Dragonlance the Musical!

[tdenmark]

I just found out that there is a Russian Dragonlance Musical.

Now, I know Dragonlance isn't exactly the greatest literature, but as I was in high school when it first came out I really enjoyed it and have some nostalgia for it.




The musical is based on the second trilogy Time of the Twins, which if I recall is a better and more original story than the original books which were very much a Lord of the Rings derivative. You can watch it with subtitle here, if you have a couple hours to kill:
youtu.be/xfeVNgEK7MM

[tdenmark]

Its kind of funny to think that most of the performers probably weren't even born yet when the books came out. That makes me feel old.

While the musical is interesting, a Netflix series with high production values would be even better. I'd binge watch the heck out of it!

[DungeonDevil]

Just...nyet.

[tdenmark]

Jun 28, 2020 20:58:05 GMT -6 DungeonDevil said:

Just...nyet.

Your loss.

[DungeonDevil]

When budding RPGers ask me what to read that is "like D&D" I don't refer them to Dragonlance, but instead to Appendix N.

[tdenmark]

Jun 30, 2020 10:53:13 GMT -6 DungeonDevil said:

When budding RPGers ask me what to read that is "like D&D" I don't refer them to Dragonlance, but instead to Appendix N.

Dragonlance is mediocre writing at best, but it is still a hell of a lot of fun. (Weiss and Hickman got much better over time)

[Punkrabbitt]

I read the first two Dragonlance trilogies for fun. I was absolutely fascinated by Raistlin.

[Deleted]

Guys, with respect - but the notion that, twenty years from now, when people are going to look back trying to understand what early D&D was, folks are going to point to, whoever, William Morris, and not to Margaret Weis or RA Salvatore, is mildly delusional. The fabled "Appendix N" is part of the false GIER narrative, and it was created as part of a tactical maneuver after the Tolkien-TSR lawsuits, and similar other ones. And while the list itself is not a mindless composition, and surely contains portions that are true - or became true, over the subsequent decades - the foundation of D&D is clearly Tolkien, plus some elements from works by Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock, and in the case of Gygax/Greyhawk in particular, of the works of Fritz Leiber. But D&D didn't have a "face", a definitive visual style and an implicit promise of content, until the adventure novelizations started - of which "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" simply was the first one noted by the general public.

Again, not to oversimplify or to insult, but TSR's marketing campaign before Brian Blume's stroke of genius were "six teenagers enter a joyride", "that is totally not the Balrog of Moria you're fighting", "Norwold is a cool name for a place", and, last but not least: "Revenge for Aleena!" - "Dragonlance", while surely on the "light" side of novelistic endeavors, stayed an active brand for the next 25 years, and was only ended by corporate verdict, when Wizbro took the 3rd party license from MWP, and later quietly canceled the novel line. That we're now getting a musical, of all things, is a good sign: We're not going to see "Quag Keep - the musical", or the "Gord the Rogue" ballet, ever, mind you. But that people love "Dragonlance" enough to move forward with such a production, that's a very strong indicator that we won't see D&D end soon. As long as Dragonlance is around, 1e and 0e do not need to fear that they are going out of style, either.


Oh, yeah, and the musical itself is the terrible terrible. Play it in some Siberian steppe, summon undead woolly mammoths.

[tdenmark]

D&D is most certainly more than 50% Lord of the Rings influenced, and a heap load of John Carter of Barsoom.

Also I'd argue there is some Marvel comics influence. The Norse pantheon in Deities and Demigods is more akin to the Thor comics than it is to actual Norse mythology.

Back to Dragonlance, Raistlin is a great character. I'd binge watch a Netflix series centered on him. The whole Dragonlance story told from his perspective would satisfy the edge lords and give it enough Darkness for our bitter, cynical, modern times.

[DungeonDevil]

Again, not to oversimplify or to insult, but TSR's marketing campaign before Brian Blume's stroke of genius were "six teenagers enter a joyride"

Are you implying that the D&D cartoon wasn't a masterpiece?!
D&D before Uni??? Impossible!!

[Deleted]

Jul 1, 2020 7:27:29 GMT -6 tdenmark said:

Back to Dragonlance, Raistlin is a great character. I'd binge watch a Netflix series centered on him. The whole Dragonlance story told from his perspective would satisfy the edge lords and give it enough Darkness for our bitter, cynical, modern times.

This has actually been talked about since the first Dragonlance animated movie. Pretty sure we'll get it, eventually, especially with all the fantasy on TV, lately. I think we won't get this before the mid-2020s, though, if only because the D&D movie has been in the making since forever, and because Wizbro won't do this without having a product line to promote. So if 6e, or 7e, see a DL remake, then I'm pretty sure this will become a reality quite soon.

Jul 1, 2020 21:14:33 GMT -6 DungeonDevil said:

Again, not to oversimplify or to insult, but TSR's marketing campaign before Brian Blume's stroke of genius were "six teenagers enter a joyride"

Are you implying that the D&D cartoon wasn't a masterpiece?!
D&D before Uni??? Impossible!!

Aaaaah, the memories...

[tdenmark]

Jul 1, 2020 21:14:33 GMT -6 DungeonDevil said:

Again, not to oversimplify or to insult, but TSR's marketing campaign before Brian Blume's stroke of genius were "six teenagers enter a joyride"

Are you implying that the D&D cartoon wasn't a masterpiece?!
D&D before Uni??? Impossible!!

I f**kING LOVE THE D&D CARTOON!

[Parzival]

A Brazilian ad agency gave the cartoon a live-action ending as a car commercial (the adventurers finally escape and return to the real world, thanks to a spiffy new SUV! )

Alas, my attempts to find a current link to the commercial have been stymied— all I get is messages that the video is now “private.”

A shame, as, even with being a car commercial, it’s an enjoyable capper to the cartoon!

[captainjapan]

Am I the only one that missed this!

Last November, some die-hard fans of the cartoon took Michael Reaves' unproduced season 4 finale script, Requiem, and animated it into a half-hour series finale. The show is made of recycled footage from the original series cut to a 2006 radio broadcast of the lost episode, with Katie Leigh reprising her role as Sheila the Thief! This is kind of tribute that warms my heart; and, to be honest, the quality is in a lot of ways equal to the quality of animation of the 1983 original (the sound mix can be a little jarring).


 

An archived copy of the original script can be found HERE.

[geoffrey]

The Dragon, #4, December 1976, page 29:

FANTASY/SWORDS & SORCERY: RECOMMENDED READING From Gary Gygax

Anderson, Poul Three Hearts and Three Lions
Blackwood, Algernon
Brackett, Leigh
Burroughs, E. R. John Carter of Mars (etal)
Carter, Lin Warrior of the Worlds End
deCamp & Pratt Incomplete Enchanter; Castle of Iron (etal)
Farmer, P. J. Gates of Creation (etal)
Fox, G. F. Kother the Barbarian (etal)
Howard, R. E. Conan the Conqueror (etal)
Lanier, Sterling Hiero's Journey
Leiber, Fritz Swords of Lankhmar (etal)
Lovecraft, H. P.
Merritt, A. Creep Shadow, Creep; Moon Pool; Face in the Abyss; Dwellers in the Mirage (etal)
Moorcock, Michael Stealer of Souls; Stormbringer
Saberhagen, Fred Changling Earth
St. Clair, Margaret
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit; Lord of the Rings (Trilogy)
Vance, Jack Eyes of Overworld; The Dying Earth
Weinbaum, Stanley
Wellman, M. W.
Zelazny, Roger Jack of Shadows (etal); Lord of Light; Nine Princes of Amber series

[stevemitchell]

Karl Edward Wagner and Kane should be on that list, certainly in preference to Fox and Kothar. Lord Dunsany had much more to do with heroic fantasy than Algernon Blackwood (while not disputing the merits of "The Wendigo" and "The Willows" as horror stories). And C. L. Moore and Andre Norton are striking omissions.


I wonder what Dave Arneson's reading list looked like?

[tdenmark]

Jul 1, 2020 2:35:54 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Brian Blume's stroke of genius

And what was Brian Blume's stroke of genius?

[tdenmark]

Mar 7, 2021 22:36:03 GMT -6 stevemitchell said:

C. L. Moore and Andre Norton are striking omissions.

Seriously. Andre Norton probably did as much to pique my interest in fantasy (and sci-fi and post apocalypse!) as Tolkien did. Though I've never read Quag Keep. I think it has a dumb title name.

[mgtremaine]

six teenagers enter a joyride

early trope you could even say 1d6 teenagers enter a joyride.

[Deleted]

Mar 8, 2021 2:20:57 GMT -6 tdenmark said:

Jul 1, 2020 2:35:54 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Brian Blume's stroke of genius

And what was Brian Blume's stroke of genius?

Also, why do so many here use the justify paragraph format? It does not look great on a forum. I always delete that out when quoting.

Well, Blume, and, later, post-Gygax TSR are arguably the inventors of modern transmedia storytelling. You'll find stuff that TSR did, back in the day, in every modern media franchise, from "Final Fantasy" to "Harry Potter", and the brands TSR created between 1983 and 1994 (oooh, the shirt I'm gonna get for that) are still highly popular among fans of all age groups today, from Dragonlance to FR, Ravenloft, or even stuff like "Spelljammer".

This mix between stories (novels, comic books, movies) and interactive fiction (gaming books, board games, video games), it just works, and it apparently works best if you do it the TSR way.

[captainjapan]

I think you'd do better to pin the transmedia paradigm on a company with more obvious marketing influence in those years such as Lucasfilm than in TSR of any era. Also, Harry Potter was a legitimate phenomenon for the reason that it reflected the experiences of it's readership, school children, back to them with a healthy dose of gee-whiz magical super-empowerment. Harry Potter is relatable. I can't think of any TSR property that began from a similar basis; and so Dragonlance, Menzoborranzan, Ravenloft, et. al., could not capture a general readership. They exist for the fans. The anemic trans media appeal of these D&D books is evidence of this; and I don't think the timing of their release supports the notion that the post-Gygax print boom was taken up as an example by any other company.

Please, don't take this as a put down of Weis or Hickman or Salvatore or the TSR executive that signed them. I give them full credit for evolving the brand, but it is an evolution for which the default response has to be praise. This is a company that previously licensed shrinky dinks and pattern samplers, or some such random products. I was certainly growing weary of the orange-spine books. This was their core business, but it was a dead end revenue-wise. Any creative content could be better consumed in the mags (of which I subscribed to four). That's a lot of content!

As an aside, I would love to see some sales numbers from these years.

[Deleted]

Trick is, if you look at Lucasfilm's "Zahnverse" (1991 and onward), it's basically the Dragonlance/FR concept taken into sci-fi. (1980s Lucasfilm was still a completely different animal, with those YA books that ended with Han Solo and Leia getting married. )

I'm not lauding Blume because I'd have "skin in this game", or because I like Dragonlance. It's just that it was him, the same way that, ugh, I don't have to particularly like Elon Musk to say he built the first popular electric car. "Novel + gaming supplement = profit", that's Blum.

[tkdco2]

There's also the animated version of Dragons of Autumn Twilight. It can be found on YouTube if you want to watch it.

[Deleted]

Luke Gygax offers his thoughts on Dragonlance's popularity. (and Ravenloft)

[Deleted]

In the above Luke Gygax video, the host refers to a comment made by Joe Manganiello here.