tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post1844811340130801127..comments2024-03-28T01:53:34.870-04:00Comments on GROGNARDIA: Retrospective: Dragons of DespairJames Maliszewskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-60826647294198931312010-02-13T21:47:42.185-05:002010-02-13T21:47:42.185-05:00That's fair enough. I think the majority of u...That's fair enough. I think the majority of us self-identified grognards, old-schoolers, etc.,. can't stand railroads, but it's worth reminding ourselves that there <i>are</i> people who like them. It would never have become so popular if there weren't.<br /><br />Enjoy your game.Matthew Slepinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04056247825064943944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-77983310553908792382010-02-13T16:09:14.735-05:002010-02-13T16:09:14.735-05:00As a matter of personal taste, I disagree with alm...As a matter of personal taste, I disagree with almost everything that's been written in this thread. I <i>love</i> narrative gaming, and I love the Dragonlance modules -- I've DM'd them twice, and I'm playing Raistlin right now in a campaign derived from the Silver Anniversary "Saga" edition (which is different enough from the originals to keep it interesting and ensure a few surprises) that started with characters at 1st level, and is about to launch into "Dragons of Despair" now that we're all at or very close to fifth. The group doesn't including any of the original pre-gens except the Majere brothers, but our next session will begin with the fateful reunion at the Inn of the Last Home -- we'll have to see who actually shows up in this iteration of the story. One of these days I'm going to run the modules again, using the Sovereign Press 3rd-edition updates.<br /><br />My experience with the pre-gen characters has been that that using them leads to <i>more</i> interesting, story-oriented role-playing. A lot of players (including some of the ones I'm playing with now, unfortunately) don't give a lot of thought to developing the characters they make themselves into more than just a miniature and a statblock -- but give them one of the Companions, with a Larry Elmore portrait and a whole page of background on the character's history, personality, and quirks, and even if they haven't read the books they tend to start <i>acting</i> the part instead of just rolling dice and worrying about tactics and wealth acquisition.<br /><br />It probably didn't hurt, the second time I ran them, that half the players were theater majors. It also didn't hurt any that Annie and Amanda, the players running Goldmoon and Laurana, respectively, had both the looks and the dramatic talent to have played them in a live-action movie (not that we'll ever get one, after the well-deserved failure of the execrable animated version of <i>Dragons of Autumn Twilight</i>), or that Amanda was dating the guy who ran Tanis in real life. That campaign only lasted through DL4, because real life intervened and the group split up, as tends to happen with gaming groups that large, but <i>man</i> was it fun, for everyone involved, while it lasted.<br /><br />On balance, I'd much rather ride a railroad through landscapes as interesting and varied as those of Krynn than wander around in a sandbox that, because the vast majority of DM's do <i>not</i> have the creative chops of even a modestly talented hack novelist like Hickman, rarely has much in it <i>other</i> than sand. I'm loving the Paizo adventure paths for the same reason -- when I'm not playing <i>Dragonlance</i>, I have one character running through <i>Rise of the Runelords</i>, and am about to start another in <i>The Shackled City</i>. No DM I've ever met or expect to meet has either the talent or the time to create a setting as detailed and fully-realized as Sandpoint or Cauldron and their environs. <i>Vive la Railroad!</i>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-39812644911169004432010-02-13T16:07:58.552-05:002010-02-13T16:07:58.552-05:00You don't have to kill off Sturm. He disappea...You don't have to kill off Sturm. He disappears as a pre-generated character in DL10-13 because those modules are about the other half of the party, who went east from Tarsis when Sturm, Laurana, Gilthanas, Tas, Flint, and Elistan (and the two other Solamnic knights who joined them in Tarsis, Derek Crownguard and Aran Tallbow) went south to Icewall. Sturm <i>is</i> on the list for DL14, when the whole party reunites for what should be the final battle of the War of the Lance, and the incursion into the Temple of Neraka that will determine the fate of Krynn. Raistlin doesn't have to turn evil, either, and didn't the time I ran the series all the way through to its conclusion (and certainly won't in my current game, where I'm his player -- I don't <i>do</i> evil PCs).<br /><br />The modules, while they have a very strong, "railroady" story-line, do in fact diverge <i>far</i> more from the novels, especially after the first book, than you are remembering, and have a good deal of flexibility for taking the story off the original rails entirely, depending on the outcomes of the battles of the High Clerist's Tower, Istar of the Deep, and Neraka (all of which were meant to be run with the Battlesystem Mass Combat rules, with at least some of the PCs on the field as commanders or heroes).<br /><br />The High Clerist's Tower, especially, can go a bunch of different ways, and the Dragon Orb is actually the weakest of the artifacts the heroes may find in the Tower -- if they get hold of the Crown of Yarus and the 33rd Khas Piece, the most likely outcome of the next engagement is the total destruction of the Blue Dragonarmy as a coherent fighting force, in which case Kitiara and Skie probably have to desert and drop out of sight to avoid being executed for incompetence by Ariakas. (To be continued: comment got too long for the site to accept.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-75644664946805182772009-08-05T21:53:09.501-04:002009-08-05T21:53:09.501-04:00For me, when I want to run an epic campaign these ...For me, when I want to run an epic campaign these days, I just try to create epic bad guys. I set up their machinations. Then I have them react once the PCs decide to engage. (Which, with my current group, they will do.)<br /><br />In the last one, the PCs took a path I would’ve never anticipated. It didn’t matter, though, because I’d only planned what the bad guys would do. I didn’t plan what the PCs would do.<br /><br />I think I could take the same NPCs, their goals, their motivations, their minions and their strongholds and drop them into just about any world without too much work.<br /><br />That said, I’m coming to terms with running a more “railroad” style of epic campaign. My current group can enjoy that type of thing, so why not? Of course, unlike Dragonlance, I’m perfectly willing to let a PC die or even let the whole party fail to live up to their “destiny”.<br /><br />In fact, it can be interesting when the next party has to deal with the consequences of the last one failing.Roberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16733274876782876659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-78872257986602554372009-08-05T18:46:22.158-04:002009-08-05T18:46:22.158-04:00And that's a terrible shame, because I think, ...<i>And that's a terrible shame, because I think, in principle, that Dragonlance could have been one of the most amazing things ever attempted with Dungeons & Dragons. It could have been a glorious framework for the creation of a grand epic involving your characters in your campaign world rather than an exercise in heavy-handed auctorial fiat.</i><br /><br />That's a question that my Silver Age novel series has raised in my head. It came up as "how do I play the Belgariad without Belgarath, Polgara, or Garion". Lately it has been how do you write a quest module that is as easy to drop into a campaign as a location based module.<br /><br />My current thought is a series of encounters which have a "natural" linear organization but also have variant paths described. Instead of locations you can drop into your campaign it would be a bunch of encounters to drop into your locations. Like a location module it need to have not doing it as an option.Pulp Herbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02486803457210325703noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-3714967430579863732008-12-13T14:33:00.000-05:002008-12-13T14:33:00.000-05:00I don't believe you were actually required to kill...<I>I don't believe you were actually required to kill off Sturm</I><BR/><BR/>You've probably seen the modules more recently than I. My recollection was that he disappeared as a pregen character and this coincided with when I read the book where he died, so I may have simply connected the two things unnecessarily. In any event, the modules simply made too many narrative demands on me and my players to work, so we abandoned them and went off in our own direction, eventually creating a campaign that was wholly unlike <I>Dragonlance</I>.James Maliszewskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-8663497403046789512008-12-13T14:29:00.000-05:002008-12-13T14:29:00.000-05:00I did used to really love Ed Greenwood’s Dragon ar...<I>I did used to really love Ed Greenwood’s Dragon articles when we got glimpses of FR long before it was considered for publication.</I><BR/><BR/>I did as well. They were absolutely a joy to read and inspired me like few things back in the day. It's a pity that the Realms eventually proved so successful that TSR (and then WotC) wound up destroying most of what made it such a charming setting.James Maliszewskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-27113618698524172392008-12-12T08:56:00.000-05:002008-12-12T08:56:00.000-05:00Dwayanu, it's not surprising the D&D movie...Dwayanu, it's not surprising the D&D movie was lame. Hollywood as a general rule does not "get" fantasy, and D&D, strictly adapted, does not lend itself to great screen entertainment (there's no real "plot" and certainly no definable structure). <BR/><BR/>Second, the DL novels are also lame. :-) They're not good writing, and wouldn't make good films, either. As some here have done, you might be able to use some of the basic ideas or fundamentals of the DL campaign world and craft a fun movie, but the novels are about the same level of quality as other gaming fiction.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-869589322478678372008-12-12T00:12:00.000-05:002008-12-12T00:12:00.000-05:00What gets me is that, with so much Dragonlance and...What gets me is that, with so much Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms fiction on which to draw, the D&D movie was so lame. The DL novels in particular seemed to appeal to a wider (especially more female) demographic than the game.<BR/><BR/>The modules rubbed my group of AD&D players decidedly the wrong way, though. Sing alongs? "Let's not, and say we did!"Dwayanuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07388657516129827977noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-89070328775583186332008-12-11T21:08:00.000-05:002008-12-11T21:08:00.000-05:00I don't believe you were actually required to kill...I don't believe you were actually required to kill off Sturm, but you were absolutely required to split the party up early in DL6, sending half of them south then west into the rest of DL6 and DL7-9, and the other half east into DL10-13 (before everybody meets back up for DL14). The pregenerated PC lists in those modules only included the appropriate half of the party (i.e. you couldn't play Tanis or Raistlin in DL7 and couldn't play Tasselhof or Gilthanas in DL12).Trenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01889179660165006042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-44303342590471537532008-12-11T16:30:00.000-05:002008-12-11T16:30:00.000-05:00Wait, you actually HAD to kill one of the PCs if y...<I>Wait, you actually HAD to kill one of the PCs if you followed the storyline?! Is that really true? How did they manage that? Did anybody accept that with no bitterness?</I><BR/><BR/>I honestly can't recall how it was handled in the module. I remember very clearly, though, that at least one PC from earlier modules -- Sturm Brightblade -- is simply dropped from the list of pre-generated PCs on the assumption he died in an earlier one. It's been years since I owned this modules, so perhaps I am misremembering.James Maliszewskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-13493886321844547952008-12-11T16:16:00.000-05:002008-12-11T16:16:00.000-05:00What I remember best was an NPC waitress who wield...<I>What I remember best was an NPC waitress who wielded a frying pan for 1d8.</I><BR/><BR/>That NPC was, if I recall, Tika Waylan, who eventually goes on to become available as a PC.James Maliszewskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-65950919546931910422008-12-11T16:11:00.000-05:002008-12-11T16:11:00.000-05:00Are there two types of gamers? Those who are happy...<I>Are there two types of gamers? Those who are happy to go to a con or whatever and run some pre-gen a time or two; and those who are only happy with characters they design, or DM's players design, themselves? Characters they will always remember, and proudly display the figure on the book shelf?</I><BR/><BR/>I do in fact believe that there are at least two distinct types of gamers and attempting to cater to them all at once is one of the things that's done a lot of violence to games widely perceived as "generic," like <I>D&D</I>, since the game tries to be all things to all men and, in the process, loses sight of its origins and purpose.James Maliszewskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-15826864467828611972008-12-11T07:37:00.000-05:002008-12-11T07:37:00.000-05:00Love the story it spun, but playing the modules re...Love the story it spun, but playing the modules really sucked. The story was already foretold and done....talk about rail roaded...carmachuhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06037584604296331790noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-28536043067638034362008-12-11T00:28:00.000-05:002008-12-11T00:28:00.000-05:00Another point that perhaps marks my group's experi...Another point that perhaps marks my group's experience with these modules as a little different from everybody else's: we read and played the adventures before reading the novels. I distinctly remember liking how in the first part of the first novel they followed the adventure exactly -- you could trace their path through the module, and I was surprised when they did some things differently than how our group had -- and being disappointed when the novel ended abruptly at the end of the second module (not least because I liked the third and especially fourth module (with the floating dwarf-fortress) and was looking forward to seeing them "in action." I'm also pretty sure we had already played through DL8 before I read (or at least finished) the second novel, again being disappointed that there was basically nothing about exploring the High Clerist Tower dungeon, and surprised when Sturm died (because I was 9 years old and not familiar enough with literary cliche to realize that he had "doomed" written all over him from page 1) -- he didn't die when we played it! Either DL10 or DL12 (note DL11 wasn't an adventure, it was a strategic scale wargame) was the first module I read after having already read that part of the novel, which likely suggests why we never had any desire to play through those last few modules (even though IIRC there was some fairly cool (i.e. seemed cool at the time to my 9-10 year old self) stuff in DL12 that wasn't in the book).Trenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01889179660165006042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-56873047267485158672008-12-10T21:34:00.000-05:002008-12-10T21:34:00.000-05:00For the record, I wouldn’t really blame FR for any...For the record, I wouldn’t really blame FR for anything. I never used a lot of the supplemental material anyway, and FR was close to the time when I left AD&D for other games. So, I really can’t speak much about it.<BR/><BR/>I did used to really love Ed Greenwood’s Dragon articles when we got glimpses of FR long before it was considered for publication.<BR/><BR/>For me and my group at the time, DL was really a non-entity. We played one session of DL1. We kept playing AD&D and even some 2e including one really good and lasting (for us) campaign.<BR/><BR/>Two or three of us who read novels read the DL novels and enjoyed them, but DL never really had a direct impact on the game for us.Roberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16733274876782876659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-24354959885710846402008-12-10T20:37:00.000-05:002008-12-10T20:37:00.000-05:00I had all 14 DL modules and we ran several of them...I had all 14 DL modules and we ran several of them BITD (I remember running at least DL1, DL2, DL7, and DL8, and perhaps 1 or 2 others). We used the pregen characters and treated them as a series of tournament-style one-offs, more or less. We didn't keep track of treasure or XP; if a PC died in one module but was listed in the pregens for the next one he showed back up, etc. I remember DL1 and DL8 both being pretty fun (especially the latter because we ran it including all the optional <I>Battlesystem</I> scenarios), the others less so (especially DL2, where literally half the module goes by before the players are actually allowed to make a choice). Nowadays they're boxed up in my mom's basement back in Indiana, alongside my 2E stuff, old Dragon and Polyhedron issues (both c. 1988-92), and whatever else I decided I no longer wanted that I can't even recall anymore what it was.Trenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01889179660165006042noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-87700407084878529602008-12-10T19:36:00.000-05:002008-12-10T19:36:00.000-05:00I did not buy any of the DL modules becase of the ...I did not buy any of the DL modules becase of the predefined story. I had a chance to flip through the first one, and it was not that bad, but you could see where it was going. DL was just too heavy handed in this regard.Mr Baronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07502432352346301026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-23537740505638073832008-12-10T18:13:00.000-05:002008-12-10T18:13:00.000-05:00That the non-Gygaxian influences, and Hickman/Weis...That the non-Gygaxian influences, and Hickman/Weis line and the Dragonlance line in paticular, are the central influence flowing into AD&D 2E in my charts, is no coincidence. While the rules as developed in 2E were mostly derived from 1E via the Oriental Adventures-derived line, the core assumptions and spirit of 2E were entirely from Dragonlance and such "novel-driven" works.<BR/><BR/>Lots of folk blame Forgotten Realms, but the real culprit was Dragonlance; though Forgotten Realms became the true novel machine in time, in the original work you can see how classical the structures were, even in the face of the setting's origins long before as a setting for Greenwood's stories. He designed FR as a setting for his own writing, but when he ran it as a D&D setting, he let the players make their own stories (this I know from several conversations with him), he did not dictate that the setting drove their stories. Much like Gygax and Greyhawk, though in FR even in the day the retired hero/Mary Sue factor was turned up to 11 (versus the 8 to 10Gygaxian factor for Bigby/Mordy, etc.)<BR/><BR/>Marry the predestination gaming of Dragonlance to Forgotten Realms, and there's the 2E spirit...James Mishlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10588233931813111541noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-42070349140525717062008-12-10T17:50:00.000-05:002008-12-10T17:50:00.000-05:00I also found the world of Krynn a bit too "twee," ...<I>I also found the world of Krynn a bit too "twee," as our UK friends might say.</I><BR/>Me too. It's awfully cuddly for an allegedly post-apocalyptic setting, isn't it?thekelvingreenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01928260185408072124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-46138194966254150132008-12-10T16:28:00.000-05:002008-12-10T16:28:00.000-05:00Wait, you actually HAD to kill one of the PCs if y...Wait, you actually HAD to kill one of the PCs if you followed the storyline?! Is that really true? How did they manage that? Did anybody accept that with no bitterness?<BR/><BR/>I wonder if this is the source of all the "module-hate" I discovered in the online gaming world. I always really liked modules, but I stopped buying them way before the DL stuff came out and considered them to be fundamentally malleable. So it sort of surprised me to hear the entire format quite regularily denigrated.OlmanFeelyushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17521657876810568251noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-18598339591158715232008-12-10T15:36:00.000-05:002008-12-10T15:36:00.000-05:00For me, while the growth of storyline modules did ...<I>For me, while the growth of storyline modules did coincide with my abandoning D&D, and did affect my purchasing habits and such, there was actually a different cause of my abandonment of D&D.</I><BR/><BR/>I just wanted to add that for us as a group, AD&D was already on it's last leg. The DL modules was just the final punch (to the groin?).<BR/><BR/><I>I'll add one stupid little thing that bugged the hell out of me...</I><BR/><BR/>This is all from my foggy memory, but I think for me it was one of the boxed text (for a PC, nonetheless) entries, that had the PC respond "Dragons!?!?! Ha Ha Ha, There's no such thing as Dragons!" which is a bit hard to swallow as a player in a Dungeons and DRAGONS game in a module called DRAGONlance. But it's an old saw we pull out time and again in various different games and have a chuckle.<BR/><BR/>The other memory I have of playing the DL modules (or in my case, module), was the few people that had read the books and then played the modules, were pretty much sitting around not doing anything as they were bored out of their skulls by the similar(exact?) plotline as compared to the books...Richhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06259868994112526101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-67664110479696036042008-12-10T15:13:00.000-05:002008-12-10T15:13:00.000-05:00I do think it would be interesting to know how man...I do think it would be interesting to know how many people bought DL stuff and <I>played it</I> vs. people who bought it and just <I>read it</I>.<BR/><BR/>I pretty much agree with James on this. I'll add one stupid little thing that bugged the hell out of me: the first module said that steel was so scarce that it was used as currency instead of gold. That seemed so cool to me, until I realized that everybody still had steel armour and weapons. That bugged me to no end.Matthew Slepinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04056247825064943944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-34387236633787301042008-12-10T15:10:00.000-05:002008-12-10T15:10:00.000-05:00For me, while the growth of storyline modules did ...For me, while the growth of storyline modules did coincide with my abandoning D&D, and did affect my purchasing habits and such, there was actually a different cause of my abandonment of D&D.<BR/><BR/>The problem was I got tired of the overpowered magic, and the fact that I was radically changing rules to keep magic in check. These days I realize what had really happened. I had jumped on the bandwagon of "appropriately challenging" encounters, and dropped the fluff encounters. The problem is that D&D doesn't work in this environment because a single encounter that's challenging enough to make the mage sweat as to whether he has enough spells isn't playable. So what happens is you have a challenging encounter, the mage fires spells with wild abandon. Then the PCs go off and rest. It's damned hard to keep the pressure up.<BR/><BR/>These days I realize that all that filler stuff, random encounters, loads of traps, and such serve to make it costly to have this shoot your wad in one encounter then go hide until you recover.<BR/><BR/>On the other hand, the other games I was playing, Cold Iron and Rune Quest, allowed for a single challenging encounter.<BR/><BR/>FrankFrankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15855679156477779666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-89431571545363570112008-12-10T14:54:00.000-05:002008-12-10T14:54:00.000-05:00Wondering out loud, I think it would be interestin...Wondering out loud, I think it would be interesting to know for how many groups was Dragonlance the death knell for AD&D showing up at their table. <BR/><BR/>Speaking as a player in DL1 when it first came out, I bailed halfway through it. The rest of my buddies bailed somewhere farther down the line. I don't believe any of us went back to a regularly(or at all) played AD&D game after the DL "experience".<BR/>We had no shortage of other RPGs to play even in the fantasy world (Elric, Rolemaster, Runequest, etc.)Richhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06259868994112526101noreply@blogger.com