Dragonlance

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Knights, dragons, draconians, kender, gully dwarves, and a shitload of books that a huge amount of nerds have read. It's mostly the result of reading too much Tolkien in the 70s and an unhealthy obsession with dragons. The hook for Dragonlance is that dragons have a much larger presence in the material than in other D&D settings.

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, with their friends, created the setting after a long session of Dungeons and Dragons, eventually splitting the party when people moved away, going as far as finishing their game and making it into a book. The setting in itself is pretty much dark, as evidenced by the first books: Even the kindest gods are egotistical assholes who are perfectly content to make the world suffer for one man's hubris, stooping to mortal levels of pettiness in a manner that would make the fucking Greek Pantheon wince (more on that below and in the Setting Section).

Also, it's low magic as fuck, at least when in comes to divine magic: a famous dude is called "Twice-Born" simply because he got offed and was revived via magic. The reason is that the gods abandoned the world after the aforementioned Cataclysm, when they dropped a mountain on the city of Istar because the Kingpriest demanded that they elevate him to their level after turning Istar into a police state out of George Orwell's nightmares in the name of "good." The gods of arcane magic remained in contact with the world in their own inscrutable way to keep it going.

Arcane magic, called High Sorcery, is heavily regulated. Everybody who displays magical talent is required to report to a Tower of High Sorcery for instruction and indoctrination. In order to advance, every wizard has to take a highly-personalized Test. Those who take the Test often have to sacrifice something inherent to themselves to pass. A full wizard then has to choose a color-coded Order: White, Red, or Black, corresponding to good, neutral, and evil. The choice is supposed to represent how you'll use your magic and all wizards are brothers within the Towers, but outside those walls, nothing stops a Black Robe from knifing his White Robe "brothers" in the back or blowing up their cottages with fireballs.

It's balanced by Raistlin Majere's presence, so it can't be all bad.

The Dungeons and Dragons movie Dragons of Autumn Twilight took place in the Dragonlance setting. It was an adaptation of the first novel in the Dragonlance canon and combined CGI with traditional 2-D cel animation. Unfortunately, the cel animation had the quality of an early 80's Saturday morning cartoon, which is not surprising considering that the movie was directed by Will Meugniot, whose whole career has been in Saturday morning cartoons, and the CGI was even worse. Its star-studded cast included Harriet the Spy and Xena, Warrior Princess, which probably would have been something to brag about in the mid-'90s, but the movie was made in 2008. On the plus side, it has gratuitous dragonboobs. And we don't mean "there are female dragon characters that happen to have boobs", we're talking about close-up shots of just the cleavage. And also gratuitous bar wench boob jiggling. And the same bar wench "adjusting" her boobs. And god-boobs. And I'm not even 15 minutes into it yet.

Dragonlance is mostly known for its books than anything. There's literally hundreds of novels in this setting, in all kinds of eras, to the extent a lot of people don't even know that the first trilogy was made to promote one of TSR's newest D&D settings or that there was even a 3rd edition release of the setting. Even amongst those who are aware, Dragonlance tends to suffer similarly to the Forgotten Realms; everybody feels there's no point RPGing there because all of the "fun stuff" has already been done by the authors.

Setting

Ansalon, the main setting, post-Chaos War

The setting is fairly interesting, in its own way, with a lot of positive traits. For example, it's one of the few settings to focus on giving lots of variety to demihumans as well as humans - dwarves, for example, come in at least three major typings (Hill, Mountain and Dark), with each typing being made of multiple ethnicities, or clans.

On the other hand, there's also a lot of derp or even outright fail involved. This is the setting that gave rise to the infamous race known and loathed as the kender, after all.

The setting began with a trilogy, focusing on a band of adventurers, and their quest to stop the world being conquered by armies of dragonriders, goblins and draconians in league with Takhisis, Goddess of Evil. The reason why all this happened? Well, that's a long story...

In the beginning, the Gods decided to create the world. In doing so, they split into three factions: Good, Neutral, and Evil. The leaders of the three factions each created their own races: Paladine, god of good, created the Elves, Takhisis, Goddess of Evil, created the Ogres(originally called the Irda), and Gilean, God of Neutrality created Humans. Takhisis and Paladine also created the Chromatic and Metallic Dragons, respectively. Takhisis and her Dragons then waged quite a few wars to try and conquer the world. The Third Dragon War ended when the knight Huma Dragonbane, with the blessings of the Gods, struck Takhisis with the Dragonlance, causing her pain for the first time, and forcing her to promise never to invade Krynn again. There was peace at last. Until some idiots had to screw it up.

In short, centuries ago, the King-Priest of Paladine, resident God of Good, went totally mad with power. Using an artifact-tier magical crown to basically let him mindrape people into obeying him, he set up a totaliarian police state in which all evil was punished, with his definition of evil growing increasingly broader - probably not helped by the fact he had particularly racist elves who considered themselves the perfect, Paladine-created race with all others being inferior in some fairly important positions. He even went to the trouble of using clerical agents to mind-probe random people to seek out thought-crimes.

As you might guess, this kind of upset the whole "balance between good and evil" thing, which is kind of important to the setting. However, the setting claims that the "upsetting" this did was by making Good stronger than Evil. If this rings at all hollow to you, then congratulations, you're putting more thought into this than the original authors did. Or at least your brain hasn't been fried by your particular flavor of faith -- they were both pretty devout Mormons, after all.

So, anyway, the gods get pissed and start sending omens. Heatwaves, unseasonal storms, turning the sky funky colors... you know, just enough mystical crap to make people scared that something bad is going down, but absolutely nowhere near a straight answer as to why they're ticked. The real reason? The King-Priest wants to demand the Gods make him a god too, so he can "wipe out all evil forever".

The day before the big ceremony, the gods snatch up all their clerics and spirit them away to their homes in the planes. Those who refuse to come, they leave behind, but strip them of all their clerical powers.

And then the big day comes. The King-Priest demands the gods elevate him to their ranks, and the gods respond like any sane, rational all-powerful beings would - by grabbing a huge-ass meteor and smacking him right in the face with it, literally reshaping the whole continent in the process - the kingdom of Ishtar becomes an inland sea, coasts change, famine and fire and pestilence runs rampant, and there's nobody around who can use any divine magic to try and reduce the nastiness.

After things quiet down, the gods wait for the mortals to apologize for the hubris of the King-Priest. Instead, the mortals demand to know what the hell the gods were thinking doing all this to them over one man and his wrongheadedness. In a huff, the gods declare the mortals will no longer benefit from their powers and they stop allowing any divine magic to be used at all.

Cue the present day, in which people sadly realize they turned their back on the gods, believing that none of them will answer their prayers anymore. Wew.

Eventually, Takhisis realises that while the other gods are busy ignoring the world, she can wriggle back into it and conquer it. She wakes up her armies of evil dragons, steals the eggs of the good dragons, starts converting the stolen eggs into her monster minions (whilst lying to the good dragons that their eggs will be safe if they just let her minions do what they want), and gets to work. The ancient "good" dragons are somehow tricked into this. The moment they discover the truth, they immediately join in the War against Takhisis.

And that's when the first trilogy starts, ending with Takhisis beaten back, the other gods returning, and divine magic being restored. Until the next big setting-changing upheaval, anyway.

The Adventures That Started It All

The Dragonlance protagonists fighting in the ruins of Xak Tsaroth.

The original series of adventures were published from 1984 to 1986, known as the DL Series. Although notable for being one of the first types of interconnected adventures (Against the Giants preceded it), the DL Series has not aged very well, being infamous for railroading, threadbare adventure hooks which artificially carry the protagonists from Point A to Point B, the criminal sin of splitting the party long-term for 2/3rds of the plot, in the later adventures an over-reliance on the Dungeon Master having read the book series in order to make sense of events. With some exceptions the DL series closely follow the events in the books, and instead of making your own PCs you were expected to choose one of several pre-generated characters from the novels. The average party size was quite large, and only gets bigger as more NPCs end up joining throughout the adventures. In spite of this, not even death can free you from the railroad tracks thanks to an "Obscure Death" variant rule where plot-important PCs suffer off-screen deaths and reappear later.

The Modules, in order:

DL 1: Dragons of Despair: The PCs are chilling out in an idyllic frontier region when the party Cleric comes to them with news of the true gods and a magical healing staff, but needs to retrieve holy scriptures from a dungeon overrun by draconians.

DL 2: Dragons of Flame: The Dragonarmies invade the aforementioned frontier region and start capturing people to use as slaves. The party gets captured via an unwinnable battle and are rescued by elves, who in turn get their princess kidnapped and the PCs have to rescue her and the slaves from a military fortress. The 'climax' of this adventure is watching big-ass two dragons fight, and the PCs have no means of participating in the outcome.

DL 3: Dragons of Hope: The PCs escort the slaves south in Oregon Trail: D&D Edition to the supposed safe haven of the dwarf kingdom of Thorbadin.

DL 4: Dragons of Desolation: PCs get railroaded into a dwarf civil war between the Good Dwarfs and Bad Dwarfs who are in league with the Dragonarmies. They get railroaded into helping out the former or end up under arrest, and get the opportunity to visit a floating tomb-dungeon whose only inhabitant is a good-natured prankster dragon...whose traps can kill. The climax of the adventure is fighting the Red Dragonarmy leader near a giant pit of death, but the PCs never get a a THIS IS SPARTA moment cuz the bad guy throws himself in when the battle turns against him.

DL 5: Dragons of Mystery: Not an adventure, but an outline of the world of Krynn.

DL 6: Dragons of Ice: The party splits up in the cold southern city of Tarsis and visits a glacier-covered castle because an old man told them to. Said castle has the White Dragonarmy leader and a Dragon Orb, a cursed artifact which can control the minds of dragons and drive them insane.

DL 7: Dragons of Light: The PCs get railroaded onto an island by having their ship sink at sea. Coincidentally said island also has the elf refugees from the mainland who are enslaving the indigenous wood elves but somehow still remain Chaotic Good. A silver dragon in disguise helps the party find an ancient forge for the Dragonlances, which get tested out in combat when some white dragons invade the sanctum.

DL 8: Dragons of War: The PCs lead an army of knights in defending a sacred tower from the Blue Dragonarmies. Unlike the earlier modules, this battle can be resolved in a variety of ways and the adventure keeps going even if they lose. Said tower is an explorable dungeon containing various treasures and sidequests which can turn the tide of war, like helping a high priest ghost find his missing chess piece or using the Dragon Orb to get the blue dragons to fly into the dungeon's many traps.

DL 9: Dragons of Deceit: Silvara and the PCs infiltrate the EVUUUULLLLL City of Sanction to rescue the good dragon eggs held hostage under a temple and which are being turned into draconians. The adventure's climax involves the PCs riding on the backs of metallic dragons besieging Sanction and fighting the chromatic dragons in aerial combat.

DL 10: Dragons of Dreams: The PCs who split off back in Dragons of Ice accompany a different elven princess east to the ruined kingdom of Silvanesti. A green dragon with a Dragon Orb is responsible for the warped, nightmarish landscape and the curse can be lifted based on a coin-flip. No really, the key to Silvanesti's freedom depends on the result of casting coins into a river, whose sides tell the PCs how to end the nightmare.

DL 11: Dragons of Glory: A sourcebook for TSR's Battlesystem rules, for all of your mass combat needs. Was oddly released after Dragons of War in which it would have been most useful.

DL 12: Dragons of Faith: The PCs commandeer a ship in an evil port city and yet again get railroaded into it sinking. They end up in an undersea kingdom populated by elves (beginning to see a pattern here) fighting off the Dragonarmies' underwater allies. They also meet a mysterious man with a gemstone in his chest who may or may not be the key to defeating the Dragonarmies.

DL 13: Dragons of Truth: The PCs visit a holy shrine to the gods in the middle of Takhisis' Empire of Evil, and must conduct a series of tests to beat the dungeon.

DL 14: Dragons of Triumph: The PCs un-split and reunite for an epic battle in the Empire's capital city. The adventure has one of six different ending sequences for how to shut down the portal which would allow Takhisis into the world. A few of them are cool and epic involving fighting the Evil Emperor or distracting Takhisis on the other side of the portal while the rest of the party shuts it down. While others are lamer, such as sneaking into the basement and breaking the gemstone chest guy's chest.

DL 15: Mists of Krynn: A sort of grab-bag book of cutting room floor material. Stats for notable NPCs, 12 mini-adventures, and descriptions of Krynn's races and draconians.

DL 16: World of Krynn: Four larger adventures for PCs unconnected to the main adventure.

External Links

• Dragonlance Nexus - Fan site and materials.
• Dragonlance Lexicon - A wiki in need of love, like this page.
• [1]-An animated/CGI adaptation of the original film. Largely considered by most to be the distilled essence of FAIL, its also unfortunately the only adaptation we'll likely have in a while. And by "fail" we're talking about Food Fight levels of fail.
• [2] - An honest to God Russian play about Raistlin Majere. A VERY loose adaptation of the Twins Trilogy that came after the first trilogy.