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 would too. Hickman alludes to it on it his website: http://www.trhickman.com/about-tracy/my-faith/

He also wrote an article (which I cant find right now) about ethics in fantasy rpgs and I think he addressed it there as well.

Quote from: Melan;524710For the sake of fairness, I must mention that I have played in a few Dragonlance-based adventures which were perfectly all right. The secret: no metaplot, no kenders, and a slightly Vance-inspired tone (I know, completely antithetical, but that's just how it was - the GM liked Dragonlance and he liked the Dying Earth, so he decided these two great tastes will taste even better when mixed together). With that, it all worked fine, and the various DL-specific ideas added something to an otherwise normal AD&D mini-campaign.

That's getting close, but not quite.

See, it's become a standard criticism of Dragonalance that it scripted certain narratives. What's a lot less critiziced is what I find personally a lot more problematic: the content of these narratives. In particular, the ethos which infuses the key NPCs and the pantheon.

To be precise. I recently reread Dragonlance Chronicles II and III after many, many years, and was shocked by the following.
1. The stupid sentimentalism. Characters cry all the time. For no reason, other than their being disappointed with themselves. There's no actual strength or character development, people simply migrate from one type of immaturity to another. There's no emotional maturity. The only way to be emotional is to display them, and display them in the most immature manner. Anything less and you qualify as 'cold' and 'unfeeling'. This is a frequent criticism the characters in the novel level at each other, by the way. It's a "lesson" of the setting.
2. The deeply warped understanding of love as self-sacrifice. Again, this oozes over with pathos. The entire Chronicles is bereft of a single functioning long term relationship, because couples gravitate from one type of immature relationship (not being able to be honest about it) to another (being sentimental etc etc). You can see a pattern here.
3. The very, very warped moral code that extreme goodness is blind. Supremely good characters, in the mortal realm and the pantheon, subscribe to the idea that good is best promoted by destroying, not evil, but people who occasionally display (traces of) behaviour which could be interpreted as evil or selfish. (Remember, if self-sacrifice is the ultimate form of love and goodness then any trace of self-concern must be EEEEEVIL.) This silliness breaks the setting literally in half. The most intelligent and wise beings in the cosmos have not advanced to a mature understanding of morality, of self- and other-concern, and flout the most primitive notions of integrity. Any 'moral development' they undergo is - surprise! - a transition from this type of immaturity to another: the idea that destroying people etc. who display evil tendencies is bad. Something you might tell a child for when he or she is 5 - that's the moral pinnacle of the setting, the upper bound of moral development.

Now, strip that out of Dragonlance, and you have ... very little left. The morally repugnant sentimentalism of the novels and the modules, of the characters (Sturm, Lauranna, ...) and the pantheon... there's nothing that remains except AD&D class+race combos. They are literally nothing but templates on which Weis and Hickman foist again and again tropes 1. to 3. Without the tropes there are no characters.

By extension, the only sense I can make of Dragonlance as an campaign world is a template against which players experience the same sentimental journeys in self-realization, journeys of the very nature outlined above: bumbling from one type of immaturity into another, but feeling (feeling!) more mature at the end, feeling to have come out of it with a more profound understanding of self and others.

Initiating these 'journeys of self-discovery' can be a success only with an audience that is emotionally and ethically immature enough to experience exposure to the Dragonlance cosmos as personal growth towards maturity when it is anything but. The fakeness of it all, the cheap sentimentalism and the naked grab at that audience' most immature urges, with no inclination to actually address them as adults or move them closer to actual adulthood - all this makes the Dragonlance enterprise, despite its ostensive pretension towards morality and maturity, the most deeply immoral and cynical thing ever attempted by TSR.

Sounds like a cosmology built upon Mt. Olympus during their Jr. High years.

Sadly the only exposure I've had of Dragonlance is currently reading Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home. So far it's cute with some interesting world setting background. Several of the characters are annoying. But it's only page 40 as of yet.

Is there a cruel diaspora of Kender later in the setting? It might make for an entertaining all-Kender campaign in table masochism. I'll bring the tissues and shiny glass beads. Someone else will have to bring the Xanax and Thorazine.

Quote from: Simlasa;52487That'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.

True. But I change or ignore certain elements in any setting I run or play in. Every last one of them has some level of shit in them in my opinion.

Quote from: Opaopajr;524916...an entertaining all-Kender campaign in table masochism. I'll bring the tissues and shiny glass beads. Someone else will have to bring the Xanax and Thorazine.

I'll bring the flamethrower.

I suppose that Dragonlance would be the worst one that I actually owned (more precisely, I owned the first six or so modules).

The other two I own -- Gygax Greyhawk and the various Known World (Mystara) Gazetteers -- are both pretty good IMO (the quality of the gazetteers is mixed; some are brilliant, others lame).

Quote from: Benoist;524747"Are spawned by" indeed. Dragonlance represents essentially the takeover of a bunch of failed fiction writers who spawned a RPG setting only fit for more fiction writing, a tendency which took over TSR for years thereafter.

At times I wonder whether Weis, Hickman, Greenwood, Salvatore, etc ... would have ever became published authors, if they never did any TSR novels.

It seems like some publishing imprints associated with IP franchises like games, tv shows, movies, etc ... (ie. TSR/WotC, Star Trek, etc ...), have some sort of implicit stigma attached to them.  In some ways similar to how singers who became famous via American Idol, have a stigma associated with them that they are not "real" singers or that they are "lightweights".

Quote from: Windjammer;524888That's getting close, but not quite.

See, it's become a standard criticism of Dragonalance that it scripted certain narratives. What's a lot less critiziced is what I find personally a lot more problematic: the content of these narratives. In particular, the ethos which infuses the key NPCs and the pantheon.

To be precise. I recently reread Dragonlance Chronicles II and III after many, many years, and was shocked by the following.

This is an excellent post and echoes something I've always felt, even if I never found the words to express it. I agree with just about everything in it.

Being scripted is bad enough. Being scripted, and with a bad, horrible, no-good script is even worse. The already incredibly annoying über-NPC Companions are made a million times more annoying by their complete lack of humanity (meaning, capability of correlation with living, breathing human beings). Shit, My Little Pony's characters behave more like people than fucking Sturm or Tasslehof.

And don't get me started on Fizban. It's as if Elminster was also Jesus, and drawn by Disney. Fuck you, Fizban.

I swear to God I'll never get how people gobbled up this shit, and asked for seconds too.

Quote from: The Butcher;524946I swear to God I'll never get how people gobbled up this shit, and asked for seconds too.

(Speaking for myself).

When I was a kid, I liked reading stuff about death and destruction.  I also liked watched watching tv shows and movies with a lot of death and destruction.  (As morbid as this seems).

Now that I think about it, in hindsight I didn't really pay much attention to whether the characters were one dimensional "cardboard" caricatures or if they actually had more depth.  I suppose my thinking back then was that if the characters were going to end up being killed or arrested, does it matter whether they are one-dimensional?

For example, I use to watch the tv show "The Incredible Hulk" back in the late-1970's and early-1980's.  Back then the only reason I liked watching the show, was to watch the Hulk destroying stuff.  Awhile ago I was watching the episodes again (on dvd), and realized the show had a lot more depth and insight to the Banner/Hulk character.  (When I was a kid/teenager, I never realized "The Incredible Hulk" was actually a drama show and not a cheesy mindless action tv show).

Quote from: The Butcher;524946This is an excellent post and echoes something I've always felt, even if I never found the words to express it. I agree with just about everything in it.

Being scripted is bad enough. Being scripted, and with a bad, horrible, no-good script is even worse. The already incredibly annoying über-NPC Companions are made a million times more annoying by their complete lack of humanity (meaning, capability of correlation with living, breathing human beings). Shit, My Little Pony's characters behave more like people than fucking Sturm or Tasslehof.

And don't get me started on Fizban. It's as if Elminster was also Jesus, and drawn by Disney. Fuck you, Fizban.

I swear to God I'll never get how people gobbled up this shit, and asked for seconds too.

Hell I never had a clue or even give a flying fuck it used the themes you and Windjammer are discussing, but at least I know why I like it. Those very themes resonate deeply with me and I am not a minority or weird fringe of the Dnd playerbase, I am your typical casual player.

Quote from: Windjammer;524888To be precise. I recently reread Dragonlance Chronicles II and III after many, many years, and was shocked by the following.

...

Sometimes one gets a different perspective when reading/watching something again as an adult, than when one was a kid/teenager.

More recently I was watching tv shows (on dvd) I haven't watched in decades, which I use to like a lot when I was a kid/teenager.  Quite a few of these tv shows look almost outright silly with one-dimensional cardboard characters, through the eyes of an adult.

The stories and characters in tv shows like Knight Rider, The A-Team, Starsky & Hutch, Dukes of Hazzard, etc ... seem to be mostly one-dimensional characters with the same types of stories (ie. get the badguys, destroy/stop something, etc ...).

When I was a kid/teenager, I never realized how generic and one-dimensional the characters and stories were.  Back then, I just liked watching stuff being destroyed, explosions, high speed chases, cars being smashed up, badguys being killed, etc ...


I didn't read a lot of fantasy when I was a kid.  I was more into sci-fi type stuff.  Back then I liked reading stuff about futuristic cities, flying cars, laser weapons, nuclear bombs, space ships, etc ...   Whether the characters had any depth or were just one-dimensional cardboard cutouts, I didn't really pay much attention.  (I was mostly interested in the future visions and technology stuff).

Today when I read such stories again (or watching such tv shows again), it seems like it's either "technobabble" type stuff or just mindless futurism.  Not quite as exciting to me these days.

Quote from: Marleycat;524954Hell I never had a clue or even give a flying fuck it used the themes you and Windjammer are discussing, but at least I know why I like it. Those very themes resonate deeply with me and I am not a minority or weird fringe of the Dnd playerbase, I am your typical casual player.

You're kidding, right? You like this type of moral hogwash that turns common sense upside down, shakes it to steal all it might be carrying of value, to then rape it, set it on fire and throw it through the window yelling "KEEEEWL!!" as it crashes in the moat down below?

It doesn't make sense. Even as a Disney-like moral tale, it doesn't make sense.

Maybe it's even more insulting considered that way.

Come on. COME. ON. Now.

Quote from: Opaopajr;524916Sounds like a cosmology built upon Mt. Olympus during their Jr. High years.

Brad's description of Orson Scott Card's fiction fits Dragonlance just as well:

Sadly No!

QuoteThe prose reminds me of the stuff I wrote when I was 11 years old, just before I discovered the wonders of self-abuse.

Quote from: The Butcher;524946And don't get me started on Fizban. It's as if Elminster was also Jesus, and drawn by Disney.

Thank you.

And let's not forget about the ancient dragon ladies falling into luv with human studs. They get the strict look from papa Paladin ('what have ya done, gal'), and then break into tears. Totally my understanding of century old beings: Al and Kelly Bundy.

Quote from: Elfdart;524974Brad's description of Orson Scott Card's fiction fits Dragonlance just as well:

Sadly No!

Empire was awful, but i enjoy some of his earlier stuff.

Edit: i will say this about Empire though (spoiler warning)- killing the main character half way through the story was definitely a neat twist, but it was too bad the character was so two-dimensional you didn't care when it happened. Basicall the novel reads like a very bad season of 24.