What Ever Happened to Dragonlance?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ต.ค. 2024
- Dragonlance swept through the fantasy world, captivating readers with its epic battles, unforgettable heroes, and a world teetering on the brink of chaos. But after a whirlwind of novels, tabletop adventures, and even a cartoon, things have not gone smoothly for the series. Join us as we delve into the fascinating, and sometimes turbulent, history of Dragonlance, and see what the future holds for this beloved fantasy setting.
Enjoy!
Thanks for keeping the channel alive on my Patreon!
/ endingsexplained
Music:
Angevin, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Hard Boiled, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Angevin B, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Eastminster, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Suonatore di Liuto Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Celtic Impulse, Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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Sources:
Huge credit to Andrew Liptak for his amazing article breaking down the history of the series
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Weiss and Hickman were my childhood. The legend of Huma started it all for me.
That's still one of my favorite books.
Same
Legend of Huma was also my first. An all time great.
Hi from Ohio, and honestly the legend of Huma and thorbardin , where are the first two dragon land books I got back in the fourth grade I got them stuffed in my stocking for Christmas morning. I’m very glad my dad kept his old TSR books from the 80s.the price of power by rose Estes what is the very first fantasy novel? My dad gave me a year before and that’s what got me into then he gave me the Lord of the rings trilogy then I got involved with dragon Lance.
Legend of Huma is by Richard Knaak.
What I think hurt Dragonlance more than anything was how TSR at the time had Weiss and Hickman write Dragons of Summer Flame to cater to a new direction they wanted a game system of Dragonlance to go. They wanted to make a game system for Dragonlance with no gods and more of a storytelling game. So in DoSF they had them remove the gods and remove 'magic' from the world on top of killing off great characters set up in The Second Generation. And to be honest it never really recovered from that.
Exactly! Dragonlance started as a different kind of setting. It was set in a dark age-- the Gods had abandoned Krynn, replaced by "seeker" cults, rare magic that everyone feared, and dragons being gone for so long, that no one believed in them anymore. It was a low magic setting, going through a painful transformation, as gods and dragons emerged for the first time in centuries.
... Then suddenly, it was all gone. No gods, no dragons, no magic. Back to square one. It was _Game of Thrones,_ Season 8 1/2.
Dragonlance was supposed to be a game world, not a book series. Players and DMs at their tables are supposed to shape the world, not authors.
Thanks! Definitely. Beats. Listening. To. This. Guy. Clip. Out. One. Word. A. Second. Even. Listening. At. x2. Speed. Is. Tedious. Quit this after 20sec.
The SAGA Dragonlance period wasn't the result of planning, but rather the lack of planning. The Chaos War books were cancelled midstream and left the franchise in a broken, no magic no gods state that was supposed to be resolved by the end of the story, but was left hanging. A few years later when they wanted to launch new adventures in the game system, they were left with a broken world and had to come up with something completely different to get around that issue. Weis and Hickman were only able to finally fix the world and set it back on track when they were brought back by Wizards of the Coast and used the Soul War to correct course.
@@bradleypotts9865Yes the War of Souls was a correction trilogy and was a good read but still the damage had been done. At that point Dragonlance had lost a lot of it luster, fan base and still the characters set up in The Second Generation were still dead. It makes me sad what happened to the setting. It would like to see it flourish again
@@bradleypotts9865 - Weis & Hickman never should have broken it in the first place-- for break it, they did. The entire point of DragonLance was to establish a brand new, low-magic game world, not serve the vanity of the authors.
Most of us were drawn to Dragonlance because of the art, and then discovered a good story. Unfortunately the new owners of Dragonlance care only about modernizing the look and feel of Dragonlance and that has stifled it's continued success.
It's a sad state of affairs - on one hand I'd love if the story and series could continue and to continue there does need to be some evolution but I think the current way is obviously not working. Can only hope the series gets another worthy shot with passonite people behind it
WOTC is incompetent.
Define new? They've owned it for 25 years...
@@ed_mekeel3 It's been garbage for 25 years (I'd even say longer for DnD as a whole since TSR went down hill after Gygax left). WOTC and Hasbro did not create DnD and Dragonlance and hence when they purchased TSR they became the "new" owners. The word "new" does not have to refer to something recent. Also, what is it with people like yourself and these kind of semantic games comments? Are you actually so obtuse as to not understand context? I see them all the time across a spectrum of subjects. Do you work for Hasbro, WOTC, or a PR firm hired by them? Or are you just a good little apparatchik following the commissars orders to ensure that every comment against the current modern garbage across our culture has the correct kind of pushback?
@@johnarnold7984 lol, hit a nerve eh? I work with the Dragonlance Nexus, a fan site dedicated to DL that's been around for 23 years. New to you, I guess. We have been keeping the flame lit for Ansalon and Krynn for quite a while. Am I a WotC head? No, but 5e is fine. If you think DL has sucked for this long, not sure what to tell you. But we offer more on the DM's Guild than WotC ever did.
I'm not ashamed to say that Flint's death always brings me to tears.
I felt the same about Sturm. RIP
@@exitsexaminedya kinda stinks it was kitiara that killed him
It was Steel and Tasslehoff for me. Steel's line "We will sing the hero songs ourselves." made me tear up as they believed that when they fall to Chaos, no one would remember them.
Time, Test, and War of the Twins are some of my favorite fantasy books of ALL TIME. Go Raistlin go!
Love to see a fellow edgelord Raistlin fan!
(ahem) Go, Bupu, go.
@@ab-ts7md The only female Raistlin ever showed compassion to...
Randomly pulling Dragons of Autumn Twilight off the B&N shelf one day while waiting for the next Redwall to come out was the best decision I made in my youth! Thanks for covering Dragonlance!
Hey my pleasure! It's so cool doing this for the channel because when I was younger none of my friends were interested in Dragonlance or DnD at all - so cool to see other people who are into it, as well as Redwall!
Dragonlance Saga is a great TH-cam channel that does not get enough support for the quality of his content. Check em out!
The animated movie? I liked it, even with most fans disagreeing. It summarized the basics to all newcomers, and while no masterpiece: The story was solid.
True story: In 1991 I was 14 and had been playing D&D for about a year when our GM converted our Greyhawk campaign to Dragonlance. I fell in love with the grittier and more epic setting, and started reading the novels immediately, adoring the original trilogy. However, by the mid-90s there was just soooo many books being released (most of poorer quality) that I got overwhelmed and just stopped reading them. TSR literally released so many books that it became a chore to keep up and so I stopped trying... kinda like how Disney has killed off superhero movies by oversaturating the market.
absolutely loved the dragonlance novels, Tanis Half elven is my guy
Totally with you! Apparently Hickman originally viewed him as a captain kirk type figure when Weis had trouble deciding what type of character he'd be!
Dragonlance Saga is a great TH-cam channel that does not get enough support for the quality of his content. Check em out!
April of 1986, I received the Dragonlance chronicles as an Easter gift. Something to read over the summer. I don’t think paperback box sets were a thing back then. I wasn’t overly excited to have 1000+ pages of reading material between 8th and 9th grade looking at me. However, my gift-giving aunt was an actual genius and it was a game changer in my life.
I got the first trilogy for Christmas one year. Also gifted by my aunt. I fell in love with the world and never looked back.
Dragonlance novels were my favorite thing back between 2004-2010, and had no idea they were related to DnD. Whenever I see a Dragonlance reference in games, I get thrilled and the nostalgia comes rushing back.
I discovered Dragonlance books following an ad at the back of the Dark Elf trilogy book. What an amazing journey it s been since.
The Elmore art sold me on the first modules. Unfortunately the style of play didn't get me excited about playing the modules, but I did borrow inspiration from the setting - especially from the art!
I can understand that! How did it inspire you? With art? Or with DnD stuff?
Artistic coherency can do a lot to sell an idea.
100% agree - sometimes it can be literally the only thing selling an idea haha
You know what would be amazing, but would never happen? Larian Studios going from Baldur's Gate 3 to doing an epic Dragonlance game.
Larian is done with Hasbro/WOTC clearly. They also seem like they want their own IP and feel like they have the chops and market rep/pull to do it now.
Yeah Larian recently said they were done with DnD, but agree I'd love to see a game like that in the setting!
@@paulie-g
They already have their own IP. Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2.
@@exitsexaminedthat’s sad , dnd is my favorite setting and I’d love a ice wind dale ee for 2-3 or a new character 😊
Even remastering (remakes) the Commodore 64 Dragonlance games would be better than nothing.
In 1989 I got the Dragonlance game through Scolastics without knowing anything about D&D or even the Dragonlance books. I just saw a fantasy game and I was interested. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to play the game, so I gave up and it's been collecting dust ever since.
A friend got me the chronicles for my 17th birthday in 1997 (don't math that to figure out my age!!!! :p ). I was hooked from the word go. It wasn't for another 9 months when that same friend introduced me to D&D and sometime after I discovered the connection between the two. Another friend gifted me his entire collection of Dragonlance books and I absorbed most of them throughout the next few years. I loved this series, and I loved D&D.
Favorite character? Tie between Tanis, Raistlin and Tas. Although Tas is probably my true favorite with Kender now my favorite race.
My introduction to Dragonlance was sometime between 1985 & 1988.
Comic books were advertising book 1 of Dragonlance Tales & it made me want to read it.
That led me to Dragonlance Chronicles & I was hooked.
I didn't read every book made, but I read a lot of them.
The last one I remember reading was the series centering around Takhisis using Mina to fool everyone on Krynn into worshipping Takhisis as the one true god.
My little corner of DragonLance is alive and well. I first picked up the modules when they were released in 1984, and I end up running them about once every ten years. My current group began in the fall of 2017 and just wrapped up their 11th module (Dragons of Deceit) about a week ago. I run the two groups of the split party concurrently, so not quite in numerical order of the modules. As we close in on the end of the series, I'm looking at running Shadow of the Dragon Queen next, but I'll agree, it has required a lot of editing to make it fit into the world I've been running games in for the last 40 years. I find it a little amusing that one of the Wizards of the Coast contributors who wrote for the 5e DragonLance material was introduced to DragonLance at my table back around 2002 when I first started my homebrew conversion to 3e (Before the Sovereign Press release). As I write this, I'm working on my 3.5 conversions of Dragons of Triumph, Shadow of the Dragon Queen and New Tales: The Land Reborn. Not sure if my players will want to play the prequel adventure or push forward, so I'm preparing for both eventualities.
Great to know people are out there keeping DragonLance alive! Wish I could play with you sometime, would even be interested to play Shadow of the Dragon Queen!
@@exitsexamined Sure, any time :D Your comment gave me an idea. I need to get all my favorite D&D TH-camrs in a streamed game!! Find 8 of you and run through the modules.
Although I've never heard a lot of the things you've covered on this channel, I appreciate how much obvious time and effort it takes to make these videos while also delivering information in a concise but passionate way. You deserve way more subs dude.
Hey honestly this means alot to me - it does actually take a large chunk of time and effort. Breaking down some of these decade old franchises into digestible chunks with an engaging narrative is something I struggle with. It's really cool that you pick up on it and hopefully it's something I can continue to get better at with this channel. Anyway yeah, appreciate it a ton and glad to introduce you to some new topics!
I had completely forgotten about Dragonlance, wow this just brought back a flood of memories, thank you so much for reminding me haha. Gonna listen to the audiobook this weekend!
My pleasure! That actually sounds like a great weekend activity and I'll probably join you in that! There's actually a ton available on the channel: www.youtube.com/@audiobooksgraphicnovels
If you want good Dragonlance nostalgia, someone created a pretty awesome channel for that - Dragonlance Saga Cheers
What attracted us to Dragonlance was the calendar they sold before there was any adventure out. The art was incredible. There was one art called the flying citadels, but sadly the art was the tomb of of a Dwarven King, when we played the adventure. We only played the first four adventures. The problem was that it took too long between adventures, also the structure of the adventures was too strict, we had to play the pre rolled characters & they couldn't die. Also the second book, Dragon of Winter, was out before all the corresponding adventures were available.
Was never a big reader, but this series captivated me.
Just like with LotR, I had the most fun when we avoided playing railroaded Dragonlance D&D modules and encountering the novel's main characters and storylines. When we used main characters in module play, knowledgeable players were too frustrated by players who hadn't read the books. It was rough (and funny) to see Raistlin be called a "little bitch" by Caramon, to have Tasslehoff swipe his tea, and to get shot to death by goblins before he got to cast his Sleep spell.
First intro was a manuscript version of The Meetings: Kindred Spirits. Then a friend got me the Preludes series and the rest is history. Surprisingly I've never read the original trilogy, really should do that eventually.
Oh my gosh! I'm playing through the DragonLance DnD module right now for my first game! We're 9 months in and I LOVE it!!!
Haven't watched yet, will later! BUT my husband grew up reading these books and we've started reading the new trilogy!! Super interesting takes on the DnD world, I especially love the Kenders and their lore!
Oh excellent timing to read the new trilogy as the last book should be out soon! Agree love it's take on the world especially draconians and minotaur, such great concepts! And one kender should be mandatory in every DnD party haha
I spent probably about half of my childhood glued to my Amiga, playing Champions of Krynn, and Death Knights of Krynn.
Sounds like an awesome childhood tbh. Did you ever play The Dark Queen of Krynn though? It's the last one right
i found this series in the late 80s... read about a dozen books and loved them
Oh nice! Remember which ones were your favorite?
Dragonlance is alive and kicking on the DM's Guild. The Dragonlance Nexus has sourcebooks, adventures and even new short fiction from Richard Knaak in their books. Maybe take a look.
It's good to hear it's alive and kicking! Didn't realize about the new short fiction from Knaak, I'll have to include that in the description!
The novels were one of the things that got me into D&D in the early 90s.
My one complaint about the impact that Dragonlance has had on the D&D landscape is the move towards adventure paths and narrative campaigns. Site based adventures - not necessarily mega-dungeons - fell by the wayside
Do you know if the more modern D&D ruleset is the same way? Tbh I haven't played DnD properly for a couple years so unsure
@exitsexamined I can only speak to the published adventures I have played for 5e. But those are definitely adventure path style, where the party is expected to spend 7-10 levels moving between the plot points
@@exitsexaminedMost of the adventures go from 1-10, or 1-12 or so. There are dungeons and locations you spend some time at, but not *10 levels* worth of time. The one exception is Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which goes from 5 to 20.
The problem with DnD in general is that Wizards and Hasbro are toxic companies in many gamers' eyes. The implementation of MtG into DnD has not gone well, and the problems they created with the OGL and DND One is just not giving them any credibility. Basically, they can't manage multiple settings in a TTRPG like they can in a card game (where setting doesn't matter) and they don't understand what TTRPGers want out of their games, which is everything they aren't doing and none of what they are. We're not here to be monetized. We spend godawful amounts on our hobbies because we want to. Force us to spend money by nickle and dime-ing us, and we'll take our money elsewhere and leave you struggling. Also, not paying $70 for a game book. WTF, Hasbro.
Topically, I used to love the DragonLance setting, but I never really read the books. I consumed all the 2nd Edition stuff for it that existed. I loved the Minotaurs, and the Kender. Tass was my fave, of course. Then it just kinda disappeared. No one was playing that setting anymore. It was all about the Forgotten Realms. Never really felt the pull of the Realms. Mostly because I hate elves. Give me the real Doom Patrol and the Twins. Never felt anything for Greyhawk, either. Guess that's why I created my own setting. 2000 pages and I really should type them up and get them published in some format. Meh.
BTW, the "L" in DragonLance is capitalized.
Nah, the problem is that DnD is boring and bland. The rules are broken and the settings are infantile nonsense. Dragonlance is a joke, it's just mormon nonsense.
Dragonlance Saga is a great TH-cam channel that does not get enough support for the quality of his content. Check em out!
@@ratatatuff I like the world of DragonLance, its fun
@@ratatatuff Nah, it is a cheap-shot Tolkien copycat, and by that harshly a legal work, but blaming the Mormons is wrong.
@@a.m.pietroschek1972 Tolkien is a cheap folklore copycat.
TSR's focus on advancing the plot via the novels undermined at least two settings - Dragonlance and Dark Sun. Dragonlance had more setting-shifting events because of it, but Dark Sun was screwed right out of the gate when the Prism Pentad basically fixed the core conflict of the entire setting. They'd eventually get it right with Birthright, where the fiction all took place historically, but by then the wheels were falling off and they'd sell to WOTC not long after.
I read the DL novels as a kid, and I also had no idea they were D&D branded!
When I finally got a chance to start playing D&D a few years ago and saw the connection it got me to reread the OG Trilogy, and I am currently playing a Raistlin inspired Wizard in a campaign!
Nice!!! How is playing Raistlin? I never got a chance to. Please tell me he gets OP
I love the art of old fantasy covers. I will read dragonlance any day over most modern fantasy, where half the time they stretch the story out for money and never finish it
I have been enjoying your content a lot! You pick some interesting subjects to discuss, ones that really aren't talked about much anymore. Here are a few suggestions for topics you could cover in future videos:
Bone (graphic novel)
The Dark Crystal (film)
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (video game)
Xena Warrior Princess (TV)
Keep up the good work!
Hey thank you so much for the kind words! I really appreciate taking the time to watch my stuff.
These suggestions are excellent by the way. I've put them all on the list and had compeltely forgotten about Xena! I'll probably actually do that in the following weeks depending on a few things - used to love that as a kid.
Thanks again!
I started with the Chronicles Trilogy in the mid to late 90's the went to Barnes & Nobles as a young adult to buy any Dragonlance book I could find. I recently went back and re-read the Core-6 novels again in 2020 and have re-found my love with the series. Now buying as many books I can find to add to a collection for future generations. My D&D group even wants me to DM a series based on the books. (They have never read)
One of the biggest pulls of the setting was that it was the first one to tell players that they couldn't play something. They restricted the races, which made the setting unique. That didn't mesh with the new game approach of fifth edition
But... but... Then I couldn't play my half-dragonborn, half-tiefling werewolf vampire paladin/monk/bard/artificer-tank! 😄
@fleetcenturion well WOTC says just say they came from another plane. Problem solved!
@@Mr_Welch - Yeaaaah... Planar and interstellar travelers don't really make sense, in a campaign that basically takes place in a dark age.
Remember in the Preludes series, where Tasslehoff meets the plane-hopping, half-orc bounty hunter, and they tried to act like it was totally normal? Didn't really work, did it?
Even after researching the series for this video it's so wild to me how one of the biggest pulls was essentially restriction and railroading. Great characters and story don't get me wrong, just interesting because I guess I wrongly assumed in DnD one of the major attractions was the use of player imagination / agency.
@@exitsexamined - In D&D today, we're faced with the opposite problem. Every adventuring party is a traveling freak show; every tavern resembles the space port from Star Wars.
DMs and players both have an idea of how the campaign will go, until That Guy shows up, wanting to play a complete outsider, that just doesn't fit the party. The game suffers, as everyone tries to fit this proverbial square peg into the round hole, and ignore the problem.
Most players would prefer it if the DM just grew a pair, and said, "No, your hobgoblin blood hunter doesn't fit in my Lankhmar campaign. Please pick something else, or find another table."
I had got hold of this series really late, then again the novels were translated into my language far later than it was released. The OG of the fantasy fiction LOTR was translated in my language like in the 90’s! This ushered in an era of a fantasy boom coinciding with my late teens and early twenties, that’s when I got into the books. I liked the more humanly, imperfect nature of the heroes and the humor.
Oh what language? I didn't look at the dates of different translations for this video and that would be interesting to see. Agree about LOTR - something wild I came across during research was apparently LOTR was the only fantasy book Weis read before making DL
@@exitsexamined Turkish. I’m from Turkey. LOTR, a classic book that even had an effect on 1960’s counterculture being translated to Turkish in the 1990’s is kinda unlucky but, better late than never. Though I think that some people might be aware of the Dragonlance series before translated, or more probably the games of it. A Turkish indie FRP game made for Amiga in the early 1990’s named “Legends of Istanbul: the Wars of the Tulip” (translated name) had a “race” called “Siliconian” (a stereotypical computer nerd/hacker) based on the Dragonlance-specific Draconians. BTW that game takes place in Istanbul during a dystopian future.
Besides the main books, I really liked The Legend of Huma and The Black Wing. Rare to get a DL book from a dragon's perspective, even rarer to get a book from the an evil/chromatic dragon's perspective.
I actually had that animated film on DVD. Man, that was disappointing. It could've been good, but nope. Surprised they didn't try making DL into an anime.
Westwood Studios made a Dragonlance game!? I really didn't know there were video games as I got into the Dragonlance books during the 2000s. Not really into fantasy video games, but I might check out a new Dragonlance game.
Legend of Huma is awesome, made sure to include it in the vid! Never read Black Wing though, I'll check it out! And yeah I think every DL fan was let down by the film...it's too bad because there is so much potential there I feel like. An anime would be fascinating though.
I was honestly so shocked when I came across the westwood game, I think a new video game for the series would be incredible because the old ones are charming but I think would turn off alot of new players - they have a bit of that old school jank haha
@exitsexamined, I think there was a comic book adaptation for The Legend of Huma, but it didn't adapt the entire book unfortunately.
I did like the Dragon Overlords from the 5th Age too. Gigantic evil alien dragons from another world, scary lol.
A new film might be too risky now, but a new animated show true to the source books might be good.
Imagine if Westwood Studios made a Dragonlance RTS. Or, a hybrid game like Command and Conquer Renegade. Go from ground combat to riding a dragon with lances in the skies.
Yeah, retro games might turn some players off. Jank is still alive and well, especially in Slavjank.
Great video, great commentary. Deserves more views and subs for the channel. Well done!!
Hey! That means alot coming from you - I'm actually a big fan of chess and just checked out your channel, great stuff! Subbed! Appreciate the compliment, the commentary is still definitely something I'm working on haha
I had 41 of their novels at one point, ending with the Elf dynasty trilogy. Dhamon Grimwulf being my introduction novel. I forget what it was called. Eventually I looked up the original trilogy and started collecting and reading the rest. Got through every book starting before and ending after highschool. Before that I never read a novel not assigned by the school.
Edit: The Book was Downfall, saw the cover in the video, easy enough to recognize, lmao. The Minotaur Trilogy was probably one of my favourites.
This was my first introduction to fantasy as a genre and to D&D though I didn’t realize I was reading a D&D story for years.
Loved this when I was a kid, legend of Huma got me into it
Legend of Huma was one of the best, loved how he was originally mentioned chronicles. Did you read any of the other books?
Though I liked the early novels-- even the questionable ones, where Tas meets the half-orc-- I gave up on _Dragons of Summer Flame._ Weis and Hickman butchered their own product, because they forgot it was, in fact, a _product._ The Dragonlance timeline changed so much, that D&D players had no time to actually _play_ it, as the authors changed it from "something to read after the Ring books," into their Mormon-ized version of Warhammer Fantasy.
I wish game designers would just stop constantly messing with the timelines, and just design adventures for players in the already established world. This is Dungeons & Dragons, where the player-characters are supposed to shape the world, not wait for the next series of novels and game books to find out what happens.
... mormonized? What's that all about?
@@hoi-polloi1863 - Yep. Dragonlance has a _lot_ of Mormon allegory, courtesy of the Hickmans. I didn't mind it so much, until they started sabotaging their own game world.
They were basically forced to write Summer Flame a certain way to satisfy TSR. Weis dislikes it so much that she doesn't even consider it canon.
Good gravy mate, pullin out all the gud stuff💓
That gud dragonlance gravy! You're the real MVP though - helping me make this even possible!
Still the most expansive fantasy world I've ever read. I've been busy buying up the books I never got to in my initial collection in high school. Can't wait to start reading them.
Whoa so you have a collection but haven't read them - blasphemy!
@@exitsexamined lol. I read them when they first came out up to War of Souls. But anything beyond that is new to me, even some before that. The trouble is finding them. I used to be able to walk into a used book store and find scads of them, now not so much. And online prices are out of control. I saw this trend occuring in the States and now it's caught up to Canada. I still have a lot of gaps I need to fill from assorted trilogies.
Legends was absolutely amazing, honestly prolly one of the best time-travel storylines in modern fiction
Was my personal favorite as well. Time-travel can be tricky to do right but agree!
I recall devouring TSR books as a teenager. I loved the dragon lance chronicles and bought so many more of the books in that worlds, and then the forgotten realms.
When I was in my mid ish 20's I felt like some nostalgia and decided to try reading some of my favorites again. I went with the Legend of Huma as I think it encompassed so much of what I liked. I think I got a third of the way through before I decided to stop and never touched one of the books again. Rather than read them as an adult after expanding my reading repertoire, I would rather have had the fond memories of a child enjoying the books, rather than realize the books were written on the cheap for a much younger audience. And this isn't even a knock on Richard Knaack. The books are what they are and we all have to accept that.
For me I remember reading some of these books when I was younger, finding them in the local library. While they only had a couple of them, I still remember loving them. And of course, I then found the Deathgate Cycle as well, though sadly again, only some of the books.
Nice they had any! Hopefully later in life you were able to find more of the books in the series?
@@exitsexamined Sadly no, mostly cause only a handful were translated into my language, and they are getting harder and harder to come by as the translations are getting older.
For the Deathgate cycle for instance, only the first four books were translated.
Never dove into these, but have every intention to now. You have a gift and wit my friend.
I would absolutely recommend the series, it's incredibly rich and engrossing stuff, thank you so much for the kind words and the comment - can't tell you how much it means that someone out in the world resonates with these!
My first introduction was the prequel novel Riverwind the Plainsman. I read it years before I had a chance to read through the Chronicles.
I came to Dragonlance in an odd way. I found the Art of the Dragonlance Saga which prompted me to pick up the novels. I was a kid who struggled greatly with reading, and always responded more to Science Fiction, but I devoured the novels. I read the first two trilogies and kept pushing through the short stories, and other novels. I tried to read the Chronicles again a few years ago and I just couldn't do it. The writing was awful. 12 year old me VS 48 year old me simply have different abilities to ignore problems.
I think the first book Autumn really is the worst from the first chronicles sadly - just because it was their first. Did you make it to two during your reread?
@@exitsexamined, I didn't. I barely made it through the first book. I was pretty much skimming the last 50 pages just to get to the end and decided to quit.
Maybe I should go back and try to finish off re-reading the trilogy. I ended up rereading the first Dark Sun novel last year and ended up really enjoying it. That and Autumn Twilight were the first two TSR books I'd read since the mid-90s.
Isn't that sad?
I was one of those people who binged Dragonlance from about 15-19 years old in the early 2000s
One of the many reasons I think Dragonlance fell off was a combination of retreading the same story over and over and they had no where to go after they had killed of certain characters
That's a good bit of time! Were you mostly into the books or game? Or both? And did you try the newer version that just came out? I didn't get to play it yet!
@@exitsexamined the books cause my local library system still had a bunch of them...then it was like 2010 hit and poof, no more books and as they cleaned out inventory, they kept getting rid of dragonlance and warhammer, and a bunch of other older series
My dad gave me his copy(war of the lance) when I entered high school. God, such a good read.
in elder days, i had personalized license plates that read RAIST. loved those books. the best piece of dragonlance media is still the musical, however (i'm not claiming that its good, only that its the best).
The first WTF i can remember of my teenage years reading a book is the death of flint.
that was pretty tragic. and the fact that he was waiting under the tree for tasslehoff.
Here are some updates. As of Gen Con 2024, Wies and Hickman announced that there WILL be another trilogy written by them that will see the release of the First book in 2026. It will be tied to the story of Huma. It was also stated during the 40th aniversary gathering that a show written by Joe Manganela still has potential. Very likely, everything new for Dragonlance will not be tied to WOTC. The court case mentioned did state that WOTC has rights to the game, but Weis and Hickman have rights to the novels, which means a show or movie based on the books can move forward despite WOTCs wishes.
Also, as far as other Legendary fantsy writers, the only one still working with WOTC is R.A. Salvatore, though there has been mention of his waning interest in dealing with the company.
I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. Weis has stated on socials numerous times that she and Hickman have a license to produce their novels (with Random House acting as publisher). It sounds to me like, as a way to settle the litigation, WotC agreed to license Dragonlance to them for the purposes of novels which won't necessarily influence anything WotC does with its game modules. Unfortunately, all of the stuff they made for Dragonlance was likely under a work for hire arrangement back in the 80s so they don't own anything related to Dragonlance aside from their own ideas. Still, it's comforting to see they were able to find a deal and hopefully WotC doesn't meddle in anything and all parties are happy with the revenue these new books are generating. Even though their next book will concern Huma, the most recent book left the world in essentially a state of reboot so perhaps now they'll be able to write the Dragons of Summer Flame trilogy they always wanted to do, but were unable to.
@joehodgson9217 I recommend watching the video of the Dragonlance 40th anniversary celebration at Gen Con. WOTC wasn't there, but Weis, Hickman, and a good part of the current writing team was. They had a lot to say about who had what rights and the possibility of new projects. It also seems they had more creative control over their writing than some others. Plans are even in the works for Leatherbound omnibus edition re-releases of the first 2 Trilogies, published but them and not WOTC, who they have mostly cut ties with.
@@leroybyrd7545 yes, I watched it already. I referenced recent Twitter exchanges Weis had with fans where she has referred to it as a "license." It fits with parent company Hasbro's wider policy which is to be less involved on the production end with certain properties and rather license them out instead which is for the best, in this case. The license owner always has to approve materials being sold so they'll never have total creative freedom, but it sounds like that, at least for now, they are in the strongest position they've been in creatively in some time.
Larry Elmore's art...top tier.
First grabbed The Legend of Huma in the mid 80's and was all in from there. Also read Weis and Hickman's Darksword Trilogy early amongst the Dragonlance Chronicles, and loved all of their work. Great vid, keep up the good work!
Thanks so much for the kind words! How was Darksword Trilogy in comparison? I wanted to check them out for the video but didn't have enough time.
Darksword has some really great characters as well. What I liked about it was that is tied to Earth, loosely, and it was an illustration of a different fantasy struggle - "technology" vs magic. Also has its own "game" rules that someone could play. Worth checking out, in my opinion.
Kaz the Minotaur , and Riverwind the plainsmen. I cant remember the exact title of the third, but i think it was about the boy think who becomes a squire. Still cant remember where the hell i got them from
The Chronicles were great. Every so often a fantasy series comes out that is worthy to stand in Tolkien's shadow, and this was one of them.
Dragonlance is and always has been so much better than forgotten realms. It makes me cry that everything keeps breaking towards forgotten realms.
I haven't gotten into FR too much aside the video games. Are the modules worse than DL as well?
Untrue, Forgotten Realms is a far superior and richer setting than Dragonlance, you cannot even compare them.
You can find ANYTHING in that setting, Dragonlance has just a fraction of the elements present in Forgotten Realms, honestly (Dragons, Draconids, Wraiths, the same fantasy races seen in Lord of the Rings and little else... It's really boring).
By the way, the characters of Forgotten Realms are also better explored and more original than the characters of Dragonlance, where the only interesting two are Lord Soth and Raistlin (even if he is a copycat of Prince Elric), while the others are cringe and useless.
We could also say that Krynn has nothing else to offer, because the story is only another version of Lord of the Rings with Dragons and Draconids instead of orcs, basically... And with the Dragonlance instead of The Ring at the center of the story. So, once Takhisis is gone, there is nothing to do, and if you remove Raistlin from the setting, you only have boring and annohing characters like Tanis, Caramon and Tasslehoff, or useless like Gilthanas and Laurana, nobody cares for them or their stories, so the setting is dead.
That's why people all around the world love Forgotten Realms, why the books of Drizzt are bestsellers in USA, Europe and Japan, why statues and miniatures of F.R. are always purchased by collectors and why everyone ignore Dragonlance.
@@exitsexaminedYou should really look at that setting with more attention... I am sure that you will be really entertained by the Books of Drizzt do Urden.
15 years old in a book store and the cover of Meeting Sextet volume 1 with Tanis and Flint caught my eye, that started it for me. Cheers
15 years old is the prime age for this and I think I was the same! You still reading them?
@@exitsexamined I did re-read Chronicles a few years back, but have wrapped in Tolkien works recently. Cheers!
I randomly picked up a copy of Chronicles first and second book (double issue) from a bookstore because the cover was great and I love everything fantasy - without knowing that D&D was. You could say I rolled a nat20 on that random roll.
So, I'm one of those weird folks who really likes Dragonlance...and never read a DL novel. 😊 Still, I really enjoy the setting, and I'd love to see more of it. For me, though, one struggle has always been its characters. I LOVE Forgotten Realms, but part of that is because the world is usually so fleshed out, and filled in. It has awesome NPCs, but I still feel like I can weave my own characters into places; I don't have that ease, as much, with Dragonlance. To me, it feels a lot more like it depends upon its smaller cast of iconic characters, and some of them feel like they'd just be being picked up from 25 years ago, and marched our now, in a jarring way, but without them, it feels less like Dragonlance. I don't know if I can explain it better. I got the 5e book, and I guess it was okay, but it didn't feel like much, and since I didn't expect another, before One D&D, or 6e, it didn't do a lot for me. Wizards seems to have stymied several authors, leaving to not a lot of world development, and DL is a fine example. Still, a BG3 style game with its characters, themes, and stuff could be great. There are several words I'd love to see again, but they've been gone for ages (Birthright), or couldn't be handled amicably (Dark Sun), but Dragonlance could, if various agencies could agree.
Land of the Minotaurs was my introduction.....still remember it fondly 28 years latter.
There was also tension/controversy over Lord Soth being included in the Ravenloft setting, and when wizards allowed sword and sorcery to publish Ravenloft products for 3/3.5 they weren't allowed to use any Dragonlance specific terms beyond the name of the domain, so no Soth, no kinder vampires, and the elves seem to have forgotten where they came from even though the name Sithicus is a dead give away. All of that kinda ruined the vibe of Sithicus, and the darklord position still being denied to Azrael Drak is the only redeeming thing about it. It's too bad the 5e version of Ravenloft is so disjointed with everything that came before.
Would love to see you cover other DnD campaign settings as some have been left in an even more neglected state than Dragonlance. I'm speaking of course of Dark Sun which is an incredible John Carter of Mars-style setting, inspired by the Dying Earth and Richard Corben's Den series.
Though my number one pick for you to cover would be the Planescape setting (and game) IMO the best DnD setting and the one with the most potential.
Hey thank you so much for the comment! These are all excellent suggestions and I've added them to my list. I hadn't heard of Dark Sun or Dying Earth but I am 100% going to check them out. And Placescape is interesting to think about too...
@exitsexamined Of course! I'd recommend Michael Snow's video on Dark Sun, and he's covered most of Planescape as well! I'm sure some videos in your style on these would be amazing! 👏
oh its great, its just that trying to run D&D on krynn always feels like playing D&D against the backdrop of krynn unless you are down with quantum permutation, which, most die-hard DL fans are not. You can run a game in dragonlance but just not for dragonlance fans, as they don't want anything changed or reinterpreted at all in the slightest...until you get to the parts they don't like, which seems to be chaos war onward.
This was my main issue with it. I read the books in the late 80s as a kid before I started playing D&D a couple of years later. The normal adventuring world (Ansalon) is just so limiting because it's like being handed a coloring book where most of the colors are already filled in. The characters skipped around and hit so many places on the continent or heard about things in passing (green dragon invading Silvanost) that you already know most of what is going on in any specific area if you read the first six novels.
Then on top of that, it's a low magic setting with fewer viable classes, races, and monsters. Everything just feels so restricted when trying to create your own stuff compared to more generic settings.
I have read most of them! My first one was Before the Mask.
Oh I never read that one! How does it compare to the original set of books?
Used to read these all the time when I was younger! I should read a few again would be fun. That Raistlin series was my favorite!
Totally agree, loved Raistlin as an edgy kid haha. You remember which book was your favorite?
@exitsexamined been too long but I did like the ending, Raistlin was a crazy bad ass but did do the right thing in the end. Though I wish he had still killed her, ah well lol. I need to re read it!
Dragonlance was my childhood.. still love the books.. Legend Of Huma was my fav then Soulforge with Rasitalin ✊🏿😁
Huma was the man!
Wish I had the table top modules of Dragonlance. Like 10+ are out there.
The new trilogy is pretty good so far. I just finished the second book and waiting for the third to release in August.
I really like the relationships formed between Huma, Sturm, Magius and Raistlin the most. The end of the second book hit really hard though and now on a cliff hanger.
I really liked the concept of the Noble Draconians. It's a crime they were snubbed in Fizban's. Steel Dragons, too.
100% agree, as a get I loved them
i'm pretty sure there is a short story about a noble draconian that dreams of changing back into a dragon and flying.
They wrote many great series beyond Dragon Lance. The Death Gate series was fantastic.
While not my first experience into the fantasy genre, the first trilogy of dragonlance novels was my first time reading fantasy books, they got me hooked as a kid. I still have a large bookcase filled with roughly 50% dragonlance novels and the other 50% forgotten realms novels.
Honestly same! How are the forgotten realm books? I haven't gotten into them as much but have been curious for awhile
@@exitsexamined I started with the Drizzt series and can highly recommend them. I feel it's also a good starting point since a lot of the more spin off or side novels cover characters that Drizzt meets. As for overall quality, it's a lot like dragonlance, some great some not so great. It's what you get when multiple authors write the side novels, again just like dragonlance. No clue about newer novels though, haven't bought many books the last few years.
I remember playing Dragonstrike. It took forever to beat it.
It honestly looked insanely difficult so props to you haha. Maybe I'll sit down fo a full playthrough sometime
I recently started reading the first books and boy LOVE this setting. Its classic high fantasy at its best. Dont get they choose ebberon for ddo^^ I think Hickman and Weiss loved their world and thats why it got successfull. Sure it went commercial and the d&d is a complicated fanchise but i agree: this setting formed fantasy. The Inspiration they took from lord of the rings is also very charming. What was the matter with those sexism and racism issues? Did the Authors refused to be woke?
It's honestly pretty confusing from what I remember off hand about researching this video. I think WOTC had some changes they wanted to make to the original scripts to avoid those issues. But what those issues were and if they were actually problems I don't know if we know, although could probably dig it up somewhere. But yes, I agree the first books are excellent!
That's funny, today most characters in the manuals are black females!
My first Dragonlance book was the one about the gullydwarves. Certainly an interesting place to start
that's an amazing first book to start with haha. It's so cool the series has so many different books exploring all the different races and perspectives. Good on you for not stopping after that being your first - although I personally never read that one so maybe it is amazing haha
HAHA me too! Never read another one again.
I thought it was great. I really miss the "D&D novels section" that had been in bookstores for decades. They seem to have all but completely disappeared with only an occasional Salvatore novel popping up now and then. C'mon Hasbro! You had a decent stable of writers (that I haven't seen any published work from in some time) and probably more, like Weis & Hickman, that would be game.
I totally agree! Any other series from those sections you miss? Might take a dive into more series like these!
@@exitsexamined I liked a lot of the D&D novels in general, though I have not read them all. The easiest to find would likely be the Drizzt (however its spelled, haha) stuff. In the last decade or so, that has been about all they release in any given year. Outside of that, I liked the offerings from Richard Lee Byers (Brotherhood of the Griffon is a standout series) and Paul S Kemp. He also did his own books that were pretty decent sword & sorcery stuff. Also, The War of Spider Queen was another series that I liked from years back.
Krynn is still the best DnD world. Awesome books (read all >200 :D), great games (back in the days) but Hasbro is just a shitty company that does not care bout its lore, fans and employees.
I haven't read the books, but the artwork is beautiful! Is that Tiamat?
I love the books and the setting it was the first real adult fantasy novel I ever read. For me the high water mark of the series is the 3Rd and 3.5 edition books published for the game, it had fully fleshed out the world and even if your not a gamer it has tons of wonderful info and stories that were driven by the original authors publishing company in partnership with WOTC.
I'm really looking forward to the next book but DAMMIT. It feels like the new series just finished the introduction to the story part, and I can't see how all of the plot from the last book can be concluded in only one sequel. We need another trilogy after that.
My first book I read that wasn't a school assignment was DragonLance in the year 2000. I bought it at a church yard sale. Kaz the Minotaur. That very copy is still on my bookshelf today.
Kaz The Minotaur! One of the best! Cool you still have it. Did you ever get into other books in the series? There's quite a few about the minotaurs I think
@exitsexamined I have about 2 dozen DragonLance books. I bought a bunch when I enlisted and was going out to sea. I went into the bookstore and bought every D&D book they had. Lots of DragonLance and Forgotten Realms too. I still have all of them.
I don't know whether you just didn't know about it, or chose to leave it out, but in the section where you were talking about Dragonlance blowing up, mentioning games and the movie, I wanted to add there was a DC comic series that lasted 34 issues from 1988-91. DC were publishing a bunch of D&D related stuff at the time.
Thanks! I did know! I should have clarified there more of them aside from Legends of Huma - I'll probably add a correction in the description, cheers!
@@exitsexamined Cool, a lot of people don't know about the comics, they weren't great, but the art was good. I liked 'em when I was a kid when they came out lol. Was just excited to see more Sturm after the books.
It doesn’t matter what is released because if WotC has anything to do with it, it will not be the DragonLance we remember. Characters will be “changed.” Themes will be replaced with “the current thing.” Theyve already started whinging about perceived “racism” and “sexism” thing, which is probably not even what they make it out to be. Probably so-called micro-aggressions or some gutter tripe. Who knows?! WotC is one of THOSE kinds of companies so regardless they will ruin it.
Yeah it's a sad state. Do you think then in that case it's better for Dragonlance to just stop entirely? Or move to another company?
Dude, shut up
@@exitsexamined since d&d is no longer what it was and isn’t even owned by tsr(obviously) and hasn’t been for a long time, I’d prefer DragonLance either stop, or to leave WotC. As long as Weiss and Hickman have control. They truly are the heart and soul of the DragonLance Universe. I don’t think they would do anything to compromise it. WotC would; in many ways and for many reasons. I’m all for letting time-tested creators have as much creative freedom as possible. WotC will not do that. Ideologues don’t exactly like
“drawing outside the lines” and impose specific boundaries. That hurts the product and if they are just going to let DragonLance languish, I’d prefer it elsewhere. There’s nothing, at this point, DragonLance needs from the actual d&d model. At least the books, i mean. Idk about the game; I stopped playing a while ago. But the DragonLance universe can stand on its own. It doesn’t need the game and the game doesn’t need it. The foundation has been laid over many years, and Weiss/Hickman laid it. They also nearly single handedly saved d&d with what they created, so a little trust is in order.(I’m not saying they’re the only ones that wrote good stories. There are others…but:
Raistlin.
Raistlin is my favorite as well. He’s by far the most complex character and soul forge, brothers in arms, and ToTT is one of my favorite fantasy sagas. All the other original books just feel like a prelude. THAT was the real story.😉
Yes, gay men and tomboyish black females!
I would like to point out that the books came before the Settings. As the Settings were made around the first book series. As Marget wiss and tracy hickman were hired to write the story that was to be the lore of the setting :P
Thanks for clarifying that point, sorry if it was unclear in the video, was alot to cover in under 20 minutes!
@@exitsexamined Totally alright it is hard to find out since the year of release is the same for both the books and the settings. The books just came out a few months before the setting as they used them as part of the marketing for the setting.
IIRC, the first book (Dragons of Autumn Twilight) was based around the actual campaign sessions that made up the first two modules. That's why the book has an awkward two-part structure. For the second book, they were able to write it *before* the modules, so the order was reversed and the book flows better.
I had all three books of the original trilogy and never read them. I think ill track them down and give it another go.
My favorite was Doom Brigade. I didn't quite understand when it was recommended to me that it was from the point of view of the draconians. I always thought that was neat. I heard they made at least one sequel to it.
Honestly so glad to see this comment because Doom Brigade was one of my personal favorites too. Was so interesting to hear things from their perspective. I'm pretty sure there was a sequel called Draconian Measures
I think was what killed it was when the writers took creative control of the ip in the early 2000s and started their own publishing company. Their relationship has never recovered. I think that really set bad with Wizards and caused them to focus more Forgotten Realms with 5e and just try to forget Dragonlance if it means working with Weis and Hickman. The latest adventure book was just fan service and Wizards really went out of their way to exclude the writers, even while they were in open negotiations with them on a novel.
I think that makes a good amount of sense. I didn't get to reading the latest adventure one. Was it that bad or just too fan servicy?
@exitsexamined actually the adventure was very good and followed the lore. It did feel like it was being put out to appease the fans, and not as a campaign setting. It takes place during the red dragon armies' failure to take Kalaman, which was their first defeat and caused them to be reassigned to the Qualinesti campaign. It's a little railroady, but most Draganlance adventures are. My group really enjoyed it. It severely lacked setting information, though. They barely touched on the lore. If you're a long-time dragonlance fan, though, you can really pepper in a lot of lore. I had Zebium patron the party to stop her mother from invading her territory. In the end, i had the dragon highlord they faced fired for her failure, and the party replaced her with orders to report to Haven for an assignment to hunt for an artifact. It would have been a great follow-up campaign, but I never got around to it.
190 books? Holy crap!
There was also an excellent paper and counters wargame for the whole war, brilliant stuff. Thanks for encouraging me to go and but the TSR collections for Dragonlance now!
What a mess with the Dragonlance relaunch last year - it appears to have failed to capture what the Hasbro venture bros wanted, within the whole clusterfark of Hasbro last year and burning totally Manganello's enthusiasm.
I felt the exact same way when I realized how many there were haha. I totally agree the relaunch could have been handled better. Cool to know about the paper and counters wargame!
Its too bad Mangianello's show got canceled. I bet it would have been the way to show that Dragonlance can be modernized by a passionate fan without losing its identity.
I thought about reading the newer Dragonlance books but when I heard they took place in the past I decided not to. Honestly, the Age of Mortals is the perfect entry point for 5E because it was the point where the alien dragons were all dead and it was possible for all classes finally exist on Krynn, previously there were no sorcerers or warlocks at all and no clerics or paladins until post War of the Lance. Krynn is a fascinating world due to ALL of it's various conflicts, not simply because of The Cataclysm or the War of the Lance. Yes Raistlin, Caramon, Tika, Goldmoon, Riverwind, Tanis, Laurana(the Golden General has my eternal love and respect!!), Flint, and Tas are fantastic and iconic characters but Palin, Usha, Ulin, Dhamon, Mina, Dalamar, Jenna, Astinius, and many more mean something too. I read Dragonlance long before I read Forgotten Realms and so many of the characters, locations, and stories are deeply embedded as my "true" D&D setting.
Tbh I feel like Dragonlance fell off in the 90's due to the meteoric rise of Bob Salvatore with the Cleric Quintet and the Icewind Dale Trilogy. Those series were foundational in establishing Realmslore for people who hadn't played in the setting and created fans for the Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights franchises and the cult classic Pools of Radiance. Forgotten Realms is much less of a hard mode dragon slaying simulator and more of a sandbox before sandbox games existed and that's another factor that doomed Dragonlance. Faerun has so many fun creatures, amazing civilizations, and breathtaking geography and Krynn is barely out of the dark ages AND is recovering from what are magical AND spiritual world wars.
Another reason Shadow of the Dragon Queen didn`t do so well was that it was THE product WoTC was releasing just as the whole OGL thing blew up. So it was affected by the controversy and "I`m not going to buy anything else from WoTC" stuff that was going on. Then WoTC lost interest in promoting it as they went into damage-control mode.
The module itself was arguably ok but definitely needed input from the Hickmans, the big casualty of this though was the board game they put out as part of Dragonlance which was a solid product made by a third-party developer that had the potential to be developed into a decent generic mass-combat system for 5e. As it was the game passed largely unnoticed and unplayed by anybody and probably the only good side of that is the game can now be bought for a small fraction of what they were originally selling it for if you can find it.
There is a small part of me, to this day, that wants to own the entirety of the written Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books. Someday, maybe, I'll have the shelf space. . .probably not.
Do it! And don't forget about Planescape and Dark Sun books too! Will need a big book shelf!
8:50 i know some are not into that movie, but i think it was ok .
I was a huge fan of Dragonlance growing up and I can clearly say why I stopped being a fan, only a handful of the books were actually any good and the timeline and arcs were a messy disaster which made getting into any of the side series that weren't the Heroes books a massive pain.
And now I refuse to give WotC a penny so I will not be getting anything new from the franchise unless they buckle and give it back to the creators.
Sturm Brightblade hands down the best character.
That death crushed me as a kid - RIP
Humas death as well.
I wish they left dragonlance alone, is not like we need more books
That's fair - when do you think would have been a cut off for the series?
@@exitsexamined I don't know, I'm not as knowledgeable in Dragonlance as you are. Maybe as soon as Weist and Hickman went off?
Personally the order I felt I liked
War of the Lance (OG Trilogy)
Chaos War (if you can get your hands on the books)
War of Souls/Dark Disciple
Minotaur War
Personally I felt these are probably the most core series as each compounds on the events of the previous Lance’s party continues in Chaos War, Chaos War leads to the events that set up Souls, Minotaur war technically starts DURING souls but continues after it
And you can totally toss in all the exposition and backstory books like Legend of Huma which is directly tied to Lance, and all the character side series that set up their pasts like the twins books. But Dragonlance tended to be good about giving everything you needed to know as you go. I totally missed chaos war when I read it but it didn’t hurt my understanding of how souls occured just wasn’t as deep
It's always strange when you hear about stories like these, in the case of the TV show and possible movie(s) not being made, you look at the success and the amount of money LOTR made at the box office and Game of Thrones for most of its run, execs must just see $$$$$ signs when they look at these products, BUT, for every LOTR you have many more flops, or didn't quite make it over the finish line movies and TV shows.
The recent debacle with the Witcher series is a good example and a movie that was expected to be a HUGE surefire hit was World of Warcraft but it barely broke even.
Then there is the most recent D&D Honor amongst thieves, which did relatively well at the box office and will probably get a sequel but again it's been critised as being D&D light for all the positives.
I think the Dragonlance novels would indeed make great movies or even a tv series, assuming they are approached from the same perspective and direction of LOTR and GoT.
They are both stories set in a fantasy land but firmly grounded in relatable characters and a world with magical beings and powers being the exception and not the norm, and if this was the case with Dragonlance it would work too.
It took eighty years for LOTR to have a box office global success, lets just hope it doesn't take that long with DragonLance, otherwise I'll never get to see it..........
Those are all great and really interesting points - something I'd love to explore in deep dive videos at some point.
Without doing research into it my first reaction would be to say it's exactly the success of the genre that makes it difficult to replicate it's success. I always think people naturally gravitate towards passionate projects driven by people who love the material they are working with. Once people realize that profits can be made with something more and more people get involved, more opinions get thrown in, and the entire process gets distilled without a distinct driving vision. You can see the same thing with the video game industry - AAA games of today are much less experimental than they were in the 2000's. High budgets destroy creativity. But that's a working theory!