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Post by asaki on Mar 20, 2021 1:03:21 GMT -6
Can they make a Dragonlance movie/streaming series now?
I've heard it's pretty good.
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Post by tdenmark on Mar 20, 2021 6:31:58 GMT -6
Can they make a Dragonlance movie/streaming series now? I've heard it's pretty good.
It's...not very. If you are a truly devoted fan you might like seeing your favorite characters animated...but then you'll be heartbroken by what they did to the story. |
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Post by tdenmark on Mar 20, 2021 6:36:23 GMT -6
Dragonlance, more difficult, especially after the negative press last year. I must have missed this. Do you mean them screwing over the writers? Or was there something else? Because screwing over authors is pretty standard fare in the entertainment industry and doesn't make a difference whether or not something is produced. |
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Post by tdenmark on Mar 20, 2021 6:44:10 GMT -6
How is this bad for the product or for the customers, in your opinion? I was going to make a snarky comment about D&D shrinky dinks. In general decisions to please shareholders tend to be shortsighted and making money immediately. Squeezing what value they can out of an IP instead of tending to the long term health of it. A comparison could be made how the US used to make the best cars, then they found out the real money was in aftermarket selling parts and maintenance. How does that relate to the D&D line? Well they keep trying gimmicky products all the time. And with 4th edition they thought they were going to smuggle in a miniatures game to the fans and make bank from selling miniatures and related stuff. That wasn't exactly great for the long term health of D&D. |
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Post by jeffb on Mar 22, 2021 12:29:10 GMT -6
Dragonlance, more difficult, especially after the negative press last year. I must have missed this. Do you mean them screwing over the writers? Or was there something else? Because screwing over authors is pretty standard fare in the entertainment industry and doesn't make a difference whether or not something is produced. This is one of those modern day cancel culture things going on in D&D- Dragonlance is racist according to the D&D community and Wizards. I won't get into it here, but that's what was going on besides the contract issues for the novels. |
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Post by Desparil on Mar 22, 2021 13:06:54 GMT -6
I must have missed this. Do you mean them screwing over the writers? Or was there something else? Because screwing over authors is pretty standard fare in the entertainment industry and doesn't make a difference whether or not something is produced. This is one of those modern day cancel culture things going on in D&D- Dragonlance is racist according to the D&D community and Wizards. I won't get into it here, but that's what was going on besides the contract issues for the novels. Is there any source for this? I tried searching and all it turned up was RPGPundit and his groupies flinging allegations around. |
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Post by jeffb on Mar 22, 2021 13:29:07 GMT -6
It was on Twitter and/or FB.
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Post by Desparil on Mar 22, 2021 13:32:54 GMT -6
It was on Twitter and/or FB. Okay, but did they have a source? Or was this just people on Twitter and/or FB speculating, as they always do about everything? |
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Post by jeffb on Mar 22, 2021 14:12:16 GMT -6
It was on Twitter and/or FB. Okay, but did they have a source? Or was this just people on Twitter and/or FB speculating, as they always do about everything? Like I said, I'm not going to get into it here, as it is very much modern socio-politics- It involved the 5E community, writers for WOTC, etc. |
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Post by Desparil on Mar 22, 2021 14:54:04 GMT -6
Okay, but did they have a source? Or was this just people on Twitter and/or FB speculating, as they always do about everything? Like I said, I'm not going to get into it here, as it is very much modern socio-politics- It involved the 5E community, writers for WOTC, etc. PM me, then? The last I heard of this was about two months ago when WotC settled out of court with Weis and Hickman and the record was pretty much sealed. If there have been anonymous insider accounts or other leaks since then, they haven't made the rounds anywhere that I've been hanging out, and I'd be interested to read them. |
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Post by tdenmark on Mar 22, 2021 16:11:59 GMT -6
This is one of those modern day cancel culture things going on in D&D- Dragonlance is racist according to the D&D community and Wizards. I won't get into it here, but that's what was going on besides the contract issues for the novels. Oh, I totally missed that part of the drama. That explains why I got messages calling me a Nazi when I posted a positive review of the Atlas of the Dragonlance World. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 22, 2021 17:03:33 GMT -6
If there have been anonymous insider accounts or other leaks since then, they haven't made the rounds anywhere that I've been hanging out, and I'd be interested to read them. It's really not that controversial: Just putting "Dragonlance" on Google will net a few results concerning allegations of sexism especially in the "Chronicles". Thing is, the critics aren't specifically wrong about that. Actually, I reread the "Chronicles" series last summer, and it indeed seems like it has aged like milk. Might be that we didn't notice as teenagers, might be that the times have changed since then, but, from a less juvenile perspective, it's a brutal cringefest. - Notably, though, later entries in the series, like "Legends", treat the topic with more finesse. I'd say it's probably not entirely by chance alone that Margaret Weis removes Goldmoon and Laurana from the stories as soon as she gets the creative liberty to do so, and that she turns Caramon into a proper a-hole. 1990s Dragonlance, finally, features some of the better female fantasy characters of the era. Now, as with most of these issues, it's terribly overblown, and not entirely genuine: The structure of the "Chronicles" is that they're are essentially side stories to the adventure modules, with an emphasis on illustrating the characters' feelings - to create atmosphere in a way that kids and early teens might be able to relate to. That's why every book is about someone's grandpa dying, just to name an example. Especially the third book, "Dragons of Spring Dawning", feels like an exercise in "misery writing", to the point where it almost becomes a deconstruction. I doubt that was intentionally done so by the authors. Because screwing over authors is pretty standard fare in the entertainment industry and doesn't make a difference whether or not something is produced. Sure, but not like that. Whoever tried to freeze the contract with the writers put his company in a losing position. That's the kind of stuff that doesn't even get you fired: That's the kind of stuff where your boss comes down and tells you "thanks, I'll take it from here". Which is what we're seeing. I was going to make a snarky comment about D&D shrinky dinks. In general decisions to please shareholders tend to be shortsighted and making money immediately. Squeezing what value they can out of an IP instead of tending to the long term health of it. A comparison could be made how the US used to make the best cars, then they found out the real money was in aftermarket selling parts and maintenance. How does that relate to the D&D line? Well they keep trying gimmicky products all the time. And with 4th edition they thought they were going to smuggle in a miniatures game to the fans and make bank from selling miniatures and related stuff. That wasn't exactly great for the long term health of D&D. Again, can't share your line of thinking, here. First, because successful media funds and media companies usually actually don't work this way. Second, WotC's main problem, especially when looking at things retroactively, doesn't seem to have been so much that 4e itself was hilariously bad. ('Member the Mach-III Elves?  ) It was that they had spent a decade building up their own competition through their inconsistent personnel and licensing policies: Or, in other words, now WotC has learned how to use the OGL to their advantage; then, they didn't. And, of course, letting Eric Mona, Monte Cook, and Chris Pramas go, stupid to the point of negligence. - Or, remember how one of the biggest reforms coming with 4e was supposed to be a "gamer Facebook"? (IIRC, going by the name of "Gleemax".) Seems to me like the people responsible didn't really get to develop a coherent brand strategy until 5e; probably, this might be tied to other decisions (licensing) that we don't know about. D&D Online, a supposed brand flagship, was poorly received; Neverwinter, in comparison, was not. Stuff like that makes big-scale decisions harder or easier. ...In any case, D&D is about to go big, again, with these recent changes. Should be fun to watch.  |
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Post by Desparil on Mar 22, 2021 19:27:29 GMT -6
If there have been anonymous insider accounts or other leaks since then, they haven't made the rounds anywhere that I've been hanging out, and I'd be interested to read them. It's really not that controversial: Just putting "Dragonlance" on Google will net a few results concerning allegations of sexism especially in the "Chronicles". Thing is, the critics aren't specifically wrong about that. Actually, I reread the "Chronicles" series last summer, and it indeed seems like it has aged like milk. Might be that we didn't notice as teenagers, might be that the times have changed since then, but, from a less juvenile perspective, it's a brutal cringefest. We took the more detailed conversation to PMs so as not to hijack the thread, but suffice to say I had seen a few people get fired up about Goldmoon and understand that there are some vocal critics out there. I just never saw the sort of size/intensity of social media activity surrounding DL that it typically takes to get something canceled - particularly since anti-DL hashtags are dwarfed in magnitude by the pro-DL community. Let alone the fact that Twitter mobs frequently fail at their stated objectives even when they do reach critical mass. So I haven't really seen anything to sway me one way or the other as to whether the WotC-Weis/Hickman problems were because of racism/sexism allegations, or for some unrelated reasons that we're not privy to. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2021 4:14:25 GMT -6
If you're really interested in the topic, read the legal papers - takes about fifteen minutes or so, did so myself while sitting in the bathtub one evening. Basically, there's a distinction to make between the overall modern reviews of Dragonlance, which are fairly negative on the sexism/racism side, and the particular situation this seems to boil down to at WotC. There, one particular editor seems to have acted "in bad faith", and by that, to have broken company rules as much as he possibly broke the contract agreement with W&H: In the sense that, even if he would have been morally right, the actions he took were likely illegal. So, it's not that WotC/Hasbro would have been up in arms about the project from the get-go: They agreed to that contract, and wished the project to be completed. In principle, that means they don't think DL is necessarily "-ist" by default. The social media activity seems to have happened mainly after the news broke, from what I can tell. The criticism itself is not new, though, and people would do good in owning it despite the usual partisan banter: It's one thing to consciously portray something novelistically as an author, but Tika, Goldmoon & Co. were largely simply written poorly as characters. It's okay for fans to criticize that as long as the criticism is within measure. Like, it's not like W&H haven't pretty awesome female characters, as well. |
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Post by tdenmark on Mar 23, 2021 10:42:07 GMT -6
Now I'm very curious about these negative reviews concerning Goldmoon, Laurana, and Tika. I haven't read those books since I was around 14 so my recollection about them is very vague, and probably more informed by the modules than by the novels.
In my memory Goldmoon became a powerful cleric, Laurana become a general of an army, and Tika went from barmaid to badass warrior. I must be completely misremembering these characters.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2021 12:16:26 GMT -6
In my memory Goldmoon became a powerful cleric, Laurana become a general of an army, and Tika went from barmaid to badass warrior. I must be completely misremembering these characters. If you're really, really interested in the topic, this is a good starting point to get up-to-date to modern criticism of the DL novels: www.tor.com/series/dragonlance-reread/In addition to that, Andrew McDermott, one of the smartest and most knowledgeable guys in the hobby that I have known over the years, wrote a pretty good paper on the matter a few years ago: www.fraternityofshadows.com/TheParlor/Burning_the_Chainmail_Bikini.docMyself, ugh, you know - I'm too much of a cold fish to have a real opinion on the matter: I would like fantasy to be taken more seriously as a genre, and the one thing I believe is common to most of the kids who write reviews of the genre's classics is that they weren't raised on D&D. For example, one common criticism of females in '80s fantasy, and in RPG-oriented novels is that they're often found in refrigerators. That's pretty much undeniable, but from a gamer's perspective, it's not so much sexist as it is consequential: NPCs are there to make the PCs do stuff. If Princess Toadstool doesn't get kidnapped, no need for Super Mario. Now, of course I would expect a genre that was reinvented thrice already, between Howard, Tolkien, and Brooks, to learn how to write women well, especially as we approach several fiftieth anniversaries, and even some Howardian and Lovecraftian centenaries... |
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Post by tdenmark on Mar 23, 2021 12:39:31 GMT -6
That reread is practically longer than the novels! An exaggeration, but I'd prefer the birds eye view of the discussion. Link doesn't work for me. I put Chainmail Bikini in the Warriors of the Red Planet RPG, but I think in a pretty funny appropriate way. |
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Post by tdenmark on Mar 23, 2021 14:45:40 GMT -6
So I skipped ahead and read the summary at the end. The criticism of Goldmoon is that she's...beautiful? And Tika is "icky". I don't get it. Maybe I have to read the whole thing. (not likely to happen) |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2021 3:19:41 GMT -6
I put Chainmail Bikini in the Warriors of the Red Planet RPG, but I think in a pretty funny appropriate way. Which is the gist here. "Appropriateness". Men can write about sex without being an not a very nice person about it. Like, check this sub on Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/...Makes me feel great about my own prose. The criticism of Goldmoon is that she's...beautiful? And Tika is "icky". I don't get it. Maybe I have to read the whole thing. (not likely to happen) Not my own opinion, not an expression of my own opinion. Just telling you, this is the direction the discussion seems to be taking. - Justified or not, I wouldn't know. What I can report is, like I said above, that DL seems to have aged rather badly, especially when compared to other female-centric fantasy from the 80s. Pretty much like in "Game of Thrones", in "Dragonlance", all or most female characters turn out to be Scarlett O'Haras: When men get rejected by their lovers, they become heroes. But when the women get rejected or when their daddies go away (Elistan, Fizban, Ned Stark, Tywin Lannister), they become violent sociopaths until the resident Silver Dragon Jesus (Tanis, Sturm, Riverwind, Jon Snow, Jaime Lannister) returns to inseminate them. - That's not even bad because it's sexist; that's bad because it's really bad storytelling. Again, I think this might be part of the reason why W&H switched from Tanis and Riverwind, the arguable male protagonists of the first trilogy to Raistlin, Caramon, Crystania, and a new, more adult interpretation of Tika. Imagine being Margaret Weis, and having to put up with this shirt. ...Anyway, so WotC didn't get sold, and anyone who says so ever again has to buy me a beer. /thread  |
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Post by tdenmark on Mar 24, 2021 5:26:55 GMT -6
...Anyway, so WotC didn't get sold, and anyone who says so ever again has to buy me a beer. /thread lol. quite a tangent, but it was semi-relevant. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2021 11:50:18 GMT -6
Wasn't meant dismissively. Was meant to say, I like beer. |
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Post by tdenmark on Mar 24, 2021 13:59:26 GMT -6
Wasn't meant dismissively. Was meant to say, I like beer. I'd be happy to hang out and buy you a beer when such activities can be done. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2021 3:10:29 GMT -6
Hehehe, with pleasure, mate. To think that the original plan for 2021, since forever, had been to visit NTRPGCon - a big journey for a Eurotard like me.  Let's indeed see what the future may hold. Germany's winging its Corona response to a point when I'm pretty positive that normal folks like me won't get the vaccine until next year, so... Vacation's gonna remained canceled for some time, huh?  |
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) It was that they had spent a decade building up their own competition through their inconsistent personnel and licensing policies: Or, in other words, now WotC has learned how to use the OGL to their advantage; then, they didn't. And, of course, letting Eric Mona, Monte Cook, and Chris Pramas go, stupid to the point of negligence. - Or, remember how one of the biggest reforms coming with 4e was supposed to be a "gamer Facebook"? (IIRC, going by the name of "Gleemax".)
