Quote from: Marleycat;524783Whatever it's irrelevant to the fact that Dragonlance rocks socks.

Irrelevant to the fact DL sucks donkey balls? Sure!

Quote from: Benoist;524789Irrelevant to the fact DL sucks donkey balls? Sure!

That's it! It's war now. Be on the lookout, I am sneaky but scratch deep.

Cheesy movie promos? Hmm, this may take a little planning given I post from a phone.  That's ok, that seems about even, no worries.

Quote from: Teazia;524772Serious question- Were they Christian themes or specifically Mormon themes?  To some level they are the same, but Mormons have some idiosyncratic beliefs.

I never really noticed them (i wasn't a huge fan of the setting), but that stuff wasn't much of a problem for me as it never came into play when we actually played. The only thing about DL that bothered me were the railroaded modules (and if i recal the pcs in them were pre gens from the story which always struck me as weird). The stuff like gully dwarves, kender and tinker gnomes never really bothered me, nor did the black and white (and red) morality of the setting. The guy who ran it in our group was a very good GM so that probably colored my experience. He was probably the best free form gm i knew, and was great at running games where you had total freedom to do what you want yet cool and relevant things would still unfold. With DL i think the quality if the group matters a lot. I can see kender being a serious problem if you have someone using them as an excuse to be an a-hole or grab spotlight. In our group they always worked fine. It was a very PG setting for sure, but i dont mind PG settings.

Oh and regarding the sheet music, i never understood that. It seemed a little self indulgant on the writers' part and when i did try to play it on my guitar struck me like it was meant for a protestant pipe organ. I cant imagine that many people tried to play it. I think they did the same thing in their non tsr books as well.

Quote from: Teazia;524772Serious question- Were they Christian themes or specifically Mormon themes?  To some level they are the same, but Mormons have some idiosyncratic beliefs.

As far as I remembered it, everything was Christian, no Mormon weirdness. And it was infuriating.

Quote from: Marleycat;524774I guess I'm just not so touchy about it. I like it for the political currents and the fact that the 3 way split in magic makes total sense to me. I don't use or care about the silly alignment system in Dnd. If I use alignment it's Palladium or Fantasy Craft style. Personal I separate and never use my IRL religious or political beliefs from Dnd style games, now White Wolf style games is a different story and parameters.

If I run a DL game there are no Kender or Gully dwarves, but I run it 3e style where that stuff is basically removed.

Cool.

Actually, I have to thank the Dragonlance adventures for one thing - they taught me how to strip just about everything out of a module but maps and shuffle around everything to actually make sense.  

I ran the whole DL series under 1e AD&D, and, later in the series, converted into 2e AD&D.  By their nature, the modules were linear because they were trying to emulate the plot of a story, and this felt railroad-y to the PCs.  Another significant issue was the rules regarding dragons and their interaction with the DL setting: relatively low-level characters are challenged by dragons.  However, the rules regarding dragons made this interaction very deadly for the PCs.  The very first dragon encounter, Khisanth the ancient (!) black dragon in Xak Tarsoth, resulted in a near TPK for my rather large party (10+, IIRC).

Birthright, by wide margin.

Birthright, by wide margin.

Quote from: Settembrini;524876Birthright, by wide margin.

It's not the setting's fault that you don't understand it.

Quote from: Melan;524603I even broke out my copy of EPT yesterday evening just to double-check. It is still one of the most clearly written RPG books out there.

I'm just curious, which book are you looking at? It seems like there are so many different ones now.

Quote from: Marleycat;524750Seriously I have a brain and can make a game or play in a setting my way regardless of what shit the writer's of said setting came up with. Better that than constantly writing settings myself, leaving me no time to play or run a game here or there.

That's all good and true, but just because you can cobble something decent out of a published setting doesn't mean that, in its native form, that setting isn't a shitstorm of stupid.

If there's a good breakdown of the supposed Christian allegory stuff in DL out there on the web and one of y'all has a link to it, I'd be interested in reading it.

Quote from: VectorSigma;524883If there's a good breakdown of the supposed Christian allegory stuff in DL out there on the web and one of y'all has a link to it, I'd be interested in reading it.

I don't have a link, but here are the things I remember people talking about:

The return of Paladine: the Good News

The plains barbarians: lost tribe of Israel

Disks of Mishikal: Mormon Golden Plates

Fizban/Berem/ or Elistan: John Smith/Jesus

Tanis wanting Laurana and Kitiara: polygamy (this one makes me chuckle)