They didn't make it the campaign setting for this year, even though it's the anniversary. They took away the license when they went to 4e. According to some people on these boards, WotC people have said they won't do Dragonlance for some time, if at all.
So then why not let MWP do it?
Simple question really.
They didn't make it the campaign setting for this year, even though it's the anniversary. They took away the license when they went to 4e. According to some people on these boards, WotC people have said they won't do Dragonlance for some time, if at all.
So then why not let MWP do it?
Because how else would they be able to murder Dragonlance, **** and pillage its corpse for things like Cyan Bloodbane, draconians, and civilized minotaurs?
Seriously, all WotC's D&D designers have shown me over the past couple months is that they lack originality.
Myself along with some of the other fans are seriously considering a temp doc for the basic rules for a 4e DL game. It probably won't be a full blown sourcebook like adlatum, but it would prove very helpful.
I myself and bummed out, not as much because I am a huge fan of DS as well as DL. But the best thing I can think of is to take this energy we have and put it to a constructive use.
Not that you are doing this, but bashing wotc or darksun will not help the situation. Asking why they won't allow MWP to once again work on DL probably won't do any good at all. I know I'v asked the same questions and always got the same answers. None of which made me happy.
Come on over to the nexus and post ideas you have on 4e DL. Alignment is a current issue and how it should be handled. Bring us your thoughts. By all means continue to post here on the wotc boards too, but share with the folks at the nexus. Not all of us read the wotc forums.;)
Simple question really.
They didn't make it the campaign setting for this year, even though it's the anniversary. They took away the license when they went to 4e. According to some people on these boards, WotC people have said they won't do Dragonlance for some time, if at all.
So then why not let MWP do it?
Probably because the legal department started raising hell. At times they seem very TSR esque with the Zealous Lawyer department.
They didn't take it away either, from my understanding SP chose not to renew the license which is a pretty big difference.
As for why not let them do it? Probably because the sales weren't that hot to begin with? There were also loads of players ****** off about the Age Of Mortals book in particular.
Also perhaps because all parties involved thought it best to probably reevaluate what makes DL really Different. Each setting should bring something Unique to the table.
Now DL could be retooled to be a War Setting, however thematically it's still quite abit of Medieval Europe Tolkien World.
They would have to advance the plot and substantially alter the setting me thinks for them to do a release that wouldn't just feel like Old Hat Tricks. I suspect if Dl were to return it won't be a High Fantasy setting anymore. And it's going to need time to be gone through, determine what is and isn't canon, and how it's going to be altered -properly- to ensure it doesn't tick off existing fans, while simultaneously bringing New Fans.
They didn't take it away either, from my understanding SP chose not to renew the license which is a pretty big difference.
From what I understand from the MWP/SP folks is that there was never an option to renew.
If you folks are members of the nexus, the best thing you can do is go over there and offer your opinions and ideas on what things you would like to see in a 4e conversion document of DL and how you would do things personally.
Myself along with some of the other fans are seriously considering a temp doc for the basic rules for a 4e DL game. It probably won't be a full blown sourcebook like adlatum, but it would prove very helpful.
I myself and bummed out, not as much because I am a huge fan of DS as well as DL. But the best thing I can think of is to take this energy we have and put it to a constructive use.
Not that you are doing this, but bashing wotc or darksun will not help the situation. Asking why they won't allow MWP to once again work on DL probably won't do any good at all. I know I'v asked the same questions and always got the same answers. None of which made me happy.
Come on over to the nexus and post ideas you have on 4e DL. Alignment is a current issue and how it should be handled. Bring us your thoughts. By all means continue to post here on the wotc boards too, but share with the folks at the nexus. Not all of us read the wotc forums.;)
I've been to the Nexus before. Quite a bit. I've even submitted a thing or two in the past.
I used to be somewhat active on the DL forums too, but really only in the novel area. I've been active in this forum for longer than that.
I really don't want to put in the effort of creating source material though. For that much, I can just use my 3.5 DL books and change the stats. I wanted true 4e support, whether from WotC, or preferably MWP/SP (I can never remember which name they currently are.)
Probably because the legal department started raising hell. At times they seem very TSR esque with the Zealous Lawyer department.
They didn't take it away either, from my understanding SP chose not to renew the license which is a pretty big difference.
That's completely incorrect. The license was not available to them to be renewed. That's directly from Margaret Weis' keyboard to my eyes.
As for why not let them do it? Probably because the sales weren't that hot to begin with? There were also loads of players ****** off about the Age Of Mortals book in particular.
I don't think sales were as anemic as you're portraying them. There were an awful lot of 3e DL books for it to have been an unsuccessful line. Actually, the speculation has been that Dragonlance was too successful under them for WotC to allow them to continue into 4e.
And I don't know what constitutes "loads" of players. I know that I don't know a single Dragonlance fan who didn't like the Age of Mortals source material.
Also perhaps because all parties involved thought it best to probably reevaluate what makes DL really Different. Each setting should bring something Unique to the table.
I highly doubt the validity of this statement. "All" parties would include MWP, and I am certain they were unhappy to have lost the license.
Now DL could be retooled to be a War Setting, however thematically it's still quite abit of Medieval Europe Tolkien World.
They would have to advance the plot and substantially alter the setting me thinks for them to do a release that wouldn't just feel like Old Hat Tricks. I suspect if Dl were to return it won't be a High Fantasy setting anymore. And it's going to need time to be gone through, determine what is and isn't canon, and how it's going to be altered -properly- to ensure it doesn't tick off existing fans, while simultaneously bringing New Fans.
The Age of Mortals breaks all of the ideas people have of Dragonlance on the world of Krynn. Suffice to say, Dragonlance in the current age is more 4e-ready than any other setting.
No. I think I'll stay. This thread is just complaining about WotC not re-upping a license they own. It's just complaining and whining and cannot lead to anything fruitful. Let the thread die.
Actually, the thread is regarding why they couldn't just let another company have the license if they're not going to use it anyway.
There are fans of the setting, and there was a company more than happy to service them.
This thread isn't "just complaining and whining." You're just a troll.
I don’t think either option is very great. In terms of world shaking event to remake the setting, I would say “been there, down that, enough cataclysms already". Also if you change the setting too radically then it is not recognizable as DL anymore so it becomes self defeating.
In terms of War of the Lance, I would say it has been done to death and I have 3 other editions worth of books on this period. Also if they did do war of the lance they would either be shackled by a set timeline or do a reboot (not crazy about either).
So I don’t think we will see 4E DL anytime soon. The only plausible option might be if they do a few non-high fantasy settings for a while and decide that one year they want to do a more classic high fantasy world for change.
Frankly I would just be happy with some new novels set in the current timeline that I could loot for game ideas.
In any case, one way or another, I hope you guys get a setting soon. Considering that WotC plans to release (at least) one new setting per year, I am sure that Dragonlance will be released eventually. Considering all the signs, I also think its probably sooner rather than later.
No. I think I'll stay. This thread is just complaining about WotC not re-upping a license they own. It's just complaining and whining and cannot lead to anything fruitful. Let the thread die.
Actually, the thread is regarding why they couldn't just let another company have the license if they're not going to use it anyway. There are fans of the setting, and there was a company more than happy to service them. This thread isn't "just complaining and whining." You're just a troll.
Because they DO intend to use it...maybe not as quickly as we would like (next year) but they do have plans for it. I'm sure the 2011 campaign world is already under development, and the 2012 has already been selected and is just waiting for the teams to finish writing material for Dark Sun so they can concentrate on things coming down the line in the future.
No. I think I'll stay. This thread is just complaining about WotC not re-upping a license they own. It's just complaining and whining and cannot lead to anything fruitful. Let the thread die.
Funny you say that. All the 'complaining and whining' by DL fans convinced wizards to allow Dragons of the Hourglass Mage to be published after they had previously canceled it. Sometimes if you shout loud enough you can stir the ice cold heart of a corporation to do something positive!
Perhaps DL needs the treatment FR got for 4E. Advance the timeline by 100 years or so but instead of some cataclysmic event we should have 100 years of stabilization after so many world changing events.
This is what I did for my campaign.
It was set almost 500 years into the future and had a lot of minor nation changes to acount for all the effects of the current novels.
My hope is to get DL by 2011, but I doubt it will get that slotting. Hopefully it will be before 2013 due to the off chance of there not being a 2013.
Anyway... MWP.
That was, for the most part, a huge disappointment. I believe the best book released by MWP was the Towers of High Sorcery as it had some exciting material that often times worked well. The rest of the books were filled with *ahem* lame artwork, *ahem* more grammatical errors and typos than a special-needs 4th grader's book report and perhaps most importantly, mechanically inferior classes, feats and a host of "why bother" prestige classes.
The best thing about the books was learning a little more about the setting from time to time, but the game driving elements just fell flat.
MWP. . . I would have liked to have seen more work done on the Serenity (and a game title non-specific to one single ship) game setting, preferably a better core book than was released, as opposed to the hacked up DL books that were released. I loved her literature, but by most accounts her business model is an example of how not to run a business.
MWP and the OGL.
The rights reverted back to WOTC when the OGL expired and this was for many good reasons, not the least of which was a dip in WOTC 3.5 sales to other companies that were releasing better content than WOTC was putting out in the latter stages of the 3.5 era. It should be noted that MWP in and of itself was not hammering home the sales figures that prompted this decision. I believe that honor goes to Sword and Sorcery Studios, even though some of their stuff was just as appalling as the latter WOTC releases and the consistently poor MWP works.
All that being said, I still love Margaret Weis, but I earnestly abhor MWP.
I'm sorry you were never happy with the Dragonlance products released by MWP (and Sovereign Press). Our earliest sourcebooks had their fair share of flaws, but I believe the line as a whole has been the most successful Dragonlance edition so far. All of the books passed WotC's approval, kept up with the novels, and brought the setting into a coherent foundation for gaming under 3.5. I couldn't have been happier with how things turned out.
Our company has emerged from the economic slowdown with positive growth in licensed RPGs, especially with the summer release of the Supernatural RPG and the Big Damn Heroes Handbook for the Serenity RPG. Our Serenity Adventures product won an Origins Award in 2009, and I'm really excited about two new RPG licenses that are set to hit the shelves next year.
All this is to say that while I would personally have loved to bring Dragonlance in 4th edition, the decision (and direction) lies with WotC alone, and MWP have moved on. As far as I know, there are no plans for any DL sourcebooks, no new DL novel contracts have been made, and the setting is going into the vault until WotC determines how they want to relaunch it. Until then, there are folks at the Dragonlance Nexus forums creating conversions for 4E, Pathfinder, True20, and other popular systems. As always, it's the fans that keep the world of Krynn turning, not any specific publisher.
Cheers,
Cam
Perhaps DL needs the treatment FR got for 4E. Advance the timeline by 100 years or so but instead of some cataclysmic event we should have 100 years of stabilization after so many world changing events.
The timeline was advanced once already, and not received well. However, there was no stabilization period. So who knows.
Anyway... MWP.That was, for the most part, a huge disappointment. I believe the best book released by MWP was the Towers of High Sorcery as it had some exciting material that often times worked well. The rest of the books were filled with *ahem* lame artwork, *ahem* more grammatical errors and typos than a special-needs 4th grader's book report and perhaps most importantly, mechanically inferior classes, feats and a host of "why bother" prestige classes.
The best thing about the books was learning a little more about the setting from time to time, but the game driving elements just fell flat.
Strange how I got a totally different experience of these books than you did.
I thought that they were generally a lot better than the (limited amount of) 2e DL material I had.
I didn't buy the adventures and didn't plan to buy Age of Mortals (partly as it got bashed a lot online), but I recently saw that cheap and (although it isn't much use to the sort of game I want to play) it seems fairly OK.
My main issue with MWP is that the didn't cover the entire Dragonlance world within the time they had. (For example, they didn't do Taladas.) Now, I know that , at the end, they worked their little socks off, but given the time-limit of the licence, it would have been nice if they could have hired more people and pumped out products faster, to maximise the product line, before the license expired.
(I wouldn't have wanted them to work faster, if they were not dealing with a fixed timescale from WotC.) If MWP owned DL, I'd have been happy with the schedule and pushing them to continue with 3e.
All this is to say that while I would personally have loved to bring Dragonlance in 4th edition,
This is something I would have liked to see
Havard
Two big issues I see with 4e is that its too high magic for Age of Dispair DL and probably most other settings in DL.
Also I am sure WotC is frustrated with MPW because they told MPW not to do Era setting books because WotC didn't know how to do them right. MPW showed them up, not saying thats why Wizards cancelled because of this though. Wizards does seem like a vengeful company though. I would almost perfer to see wizards leave the setting alone, because the first time they tinkered with it we got the Age of Mortals, and its not the same DL it used to be.
The system used in the original module and explained within the novels completely contradicts the 4E setup. Raistlin running out of spells and having to sleep to relearn them was a major component for arcane spellcasters in DL, a complete opposite to at-will powers present in 4E.
I am a DIEHARD fan of the dragonlance novels, all except the ones by Jean Rabe (the Fifth Age series SUCKED in my opinion), but playing in the world is difficult when you have played other worlds, FR and homemade, because of the extreme limits to magic and creatures. DL reminds me of Ravenloft in that story and feel are far more important than power and diversity.
I believe SP/MWP should continue to release products for the d20 system. Pathfinder is continuing to use the same system, and I believe that system works best for the DL world. Overall, I am not that big a fan of 4E to begin with, let alone to let it degenerate my favorite setting.
For those interested in playing DL with changes, look at the Legend of the Twins sourcebook. The time travel aspect presented in the those novels presented DMs and players with alternate reality possibilities, which also came up in the War of Souls series as Tasslehoff was surprised to see a world he did not recognize.
Within the LoT book are options on if the first Cataclysm hadn't happened, Takhisis had one, Raistlin had become a god, and various other possibilities. You can use the world and famous characters but change how they act due to changes in history. Remember the Butterfly Effect (great movie with Ashton Kutcher by the way)
So, from my understandings here is that WoTC still owns all rights to Dragonlance? Like all lore, art, characters, etc? I am tracking down who owns the rights to Dragonlance and this is really the first real hit I have found on it. Can anyone steer me in the right direction or who I can speak with about who owns the rights? I guess I could call WoTC, but thought I would try here. Even tried twitter, but James is always too busy to reply and the D&D twitter account never replies either.
Yes, WotC owns Dragonlance. There has been zero talk about it though. I don't hold much hope that they'll do anything with it, though who knows? Maybe I'll be very pleasantly surprised by this year's GenCon announcement.
They seem to be the ones not happy with Dragonlance because it does better at novels then games.
And I'm one of the problems since I've never played table top. I play play by post online...
And Hasbro owns WOTC.
They seem to be the ones not happy with Dragonlance because it does better at novels then games.
And I'm one of the problems since I've never played table top. I play play by post online...
That's simply supposition. Who says Hasbro is at all unhappy with Dragonlance? Personally, my supposition is that it is WotC who don't like Dragonlance. I can only go on what I infer from what I've heard on things like podcasts and replays of seminars, but it's almost as if the people at WotC look down their noses at Dragonlance.
I don't have any sales numbers, so again all I can do is guess, but I think MWP was doing just fine with Dragonlance sales. My guess is that they were doing too good and WotC wanted to eliminate the competition in the easiest way possible.
Again, all I can do is guess. Granted, I'm even more sour today now that ridiculous Dark Sun has ruined my Creature Competition bracket by knocking off my champ pic in the first round (Bargle lost to some Dark Sun clown.)
I don't think WotC was unhappy with MWP's work. Rather, I think that their business model changed (hence why NO licenses were renewed) and they're just doing everything in-house from now on (which is their right).
At all.
Look at how Forgetton Realms has changed: Spellplague, twinned worlds, death of gods. This is nothing compared to DragonLance.
It's a setting that has essentially seen three generations of constant war, planar incursion and escalation. The very geography of the main continent has changed completely (again.) The gods have no real connection to the world.
In many ways, the Fifth Age was more cataclysmic than the actual Cataclysm as it set in a rot that has never really recovered.
DragonLance has been massively influential. The Chaos War is clearly the precursor to the latest concept elemental demons and the war between the gods and primordials. The idea of dragons having an elemental effect over their environment. The "slash-and-burn" model of rebooting a setting by apocalypse and time line advancement. Dragonborn. These are all legacies of DragonLance.
The ideal setting for DragonLance in 4E would around 5 to 10 years after the War of the Lance. The Knights of Takhsis are just emerging as a threat, the hobgoblins and draconians are building their own identities, the Tower(s) of High Sorcery are active and the gods have returned and are proselytizing. Kender are Kender and Dragons are Dragons.
All we'd need is for Tas to come back through time and save us from the Dragon Overlords!
But there have been too many books written (and sold) since then for them to go back. Which is a shame as the major world-shaping events (Invasion of the Dragon Overlords, War of Souls, etc.) have all been deus ex machina, which runs contrary to the spirit of the original modules: you had to save your world. You had to save your world. This wasn't about gold or glory, your party had to defeat the armies of an evil goddess or die trying.
Given the arc of the original books, they match the new concept of tiers perfectly: Autumn Twilight (Heroic,) Winter Night (Paragon) and Spring Dawning (Epic.) *Cough* Adaptation. *Cough, cough.*
But there have been too many books written (and sold) since then for them to go back. Which is a shame as the major world-shaping events (Invasion of the Dragon Overlords, War of Souls, etc.) have all been deus ex machina, which runs contrary to the spirit of the original modules: you had to save your world. You had to save your world. This wasn't about gold or glory, your party had to defeat the armies of an evil goddess or die trying.
I think the only way that everything would work with continuity in tact is to take a Star Trek style reboot, set just post-Legends. Keep the Holy Six as true.
Given the arc of the original books, they match the new concept of tiers perfectly: Autumn Twilight (Heroic,) Winter Night (Paragon) and Spring Dawning (Epic.) *Cough* Adaptation. *Cough, cough.*
I would disagree. The Heroes of the Lance go from being around 5th level to somewhere in the early paragon levels when they are done. Legends has the heroes at paragon levels, though Raistlin is most certainly epic level at his height of power.
They go from about 3rd to about 16th level under AD&D rules. And at different paces since the classes had different thresholds for levelling and some people were multi-classed. Also, some of the characters would have had level limits. The elves and probably Tas would have hit their level limits by the time they reached Nereka. Maybe even Tanis, too.
Raistlin almost defeats Takshsis (having previously cast her out of the world.) Tasslehoff achieves his epic destiny at the beginning of the Legends books. Tanis defeats Ariakas pretty much alone. I wouldn't have any of that at a Pargon level.
Epic Destiny Achievements
Defeating/Slaying Takhissis: Huma, Silvanoshei
Becoming a God: Raistlin
Defeating Chaos: Tasselhoff*, Palin, Steel
Reuniting the Gods with a Stolen World: Tasselhoff*, Raistlin
Slaying Malastryx: Mina
Slaying Berel: Lauranna
*Admittedly, from a relativistic PoV, Tas' destiny quest involved time travel and therefore (from his perspective) both of these events are considered to happen in reverse sequential order making this singular quest the most profound and worldshaping quest in the history of Krynn.
Epic Tier Achievements
The Legends Trilogy: Tanis, Caramon, Tasselhoff, Crysania
Paragon Tier Achievements
Defeating Ariakas/Dragonarmies: This would have to be considered the crowning moment of the Paragon Tier.
While World-changing, it pales in comparison to the cosmic ramifications which resulted with the conclusion of the Chaos War, War of Souls, (and to a lesser extent) the Third Dragon War.
The Battle of High Clerist Tower: Flint, Tasselhoff, Laurana, Sturm
Finding the Good Dragon Eggs: Gilthanas, Silvara
Reforging the Dragonlances:
Icewall Glacier:
Discovering the Hammer of Kharas:
Heroic Tier Achievements
Defeating Verminaard: This would have to be considered the crowning moment of the Heroic Tier.