When a DM ran this module for us, he made there be a final battle against Verminaard and Ember, by having us and villagers face down a horde of draconians and having Verminaard and Ember rain destruction down from above. The battle for the first round was very touch and go, until Flamestrike appeared and grounded Ember and Verminaard. At that point, it was a race to get Verminaard down to half HP, before he and his forces overwhelmed us. At half HP, he called to Ember, whom snatched him up and the two fled the battle, leaving his forces to cover his escape. While killing Verminaard was off the table for us, we had the chance to actually save Flamestrike's life via healing and preventing damage to her (which we did), so that she would come back later. Sadly the campaign died after we cleared Dragons of Hope, so we never found out what would have happened... I felt that, after listening to this, was a great way the DM spun it, to give a conclusion and a chance to have our actions make a difference. Rather surprising to hear none of those options were in the original module.
The books are hammy and campy but fun to read. Best part is when Lord Soth faces Tanis in the burning streets, the death knight going on foot and even allowing Tanis to have his weapon in a twisted manner of chivalry. God damn.
Flamestrike's character and death was one of the most brilliant and concise bits of the Dragonlance books. In that moment she's not a enemy, she's an old creature suffering flashbacks to her children fighting a war that is already lost and die for it.
As a DM, I always wanted to run a Dragonlance campaign. I did it for a few months in the late 90's after POURING over the novels, buying the sourcebook and modules, and cannibilizing the module resources to flesh it out. It took months of preparation but it was fun while it lasted. It boiled down to an escape to Palanthas campaign. Unfortunately, there was so few places to take it and I was spent after pulling all THAT together that we moved on to Star Wars.
Omg I hope there's more of this series exploring all of the DragonLance game version. As a HUGE fan of the major 2 trilogies learning the differences is Absolutely FASCINATING. For example, learning Verminaard was supposed to survive, Makes So Much More Sense. Why would Takhisis, Queen of Darkness Herself, need to flee from a minor healer Goddess? Dragons of 4he Dwarven Depths would also have been Far less confusing with Verminaard. This is worthy of a stand alone series.
I really enjoy your channel. The topics you discuss are really useful for new players/ DMs to learn the history and lore surrounding the worlds of D&D. The information is presented in an entertaining way, and the video backgrounds/ graphics are of great quality and edited well. I just wish you had more content. Please keep working on this channel, you are offering a valuable resource that nobody else is providing.
Re 24:23 I read the books while going through the modules. Luckily my DM was awesome and he was running the modules differently than the books. I missed a few sessions and was kinda lost when I reattended. Later I bought the modules and read them. Wow. It made me realize how truly awesome my DM had been. There's no way in heck I coulda ran those monstrosities. I still have them and enjoy going through them from time to time. Nostalgia
When I played this series in the 80s, none of the players had read the books. By the time we got to the third or fourth module, the DM had the second novel open behind his screen and was literally saying "And then you say ______, and you smile, then you say _______". We went behind his back and read the books at that point, and the campaign soon came to an end. The novels to this day are still some of my favorite fantasy.
I am at the moment running a Dragonlance 'War of the Lance' campaign. I have changed PLENTY of stuff from the modules, but I still use them for the maps and mostly inspiration. I must say tho, 23 episodes in and the campaign looks almost nothing like the novels
What's most galling about this module is how easy it would have been to give players more agency, while still funneling them in the direction of the plot. Instead of forcing them to be captured in the bar, have that be the price of losing the fight. Whereas if they win, the elf NPC will offer to lead them to safety in the Elf Lands. Same with escaping the slave caravan: if the PCs don't escape on their own, the elves can arrive to help them. Heck, give them the ability to learn about Pax Tharkas at the start, and let them go there on their own initiative if they want. The point of the module is to get the party to the dungeon. It doesn't really matter how. Laurana doesn't really NEED to be kidnapped on the party's watch. They could foil the kidnapping, then bring her along (or not; she can catch up later). And if the party never arrives at the Elf Lands, well obviously she can be kidnapped offscreen and be freed later with the other prisoners. Same with Verminarde's death. If he's so important that he needs to come back in later modules (and even the novel writers didn't think so, since he canonically dies here), he can just be resurrected by Takhisis. He IS a Cleric of hers, and probably considered valuable enough to bring back. So if he appears in the later module, he can show off his sick scar from when the PCs laid him low the last time. (And if he dies again, just say that Takhisis considers him a failure and not worth bringing back a second time).
Thank you SO MUCH for making these videos! Watching this one is VERY CRUCIAL FOR ME right now because i am running a War of the Lance game with friends (I am the DM) and right now we are EXACTLY AT the point where we start to head off for the Sla-Mori .... i am literally going to introduce them to Eben and they'll be starting off in Pax Tharkas literally next game day lolllllllllllll THIS HELPS ME A LOT though!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
Your channel came up in my suggestions and since I'm an old school AD&D 2nd Ed player I figured I'd check it out, I really enjoyed your content so far thanks it great to revisit these settings! My favorite setting was always Ravenloft ( though it took great care for a campaign to be ran in it). I hope someday you will have time to make some content on the awesome modules set in it ( the Van Richten books were always a favorite of mine as well).
The original Ravenloft module had the most ridiculously overpowered NPC villagers I've ever seen. 'This guy is a blacksmith, he must be strong, he's a 10th level Fighter'.
All I require from the new modules: A map of Krynn. The magic system. Specific classes for the world (i.e. knights of Solamnia, wizard schools). The gods. The rest can be whatever.
❤️. I watched part one, and was amused at the fact that I own PHARO....... And then I watched part two, and my first module ever, was horror on the hill. I still have these modules. And I still have my 80's basic set w/the box!
19:53 While in the novels, her naivety is part of her character growth, and later she finds herself being called the 'Golden General' while taking an active part in the cause.
Laurana is the Weiss/Hickmann "Eowyn" proxy... ETA she also doubles as the Arwyn proxy with her being the Elven Princess with unbound love for that "Ranger from the North..." hero dude.
Dragons and railroads, the train MUST run on time. It really was a bad time for dungeons when this back then was considered great writing and now its a * hot classic*.
I would say take a look at Dragons of Autumns, the 3.5 re-release by Margaret Weis Productions. It's available on the DM's Guild and fixes many of these problems.
First let me start off by saying I absolutely love your videos. Ed dragonlance is my absolute favorite Dungeons & Dragons setting. I also agree that the modules were not as good as the novels. But I would also love to see any more videos of you discussing the dragonlance modules
While many of your points are spot on - the nature of this railroad adventure was a fantastic introduction into the basic mechanics of the game for a newb DM. I ran these modules when I was in the 5th grade for some friends and it was cake. I graduated to crafting open worlds and dealing with players splitting up for months on end later... This was really a great introduction from the DM side.
I read many of the Dragonlance novels and I really liked the setting set just before the 4th (or 3rd?) Dragon War. Using steel as currancy, the Gods are gone and Ansalon is in decline.
I love the retro style of your videos. Very very enjoyable. Would love to see more of these! I got into the novels last year and probably wont find myself playing adnd soon, so getting a summary of this stuff from you is awesome!
I like this run through. I have been thinking about adapting some of this for 5e, and it's good to get a critical review of what we can do to bypass some of the pitfalls.
I've learnt it depends on the players. I have a few who would probably enjoy these because they don't care about being railroaded as they enjoy a really good story and will willingly seek it (as I play Eberron and let's face it, alot of those modules are scripted but tweekable), but a few who No matter how you'd tweek it would hate it as they're not bothered in playing anything involving NPCs let alone a storyline. Atm the time these were written, no d&d modules at the time were really given a story to role play out and you can tell what they were trying to do and didn't quite know how to give a story without making things incredibly scripted. They have sort of learned since then, but not to the point where they've solved minior areas of scripted events.... but sometimes a scripted event can change how a character plays the campaign from then forth (especially in an AL senario)
Dragonlance is good for reading, not much so for playing. Back in the day we used to play our own custom adventures, but totally unrelated to the original plot, with custom characters. Stuff like sneaking into Xak Tsaroth and discovering the origin of draconians etc. Good times.
Players NEVER submit to capture... You have to force it n them by putting them to sleep and chaining the in their sleep, or yo will have a fight to the death. And even then, the Druid is going to wild shape out of the chains and unlock everyone else so they can fight to the death.
In 5e, there's an optional rule that if you reduce a target to 0 HP, you can choose to have it be a knock-out blow, so they aren't having to make death saves. Obviously this wasn't necessarily an option in earlier editions, since hitting 0 HP meant death. But it's a useful mechanic the DM can employ, if the players would rather fight to the death. Have the bad guys knock the PCs out instead of killing them, so they can be taken.
I had never read the books when we got the modules. They had great art work, story, presentation, and a different setting, but they all failed as D&D modules. We must have started it three or four times and rarely got past the first or second module. We tried making out own characters... that didn't work as they story needed the named characters to advance. We then tried using the given characters, but still the DM has to run half of them as there were only 3-4 of us at any time. Even then, the linear nature of the story was always like a cloud over the game. Even without having read the books, we all knew we needed to do X and then Y. Worse, it was good a scale which affected every encounter. Master Toad gets away... even if you have a mounted knight character able to run him down. And all of this was a ton of work for the DM... trying to keep the story on track while allowing the players some freedom. We tried the campaign setting and in the end all went back to Greyhawk. It is more fun to play D&D when you don't know what is going to happen, have agency, can make your own characters, and aren't forced to any plotline. Even other modules weren't as linear as these. Still... the modules were fun to read, but it was honestly like reading a book.
The crazy thing is I love the Dragonlance novels and Dragonlance was my introduction to dungeons and dragons by a very by the book dungeon master and I remember playing this campaign and hating that I couldn’t deviate from the story and had no real affect on anything. I played an original character while others at the table played characters from the novels I designed my character to be antagonistic to almost every character and the DM hated me and I hated him it almost ruined dungeons and dragons for me until I discovered forgotten realms and started playing with a DM who allowed more homebrew rules
I've ran this campaign before in my earlier years (although I didn't finish the saga) and I basically changed a lot of the gameplay suited based on my players' actions. No NPCs are non-killable but I do try to "save" those that will further the plot. However, there are cases whereby the NPC got killed and I just create new NPC to plug the plot. It really depends on the skills, experience and story-telling abilities of the DM.
this sounds like my own experiences at the time: none of us enjoyed the railroad experience even though we all read and loved the books; using dnd rules we leveled up and trashed the draconians
I'm in the middle of this adventure with my 5e group. This one took some heavy revision in the first half to make an enjoyable story. I also changed elements of the story significantly. Instead of a bunch of charlatans, I have the Seekers as a secret society dedicated to restoring knowledge of the old gods. The Seekers have run afoul of the Dragon Army for obvious reasons. After the events at Xak Tsaroth, my group is sent back to the city (the equivalent of Haven) to find Elistan, the leader of the Seekers. Unfortunately, there's evidence he's been captured and taken to Pax Tharkas. Some of the elves in the group decide to swing by Qualinesti to inform the Speaker of what is going on. There they'll be resupplied and go on a stealth mission through the Sla-Mori to save Elistan. There are some really obvious changes to make to this adventure. Like, why is there a giant slug wandering around in the tomb of Kith-Kanan? Why not use a carrion crawler, which is a far cooler monster to face and more fitting with the setting? And why are the bodyguards of Kith-Kanan zombies? Elves and dwarves dabbling in necromancy??? Instead, I have a sort of guardian spirit placed by the elves to ward off tomb robbers. I kinda like the idea of the delusional red dragon, so I'll probably keep that part. By I already got rid of Verminaard and replaced him with a mysterious group of villains who seem to be leaders within the Dragon Army. The leader of Pax Tharkas is a particularly vicious fire mage (which fits the theme of the module being fire and red dragons) who might die a permanent death depending on how well the players do against her. (I have a different character, a dark cleric, for modules 3 and 4 already set up as a recurring villain.)
I am interested in these changes. Could I take a look at this module? It seems genuinely interesting what changes you could have. I might want to run a less race restrictive version of this.
So, I'll be running this for my group once we finish Dragons of Despair. But I have no intention of going along with the capsule idea. If Toede dies, which I'm guessing he will, it can very easily be a different hobgoblin that shows up later. Also, the extreme railroading strikes me as unnecessary.
I own the modules (as a bundled collectors edition) and am a DM. But I would never run them for players mostly due to the railroading nature. I bought them for the occasional inspiration for scenes (as some dungeons are very high quality); but the main reason for me as a Dragonlance fan and reader of the novels was to fill out some blanks the novels left. Like the Hammer of Kharas or the Icewall Encounter. But overall, browsing through the modules is still interesting by itself.
really cool reviews mate! will you do more on the following books? It would be nice to listen to them. To be honest these two videos kinda made me want to run a dnd campaign and just finish the one im currently running for vampire. its a quite different monster though. Any suggestions on this? Please keep up your neat work, you just got a new sub from me ;)
Any module serier based on a book series is always a railroad nightmare where the light at the end of the tunnel is another train... Be it Dragonlance, forgotten Realms, or any TSR/WofC property. And old school computer/video games are no better. I'm looking at you, Pool of Radiance!
Our poor DM. In the 80's we were a buncha Metallica-listening Chaotic Neutral teenage sociopaths. Railroading a story module did not work with us, we kept effing it up six ways to Sunday until the DM finally gave up and Deus Ex Machina'd a dimensional portal back to Greyhawk where we could loot ruins, commit general larceny, sell stuff and, occasionally, help some people, like our idols Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
Wow! I had always assumed that the novels were all based off of the playtesting of the modules. I would have hated to play the remaining modules based off of this review!
Railroading the story is not, of course, a concern with the novels, which are excellent. The modules are probably best enjoyed by Dragonlance fans who have read the novels and don't mind being railroaded.
As a DM I would raid these Dragonlance modules for their maps and content and run an entirely different game. I would never run a game in Krynn either because I think that dragons are overused in that world and I hate the idea of the nigh god like dragons allowing humans to use them as steeds. I loved the books though.
I'm always looking for modules be them print or PDF. I take out the maps or print the maps and store them in a folder. Also the npc lists, monsters, and treasures for a repository of useful things. The adventures? Not so much.
I read the Dragonlance books as a much younger man, and one of the few things I clearly recall is them finding that cool vibrating dragonslayer sword. I believe Tanis was the one who got it, only he then randomly lost it before even having a chance to put it to use. I remember finding this incredibly annoying. Like, what was even the point of that? Heroes acquiring awesome magic weapons is supposed to be important.
I have attempted to run these games at least 3 times with 3 different groups, and each time the party has met a sticky end. What I found most annoying, and dont get me wrong, I love the novels and even the campaign, was the amount of grammatical errors within the text and in some cases, the descriptions not aligning with the presented maps or no map provided. Admittedly, I bought the Chronicles series as a condensed 3 book set, with 4 of the original games in each book (the Green, Blue and Red covered books) and maybe they were not published with everything required. But as to my 2 coppers worth, its still a great story that hopefully Joe Manganella can get made into a movie one day.
I've run this module as part of the larger series a number of times, and it is always the weakest of the series, due mostly to the points you make. That said, I've found that most groups (not all) choose the path anticipated and don't require much nudging to go the right direction. The weakest part by far is the section between the fight in the bar and escape from the caravan, which basically is scripted. The rest has, in my experience, run pretty well. Players HATE to surrender and such a situation where they are forced to really upsets some of them.
If you run the modules, you can fix any Verminaard paradoxes by having someone on the enemy's side take on the persona of Verminaard, and only the party (and a handful of easily ignored common folk) would be able to claim the truth.
Everything that the Dragonlance modules got horribly wrong, the d20 Wheel of Time got right with their adventure "Prophecies of the Dragon". In PotD, the players adventure, doing important things as background for the novel story line, things that the story could not have succeeded without the players actions.
Yea I always planned a game around the modules and even have a bunch of the boxes sets but just never managed to figure out how to be a story teller rather then just a DM. Played through all the gold box PC Video games so have a feel for game play. Use to DM a long time Forgotren realms game, where we started an lever 2 and 3 and after little over a year most players were level 7 to 8. So can run a campaign using the modules. From all I heard from others about The Dragonlance setting game play is suposed to be heavy on environmental description and that concept was hard to grasp. To this day the audiobooks from the dragonlance world are my favorite of any audio book and still look for them on Audiable anytime have a long trip comming up. Anyway sorry to be so long but that is my take on Dragonlance for table top game play.
I think the biggest think that WotC missed with Dragonlance was that they never did OVA's or an animated series with one of the top Japanese animation studios that could have outdone Record of the Lodoss War.
Clone spell my friends, if for example the enemy is a Wizard, or has a lot of money have a clone spell ready for them to explain them escaping. And of course an NPC can be rezzed just like a a PC can be.
10:06-10:09- "The draconians will then invade the elf lands and slaughter the elves." And such a terrible, awful loss that would be. Seriously, except for Laurana and (eventually) Gilthanas, Krynn elves are all assholes.
We never got as far as this. Loved Cult of the Reptile God. And Liked Horror on the Hill. I'm glad we never got to this. Nobody dies? What is the point here? What is the game we are playing?
I'm kind of an avid believer when I make my own campaign settings and my own NPCs that none of them are immortal even my most hated NPC in the new group Lowtenn who has a lot of powers and abilities is very killable it has been fun slowly riling them up to the point they want to burn down a city to get him happy I don't allow evil alignment
I have only read the first Dragonlance novel, excluding the Tiamat Paladin (Verminard?) origin novel, which I read 20 years ago in middle school, yet even I can see how lazily and blatantly the adventure "design" lifts not only the setting, not only the encounters, but the *main characters of the canon* straight from the passages of the published novels and serves it up to us like we should give them money for other fantasy authors' work... ...With capsule force-fields around said characters, to boot it out of the park. The game designer must have been scared some kids in Iowa would ruin the whole series for Tracy & Hickman if they killed off the adventure twins or Goldshower or the others whom I forget the names of right now. Hilarious gaming relic, but would feel ripped off if I spent money for it.
I really enjoyed the first 3 novels, but got bored when my fav. character turned evil. I was never that interested in the modules as it didn't sound much like a fun world to inhabit. Really enjoying this series though
I never played the modules but I did read the entire series and the sequel series that feature Caramon as well as playing one of the old PC games. I loved the old PC game(s) because of its party pool system that allowed you to freely swap players in and out of your party from a pool of characters I learned to use it to my advantage. Because of the pool system along with multiple save games, I would swap characters in and out from one save to the next in order to duplicate items. So, whenever I got a really good piece of armor, a good sword, or what have, all of my characters who could use it would be equipped with it so I ended up with a fairly OP party.
TSR should have focused on a non-linear story, with customized, or even pre-generated characters to explore the immediate aftermath of the novels as they were written in a series where players could tell their own epic journeys instead of rehashing what was already told in the books themselves. I think they would have sold better and might have even developed a cult following of their own... But nah. Let's just do what we did once already since people seem to like it.
I never understood the "we can't make weapons out of gold, so it's worthless" concept. If your world is somehow so absurdly violent that you need steel to make weapons and armor that desperately, wouldn't that be a reason to *not* keep tons and tons of it tied up as currency?
Soooo.... theoretically when you fight the senile dragon, you could grab one of the kids by the scruff of the neck and use them as a literal human shield?
My D&D 3.5 group rant through the whole campaign. Serious problems with railroading. Allowing PC's to play characters led to wildly inappropriate characterizations and decisions. GMs are far better off to look at each module and attempt a sandbox scenario.
Playing through this module is the reason I *HATE* Dragonlance as a setting. If had such a bad experience with it that I can’t hear the word Dragonlance without gaging
Let's stop fooling ourselves... Every module (pre-gen or homebrew) is a "railroad" to some degree. There is no such thing as an infinite sandbox. And there are 2 types of "railroads": 1) Forcing the players to come up with 1, very specific, complex, and exact solution to any given conflict presented by the DM in-game, in order for the PC's to succeed. (Every DM does this to some degree!) 2) Forcing the players to proceed on a myopic, A-Z plot-path, and with no deviation. A to B to C etc. (Every DM does this! Even if it's mixed up to hide it as a A to C to B to F to D etc.) Here's a start to a completely open, non-railroad, DnD game: (with no rules, any set narrations, or boundaries) DM: "What do you all want to do?" PC's: (After several moments of confused silence) "What do we see?" DM: "I don't know, you tell me." Good luck with that format being fun!!! Just might as well and been better off to have an ad-lib movie-script night, rather than play DnD. Character creation and backstories are now a useless waste of time! We are all "railroaders"... And all our attempts at denial doesn't change the reality of our fantasy. We're all railroaders... deal with it!
Great videos, thanks for the detailed walkthrough and history! Is there any way to get in touch with you apart from Twitter? I'd love to discuss the possibility of an interview on my upcoming podcast. (Which is not linked to this UA-cam account, but ok)
I enjoyed the novels, but I would never use the modules as they were printed. I would at best use the ideas and then allow the players to go nuts at the expense of their demise and the enslavement of the world.
Dragonlance Classics volume I was the first D&D campaign I run. When it finished, I took the book and threw it at the floor in front of the players. Until now I don't like the notion of "plot" or "story" in tabletop RPGs.
It would be interesting to play these adventures without the npc capsules. Would love to see how unfettered PCs would do. Timeline continues but pcs can do anything.
"it's almost as if this was written by a frustrated fantasy novelist, rather than designed by a thoughtful game designer." yeah, it is almost like that.
The thing is, this type of adventure can work well if it's part of an ongoing fast paced campaign and not how the campaign is structured overall. I often dump players into a tight railroad with intense time constraints and limited options just to apply that sense of pressure on them for a while. The problem with DL2 was always that the Dragonlance campaign took SOOOOO fucking long to be released episodically, that if this was your second dip into the campaign, and the next session would be months down the line, a lot of people I know were just... "Nah... let's do Greyhawk." I know that a lot of people rate Dragonlance as some crowning moment of glory in the history of D&D... I have a very different memory. I remember going to the game shop, buying DL5... returning home all excited and sitting down to read it, and...it was a fucking SOURCEBOOK. Then we eventually got DL6, and half the players had to dump their characters as the party split, and couldn't play them again till DL10... where everyone had to dump their character and go back to playing one they hadn't played since DL4, or another new meat shield (N)PC Then of course, there's the matter of not getting the full benefit of the material unless you had the AD&D Battlesystem set, and the general, overall feeling my players felt, that by the time you were at about DL8, there was little point to coming up with any clever ideas as a player, since it was all a bit pre-scripted. Years later I ran it again a couple of times, but only after some very heavy editing on my part and with the benefit of having ALL the modules available from the start. Even then, it all felt a bit like one of those dreams where you are trying to run but your legs won't take you where you want to go. Dragonlance was a very ambitious project, a long, sprawling, epic campaign told in three acts with the Tolkienesque small party start out, split party and introduce new characters, (which, to be fair, was absolutely the right way to go for the DL books) and epic finale, arc. It tried to introduce new elements like , "Hey, if any of your group can play a musical instrument... we have SONGS!" and abstractions of the game made into manageable and possibly re-useable add-ons. But what it needed was a coherent core with a single lead writer having a firm hand in the construction. It would have been much better to release in three parts, as mega modules like Temple Of Elemental Evil. I think one of the problems across the series was that people like Douglas Niles would be thrown a brief where "This, this and this needs to happen, in these places... throw in this set piece and fight scene, but these people need to be alive at the end... go write THAT module. Oh, and see if you can't stick a song in there too."
i got so into Dragonlance in my teen years, the novels only, as everyone i knew played Forgotten Realms and i think i understand why now
When a DM ran this module for us, he made there be a final battle against Verminaard and Ember, by having us and villagers face down a horde of draconians and having Verminaard and Ember rain destruction down from above. The battle for the first round was very touch and go, until Flamestrike appeared and grounded Ember and Verminaard. At that point, it was a race to get Verminaard down to half HP, before he and his forces overwhelmed us. At half HP, he called to Ember, whom snatched him up and the two fled the battle, leaving his forces to cover his escape.
While killing Verminaard was off the table for us, we had the chance to actually save Flamestrike's life via healing and preventing damage to her (which we did), so that she would come back later. Sadly the campaign died after we cleared Dragons of Hope, so we never found out what would have happened...
I felt that, after listening to this, was a great way the DM spun it, to give a conclusion and a chance to have our actions make a difference. Rather surprising to hear none of those options were in the original module.
I am huge Dragonlance fan, but you're spot on these reviews and overviews. Anyone interested should just read the books.
Yeah, the campaign setting was great, but the modules sucked.
Aye.
i agree the books were the best out of all the ones tsr and later wotc published for any of their campaigns.
The books are hammy and campy but fun to read.
Best part is when Lord Soth faces Tanis in the burning streets, the death knight going on foot and even allowing Tanis to have his weapon in a twisted manner of chivalry. God damn.
Flamestrike's character and death was one of the most brilliant and concise bits of the Dragonlance books. In that moment she's not a enemy, she's an old creature suffering flashbacks to her children fighting a war that is already lost and die for it.
As a DM, I always wanted to run a Dragonlance campaign. I did it for a few months in the late 90's after POURING over the novels, buying the sourcebook and modules, and cannibilizing the module resources to flesh it out. It took months of preparation but it was fun while it lasted. It boiled down to an escape to Palanthas campaign. Unfortunately, there was so few places to take it and I was spent after pulling all THAT together that we moved on to Star Wars.
Read the novels in High School & had a huge crush on Tika 🥰 Never played the modules however but loved the Commodore 64 video games.
Omg I hope there's more of this series exploring all of the DragonLance game version. As a HUGE fan of the major 2 trilogies learning the differences is Absolutely FASCINATING.
For example, learning Verminaard was supposed to survive, Makes So Much More Sense. Why would Takhisis, Queen of Darkness Herself, need to flee from a minor healer Goddess? Dragons of 4he Dwarven Depths would also have been Far less confusing with Verminaard. This is worthy of a stand alone series.
I really enjoy your channel. The topics you discuss are really useful for new players/ DMs to learn the history and lore surrounding the worlds of D&D. The information is presented in an entertaining way, and the video backgrounds/ graphics are of great quality and edited well. I just wish you had more content. Please keep working on this channel, you are offering a valuable resource that nobody else is providing.
Re 24:23 I read the books while going through the modules.
Luckily my DM was awesome and he was running the modules differently than the books. I missed a few sessions and was kinda lost when I reattended.
Later I bought the modules and read them. Wow. It made me realize how truly awesome my DM had been. There's no way in heck I coulda ran those monstrosities. I still have them and enjoy going through them from time to time. Nostalgia
When I played this series in the 80s, none of the players had read the books. By the time we got to the third or fourth module, the DM had the second novel open behind his screen and was literally saying "And then you say ______, and you smile, then you say _______". We went behind his back and read the books at that point, and the campaign soon came to an end.
The novels to this day are still some of my favorite fantasy.
Id like to see you continue this series, i have sort of aquired a heap of dl stuff including this campaign in 3 books
I am at the moment running a Dragonlance 'War of the Lance' campaign. I have changed PLENTY of stuff from the modules, but I still use them for the maps and mostly inspiration. I must say tho, 23 episodes in and the campaign looks almost nothing like the novels
That's good. The novels are their own timeline. Your players are meant to be the heroes of the setting and their choices matter.
That's awesome! I had always assumed that's how the novels had gotten written. All based off of playtesting from the modules!
What's most galling about this module is how easy it would have been to give players more agency, while still funneling them in the direction of the plot. Instead of forcing them to be captured in the bar, have that be the price of losing the fight. Whereas if they win, the elf NPC will offer to lead them to safety in the Elf Lands. Same with escaping the slave caravan: if the PCs don't escape on their own, the elves can arrive to help them. Heck, give them the ability to learn about Pax Tharkas at the start, and let them go there on their own initiative if they want. The point of the module is to get the party to the dungeon. It doesn't really matter how.
Laurana doesn't really NEED to be kidnapped on the party's watch. They could foil the kidnapping, then bring her along (or not; she can catch up later). And if the party never arrives at the Elf Lands, well obviously she can be kidnapped offscreen and be freed later with the other prisoners.
Same with Verminarde's death. If he's so important that he needs to come back in later modules (and even the novel writers didn't think so, since he canonically dies here), he can just be resurrected by Takhisis. He IS a Cleric of hers, and probably considered valuable enough to bring back. So if he appears in the later module, he can show off his sick scar from when the PCs laid him low the last time. (And if he dies again, just say that Takhisis considers him a failure and not worth bringing back a second time).
Thank you SO MUCH for making these videos! Watching this one is VERY CRUCIAL FOR ME right now because i am running a War of the Lance game with friends (I am the DM) and right now we are EXACTLY AT the point where we start to head off for the Sla-Mori .... i am literally going to introduce them to Eben and they'll be starting off in Pax Tharkas literally next game day lolllllllllllll THIS HELPS ME A LOT though!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
Your channel came up in my suggestions and since I'm an old school AD&D 2nd Ed player I figured I'd check it out, I really enjoyed your content so far thanks it great to revisit these settings! My favorite setting was always Ravenloft ( though it took great care for a campaign to be ran in it). I hope someday you will have time to make some content on the awesome modules set in it ( the Van Richten books were always a favorite of mine as well).
Dragonlance helped forge my lifelong love of fantasy. Thanks for the video!
Lol I've waited my whole lifes only to watch 3 yrs later- I'm still watchin! Don't stop now . . .
Please do D&D Walkthrough of Ravenloft
yea....for halloween
The original Ravenloft module had the most ridiculously overpowered NPC villagers I've ever seen. 'This guy is a blacksmith, he must be strong, he's a 10th level Fighter'.
All I require from the new modules:
A map of Krynn.
The magic system.
Specific classes for the world (i.e. knights of Solamnia, wizard schools).
The gods.
The rest can be whatever.
❤️.
I watched part one, and was amused at the fact that I own PHARO.......
And then I watched part two, and my first module ever, was horror on the hill.
I still have these modules.
And I still have my 80's basic set w/the box!
Must say, a post apocalyptic fantasy setting where the gods are gone and a gigantic dragon horde is descending on the world. Quite neat actually.
19:53 While in the novels, her naivety is part of her character growth, and later she finds herself being called the 'Golden General' while taking an active part in the cause.
Laurana is the Weiss/Hickmann "Eowyn" proxy...
ETA she also doubles as the Arwyn proxy with her being the Elven Princess with unbound love for that "Ranger from the North..." hero dude.
Dragons and railroads, the train MUST run on time. It really was a bad time for dungeons when this back then was considered great writing and now its a * hot classic*.
I would say take a look at Dragons of Autumns, the 3.5 re-release by Margaret Weis Productions. It's available on the DM's Guild and fixes many of these problems.
More Dragonlance videos please!
First let me start off by saying I absolutely love your videos. Ed dragonlance is my absolute favorite Dungeons & Dragons setting. I also agree that the modules were not as good as the novels. But I would also love to see any more videos of you discussing the dragonlance modules
I agree with you on the modules not being as good as the novels.
Much good advice if someone wants to play these games after all these years! Thumbs up.
While many of your points are spot on - the nature of this railroad adventure was a fantastic introduction into the basic mechanics of the game for a newb DM. I ran these modules when I was in the 5th grade for some friends and it was cake. I graduated to crafting open worlds and dealing with players splitting up for months on end later... This was really a great introduction from the DM side.
I read many of the Dragonlance novels and I really liked the setting set just before the 4th (or 3rd?) Dragon War. Using steel as currancy, the Gods are gone and Ansalon is in decline.
I love the retro style of your videos. Very very enjoyable. Would love to see more of these! I got into the novels last year and probably wont find myself playing adnd soon, so getting a summary of this stuff from you is awesome!
I like this run through. I have been thinking about adapting some of this for 5e, and it's good to get a critical review of what we can do to bypass some of the pitfalls.
I've learnt it depends on the players. I have a few who would probably enjoy these because they don't care about being railroaded as they enjoy a really good story and will willingly seek it (as I play Eberron and let's face it, alot of those modules are scripted but tweekable), but a few who No matter how you'd tweek it would hate it as they're not bothered in playing anything involving NPCs let alone a storyline. Atm the time these were written, no d&d modules at the time were really given a story to role play out and you can tell what they were trying to do and didn't quite know how to give a story without making things incredibly scripted. They have sort of learned since then, but not to the point where they've solved minior areas of scripted events.... but sometimes a scripted event can change how a character plays the campaign from then forth (especially in an AL senario)
This should have gotten many upvotes a long time ago!!! But some people can't deal with the truth.
Dragonlance is good for reading, not much so for playing. Back in the day we used to play our own custom adventures, but totally unrelated to the original plot, with custom characters. Stuff like sneaking into Xak Tsaroth and discovering the origin of draconians etc. Good times.
Players NEVER submit to capture...
You have to force it n them by putting them to sleep and chaining the in their sleep, or yo will have a fight to the death.
And even then, the Druid is going to wild shape out of the chains and unlock everyone else so they can fight to the death.
Too true 👍
In 5e, there's an optional rule that if you reduce a target to 0 HP, you can choose to have it be a knock-out blow, so they aren't having to make death saves. Obviously this wasn't necessarily an option in earlier editions, since hitting 0 HP meant death. But it's a useful mechanic the DM can employ, if the players would rather fight to the death. Have the bad guys knock the PCs out instead of killing them, so they can be taken.
20:24 You have to feel sorry for white dragon when you realize THEIR OWN KIND consider them nothing more than Elite Mooks.
I remember this adventure, not from the module itself, but from a Choose your Own Adventure series.
I had never read the books when we got the modules. They had great art work, story, presentation, and a different setting, but they all failed as D&D modules. We must have started it three or four times and rarely got past the first or second module. We tried making out own characters... that didn't work as they story needed the named characters to advance. We then tried using the given characters, but still the DM has to run half of them as there were only 3-4 of us at any time. Even then, the linear nature of the story was always like a cloud over the game. Even without having read the books, we all knew we needed to do X and then Y. Worse, it was good a scale which affected every encounter. Master Toad gets away... even if you have a mounted knight character able to run him down. And all of this was a ton of work for the DM... trying to keep the story on track while allowing the players some freedom.
We tried the campaign setting and in the end all went back to Greyhawk. It is more fun to play D&D when you don't know what is going to happen, have agency, can make your own characters, and aren't forced to any plotline. Even other modules weren't as linear as these.
Still... the modules were fun to read, but it was honestly like reading a book.
Like a lot of Planescape modules.
The crazy thing is I love the Dragonlance novels and Dragonlance was my introduction to dungeons and dragons by a very by the book dungeon master and I remember playing this campaign and hating that I couldn’t deviate from the story and had no real affect on anything. I played an original character while others at the table played characters from the novels I designed my character to be antagonistic to almost every character and the DM hated me and I hated him it almost ruined dungeons and dragons for me until I discovered forgotten realms and started playing with a DM who allowed more homebrew rules
I've ran this campaign before in my earlier years (although I didn't finish the saga) and I basically changed a lot of the gameplay suited based on my players' actions. No NPCs are non-killable but I do try to "save" those that will further the plot. However, there are cases whereby the NPC got killed and I just create new NPC to plug the plot.
It really depends on the skills, experience and story-telling abilities of the DM.
this sounds like my own experiences at the time: none of us enjoyed the railroad experience even though we all read and loved the books; using dnd rules we leveled up and trashed the draconians
I'm in the middle of this adventure with my 5e group. This one took some heavy revision in the first half to make an enjoyable story. I also changed elements of the story significantly. Instead of a bunch of charlatans, I have the Seekers as a secret society dedicated to restoring knowledge of the old gods. The Seekers have run afoul of the Dragon Army for obvious reasons. After the events at Xak Tsaroth, my group is sent back to the city (the equivalent of Haven) to find Elistan, the leader of the Seekers. Unfortunately, there's evidence he's been captured and taken to Pax Tharkas. Some of the elves in the group decide to swing by Qualinesti to inform the Speaker of what is going on. There they'll be resupplied and go on a stealth mission through the Sla-Mori to save Elistan.
There are some really obvious changes to make to this adventure. Like, why is there a giant slug wandering around in the tomb of Kith-Kanan? Why not use a carrion crawler, which is a far cooler monster to face and more fitting with the setting? And why are the bodyguards of Kith-Kanan zombies? Elves and dwarves dabbling in necromancy??? Instead, I have a sort of guardian spirit placed by the elves to ward off tomb robbers.
I kinda like the idea of the delusional red dragon, so I'll probably keep that part. By I already got rid of Verminaard and replaced him with a mysterious group of villains who seem to be leaders within the Dragon Army. The leader of Pax Tharkas is a particularly vicious fire mage (which fits the theme of the module being fire and red dragons) who might die a permanent death depending on how well the players do against her. (I have a different character, a dark cleric, for modules 3 and 4 already set up as a recurring villain.)
Cool changes 👍
I really like your idea of a killable BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy)
I am interested in these changes. Could I take a look at this module? It seems genuinely interesting what changes you could have. I might want to run a less race restrictive version of this.
The Xorns of Pax Tharkas module, neat!
Loved this 2-parter. It would be awesome if you could more but I understand why you wouldn't.
Modern video game developers could learn from this.
So, I'll be running this for my group once we finish Dragons of Despair. But I have no intention of going along with the capsule idea. If Toede dies, which I'm guessing he will, it can very easily be a different hobgoblin that shows up later. Also, the extreme railroading strikes me as unnecessary.
I agree.
Fewmaster Frog, then Fewmaster Salamander, Then Fewmaster Skink...
You could also just have an evil cleric revive him. I recall he does come back to life in one of the side novels.
I own the modules (as a bundled collectors edition) and am a DM. But I would never run them for players mostly due to the railroading nature. I bought them for the occasional inspiration for scenes (as some dungeons are very high quality); but the main reason for me as a Dragonlance fan and reader of the novels was to fill out some blanks the novels left. Like the Hammer of Kharas or the Icewall Encounter. But overall, browsing through the modules is still interesting by itself.
really cool reviews mate! will you do more on the following books?
It would be nice to listen to them.
To be honest these two videos kinda made me want to run a dnd campaign and just finish the one im currently running for vampire. its a quite different monster though. Any suggestions on this?
Please keep up your neat work, you just got a new sub from me ;)
Let us invent a TSR module, The Fire Xorns of Xak Tsaroth! Hell yeah!
You guys should have videos on how you would fix problems with modules you've reviewed. It might be interesting. :)
Any module serier based on a book series is always a railroad nightmare where the light at the end of the tunnel is another train... Be it Dragonlance, forgotten Realms, or any TSR/WofC property. And old school computer/video games are no better. I'm looking at you, Pool of Radiance!
O hear the train a coming
Coming down the tracks
Our poor DM. In the 80's we were a buncha Metallica-listening Chaotic Neutral teenage sociopaths. Railroading a story module did not work with us, we kept effing it up six ways to Sunday until the DM finally gave up and Deus Ex Machina'd a dimensional portal back to Greyhawk where we could loot ruins, commit general larceny, sell stuff and, occasionally, help some people, like our idols Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
Nyes
Wow! I had always assumed that the novels were all based off of the playtesting of the modules.
I would have hated to play the remaining modules based off of this review!
Railroading the story is not, of course, a concern with the novels, which are excellent. The modules are probably best enjoyed by Dragonlance fans who have read the novels and don't mind being railroaded.
As a DM I would raid these Dragonlance modules for their maps and content and run an entirely different game. I would never run a game in Krynn either because I think that dragons are overused in that world and I hate the idea of the nigh god like dragons allowing humans to use them as steeds. I loved the books though.
I'm always looking for modules be them print or PDF. I take out the maps or print the maps and store them in a folder. Also the npc lists, monsters, and treasures for a repository of useful things. The adventures? Not so much.
I read the Dragonlance books as a much younger man, and one of the few things I clearly recall is them finding that cool vibrating dragonslayer sword. I believe Tanis was the one who got it, only he then randomly lost it before even having a chance to put it to use. I remember finding this incredibly annoying. Like, what was even the point of that? Heroes acquiring awesome magic weapons is supposed to be important.
Live the books. Deffinetly better than any Drizzit novel for sure
thanks for this I enjoyed it very much
I have attempted to run these games at least 3 times with 3 different groups, and each time the party has met a sticky end. What I found most annoying, and dont get me wrong, I love the novels and even the campaign, was the amount of grammatical errors within the text and in some cases, the descriptions not aligning with the presented maps or no map provided. Admittedly, I bought the Chronicles series as a condensed 3 book set, with 4 of the original games in each book (the Green, Blue and Red covered books) and maybe they were not published with everything required. But as to my 2 coppers worth, its still a great story that hopefully Joe Manganella can get made into a movie one day.
I've run this module as part of the larger series a number of times, and it is always the weakest of the series, due mostly to the points you make. That said, I've found that most groups (not all) choose the path anticipated and don't require much nudging to go the right direction. The weakest part by far is the section between the fight in the bar and escape from the caravan, which basically is scripted. The rest has, in my experience, run pretty well. Players HATE to surrender and such a situation where they are forced to really upsets some of them.
If you run the modules, you can fix any Verminaard paradoxes by having someone on the enemy's side take on the persona of Verminaard, and only the party (and a handful of easily ignored common folk) would be able to claim the truth.
I enjoyed this very much
Everything that the Dragonlance modules got horribly wrong, the d20 Wheel of Time got right with their adventure "Prophecies of the Dragon". In PotD, the players adventure, doing important things as background for the novel story line, things that the story could not have succeeded without the players actions.
Yea I always planned a game around the modules and even have a bunch of the boxes sets but just never managed to figure out how to be a story teller rather then just a DM. Played through all the gold box PC Video games so have a feel for game play. Use to DM a long time Forgotren realms game, where we started an lever 2 and 3 and after little over a year most players were level 7 to 8. So can run a campaign using the modules. From all I heard from others about The Dragonlance setting game play is suposed to be heavy on environmental description and that concept was hard to grasp. To this day the audiobooks from the dragonlance world are my favorite of any audio book and still look for them on Audiable anytime have a long trip comming up. Anyway sorry to be so long but that is my take on Dragonlance for table top game play.
How about The Dragons of Fell Morgul Vale, Yea!
I think the biggest think that WotC missed with Dragonlance was that they never did OVA's or an animated series with one of the top Japanese animation studios that could have outdone Record of the Lodoss War.
Clone spell my friends, if for example the enemy is a Wizard, or has a lot of money have a clone spell ready for them to explain them escaping. And of course an NPC can be rezzed just like a a PC can be.
Will there be more of these Dragonlance module reviews?
10:06-10:09- "The draconians will then invade the elf lands and slaughter the elves."
And such a terrible, awful loss that would be. Seriously, except for Laurana and (eventually) Gilthanas, Krynn elves are all assholes.
We never got as far as this. Loved Cult of the Reptile God. And Liked Horror on the Hill.
I'm glad we never got to this. Nobody dies? What is the point here? What is the game we are playing?
"Tanis's beard quivered"
Will you be continuing this series?
I'm kind of an avid believer when I make my own campaign settings and my own NPCs that none of them are immortal even my most hated NPC in the new group Lowtenn who has a lot of powers and abilities is very killable it has been fun slowly riling them up to the point they want to burn down a city to get him happy I don't allow evil alignment
I have only read the first Dragonlance novel, excluding the Tiamat Paladin (Verminard?) origin novel, which I read 20 years ago in middle school, yet even I can see how lazily and blatantly the adventure "design" lifts not only the setting, not only the encounters, but the *main characters of the canon* straight from the passages of the published novels and serves it up to us like we should give them money for other fantasy authors' work...
...With capsule force-fields around said characters, to boot it out of the park.
The game designer must have been scared some kids in Iowa would ruin the whole series for Tracy & Hickman if they killed off the adventure twins or Goldshower or the others whom I forget the names of right now.
Hilarious gaming relic, but would feel ripped off if I spent money for it.
I really enjoyed the first 3 novels, but got bored when my fav. character turned evil.
I was never that interested in the modules as it didn't sound much like a fun world to inhabit. Really enjoying this series though
I never played the modules but I did read the entire series and the sequel series that feature Caramon as well as playing one of the old PC games. I loved the old PC game(s) because of its party pool system that allowed you to freely swap players in and out of your party from a pool of characters I learned to use it to my advantage. Because of the pool system along with multiple save games, I would swap characters in and out from one save to the next in order to duplicate items. So, whenever I got a really good piece of armor, a good sword, or what have, all of my characters who could use it would be equipped with it so I ended up with a fairly OP party.
modules started coming out before books
dl1 march - novel november
TSR should have focused on a non-linear story, with customized, or even pre-generated characters to explore the immediate aftermath of the novels as they were written in a series where players could tell their own epic journeys instead of rehashing what was already told in the books themselves. I think they would have sold better and might have even developed a cult following of their own... But nah. Let's just do what we did once already since people seem to like it.
I never understood the "we can't make weapons out of gold, so it's worthless" concept. If your world is somehow so absurdly violent that you need steel to make weapons and armor that desperately, wouldn't that be a reason to *not* keep tons and tons of it tied up as currency?
Soooo.... theoretically when you fight the senile dragon, you could grab one of the kids by the scruff of the neck and use them as a literal human shield?
Yep!
“Alignment violation!” declared the DM. “Your character is now a NPC. Hand me your PC sheet and leave.”
I've never been clear on what came first the modules or the books?
2:16 Milhouse! NOOOOO!!
My D&D 3.5 group rant through the whole campaign. Serious problems with railroading. Allowing PC's to play characters led to wildly inappropriate characterizations and decisions.
GMs are far better off to look at each module and attempt a sandbox scenario.
Playing through this module is the reason I *HATE* Dragonlance as a setting. If had such a bad experience with it that I can’t hear the word Dragonlance without gaging
Let's stop fooling ourselves... Every module (pre-gen or homebrew) is a "railroad" to some degree. There is no such thing as an infinite sandbox. And there are 2 types of "railroads":
1) Forcing the players to come up with 1, very specific, complex, and exact solution to any given conflict presented by the DM in-game, in order for the PC's to succeed. (Every DM does this to some degree!)
2) Forcing the players to proceed on a myopic, A-Z plot-path, and with no deviation. A to B to C etc. (Every DM does this! Even if it's mixed up to hide it as a A to C to B to F to D etc.)
Here's a start to a completely open, non-railroad, DnD game: (with no rules, any set narrations, or boundaries)
DM: "What do you all want to do?"
PC's: (After several moments of confused silence) "What do we see?"
DM: "I don't know, you tell me."
Good luck with that format being fun!!! Just might as well and been better off to have an ad-lib movie-script night, rather than play DnD. Character creation and backstories are now a useless waste of time!
We are all "railroaders"... And all our attempts at denial doesn't change the reality of our fantasy. We're all railroaders... deal with it!
Great videos, thanks for the detailed walkthrough and history! Is there any way to get in touch with you apart from Twitter? I'd love to discuss the possibility of an interview on my upcoming podcast. (Which is not linked to this UA-cam account, but ok)
Any chance you will cover the other modules?
Any chance we will see you go over DL3-DL14?
Wait, wait, Raistlin had 10 CON all this time?! I feel completely misled.
What is the worst case of a module rail roading?
Do those black and white pictures come from the D&D modules themselves?
I enjoyed the novels, but I would never use the modules as they were printed. I would at best use the ideas and then allow the players to go nuts at the expense of their demise and the enslavement of the world.
Dragonlance Classics volume I was the first D&D campaign I run. When it finished, I took the book and threw it at the floor in front of the players. Until now I don't like the notion of "plot" or "story" in tabletop RPGs.
It would be interesting to play these adventures without the npc capsules. Would love to see how unfettered PCs would do. Timeline continues but pcs can do anything.
"it's almost as if this was written by a frustrated fantasy novelist, rather than designed by a thoughtful game designer."
yeah, it is almost like that.
I read the modules but decided not to run them because it was a railroad
Funny that the author railroaded less than the guy who stepped in for them.
NPC Capsuls: Plot Armor, before it was cool.
Your screen caps of the PC/NPC stats need better OCR. Like Gilthanas is an FS/MU4 instead of a F5/MU4 and I14 is 114.
If you need a proofreader, I can help.
Also for Eben, 115 instead of I15 and CS instead of C5. Many such occurrences exist...
"baal and chains?" Do you use a robo-voice for you videos? Wow....
The thing is, this type of adventure can work well if it's part of an ongoing fast paced campaign and not how the campaign is structured overall.
I often dump players into a tight railroad with intense time constraints and limited options just to apply that sense of pressure on them for a while.
The problem with DL2 was always that the Dragonlance campaign took SOOOOO fucking long to be released episodically, that if this was your second dip into the campaign, and the next session would be months down the line, a lot of people I know were just... "Nah... let's do Greyhawk."
I know that a lot of people rate Dragonlance as some crowning moment of glory in the history of D&D... I have a very different memory.
I remember going to the game shop, buying DL5... returning home all excited and sitting down to read it, and...it was a fucking SOURCEBOOK. Then we eventually got DL6, and half the players had to dump their characters as the party split, and couldn't play them again till DL10... where everyone had to dump their character and go back to playing one they hadn't played since DL4, or another new meat shield (N)PC
Then of course, there's the matter of not getting the full benefit of the material unless you had the AD&D Battlesystem set, and the general, overall feeling my players felt, that by the time you were at about DL8, there was little point to coming up with any clever ideas as a player, since it was all a bit pre-scripted.
Years later I ran it again a couple of times, but only after some very heavy editing on my part and with the benefit of having ALL the modules available from the start. Even then, it all felt a bit like one of those dreams where you are trying to run but your legs won't take you where you want to go.
Dragonlance was a very ambitious project, a long, sprawling, epic campaign told in three acts with the Tolkienesque small party start out, split party and introduce new characters, (which, to be fair, was absolutely the right way to go for the DL books) and epic finale, arc. It tried to introduce new elements like , "Hey, if any of your group can play a musical instrument... we have SONGS!" and abstractions of the game made into manageable and possibly re-useable add-ons. But what it needed was a coherent core with a single lead writer having a firm hand in the construction. It would have been much better to release in three parts, as mega modules like Temple Of Elemental Evil.
I think one of the problems across the series was that people like Douglas Niles would be thrown a brief where "This, this and this needs to happen, in these places... throw in this set piece and fight scene, but these people need to be alive at the end... go write THAT module. Oh, and see if you can't stick a song in there too."
So much ekscaping 😂