The new first chapter preview of the new WotC dragonlance book shows what they plan to do to that setting and its themes. It also shows their ongoing hypocrisy about "diversity".
#dnd #ttrpg #osr #dnd5e #onednd

Most of my players are grogs that love dragonlance. Which I was never a great fan of to be honest as the game products fail to tell you much at all about the world, you have to read the novels to get it. As you know I am a D6 system guy, use it for everything, and my players had challenged me to see if the system can "do" dnd, or marvel super heroes, or whatever...last iteration of their demands was can it do dragonlance. It can, and I gathered and read a whole bunch of DL material toward that end (3e material does the best job of filling in the blanks, adnd hardcover does the shittiest job)...but project is currently on hold.

Issue is thus; to "do dnd" to me the xp for loot aspect must be intact, DL confounds this with its steel coin bullshit, broze iron and steel coins being worth more than silver which is worth more than gold...I've struggled with the steel coin thing and found some good (not official) meta-reasons or explanations to make it make sense (palanthian chucky cheese tokens, its not the metal value you cannot melt your sword into coins the value is that the city takes gold and issues steel tokens if you want to trade in the main deep water port on ansalaon you need these tokens). Also any coin with kingpriest of istar's face on it is considered cursed.

But, most treasure found will be from before the cataclysm and thus gold...so...either you do gold for xp or gold for steel coins, and it just screws everything all up on the xp end or the wealth end. Another issue I have is that these DL fans do not want you to change anything about krynn and they want to play in the war of the lance (i would have been happier to play at most advanced point on timeline myself, after takhisis is dead and the super alien dragon overlords have been driven off) but also "it would be cool to cross paths with the heroes of the lance or come upon a place where we just missed them" and that bums me out, I cannot portray those characters w/o pissing off superfans I'm sure.

I was going to do a ww1 style setup just after highlord ariakas is killed by tanis half-retarded, make a new dragon high lord, bog it all down into trench warfare with aerial duals over these muddy killing fields....but no, that changes the precious world and they no likey....would have been great as D6 makes for a fast fun aerial dogfight (its the star wars rules i mean come on man, that would have been fun as shit).

So right now I lean heavily toward discarding DL. I am going to essentially make D6 the core engine, but use class, xp charts, treasure charts, and treasure by monster type from becmi rules cyclopedia, and overlay the old tsr marvel power rank brackets and logic atop that for quick on the fly magic estimation as opposed to the meticulous fine hair adjustment of needed numbers that is default in D6 fantasy. Far easier to say "10D is equivalent to unearthly and range on an unearthly rank lighting bolt is listed on marvel chart as x areas (which i boil down to 20x20 spaces)" than it is to crack open the spell calculation charts in D6 fantasy (which are fine and great and fairly exact but have no place at the table when the action is going on).

I mean we may still do DL, have not truly decided, I lean heavily away because I feel like it ties my hands as a GM. I could do Mystara and be just as happy. After all the work I did bolting the best of pendragon onto D6 and expanding that I may lean back into doing that, that was fine for me, but the people who want to play elves or lady knights kind of derailed that a little. Looks increasingly like Mystara will be it, that or King Arthur, and players can suck it. I'd be happy with ravenloft too but players scowl at me when i say so. I for sure want the becmi 1-36 then [ossible godhood as becmi was my first ttrpg experience when I was 8 and therefore "the correct way" in my head.

Dragonlance causes me strife. Because of Dragonlance fans. We can do star wars or star trek and they don't care if I change things but oh no don't you dare alter sacred holy freakin dragonlance Slip, what kind of unwashed heathen would even dare...

Man...its frustrating. Feel like shouting "fuck dragonlance" over and over and just shitting all over it and telling them hell no we are not doing Dragonlance, because you don't really want to do it, you want to relive reading the books...so just go read them, assholes.

The shit I put up with.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on November 10, 2022, 01:33:31 AM
Most of my players are grogs that love dragonlance. Which I was never a great fan of to be honest as the game products fail to tell you much at all about the world, you have to read the novels to get it. As you know I am a D6 system guy, use it for everything, and my players had challenged me to see if the system can "do" dnd, or marvel super heroes, or whatever...last iteration of their demands was can it do dragonlance. It can, and I gathered and read a whole bunch of DL material toward that end (3e material does the best job of filling in the blanks, adnd hardcover does the shittiest job)...but project is currently on hold.

Issue is thus; to "do dnd" to me the xp for loot aspect must be intact, DL confounds this with its steel coin bullshit, broze iron and steel coins being worth more than silver which is worth more than gold...I've struggled with the steel coin thing and found some good (not official) meta-reasons or explanations to make it make sense (palanthian chucky cheese tokens, its not the metal value you cannot melt your sword into coins the value is that the city takes gold and issues steel tokens if you want to trade in the main deep water port on ansalaon you need these tokens). Also any coin with kingpriest of istar's face on it is considered cursed.

But, most treasure found will be from before the cataclysm and thus gold...so...either you do gold for xp or gold for steel coins, and it just screws everything all up on the xp end or the wealth end. Another issue I have is that these DL fans do not want you to change anything about krynn and they want to play in the war of the lance (i would have been happier to play at most advanced point on timeline myself, after takhisis is dead and the super alien dragon overlords have been driven off) but also "it would be cool to cross paths with the heroes of the lance or come upon a place where we just missed them" and that bums me out, I cannot portray those characters w/o pissing off superfans I'm sure.

I was going to do a ww1 style setup just after highlord ariakas is killed by tanis half-retarded, make a new dragon high lord, bog it all down into trench warfare with aerial duals over these muddy killing fields....but no, that changes the precious world and they no likey....would have been great as D6 makes for a fast fun aerial dogfight (its the star wars rules i mean come on man, that would have been fun as shit).

So right now I lean heavily toward discarding DL. I am going to essentially make D6 the core engine, but use class, xp charts, treasure charts, and treasure by monster type from becmi rules cyclopedia, and overlay the old tsr marvel power rank brackets and logic atop that for quick on the fly magic estimation as opposed to the meticulous fine hair adjustment of needed numbers that is default in D6 fantasy. Far easier to say "10D is equivalent to unearthly and range on an unearthly rank lighting bolt is listed on marvel chart as x areas (which i boil down to 20x20 spaces)" than it is to crack open the spell calculation charts in D6 fantasy (which are fine and great and fairly exact but have no place at the table when the action is going on).

I mean we may still do DL, have not truly decided, I lean heavily away because I feel like it ties my hands as a GM. I could do Mystara and be just as happy. After all the work I did bolting the best of pendragon onto D6 and expanding that I may lean back into doing that, that was fine for me, but the people who want to play elves or lady knights kind of derailed that a little. Looks increasingly like Mystara will be it, that or King Arthur, and players can suck it. I'd be happy with ravenloft too but players scowl at me when i say so. I for sure want the becmi 1-36 then [ossible godhood as becmi was my first ttrpg experience when I was 8 and therefore "the correct way" in my head.

Dragonlance causes me strife. Because of Dragonlance fans. We can do star wars or star trek and they don't care if I change things but oh no don't you dare alter sacred holy freakin dragonlance Slip, what kind of unwashed heathen would even dare...

Man...its frustrating. Feel like shouting "fuck dragonlance" over and over and just shitting all over it and telling them hell no we are not doing Dragonlance, because you don't really want to do it, you want to relive reading the books...so just go read them, assholes.

The shit I put up with.

These are your friends (presumably) you seem to have massive contempt for.

Good video pundit.

I'm a DL fan from back in the day. And WotC can slap whatever name they want on a product. Put whatever IP names/places they own on it. But it's not Dragonlance to me anymore. Just like the last "Ravenloft" isn't Ravenloft to me.

I've spread the word. Now lets see if I get crapbook (facebook) banned

Dragonlance is a good story, but that doesn't mean it's a great setting for a game.  I would rather have a location with unresolved issues that we are meant to tackle.

Take Star Wars.  I prefer the setting of the MMO.  The Old Republic when it fights a full war against the Sith Empire leaves a lot more wiggle room for our heroes to shine instead of being 2nd stringer B-team guys overshadowed by the heroes of the movies or books. 

I can't wait for the Complete Book of Gully Dwarves!

Quote from: horsesoldier on November 10, 2022, 09:18:44 AM

These are your friends (presumably) you seem to have massive contempt for.

lol, no contempt, but as much as i pull solely for their desires and cater to their wishes i reserve the right to bitch.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on November 10, 2022, 01:33:31 AM
Man...its frustrating. Feel like shouting "fuck dragonlance" over and over and just shitting all over it and telling them hell no we are not doing Dragonlance, because you don't really want to do it, you want to relive reading the books...so just go read them, assholes.

The shit I put up with.

   This matches what I and some others I've talked to have observed in Dragonlance fandom. I personally preferred the Fifth Age or ringing changes (sometimes subtle, sometimes substantial) on the whole structure.

I wonder if anyone has ever played the Dragonlance campaign with original PCs? I know the official characters are the recommended ones but I seem to recall that option was at least available.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on November 10, 2022, 07:24:18 PM
I wonder if anyone has ever played the Dragonlance campaign with original PCs? I know the official characters are the recommended ones but I seem to recall that option was at least available.

Yeah we played with player made pc's back in the ancient times under a different DM through the first couple, 1-3 modules, though he did alter some of the facts away from the novels such as changing out the race of some npc's, making verminaard for example a huge 9' tall four-armed draconian or fewmaster toede into a horned demonic satyr like thing. That was cool as anything I thought then, and still do. But there was no getting away from those disks and the blue crystal staff, not allowed to dodge that in anyway.

Quote from: horsesoldier on November 10, 2022, 09:18:44 AM
These are your friends (presumably) you seem to have massive contempt for.

I mean a good amount of my friends have politics that are pretty lol.  If they were asking me to indulge in woke settings I would probably come to this forum to QQ a bit.

Quote from: RPGPundit on November 10, 2022, 12:08:26 AM
The new first chapter preview of the new WotC dragonlance book shows what they plan to do to that setting and its themes.

Also this video is really good, and I really do think that they just walk into this stuff, make changes that they know   will upset normal people, and just believe that any pushback they receive is just The Bad People complaining, and a sign that they are on the right track, all for their perverse ideology.

Quote from: Venka on November 11, 2022, 02:35:54 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on November 10, 2022, 12:08:26 AM
The new first chapter preview of the new WotC dragonlance book shows what they plan to do to that setting and its themes.

Also this video is really good, and I really do think that they just walk into this stuff, make changes that they know   will upset normal people, and just believe that any pushback they receive is just The Bad People complaining, and a sign that they are on the right track, all for their perverse ideology.

That and marketing tells them that the pushback and bitching is free advertising. Pundit's video is free advertising. They know people will go buy the book precisely because someone tells them not to buy it. Often to see for themselves if what the detractors is saying is there is really there or not.

And odds are this will be yet another baiting maneuver where the actual content is not as bad as it is being made out to be. Or just a distraction to the real problem content. Or a distraction to the fact that there is honestly sometimes not much content at all.

Refugees not heroic? Talk to Xenophon.

Or if you want it in an RPG, take a look at Symbaroum. Or the original DL3 module, which was about escorting 800 refugees (freed captives) to safety. Writing a good refugee adventure is *hard*, I don't expect WotC to pull it off, but it can totally be heroic.

I agree that the original DL modules weren't great, and I plan to buy the new Dragonlance - even in 5e I'm having too much fun running the Runewild while dropping in Ynn and Abelia Prem and Welthorp and Fungus Forest - but there's so much assumption and projection in the premises of this video... We'll have enough to criticise when it actually gets published, I expect.

Also, there's always been some "collective activism" in RPGs, more than in a lot of Appendix N - particularly back in the days of hirelings.

Off now to move Sword & Caravan closer to the top of my wishlist.

I was never a Dragonlance fan, but "woke hypocrisy" and WOTC fit together perfectly.