Travel to any age on Krynn and you will find a dystopian landscape, which has always confused me when I hear people claim Dragonlance is a childrens setting or not interesting or challenging enough. If anything, Dragonlance is too challenging for most players!
Transcript
Cold Open
Dystopia is defined as an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic—In other words… Dragonlance.
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam and today we are going to talk about the bitter truth of the Dragonlance world of Krynn. I would like to take a moment and thank my collaborator patrons, the Heroes of the Lance, and invite you to consider becoming a patron or member of this channel by visiting the links in the description below. You can even pick up Dragonlance gaming materials using my affiliate link. This episode is informed by the novels and various sourcebooks, as well as my own experience playing the role playing setting throughout the years.
Discussion
When one thinks of Dragonlance, typically the first thing you think of is the War of the Lance, or the Heroes of the Lance. And though that entire war was told primarily from the heroes side, and focused on good overcoming evil, I believe seeing Dragonlance solely from that one event is burying the lead, so to speak. You can look at any point of Krynn’s history and find yourself mired in a dystopian landscape where any beacon of hope is at best buried in sorrow and fleeting.
The first expected reaction from this set up is logically, well isn’t every fantasy story like that? Didn’t they just copy The Lord of the Rings? I would argue that no, Dragonlance is a distinctly dystopian world, different from every other high fantasy setting. First the gods themselves are the ones meddling with the affairs of men. The Gods of evil are actively, not passively, but actively making war on the land. The Gods of Good are bolstering up heroes to battle the evil minions and ultimately, in the moment of need, they abandon them all because they weren’t worthy. Worse yet, they threw a mountain into the planet, changing the very face of Krynn, in all of it’s continents.
Again, you may say, but cataclysms happen in every fantasy world… right? Do they? Was it because of the machinations of the gods themselves meant to punish the people? And what about the collateral damage? We are brought into this world at nearly 350 years of plague, pestilence, famine and war which had killed millions in that time according to the Prologue in Dragons of the Hourglass Mage. After a couple generations, the memory of Dragons and the gods faded to myth. There wasn’t even healing! Magic was shunned at best or magic users were murdered at worst! The Knights of Solamnia, once seen as the protectors of the people, were hunted and thrown off their lands or murdered. And to think we lost our minds about toilet paper scarcity last year.
After the War of the Lance the citizens of the world had what, 30 years of reconstruction, fighting and struggle before, whoops, cataclysm number two in the form of Chaos itself! For some reason chaos was upset after having been imprisoned in the Graystone for well over 9000 years, who would have thought it? It takes the entire pantheon of deities and every fighting aged citizen of the world to stand up against him or risk oblivion. Chaos cuts a canyon through the Solamnic Plains, erupts the Lords of Doom, a trinity of volcanoes, calms the maelstrom in the Blood Sea and boils the ocean. Can you imagine being a farmer in this world? You know nothing but death, destruction and starvation. Looting and murder are tools of survival, not the actions of bad men. Game of thrones has nothing on Dragonlance!
If survival at this point was impossible, it was about to get even worse! Seriously. About a year later, after about 38 years of the return of healing, it’s gone again just like that (snap), but not just healing, all magic! A world that was based on the gods’ engagement and gifts to the world is now absolutely over. Worse still, massive dragon overlords start appearing and actively terraform random regions of Krynn, enslaving and murdering its population. And seeming to have learned nothing the citizens of the world begin warring with each other anew, rather than fighting back! Individual families have no chance of peacefully existing and struggle under the weight of the power hungry dragon overlords who themselves are warring. This dragon purge would last for nearly 30 years.
It’s time for a brief recap. Since the first cataclysm, there was nearly 350 years of darkness, death and desolation, followed by 38 years of war and recovery, then another cataclysm that reshapes the world even more and the gods ‘true’ abandonment, not like the ‘just kidding’ abandonment of the Age of Despair. Then the dragons come and its nearly 30 more years of war and darkness, slavery and attempted survival. There was magic discovered inherent to the planet due to chaos seeping out of the graystone, but its use only causes infighting for political control.
To complicate things further, there is a thread of failure that runs through every organization of peoples on Krynn. With evil, it’s the idea that evil always destroys itself. This can be seen primarily in the Age of Despair. But the supposed good people of Krynn are arguably worse! Racism and bigotry grips the good races so intensely, not solely with other races, but within their own race, that it all but prevents them from working together, even in the face of annihilation! In Krynns past, it took the gods direct influence to force them to work together to save their own hides. The beacons of light and justice, the Solamnic Knights are some of the worst examples as they are more concerned with political power over each other than doing their duty. Wherever and whenever you look at the good people in Krynn you will see glaring flaws forcing you to come to the terms that on Krynn, there are no good people. There are the heroes of the Lance, but even they, except for Goldmoon, Tas and Flint, find themselves corrupted and acting against their own self interest. Yea, even Sturm, see Dragons of the Dwarven Depths.
No, on Krynn, life is so difficult and challenging that you can’t afford to be good. So I would argue against the idea that Dragonlance is good triumphing over evil, but rather corruption triumphing over all with brief glimpses of good. It doesn’t get more dystopian than that!
Hold onto your knickers, we are ramping up one last time! A mysterious young woman named Mina appears after a massive storm that envelops the entire planet. Magic both primal and artifacts of antiquity are failing. Just after six years of the rediscovery of magic no less! The dragons are confronted by Mina and some are slain, with her power being revealed to have been granted by the Queen of Darkness herself. That ol’ chestnut. 36 years after the loss of the gods and their magic, they return again and that doesn’t even cover the Dark Disciple era!
The only time that was remotely livable on Krynn was in the 1000 years of the Age of Might, and we know how that ended. But even in that time of peace, there were smaller conflicts that made life difficult in a fantasy setting. Economic strife, the rise of bigotry and nationalism, political machinations—sounds too much like our world for a game. Dragonlance has always strived for peace but it’s gods and people will never allow that to happen. The drive to exist must be strong in its citizens, or they will be crushed under the boot of those stronger or more motivated. It doesn’t even have to be some bad guy from towns away, it could be their brother or seeker priest or closest friend. Survival changes everyone. It makes you do things that would seem unimaginable. It makes you act in ways that may be in stark contrast to your very nature. It is a drive that is present and evident in all eras of Krynn, and if you want to lose yourself in a dark dystopian landscape, I can’t think of any better than Dragonlance.
Outro
Thank you for tuning into this episode! Do you know of any times of peace and prosperity that would counter my narrative of a Dystopian campaign world? Do you play the world with that in mind? And finally if you were to choose one era to explore, what would it be? Leave a comment below.
I would like to once again invite you to consider becoming a patron or member of this channel, and you can pick up Dragonlance gaming materials using my affiliate link, all of which are in the description below.
This channel is all about celebrating the wonderful world of the Dragonlance Saga, and I hope you will join me in the celebration. Thank you for watching, this has been Adam with DragonLance Saga and until next time, remember:
We will close our eyes and begin to dream our eternal dream.
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