OKAY THAT'S IT DRAGONLANCE IS NOW BANNED FROM OD&D'74

[Deleted]

...So, in all innocence, I was listening to the German "Dragonlance Legends" audioplay. - Yeah, that's a thing, and it's pretty awesome.





...So, after Caramon temporarily becomes a drunk, poor Tika enlists the help of a local gully dwarf to run the "Inn of the Last Home".

The name of that dwarf is Ruff in English, and that's cool, and all.


Now, take a wild guess what they named him in the German version! GUESS IT!


..."Rafe". They named him "Rafe".



I need a cookie. And a nap.

[Deleted]

Unironically, the best D&D movie I've seen has been the animated Dragonlance movie.

[tdenmark]

I recently posted on this. You know, it is actually a really well done play.

I'm convinced Dragonlance can be updated, given a slightly darker tone, and be made to be really cool. In the right hands.

Amongst all the cheeze there are some great ideas, characters, and stories. Somewhere in there, if you can just mine it out.

[Punkrabbitt]

1) I gave up on Dragonlance as actual game material way back in the '80s

2) What's wrong with "Rafe?"

3) How dare you tell me what I can and cannot use in mt OD&D games?

4) With so much other, better material, why is Dragonlance the one that keeps coming back again and again?

5) Thank you for banning this!

[tdenmark]

Aug 15, 2020 13:33:40 GMT -6 Punkrabbitt said:

4) With so much other, better material, why is Dragonlance the one that keeps coming back again and again?

D&D exploded in popularity in the early-mid 80's. At this time millions of kids started playing it. This was when Dragonlance hit. For many of these kids this was their first exposure to high fantasy and they loved it. It became forever embedded in their psyche.

Once they got around to reading Lord of the Rings, by every measure a far superior work of literature, they may have become a little disenchanted with the derivative nature of Dragonlance but it was too late. They already loved that world and those characters. Those kids are now in their middle ages with kids of their own and more disposable income.

Dragonlance has been neglected by its rights holder over the past decade, so there is a vacuum. With all the amazing fantasy that is being put into movies and streaming series, and the renewed popularity of D&D, there is a feeling that Dragonlance is ripe for a renaissance.

[Falconer]

There is a darker Dragonlance, it’s called Dragonlance Fifth Age Dramatic Adventure Game. It even has digest-size boxes and books.

[Finarvyn]

I have a love-hate relationship with Dragonlance. A few semi-random thoughts:

1. My wife likes the fact that there are dragons. She loves dragons.

2. I enjoyed reading the original 6 books back in the day. I cringe a lot when I try to re-read them now. Other than the original six, there are just too darned many novels and they aren't all that good.

3. A shame that the module series was so railroad-y. Way too much like the books. What would have been neat is if they had created side adventures instead of trying to shoehorn the PCs into the novel.

4. I have a fix for playing kender PCs. When my wife tried to play one she made the whole party mad because she spent her whole time making die rolls to stry to steal stuff, which really was no fun. My fix is to let folks play as usual, but every time they want an item from a pocket, pouch, or backpack THEN you let the kender roll to see if he or she already has it. Keeps the kender amusing without being annoying.

5. Fundamentally, the world is kind of neat. (I think.) Towers of magic, dragons, knights, and so on. Interesting history. Lots of cool stuff in the world, but it has this nasty reputation because of the railroad aspect of the modules.

6. I like the main characters and the fact that they have relationships -- sibling, lover, lover wannabe, whatever. It's nice to have ties with others in the world.

Aug 15, 2020 15:14:28 GMT -6 Falconer said:

There is a darker Dragonlance, it’s called Dragonlance Fifth Age Dramatic Adventure Game. It even has digest-size boxes and books.

I have the boxed set and a few extras, and I think the concept of the SAGA system is really cool. If I recall correctly, there is a conversion guide for going between SAGA and AD&D, which is pretty neat. Also, I liked the XP system, which now we might term more of a "milestone" approach but it's the first time I can recall seeing that sort of thing in a game system. (My homebrew was kind of like that for years, but they formalized it more.) Not sure how I feel about the cards.

[Deleted]

Seriously - I still like "Dragonlance" very, very much: The books have not always aged all too well, but some of them are pretty good. Like a lot of the other 1985-1995 "corporate" fantasy, DL was a starting ramp for a generation of writers that produced some remarkable works and talent. Weiss and Hickman might not be "that" big, nowadaways, but in the 90s, they produced one good series after the other. The same goes for people like Richard A. Knaak, or for Michael Williams, who should have a had a way bigger career. "Kindred Spirits" by Mark Anthony and Ellen (?) Porath is probably my very favorite D&D novel, and Chris Pierson's late-coming "Taladas Trilogy" is also among the best we get within the "worlds of TSR".

I haven't run a DL campaign in probably twenty years, but this stuff has always stuck with me, and that we got an audioplay version of the whole Chronicles and Legends series in Germany, I consider pretty great.

From a roleplaying perspective, I've never been too enamoured with DL, though - it's primarily a setting for novels and fiction, and the published adventures only really worked as an accentuation of those. You could some good games, sure, but, again - am I running Dragonlance now, or am I running something else? "Good" alone is never enough.


- Recently, there have been rumors that DL is going to get some sort of continuation, or remake. Looking forward to that one, really. Likely, it will the usual modernized rehash, but from a gamer's perspective, an update to the setting, say, 500 years after the "War of Souls" era would be something that I would likely enjoy spending money for.

[Falconer]

Dragonlance is great fun, it was basically the Harry Potter of its time, and it got a lot of 11-12 year olds in the 80s and 90s hardcore into reading.

Other than the obvious Weis/Hickman books (early > late), my favorites are Lord Toede by Jeff Grubb, Chris Pierson’s Kingpriest Trilogy, and The Odyssey of Gilthanas by the Fifth Age Team.

[Falconer]

Aug 16, 2020 9:18:25 GMT -6 @rafael said:

From a roleplaying perspective, I've never been too enamoured with DL, though - it's primarily a setting for novels and fiction, and the published adventures only really worked as an accentuation of those. You could some good games, sure, but, again - am I running Dragonlance now, or am I running something else? "Good" alone is never enough.

That’s quite true. I have a lot of thoughts about how I would run it, but it never seems to make it to the top of the list.

Aug 16, 2020 9:18:25 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Recently, there have been rumors that DL is going to get some sort of continuation, or remake. Looking forward to that one, really. Likely, it will the usual modernized rehash, but from a gamer's perspective, an update to the setting, say, 500 years after the "War of Souls" era would be something that I would likely enjoy spending money for.

I haven’t seen any rumors.

Of course it’s only a matter of time before they do something, but I think it will be a little while, and I don’t think it will ever be more than a degree of separation from the Chronicles/DL1-14 storyline. And Tyranny of Dragons was the official 5e take on that storyline.

[tdenmark]

This one song from the Russian play, in English:

[tdenmark]

Aug 15, 2020 15:14:28 GMT -6 Falconer said:

There is a darker Dragonlance, it’s called Dragonlance Fifth Age Dramatic Adventure Game. It even has digest-size boxes and books.

I have one of those books, the bestiary I think. It is well done.

[jeffb]

Falconer mentioned 5th Age.


I was done playing D&D by the time DL came out. any curiosity was stifled by those original adventures after taking a looksee, anyway. I dug some of the fiction/world elements but the adventures..gah.


So when The SAGA card game arrived it was my first real dive into DL.

I Loved the system.
I loved the SAGA materials.

"The Bestiary" from this system is quite possibly my fave monster book of all time. I wish all monster manuals were done this way.

I understand the fanbase rejected the timeline and game, but as someone with no baggage from WOTL/HOTL, I felt it was quite good.

[Deleted]

Aug 16, 2020 19:12:25 GMT -6 Falconer said:

I haven’t seen any rumors.

Of course it’s only a matter of time before they do something, but I think it will be a little while, and I don’t think it will ever be more than a degree of separation from the Chronicles/DL1-14 storyline. And Tyranny of Dragons was the official 5e take on that storyline.

There was something on Twitter last month, I think - but, yeah, if we're being realistic, what's it gonna be? - "Tales of the Lance 5e", or, indeed, the English version of the German audioplay. But anything else, anything more "out of the box", seems very unlikely at this point UNLESS the franchise is indeed getting a full resurrection/remake/reimagining. I can see that happen, as well, but only if a movie/TV project or a video game acts as the new mothership title. - And we would probably already have heard about that if it was going to happen any time soon.

[Falconer]

Joe Mangianello wants to make a Dragonlance movie, but that news has gone so stale that for all intents and purposes the project is presumed dead. Well the whole thing last month was both Weis and Mangianello teasing something coming. Turns out someone just got a license to do T shirts.

[Deleted]

Aug 18, 2020 0:18:23 GMT -6 Falconer said:

Well the whole thing last month was both Weis and Mangianello teasing something coming. Turns out someone just got a license to do T shirts.

Arrgh. Well, that's better than nothing, I guess. Maybe it's even a test, to see the overall response. Corporate analysts tend to rely a lot on social media mentions and other "easy numbers" for their models of "sentiment analysis". So, if the shirts get a lot of buzz, maybe we get some small stuff next year, like, indeed, the English version of the audioplay?

[captainjapan]

Weis & Hickman File Suit Over Cancelled Dragonlance Trilogy



I guess the short of it is that Weis and Hickman have been writing a new trilogy for the past year and  half, for Penguin/ Random House. Licensing is subject to Wizards' approval. Weis and Hickman sent Wizards the manuscripts for the first two books, Dragons of Deceipt and Dragons of Fate. Wizards countered with a request for changes, of some sort. At that point, the discussion becomes rather one-sided. Wizards may settle with Weis and Hickman. If that happens, we won't know the exact nature of the changes or the real reason that Wizards stopped accepting Weis and Hickman's drafts. Here, is the pertinent portion of the Weis and Hickman suit:

6. During the development and writing process, Plaintiff-Creators met all contractual milestones and received all requisite approvals from Defendant. Defendant at all times knew that Hickman and Weis had devoted their full attention and time commitment to completing Book 1 and the trilogy as a whole in conformity with their contractual obligations. During the writing process, Defendant proposed certain changes in keeping with the modern-day zeitgeist of a more inclusive and diverse story-world. At each step, Plaintiff-Creators timely accommodated such requests, and all others, within the framework of their novels. This collaborative process tracks with Section 2(a)(iii) of the License Agreement, which requires Defendant to approve Plaintiff- Creators’ drafts or, alternatively, provide written direction as to the changes that will result in Defendant’s approval of a draft.
7. On or about August 13, 2020, Defendant participated in a telephone conference with Plaintiff-Creators’ agents, which was attended by Defendant’s highest-level executives and attorneys as well as PRH executives and counsel. At that meeting, Defendant declared that it would not approve any further Drafts of Book 1 or any subsequent works in the trilogy, effectively repudiating and terminating the License Agreement. No reason was provided for the termination. (In any event, no material breaches or defaults were indicated or existed upon which to predicate a termination.) The termination was wholly arbitrary and without contractual basis. The termination was unlawful and in violation of multiple aspects of the License Agreement (arguably almost every part of it, in fact). The termination also had the knowing and premeditated effect of precluding publication and destroying the value of Plaintiff-Creators’ work—not to mention their publishing deal with Penguin Random House.
8. Defendant’s acts and failures to act breached the License Agreement and were made in stunning and brazen bad faith. Defendant acted with full knowledge that its unilateral decision would not only interfere with, but also would lay waste to, the years of work that Plaintiff-Creators had, to that point, put into the project. Given that the obligation to obtain a publisher was part and parcel of the License Agreement, Defendant was fully cognizant that its backdoor termination of the License Agreement would nullify the millions of dollars in remuneration to which Plaintiff-Creators were entitled from their publishing contract.
9. As Plaintiff-Creators subsequently learned, Defendant’s arbitrary decision to terminate the License Agreement—and thereby the book publishing contract—was based on events that had nothing to do with either the Work or Plaintiff-Creators. In fact, at nearly the exact point in time of the termination, Defendant was embroiled in a series of embarrassing public disputes whereby its non-Dragonlance publications were excoriated for racism and sexism. Moreover, the company itself was vilified by well-publicized allegations of misogyny and racist hiring and employment practices by and with respect to artists and employees unrelated to Dragonlance. Plaintiff-Creators are informed and believe, and based thereon allege, that a decision was made jointly by Defendant and its parent company, Hasbro, Inc., to deflect any possible criticism or further public outcry regarding Defendant’s other properties by effectively killing the Dragonlance deal with Plaintiff-Creators. The upshot of that was to inflict knowing, malicious and oppressive harm to Plaintiff-Creators and to interfere with their third- party contractual obligations, all to Plaintiff-Creator’s severe detriment and distress.

www.documentcloud.org/documents/7245020-Weis.html

[Deleted]

Oh my goodness. This has the potential to create the biggest shirtstorm the hobby has ever seen.

[Falconer]

It’s… confusing. Reminds me of Threepio’s “No, shut them all down. Hurry!” Is WotC anticipating an anti-DL uproar from the PC crowd? Or was there already one? Is DL particularly anti-PC? I don’t see it.

[talysman]

Oct 20, 2020 11:38:04 GMT -6 Falconer said:

It’s… confusing. Reminds me of Threepio’s “No, shut them all down. Hurry!” Is WotC anticipating an anti-DL uproar from the PC crowd? Or was there already one? Is DL particularly anti-PC? I don’t see it.

At this moment, I am listening to a lawyer's analysis of the lawsuit. It seems like Hasbro issued an order to cancel all D&D-related projects just because they didn't want to deal with D&D racism/sexism arguments until everything blew over. Dragonlance was cancelled as a side effect, but since Hickman & Weiss can show that WotC had approved all their work at that point and the authors made changes as requested, they are arguing that WotC are in breach of contract. Since WotC did not officially terminate the contract or accused the authors of a breach, but instead just decided to stop approving manuscripts in hopes that everyone would just forget, it kind of looks bad for WotC.

Analysis I am listening to here: Virtual Legality: Deep Dive into the Dragonlance/WotC Lawsuit

[DungeonDevil]

Defendant was embroiled in a series of embarrassing public disputes whereby its non-Dragonlance publications were excoriated for racism and sexism. Moreover, the company itself was vilified by well-publicized allegations of misogyny and racist hiring and employment practices by and with respect to artists and employees unrelated to Dragonlance.

WTH is going on here?

[Deleted]

Okay, letters are not yet red, but let's get this on track:

1. While this admittedly looks terrible, this is a complaint, not a ruling. We have not yet heard WotC's side on the issue, just yet.
2. The loss of prestige and influence that WotC will experience over this is going to be phenomenal, regardless of how the situation turns out: They tried to royally screw over two of the arguable stars of the RPG scene. They are never going to make a similar contract with any of the old guard again, regardless of whether they win or lose. If the creators of Dragonlance and Ravenloft are going out of a contract with them unpublished and unpaid, noone is safe.
3. This is not a "SJW" issue, and the younglings at Twitter didn't "kill Dragonlance": This is a new manager trying to make a "boss move", probably according to an internal change in company policy, and not knowing whom he's messing with.
4. The details of the aforementioned company policy are not known to the public, at this point. The allegations in the complaint only marginally touch company policy, and allege a specific procedural misconduct committed by WotC: Basically,  WotC is contractually obliged to review Weis' and Hickman's manuscript within a set timeframe, and they didn't - and on top of that, said that they wouldn't.
   
5. The possibility exists that Weis and Hickman simply screwed up, or are misquoting communication: Since WotC is the license holder, they hold the legal author rights to all works associated with Dragonlance; for example, it could be well within their rights to "not approve" a manuscript written by Weis and Hickman - and to hand it to another author, instead. We do not know that.
6. THE BEST WE CAN HOPE FOR is that this shines some light on the kind of TSR-style deals that were made with many content creators around the time: This even happening is a bloody shame, and, this is going to age badly. Fifty years from now, series like this are going to be equally remembered for their creativity and influence, as well as for the vulture capitalists that tried to exploit these authors.

[captainjapan]

I don't believe Weis and Hickman have been exploited. They approached Wizards to write the new trilogy, not the other way around. I think Wizards reneged on the deal, though. They may be paying a hefty settlement, because of it.

The last Dragonlance product was a decade ago, for edition 3.5. If Wizards' numbers show growth mainly in the 13-25 age group, that leaves Weis and Hickman and their fans well in the rearview of Wizards' marketing focus.

I think that Wizards, being headquartered in Seattle, got a front row seat this summer, to social justice activism. If there's is anything like my company, memos were passing hot and heavy over race and the company's media response to issues of racial inequity, during the time that the Weis-Hickman contract went south. Since Wizards peddles fantasy fiction, their public face is their fantasy creations rather than their officers or sales representatives. This is their "public" face; orcs, and goblins, and wizards, and the like. When the fiction is being developed in-house, there's not the problem of stifling the potential insensitivities of creatives. Characters and situations can be altered to fit an inclusive narrative. They can be scrubbed of their offending -isms without debate. Not so, with established authors who have not been inculcated with Wizards' reactionary views on modern sensibility. If it's true that the authors complied with, in one instance, 70 pages of suggested retractions; that may be an indication of irreconcilable creative differences.

Here is the link to WotC public policy statement:

dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/diversity-and-dnd

And here is an interview with Nic Kelman, who is named in the complaint as heading Wizards' oversight, affirming the corporate stance on inclusivity as regards the Magic card game backstory canon:

geekdad.com/2019/07/wizards-head-of-story-and-entertainment-discusses-lore-inclusion-in-magic-universe-at-sdcc/

At any rate, Weis and Hickman will settle for $10 million; and the work need never be released.

[Red Baron]

I'm not sure just how big a scale WoTC is operating on, but 10 million + legal fees seems like a pretty big hit.

I can't see how it makes any buisness sense to prioritize a very small potential loss in revenue from SJW types hypothetically being upset about dragonslance over the very real and immediate cost of losing revenue by not publishing new material and additionally now having to deal with lawsuits over contractual obligations.

Maybe they should look at changing up their leadership again, because this is a real head-scratcher of a business decision.

[Red Baron]

That said, I'm not too worried about WoTC taking a hit. I have yet to see one good product put out by their company.

If WoTC went out of business tomorrow it wouldn't affect my gaming in any way.

[Falconer]

Yes, there are real riots due to real racial tensions and injustices, but it is baffling to me that WotC would snub real DL fans and leave real money on the table because some people on the internet somewhere might (?) complain about unfair treatment of goblins (??).

I am guessing the trilogy gets published when all the dust settles; it’s just too much of a win-win-win (WotC-W&H-fans). Option #1, the appropriate fall man’s head will roll, the appropriate sniveling apologies and assurances will be made, and everyone will laugh about how GRRM got beaten to the punch AGAIN. I think this is the most likely outcome.

Option #2, if DL is really too “toxic” () of a property for WotC to do anything with, they sell it off to W&H after all, in order to settle the lawsuit and probably still come out ahead monetarily. The trilogy still gets made.

[Deleted]

Real riots over the treatment of especially goblins, sheesh. For they themselves lord it over all and cruelly down in goblin town.

[talysman]

If we are going to be honest about what's going on with WotC, we need to stop pretending that WotC's main problem is just people complaining about "the treatment of goblins" or something like that. WotC may not have actually done anything wrong, but they've certainly been accused of worse:

• They've been accused of creating a hostile work environment for some of their employees;
• They were pressured to remove Magic the Gathering cards with racist imagery, including a card called "Invoke Prejudice" that was listed with an URL that included a symbolic white supremacy reference;
• They had to cut ties with an admitted sexual predator;
• They've been criticized for hiring Nic Kelman (mentioned in the lawsuit,) who is also the author of a novel labeled as misogynist and pro-pedophilia.

As I said, none of this may actually be WotC's fault. Maybe the people complaining about WotC hiring mostly white people and rejecting black freelancers are misrepresenting things. Maybe those complaining about hostility in the workplace and outright theft of their work are misinterpreting something. Maybe Kelman's book is meant as a satire about toxic masculinity. Maybe they can't be blamed for hiring someone they didn't know was a sexual predator, and should be praised for acting quickly to cut ties with him. Maybe they had no idea they were assigning a number used as code by white supremacists to a card named "Invoke Prejudice", or it was meant as a bad joke, and the matter is resolved now that they've removed it and apologized. The point isn't that any of this is proven, but that WotC is being criticized for stuff that's way more serious than "goblins are being treated unfairly."

And maybe it's this controversy, not the goblin stuff, that made them decide to pull the plug on Dragonlance. And maybe they are right to do so... maybe they reread the Hickman/Weiss manuscript and spotted a lot of really horrible stuff. Or maybe they're overly sensitive. We'll see when they respond to the lawsuit.

[Finarvyn]

[puts mod hat on]
Just a friendly reminder that we don't want this thread to drift too far into the "real world" and taking sides on an active litigation has the potential to become ugly. Let's enjoy Dragonlance discussion without getting a thread lock.

I've seen this topic go nuclear on some threads....
[takes mod hat off]

[mgtremaine]

I've always wanted to run the Dragonlance dungeons, I just never wanted to run the story. Still never managed to pull that off, every time I sit down with DL1 and think ok how can I take this apart I get side tracked.

-Mike