All enchanted.
Wands, various Wondrous items as plain fist-sized granite, femur bones enchanted as Staves.

It's even in canon DL lore, Gully Dwarves taking over ruins of fallen civilizations.
They could collect forgotten knowledge for centuries and people would say "Ah the gullies are drawing in the dirt, ignore them" but it's actually runes for high level spells being taught between tribe members, then erased once learned so there's no written evidence.

I like the idea that the most respected and influential guild in Gully dwarf society would be SAG.

Would that be a Rogue or Bard or either one due to skill crossover?
A Gully Dwarf Rogue guild spread across nations, connected by Sending stones, would be even more effective than that of Goblins, since they would observe, assassinate, deceive, or disappear... And even walk through daylit public crowds... Appearing as beggars and idiots.
It's genuinely not even a magic disguise if they hide the stone somewhere, spy, then report back later.
Just a small dwarf in rags.

[Aryxbez]

Weirdly enough, my exposure to Dragonlance was the novels involving the Minotaurs (Hint: My Username is one of the main characters). That seemed like a bunch of Low-Fantasy Conan-style shenanigans going on, which was pretty cool. That, and the Dragonlance RPG Book, which...was something to say the least.

Other than that, I don't really know what there is for PC's to do in the Dragonlance setting.

[JonSetanta]

Other than that, I don't really know what there is for PC's to do in the Dragonlance setting.

Planeshift, Gate, or hop through some long-lost portal to Faerun, of course.

[kigmatzomat]

I did my own version of fixing DL a while back. It was 2001 so some of this is probably going to be misremembered but I figure you folks will see where I was going.

I focused on the DLA and looked for the weird crap. Like, if the gods came "from beyond", what is beyond and why did they come here? How is it some, like the greed god, came later? And why did the god of commerce futz around and make the Graygem? Why does a crystal shaped like Krynn make weird races? Why did the smiths and the Ogres need smiting?

I decided I like the "no gods" detente, which begged the question of how the frell did the chaos god get stuffed into the gem? And if Raistlin is able to turn the world into a cinder, how the freaking heck does that make sense that a wizard can defeat the gods of magic?

So I decided the gods from beyond are classic "demiplane" gods. They built the crystal shell out of their demiplanes, sealing off Krynn. Krynn has no local gods, instead having Spirits. The Spirits are mortals who learned some ineffable truth. The first being to "grok" a concept, gets to be its living embodiment. Its not just about invention, its completely, utterly understanding it. They are god-like, but if you kill one, there is no reinstantiating a new avatar; that's their birth body. Their domain goes unclaimed until someone else figures it out.

The gods at first are nice "can we move into this unused void space?" "Mind if we let a few mortals live on your green planet?" But that's to have worshippers, which gods need, a fact the Spirits don't recognize as its irrelevant to them.

The races of Krynn pre-gods were Thanoi, Irda, Mimics, centaurs and a few other species.

Hiddukel was the spirit of deception. As such, he could tell the gods were lying. Couldn't tell about what (not being the spirit of truth), just that they were and it was big.
had never really been recognized as such by the gods (deception, you know). Armed with various relics he "liberated", Hidukkel left Krynn for Beyond, returning a century later with the pantheon of a god of greed and several potent divine relics to bribe the Gods so they would let him join their little club.

The gods wage war on the spirits for control of Krynn. Sneak attacks, targeting those who could warn the others first. The spirit of knowledge, Tobril, is trapped in a cursed book and entrusted to a horribly powerful, but horribly stupid god. With Tobril in hand, this mindless god-beast becomes Gilead. Hiddukel was intentionally left out of the loop so he too was caught by surprise.

The spirit of Magic is killed in an ambush, the spirit of nature is put to magical sleep. Several other spirits die before the rest finally gang up but are trapped in the center of Krynn.

The smiths were demi-human mortals who had recognized the gods duplicity and fought against them. They teamed up with the races of Krynn to try and fight the gods, but ultimately lost. The metallic dragons were god-corrupted versions of Krynnish dragons, who were all exterminated. The gods dropped mountains on Smith cities to destroy any records containing the truth.

The graygem was made in the image of krynn, which, combined with a little bit of bonus mojo added by Hiddukel, becomes a key to freeing the surviving spirits. Where it goes, old magic pours out, recreating lost races.

Centuries pass. The God King of Istar is building his great temple. His workers expose a lost Smith cache, full of unpleasant truths. The cache also references another stockpile in Taladas, though the notes are so vague given the passage of time it could cover a thousand square miles. The Cataclysm was the gods covering up the caches, with the godking being rationalized.

All the various pogroms against socrerors and mystics was to destroy nascent spirits.
Raistlin is the spirit of magic, who just doesn't know it.

When the graygem was broken, the spirits were unleashed, but after millenia trapped, they are fairly mad and not entirely independent beings, kind of like heads on a hydra.

Hidukel still plots to completely free the spirits and kill most of the gods. That's where players come in.....