Shout out to Larry Elmore who did most of the fantasy art of this period. I loved his style and he really brought the characters to life in my imagination.
Larry Elmore and Jeff Easley WERE the face of AD&D 1st Edition. They were both amazing artists, whose works I can recognise as readily as a Picasso or a Van Gogh.
I agree. Their artwork made the characters believable and the monsters, too. They were mostly realistic-looking, unlike this modern anime-influenced crap. 🤷
Get the Annotated Chronicles if you don't have it already. It has notes from the authors and original game-players throughout the text and has all of the Chronicles in one volume.
Not gonna lie, I swore this channel had a lot more views due to the quality it has, and how amazing the production is. I'm gonna try spreading this as much as I can to some pages and AD&D podcasts that I'm sure would appreciate this content. I hope you all post more stuff soon. "Walkthroughs" of all these modules was something I was going to plan on doing, but if you're already doing a stellar job, there probably is no point. I just hope you all keep it up!
i guess im asking the wrong place but does anyone know a trick to log back into an instagram account?? I was stupid forgot the login password. I would appreciate any help you can offer me
@Nickolas Kamryn Thanks for your reply. I found the site through google and I'm waiting for the hacking stuff now. Takes quite some time so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
3:30 I believe in the Annoted Chronicles, Tracy writes that they wanted Tiamat as a villain, but due mainly in part to the D&D cartoon whete Tiamat served as the main, largely unthreatening villain, and they didnt want their worldshaking goddess to be associated with the version in the cartoon that kinda bumbled around every few episodes. So they used Takhesis instead. Similar enough to what they orginally wanted, but with the name change to keep their villain intimidating.
As someone who only got into Dragonlance in the past couple of years, it makes me really happy to see that people are still talking about it, even though it is an older franchise.
First of all, pleased to give this its 1000th like. Second, thanks very much for putting this video together. The Dragonlance novels and other materials were a big part of my early teen years in the early 80s, and I still have many of the published novels and RPG modules. It really stoked my creative juices as a young person and holds a special place in my heart. In fact, after watching this, I think it's time to break out my copy of the Annotated Chronicles and revisit Krynn. It's been a while... thanks again! Ps: As to RPG video games, I started way back with Adventure on the Atari 2600. Good grief, I'm old... lol. Pps: Ravenloft was an awesome module back in the day. Always had great fun running groups through it.
Thanks for this video! I just ran this adventure with my 5e group. I ignored a lot of the Dragonlance specific stuff I didn't like (changed kender back to halflings, got rid of the draconians in favor of human soldiers, for example) and let my players roll up their own characters instead of using the pre-generated characters. It went fairly well. One thing I do like about this adventure is that there are four different ways to get from the upper levels of Xak Tsaroth to the bottom, allowing some flexibility and sandbox style play. The players can: 1) Find a way to take over the "elevator", probably resulting in some heavy combat. 2) Take the sewer down one level, then climb down the vines to the lower level. 3) Take the sewer down one level, then use the dimension door in the old tax office to get to the lower level. 4) Take the sewer down one level, then take the "water slide" all the way down. I also liked how it was up to the players to find their way to the dragon's treasure. My group ended up befriending the goblins (I used to replace the gully dwarves) and using the secret passage. I retooled the adventure for a 1st level group as well, so the final boss was a pair of black dragon wyrmlings. It was still a pretty epic fight.
Sometimes I also wish they made a live action series or movie, but then I remember they could butcher and destroy it. Anyway, it probably isn't going to look like I imagined so... I will just pick Chronicles and read it again :)
It's not for lack of trying. When there was a hard push for it the studios kept saying fantasy wouldn't sell. Interestingly enough, though, just a short time later boom Lord of the Rings.
An old group I was in got a converted for 3.5 copy of this campaign. Instead of the fabled heroes from the books we just made characters our own characters taking the place of the heroes of the lance. It was pretty fun.
Same here, Jason! It really immersed me at a young age and introduced me to my love for roleplaying games, TTRPGS, console RPGs, roleplaying in MMORPG, and medieval fantasy books, movies, or really anything to do with medieval fantasy. I have yet to find a table top group playing a campaign based in Krynn.
I just found the channel, and I loved the video. I remember the Dragonlance novels and modules from when they first were published and I really enjoyed them... even Tasselhoff. Even him... I read the Chronicles series, the follow-up series,with the Majere brothers, and several of the legends books as well. My favorites, as I recall, centered around Huma, and also Kaz the minotaur. Good stuff. Thank you for bringing back such wonderful memories.
I remember reading this series of books back in high school, and really loving them. Although I had of course known about the "Lord of the Rings" books for even longer, I had never gotten around to reading t hem. When I finally did, I was almost embarassed at how similar the two stories were, and by the fact that I STILL liked Dragonlance better (maybe because I actually played the game back in the day ^_^)
I had the pleasure to play at Tracy Hickman's table at GenCon back in the late 80's. Incredible DM... his modules are awesome, but his style adds far more than be conveyed in just paper and ink.
22:45 The fact the gully dwarves are basically treated like garbage is a running theme in the books. The lore mentions that before the King Priest began demonizing demihumans, gully dwarves were considered an EXAMPLE TO EMULATE with their unbreakable faith in their own 'holy objects' that DIDN'T do miracles on command like a remote control.
I understand the "Railroad" concept, and can honestly say that I thought it was the point of the Drangonlance modules. They were meant as more of a basic introduction to D&D gaming, with preset characters and story to get 1st time players introduced in an easier manner. Also to help a newer DM host a game. You could then expand into a more open world version later on, or go into the regular D&D worlds.
I got some Dragonlance novels From an older cousin... I loved these but never realized that they were based on D&D until I got in contact with it years later.
Raistlin Majere in the Red Robes is my Absolute favorite Dragonlance character and is a Total badass Mage!! Love Dragonlance, listen to the Raistlin Chronicles audiobook on UA-cam every night⌛🎲⏳💯
Love your stuff bro ! Your work is well researched and the video flows nicely with its entertaining quality. I know you’ll have a massive following 👏 One thing my tho, the Dragon Queen Takhisis. Her names pronounced “Ta - Kie- Sus”
Just found out about your channel. Please continue the series on Dragonlance. As someone who read the Chronicles trilogy more than once but never got to play the campaign, I've always wanted to understand how they're similar/how they're different from one another. If you don't mind, please take the time to tell us a little more about where you learned tibdits such as that modules one and two were written before the novel. To me, the disconnected episodic quality of D&D has always been one of my least favorite aspects of the game. DL shows us how all those rules and all that dice-rolling can knit together into a larger, cohesive, complex fantasy world. For my money, Krynn was probably the most detailed fantasy world since Middle-Earth. Since Dune, if one wishes to include sci-fi worlds in the survey. Kudos and more please!!
I remember playing this set of modules in high school. In truth, I was pretty lousy at it (we rolled randomly to see which characters we'd get and I, being the unlucky 6"1' guy that I was, got lumbered with Goldmoon for my character. At the time it was a source of mild resentment, largely because I felt I had nothing to bring to the character, having specialised in the past as thief-type characters with shady moral compasses. Specifically, I resented being reduced to playing a glorified walking first-aid kit with a line in lousy songs, so it soured the experience for me. On the other hand, I bought into the literature and artwork wholesale. I still remember being stunned by the luscious beauty of the artwork, particularly when contrasting it with the borderline incompetence of the hand illustrations of the AD&D monster books. I think it was the artwork that drew me in and kept me buying the books and playing the games. Certainly, even now, getting on for forty years later, I still look at Goldmoon whenever she shows up anywhere and a subliminal voice screams "Why me?!" Also, 'Verminaard' is a rocking name for a villain.
I have these modules, well, a lot of them. I have DL1-3, I'm missing 4, I have DL5-8, but am missing 9-11, and then I have DL12-16. I have the character sheets for the companions minus Kitiara, and I also have Tika, Laurana, Gilthanas, and Derek Crownguard, who was a very minor character in the books. I have a full map of Krynn in this same hexagonal format you're showing in your video. I used to play as a teenager in the 90s. My much older brothers (they're 15-18 years older than I) used to play with their friends all the time when I was little, presumably right after the modules were first released, and all these years later I still have many old AD&D modules and books from the first and second generation rules from not just Dragonlance but Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, written by people like Gary Gygax and Tracy Hickman. To me, as a video gamer even now starting my 4th decade of life, I am amazed no one has ever taken these modules, especially the dragonlance modules, whose books were my favorites in middle school, and turned them into a video game. These modules in particular would make AWESOME story mods for Skyrim. Everything Skyrim's toolkit offers just lends itself to plopping in AD&D campaigns to make new mods.
My homebrew world has a town called Solace as well. It started with no name but was given the name of the cities local folk hero. Well his diabolic name. He was a Half devil named Milo from his human mother and Solace from his devil father. He preferred his human name but gave the city his other name. The town has been burnt to the ground and Milo a little later was killed but maybe someday the town will be recovered and rebuilt.
13::48 Actually, the books go into a lot of depth on where the heck the staff came from, and Goldmoon being taught to step away from her old traditions of ancestor worship, and embrace the actual deities of Krynn. In particular when her own ancestors appears before her and tells that "mortals can't turn other mortals into gods." I understand you're going at this from the game design POV, as you should. But I only ever read the novels, which I liked as a whole.
I have not played the modules but enjoyed the books. They are examples of not just good fantasy but good writing. They are paced well and not bogged down with too much description which allows the reader to use their imagination.
I never could make it through the LotR, but DragonLance I couldn’t stop reading. I’ve reread the original 3 books many times. We also played the D&D modules. I remember playing Gilthanos and everyone thinking I was a traitor.
I have just started thanks for giving me some context in the start of the vid but got a little spoilery there. I will come back after i have read trough dragons of autoum twilight which is my first book in the dragonlance series U deserve so many more subs
The parts of this module involving Gully Dwarves reminds me of the Dragonlance book "Flint the King". It's been ages since I've read that book so any connection it has to the main plot involving these characters is lost on me.
I ran a decade spanning Epic dragonlance D&D quest... I hope my old players remember it fondly. It went well beyond the books one of the charecters a chaotic evil elven sorcerer became raistlins apprentice and went on to rival the gods like the men of old and brought down a second cataclysm driven by his greed for more power.
I was an AD&D player/DM during the very early 80's when I was in hs. I loved these books when they came out but I never played any dungeon scenarios based on the books. To be fair we had an array of miniatures before Dragon Lance and many dungeon modules from TSR. Shame I got rid of all my modules, books, dice, etc a long time ago
I got into Dragonlance because I picked up a used copy of The Legend of Huma because of the awesome cover art, which is the same as the Heroes of the Lance cover. Definitely had a few years of lots of Dragonlance novels.
Read it as a teenager in the 90's. Still have all my books. Just bid on all 16 modules 30 min ago. Next time my players wander through a portal I'm dropping them in Krynn. Cleric will be pissed for a bit but think it will be crazy to DM a world where I already know all of it.
Its kind of interesting for me to realize that despite being a 'Barbarian' Riverwind is much more of a Ranger He's an expert tracker, capable with both ranged and melee weaponry, can move stealthily and has honed his senses to fight without sight (analogous to darkvision, though 5e would call it blindsight). He never goes into rages (like the Berserker does in Record of Lodoss War) nor does he show supernatural resistance to damage; outside of the miraculous moment when he's wholly flayed by Khisanth's breath weapon but still technically alive (dying very quickly) only to be healed by Goldmoon's new true Clerical powers.
I did the dragonlance thing when it came out. I DMed them but it was the guys I played with that wanted to play it. So, I just went along with it. The books were good for teens. The modules were ok but a bit difficult to keep on track with the narrative. The one with all the survivors was a massive pain to run. I hated it most of the way through. The folks I played with loved it. As the DM, it was chaos for me. Herding cats comes to mind.
I played Raistlin from DL1 until he disappeared once DL5 started. I was like 14yo in 1985 and will never forget how upset we players were once Sturm Brightblade and my Raistlin disappeared on us. 😞
Brilliant!! I love the Tiamat mythology. The Sumerian's knew what was Up 🌛👽🌜.I am a Simon Necronomicon GATEWALKER, and believe that fantasy magic, and true Magick do blend at some point. Hence-- Chaos Magick ⌛🎲⏳⚡💫🌞
This was the first module that I ran as a young DM. Elmore's art really drew me in to the world of Krynn. Up until then it was just my friends, and I coming up with our own stuff just playing from the BX box set rules. The Dragonlance novels were magical to me, and these really propelled me into begging for money from my Mom to purchase the AD&D hardcover books. This was all in the midst of the Satanic Panic in the Deep South, which thankfully us kids avoided since we were just apartment dwelling pagans lol
Its interesting seeing the game maps and how similar they are to the map book that they released (my dad loves dragonlance and has the art and map books which i was obessed with as a kid) though the map book is probably the neater looking version.
I LOVED the Dragonlance books as a kid. But something I realized as started playing D&D is that the setting of Dragonlance is not a very good setting to play in. A apocalyptic medieval world is great for epic stories, not so much for adventuring. The problem is that a standard D&D world requires a robust trading economy for a lot of non epic stories to make sense and to explain away much of the bookkeeping. Like for example. If you burn down part of your PCs home town as part of your adventure you can say that the King, or helpful church come in help rebuild things in a typical D&D world. Or if you want to be fancy, you could say the survivors take a loan from that shady Zhentil Keep to rebuild. There are people with resources that you can tap to explain why the NPCs and resources the PCs need, return. In Dragonlance, there is no one coming to rescue the town. While it could be fun for the PCs to figure out how to do it themselves, city management is a fringe activity in D&D. I think that is why Forgotten Realms ultimately surpassed Dragonlance. Trade an major part of Forgotten Realms. You rarely find some Forgotten Realms flavor text about a major settlement or territory that does not cover what it produces for trade and why it is or is not wealthy. That makes it a LOT easier to write low level and mid-level quests.
Though I partially agree with you about most of your salient points here, I do remember for a fact atleast in 2nd Edition that City management became a whole lot more centralized in Roleplaying once your characters evolved beyond 20th Level.(My Group actually owned the handbook for playing High to Epic level Characters.) For example it was basically well known to those that played beyond 20th level, that by 30th level you were Expected to have your c or party become lord(Lords) of a realm.Meaning that you were expected at that point to have atleast begun the procecess of building your own Stronghold and fielding your own army. By the time My group finnished our last campaign we had buit up our own tiny Kingdoms and permanently forged an alliance between our kingdoms. Come to think about it ,sad as it might seem, those years spent with the friends I made out of that company of players, were some of if not the best years of my life.
@@alkirk1865 I've been readin through these comments and thinking exactly the same. Those early day's spent in school classrooms during dinner and afterschool were something i will treasure forever. TMNT, AD&D, Rolemaster and Marvel Superheroes were all played. When i got into my 20's my new circle of friends wasn't into it and more interested in parties and getting high. Wasn't until Baldur's gate on PC that i got back into it around the millenium. It can never replace the social aspect of tabletop gaming though.
Shout out to Larry Elmore who did most of the fantasy art of this period. I loved his style and he really brought the characters to life in my imagination.
hes a beast and beasel and frazettas
Larry Elmore and Jeff Easley WERE the face of AD&D 1st Edition. They were both amazing artists, whose works I can recognise as readily as a Picasso or a Van Gogh.
Agreed, the first official dragonlance art book is worth tracking down to get, full of really cool stuff. Very high quality
For real~🔥
I agree. Their artwork made the characters believable and the monsters, too. They were mostly realistic-looking, unlike this modern anime-influenced crap.
🤷
Love the original six Dragonlance books (Chronicles and Times...) and reread them every now and then. They'd make a great television series.
Dragonlance Chronicles was my “Lord of the Rings” growing up in the 80s
Jay Smith Same here.
same
Was David Eddings for me, never read these books till i was in college.
Mine too
@@LordSathar Eddings is WHY DragonLance exists, btw. :P
The dragon flew out of the well? That's either a really big well, or a really small dragon.
I still read Chronicles + Legends every couple years
Get the Annotated Chronicles if you don't have it already. It has notes from the authors and original game-players throughout the text and has all of the Chronicles in one volume.
Rogain Ablar I have that 20 years ago
Not gonna lie, I swore this channel had a lot more views due to the quality it has, and how amazing the production is. I'm gonna try spreading this as much as I can to some pages and AD&D podcasts that I'm sure would appreciate this content. I hope you all post more stuff soon. "Walkthroughs" of all these modules was something I was going to plan on doing, but if you're already doing a stellar job, there probably is no point. I just hope you all keep it up!
i guess im asking the wrong place but does anyone know a trick to log back into an instagram account??
I was stupid forgot the login password. I would appreciate any help you can offer me
@Jake Jerome Instablaster :)
@Nickolas Kamryn Thanks for your reply. I found the site through google and I'm waiting for the hacking stuff now.
Takes quite some time so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
@Nickolas Kamryn It did the trick and I finally got access to my account again. I'm so happy!
Thank you so much, you really help me out :D
@Jake Jerome glad I could help :D
Man, this makes me want to put on Kansas and stay up all night with my friends drinking Mountain Dew.
You hit it
3:30
I believe in the Annoted Chronicles, Tracy writes that they wanted Tiamat as a villain, but due mainly in part to the D&D cartoon whete Tiamat served as the main, largely unthreatening villain, and they didnt want their worldshaking goddess to be associated with the version in the cartoon that kinda bumbled around every few episodes. So they used Takhesis instead. Similar enough to what they orginally wanted, but with the name change to keep their villain intimidating.
As someone who only got into Dragonlance in the past couple of years, it makes me really happy to see that people are still talking about it, even though it is an older franchise.
First of all, pleased to give this its 1000th like. Second, thanks very much for putting this video together. The Dragonlance novels and other materials were a big part of my early teen years in the early 80s, and I still have many of the published novels and RPG modules. It really stoked my creative juices as a young person and holds a special place in my heart. In fact, after watching this, I think it's time to break out my copy of the Annotated Chronicles and revisit Krynn. It's been a while... thanks again!
Ps: As to RPG video games, I started way back with Adventure on the Atari 2600. Good grief, I'm old... lol.
Pps: Ravenloft was an awesome module back in the day. Always had great fun running groups through it.
Thanks for this video! I just ran this adventure with my 5e group. I ignored a lot of the Dragonlance specific stuff I didn't like (changed kender back to halflings, got rid of the draconians in favor of human soldiers, for example) and let my players roll up their own characters instead of using the pre-generated characters. It went fairly well.
One thing I do like about this adventure is that there are four different ways to get from the upper levels of Xak Tsaroth to the bottom, allowing some flexibility and sandbox style play. The players can:
1) Find a way to take over the "elevator", probably resulting in some heavy combat.
2) Take the sewer down one level, then climb down the vines to the lower level.
3) Take the sewer down one level, then use the dimension door in the old tax office to get to the lower level.
4) Take the sewer down one level, then take the "water slide" all the way down.
I also liked how it was up to the players to find their way to the dragon's treasure. My group ended up befriending the goblins (I used to replace the gully dwarves) and using the secret passage. I retooled the adventure for a 1st level group as well, so the final boss was a pair of black dragon wyrmlings. It was still a pretty epic fight.
You got rid of draconians? Yeah... it isn't Dragonlance anymore.
The fact there is no big budget Dragonlance movie is a crying shame.
Yes. Totally shocked that HBO doesn’t grab this to replace GOT.
Sometimes I also wish they made a live action series or movie, but then I remember they could butcher and destroy it. Anyway, it probably isn't going to look like I imagined so... I will just pick Chronicles and read it again :)
It will get there, CGI getting better and cheaper every year
It's not for lack of trying. When there was a hard push for it the studios kept saying fantasy wouldn't sell. Interestingly enough, though, just a short time later boom Lord of the Rings.
i know right. would love to see these done as a trilogy
Everyone always loves Raistlin. Raistlin, Raistlin, Raistlin...but what about ME?
Hey, I thought Raistlin was the jealous one.😄
@@evolution031680
_sigh_
We all have our moments...😫😭.....🤪
@@caramonmajere447 that should have been a cough, not a sigh
*Laughs in magical*
*Lord soth chuckles
An old group I was in got a converted for 3.5 copy of this campaign. Instead of the fabled heroes from the books we just made characters our own characters taking the place of the heroes of the lance.
It was pretty fun.
Your videos are the best....I got my start in the hobby from the Dragonlance Chronicles novels as a kid in the late 80's.
Same here, Jason! It really immersed me at a young age and introduced me to my love for roleplaying games, TTRPGS, console RPGs, roleplaying in MMORPG, and medieval fantasy books, movies, or really anything to do with medieval fantasy. I have yet to find a table top group playing a campaign based in Krynn.
This video basically made me read the first Dragonlance trilogy lmao.
Wow, this takes me back. I'll never forget my buddy Kevin in 9th grade introducing me to Dragonlance. I couldn't read the books fast enough!
I've been updating these modules to 5e . And I'm DMing them with my party. It's super fun
Sturm was my favorite character. Due to the second book mostly and not just the end.
In 1 of the later Dragonlance novels, it is revealed that Kitiara secretly bore him a son, Steel Brightblade.
@@19Pyrus70 Who also died in the 4th "Dragons of " book.
You're never forgotten, Flint 😭
Came here 4 years later to say we all cried for Flint and that scene with Tass
Currently I have over 120 of the novels, read every one of them and love them all
I just found the channel, and I loved the video. I remember the Dragonlance novels and modules from when they first were published and I really enjoyed them... even Tasselhoff. Even him... I read the Chronicles series, the follow-up series,with the Majere brothers, and several of the legends books as well. My favorites, as I recall, centered around Huma, and also Kaz the minotaur. Good stuff. Thank you for bringing back such wonderful memories.
how can you enjoy tasslehoff? Then again my favorite c was Raistlin.
I often wake up with a mysterious staff. Magical too: it always disappears.
@Bernie Demuth she likes to pretend she's a princess, but she's probably just a farmhand.
@Bernie Demuth Princess described it as being more of a wand than a staff ; )
@Bernie Demuth Princess: "Put that thing away, you know you don't have proficiency"
Goldmoon has been known to cause that
It has a short cast time, but only a single charge.
I remember reading this series of books back in high school, and really loving them.
Although I had of course known about the "Lord of the Rings" books for even longer, I had never gotten around to reading t hem. When I finally did, I was almost embarassed at how similar the two stories were, and by the fact that I STILL liked Dragonlance better (maybe because I actually played the game back in the day ^_^)
Similar in events but extremely high fantasy in tone. Dragonlance is more enjoyable if less believable.
"Gully Dwarves are similar to 90's website developers..." I lost it
I still have the dragonlance chronicles! greatest fantasy book ever.
@Mm Mm it sure would have been great to always be eight
you deserve more views I love your videos I hope people discover you and you grow as a channel i will stay with your channel for along tim
I had the pleasure to play at Tracy Hickman's table at GenCon back in the late 80's. Incredible DM... his modules are awesome, but his style adds far more than be conveyed in just paper and ink.
The most fun I had playing D&D was the dragonlance series. I was Tasslehoff.
The rest of the party: that was the least fun we ever had in D&D 😂
22:45 The fact the gully dwarves are basically treated like garbage is a running theme in the books. The lore mentions that before the King Priest began demonizing demihumans, gully dwarves were considered an EXAMPLE TO EMULATE with their unbreakable faith in their own 'holy objects' that DIDN'T do miracles on command like a remote control.
Loved these books as a kid. I was in Jr high when I first read them
Very well done. Great breakdown of a series that got me hooked into fantasy and D&D!
I wish we had a LoTR quality-like franchise for Dragonlance. The trilogy of the Twins is my favorite story.
So fucking good
You should consider reviewing the whole classic DL adventure. Great job!
DOS Dragon Lance games will always be my jam.
My very first intro to SSI games was actually the Buck Rogers 25th Century games. They were my jam!
Keep it up with the great videos and your channel will be huge.
Raistlin was the OG edgy character.
Don't forget taz also
Umm Solomon Kane was published in 30s
What about Elricof Melniboné?
Heathcliff of Whuthering Heights was the edgelord of his day.
While Toade is the very definition of failing upwards.
I understand the "Railroad" concept, and can honestly say that I thought it was the point of the Drangonlance modules. They were meant as more of a basic introduction to D&D gaming, with preset characters and story to get 1st time players introduced in an easier manner. Also to help a newer DM host a game.
You could then expand into a more open world version later on, or go into the regular D&D worlds.
I got some Dragonlance novels From an older cousin... I loved these but never realized that they were based on D&D until I got in contact with it years later.
Raistlin Majere in the Red Robes is my Absolute favorite Dragonlance character and is a Total badass Mage!! Love Dragonlance, listen to the Raistlin Chronicles audiobook on UA-cam every night⌛🎲⏳💯
Raistlin is the OG for sure
I loved Dragon Lance. It was the white red and black robed idea of the mages. Who where really clerics for the three gods of magic.
Ah, Dragonlance. My first foray into D&D novels. I have very...mixed feelings about your worldbuilding, but I still love you.
I am fist now reading the books, and I am in love, it's absolutely amazing!
Woah, I forgot about the Kender. I remember making one because I purchased a figure I wanted to paint back in the 90s.
Kender are so much more fun than Halflings
These are phenomenal! I love this series, and hope it picks back up again in 2019! :)
Love your stuff bro ! Your work is well researched and the video flows nicely with its entertaining quality. I know you’ll have a massive following 👏
One thing my tho, the Dragon Queen
Takhisis. Her names pronounced
“Ta - Kie- Sus”
And truly she is hella sus
Just found out about your channel. Please continue the series on Dragonlance. As someone who read the Chronicles trilogy more than once but never got to play the campaign, I've always wanted to understand how they're similar/how they're different from one another. If you don't mind, please take the time to tell us a little more about where you learned tibdits such as that modules one and two were written before the novel. To me, the disconnected episodic quality of D&D has always been one of my least favorite aspects of the game. DL shows us how all those rules and all that dice-rolling can knit together into a larger, cohesive, complex fantasy world. For my money, Krynn was probably the most detailed fantasy world since Middle-Earth. Since Dune, if one wishes to include sci-fi worlds in the survey. Kudos and more please!!
I was a great fan of a spin-off series called "The Death Gate Cycle" which brought Fizban into it as "Zifnab".
was it a spin off though?
I liked the Lord Soth ravenloft crossover
I love the death gate cycle
Imo Death Gate is the best series they have written! Zifnab is probably the only spin-off thing in it lol.
The Death Gate Cycle is my favorite series. I re-read them bi-annually.
I remember playing this set of modules in high school. In truth, I was pretty lousy at it (we rolled randomly to see which characters we'd get and I, being the unlucky 6"1' guy that I was, got lumbered with Goldmoon for my character. At the time it was a source of mild resentment, largely because I felt I had nothing to bring to the character, having specialised in the past as thief-type characters with shady moral compasses. Specifically, I resented being reduced to playing a glorified walking first-aid kit with a line in lousy songs, so it soured the experience for me. On the other hand, I bought into the literature and artwork wholesale. I still remember being stunned by the luscious beauty of the artwork, particularly when contrasting it with the borderline incompetence of the hand illustrations of the AD&D monster books. I think it was the artwork that drew me in and kept me buying the books and playing the games. Certainly, even now, getting on for forty years later, I still look at Goldmoon whenever she shows up anywhere and a subliminal voice screams "Why me?!"
Also, 'Verminaard' is a rocking name for a villain.
Very glad o found you channel. Dragonlance was my first major foray in to fantasy.
I have these modules, well, a lot of them. I have DL1-3, I'm missing 4, I have DL5-8, but am missing 9-11, and then I have DL12-16. I have the character sheets for the companions minus Kitiara, and I also have Tika, Laurana, Gilthanas, and Derek Crownguard, who was a very minor character in the books. I have a full map of Krynn in this same hexagonal format you're showing in your video.
I used to play as a teenager in the 90s. My much older brothers (they're 15-18 years older than I) used to play with their friends all the time when I was little, presumably right after the modules were first released, and all these years later I still have many old AD&D modules and books from the first and second generation rules from not just Dragonlance but Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, written by people like Gary Gygax and Tracy Hickman.
To me, as a video gamer even now starting my 4th decade of life, I am amazed no one has ever taken these modules, especially the dragonlance modules, whose books were my favorites in middle school, and turned them into a video game. These modules in particular would make AWESOME story mods for Skyrim. Everything Skyrim's toolkit offers just lends itself to plopping in AD&D campaigns to make new mods.
I haven't played d&d in at least 5 years, but I saw this video and remembered that these dragon lance books were a big part of my teenage reading.
I've ran DL campaign 3 times
party always TPKs in DL8 in the High Clerist Tower sorties
Dragonlance was a sextet Chronicles & Legends that wizards dropped the ball on after TSR sold everything to them.
My homebrew world has a town called Solace as well. It started with no name but was given the name of the cities local folk hero. Well his diabolic name. He was a Half devil named Milo from his human mother and Solace from his devil father. He preferred his human name but gave the city his other name.
The town has been burnt to the ground and Milo a little later was killed but maybe someday the town will be recovered and rebuilt.
Thanks for uploading this outstanding video. I hope someday to see Dragonlance figures.
Really like your stuff I recently got into forgotten realms novels and your vid was super informative.
This channel is amazing! So glad I found it.
Loved these books and slowly rereading them
I read chronicles sometime between 90-92 on Xmas break in 3 days balled my eyes out when the ole gruff Flint Fireforge passed
I had a whole shelf of Dragonlance books as teenager :)
I really want to run this adventure now. Thank you for the video!
I wish the death gate cycle was made into a campagin settings
13::48 Actually, the books go into a lot of depth on where the heck the staff came from, and Goldmoon being taught to step away from her old traditions of ancestor worship, and embrace the actual deities of Krynn. In particular when her own ancestors appears before her and tells that "mortals can't turn other mortals into gods." I understand you're going at this from the game design POV, as you should. But I only ever read the novels, which I liked as a whole.
Not long ago I found the audio books great flashback listening to them after all this time
I loved these novels. Started out reading the Dragonlance series and shorts, but eventually ended up with Ravenloft and Forgotten Realms.
I loved dragonlance when I was a kid
Feels like I just read the books again. Thx mate.
I have not played the modules but enjoyed the books. They are examples of not just good fantasy but good writing. They are paced well and not bogged down with too much description which allows the reader to use their imagination.
I loved this series, I still have loads of the adventure modules, games, miniatures and books.
I still love The Dragonlance Chronicles. As a matter of fact, I haven't read them in a while.
I never could make it through the LotR, but DragonLance I couldn’t stop reading. I’ve reread the original 3 books many times. We also played the D&D modules. I remember playing Gilthanos and everyone thinking I was a traitor.
I read the Dragonlance novels when they first came out and many times over since.
I have just started thanks for giving me some context in the start of the vid but got a little spoilery there. I will come back after i have read trough dragons of autoum twilight which is my first book in the dragonlance series
U deserve so many more subs
The parts of this module involving Gully Dwarves reminds me of the Dragonlance book "Flint the King". It's been ages since I've read that book so any connection it has to the main plot involving these characters is lost on me.
Great video. I love the visuals and research.
I ran a decade spanning Epic dragonlance D&D quest... I hope my old players remember it fondly. It went well beyond the books one of the charecters a chaotic evil elven sorcerer became raistlins apprentice and went on to rival the gods like the men of old and brought down a second cataclysm driven by his greed for more power.
Whoa!
I was an AD&D player/DM during the very early 80's when I was in hs. I loved these books when they came out but I never played any dungeon scenarios based on the books. To be fair we had an array of miniatures before Dragon Lance and many dungeon modules from TSR. Shame I got rid of all my modules, books, dice, etc a long time ago
I got into Dragonlance because I picked up a used copy of The Legend of Huma because of the awesome cover art, which is the same as the Heroes of the Lance cover. Definitely had a few years of lots of Dragonlance novels.
Dragon Lance is one of my favorite world settings for D&D.
I enjoy how people know how things used to be with such certainty. Every type of player that exists today was represented from the beginning.
Read it as a teenager in the 90's. Still have all my books. Just bid on all 16 modules 30 min ago. Next time my players wander through a portal I'm dropping them in Krynn. Cleric will be pissed for a bit but think it will be crazy to DM a world where I already know all of it.
Its kind of interesting for me to realize that despite being a 'Barbarian' Riverwind is much more of a Ranger
He's an expert tracker, capable with both ranged and melee weaponry, can move stealthily and has honed his senses to fight without sight (analogous to darkvision, though 5e would call it blindsight). He never goes into rages (like the Berserker does in Record of Lodoss War) nor does he show supernatural resistance to damage; outside of the miraculous moment when he's wholly flayed by Khisanth's breath weapon but still technically alive (dying very quickly) only to be healed by Goldmoon's new true Clerical powers.
I did the dragonlance thing when it came out. I DMed them but it was the guys I played with that wanted to play it. So, I just went along with it. The books were good for teens. The modules were ok but a bit difficult to keep on track with the narrative. The one with all the survivors was a massive pain to run. I hated it most of the way through.
The folks I played with loved it. As the DM, it was chaos for me. Herding cats comes to mind.
I loved this series. I read all the books, I even had the cook book!
Otik's fried potatoes,yum!
I played Raistlin from DL1 until he disappeared once DL5 started. I was like 14yo in 1985 and will never forget how upset we players were once Sturm Brightblade and my Raistlin disappeared on us. 😞
That Dragons of Flame NES game they showed at 14:01 looked a lot like LoZ 2.
Thanks for these informative videos!
Brilliant!! I love the Tiamat mythology. The Sumerian's knew what was Up 🌛👽🌜.I am a Simon Necronomicon GATEWALKER, and believe that fantasy magic, and true Magick do blend at some point. Hence-- Chaos Magick ⌛🎲⏳⚡💫🌞
4 years later but, I have read all of these books. Got to meet Margaret Whise.
This was the first module that I ran as a young DM. Elmore's art really drew me in to the world of Krynn. Up until then it was just my friends, and I coming up with our own stuff just playing from the BX box set rules. The Dragonlance novels were magical to me, and these really propelled me into begging for money from my Mom to purchase the AD&D hardcover books. This was all in the midst of the Satanic Panic in the Deep South, which thankfully us kids avoided since we were just apartment dwelling pagans lol
Apart from owning the Dragonlance Trilogy I used the main characters in BG, BG2 and Icewind sequals. ;)
would love to see someone use the BG engine to create a new Dragonlance game
There is the Earth sea Trilogy by Ursula K Leguin which has magic users and dragons.
12:57
lmfao that's a hell of a picture to choose
thoroughly enjoying your content, pal.
Its interesting seeing the game maps and how similar they are to the map book that they released (my dad loves dragonlance and has the art and map books which i was obessed with as a kid) though the map book is probably the neater looking version.
It’s true, there was a massive dragon deficit. We use to call the game Dungeons & Dungeons back in the day
I LOVED the Dragonlance books as a kid. But something I realized as started playing D&D is that the setting of Dragonlance is not a very good setting to play in. A apocalyptic medieval world is great for epic stories, not so much for adventuring. The problem is that a standard D&D world requires a robust trading economy for a lot of non epic stories to make sense and to explain away much of the bookkeeping. Like for example. If you burn down part of your PCs home town as part of your adventure you can say that the King, or helpful church come in help rebuild things in a typical D&D world. Or if you want to be fancy, you could say the survivors take a loan from that shady Zhentil Keep to rebuild. There are people with resources that you can tap to explain why the NPCs and resources the PCs need, return. In Dragonlance, there is no one coming to rescue the town. While it could be fun for the PCs to figure out how to do it themselves, city management is a fringe activity in D&D.
I think that is why Forgotten Realms ultimately surpassed Dragonlance. Trade an major part of Forgotten Realms. You rarely find some Forgotten Realms flavor text about a major settlement or territory that does not cover what it produces for trade and why it is or is not wealthy. That makes it a LOT easier to write low level and mid-level quests.
Though I partially agree with you about most of your salient points here, I do remember for a fact atleast in 2nd Edition that City management became a whole lot more centralized in Roleplaying once your characters evolved beyond 20th Level.(My Group actually owned the handbook for playing High to Epic level Characters.) For example it was basically well known to those that played beyond 20th level, that by 30th level you were Expected to have your c or party become lord(Lords) of a realm.Meaning that you were expected at that point to have atleast begun the procecess of building your own Stronghold and fielding your own army. By the time My group finnished our last campaign we had buit up our own tiny Kingdoms and permanently forged an alliance between our kingdoms.
Come to think about it ,sad as it might seem, those years spent with the friends I made out of that company of players, were some of if not the best years of my life.
@@alkirk1865 I've been readin through these comments and thinking exactly the same. Those early day's spent in school classrooms during dinner and afterschool were something i will treasure forever. TMNT, AD&D, Rolemaster and Marvel Superheroes were all played. When i got into my 20's my new circle of friends wasn't into it and more interested in parties and getting high. Wasn't until Baldur's gate on PC that i got back into it around the millenium. It can never replace the social aspect of tabletop gaming though.
one part looks like the old intellivision in the background. I can't tell you how much time I spent playing that
Amstrad 464 for me!
FASCINATING worlds from minds of old!