Learn all about the history of Dragonlance with TSR, Laura & Tracy Hickman and Project Overlord. Dragonlance was incredibly popular with the fans, but with the separation of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman from TSR, the direction Dragonlance would take, split the fanbase.
Transcript
Cold Open
Dragonlance would end up being one of the most popular Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, but how did it come to be?
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam and I am going to explain how Dragonlance was created. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to this channel, ring the bell, and you can further help this channel and pick up Dragonlance Gaming materials using my affiliate link in the description below. Dragonlance seemed like an overnight success for TSR, but it took time, planning, creation, and frustration before it would be a fully realized campaign world.
Discussion
Before Tracy Hickman was hired at TSR in 1982, he and his wife Laura Hickman ran a small adventure publishing company called DayStar West Media. During his time writing adventure modules, Tracy would pen a manifesto that required each new module to have an intriguing story that is intricately woven into the play itself. The first ideas they would have ported over to Dragonlance years later was the mix of story and gameplay, and dragon riders, i.e. dragons used as mounts.
When an opportunity arose to work at TSR, Tracy and Laura Hickman drove cross country for an interview. On the way they continued their development of a dragon centric world which would put the dragons back into Dungeons & Dragons. They developed the first Heroes of the Lance on that road trip, Tanis, Kitiara and Laurana.
TSR found themselves in difficult times around 1983 and with their blessing, Tracy create Project Overlord, his dragon centric adventure trilogy with others at TSR including Harold Johnson who insisted Tracy should develop the three adventures into a campaign world spanning 12 adventure modules with fellow designers Jeff Grubb & Doug Niles, editor Carl Smith, and artist Larry Elmore to name a few. In fact when Larry Elmore was presented with the concept he was so thrilled that he developed the first four paintings, depicting main events that weekend!
They would collect their documents, images and ideas and bring them all to the powers that be at TSR. TSR was blown away and told then to get it all ready for release in 1984. Part of that release was TSR’s first novel effort, so they reached out to their newly hired editor Margaret Weis, and asked her to write an outline for a novel based off the 12 adventure modules. TSR would take them and hand them over to a writer they would hire for this specific project. The first draft was not well received so Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman wrote the Dragonlance trilogy of novels themselves which was distributed by random house. They teased the world in issue #83 of Dragon magazine with Margaret’s short story “The Test of the Twins”.
The media campaign for Dragonlance was a huge success with every novel making the New York Times best sellers list, selling more than two million copies and the adventure modules selling over a half a million units. 1986 signalled the end of the module releases with DL14 Dragons of Triumph, but TSR wasn’t done with Dragonlance, rounding out Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1.5 Edition product line in 1987 with Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home, the Dragonlance Tales Volume 1; Magic of Krynn novel, the Dragonlance Adventures campaign sourcebook, and then a few months later the Atlas of the Dragonlance World. These releases signalled the end of an era. Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis went one way creatively and TSR went another preparing for their release of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition.
The schism between Dragonlance fans and TSR certainly began with the separation of Tracy and Margaret from the IP, but it was inflamed by the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition DLE modules and first boxed set, Time of the Dragons. This would be further inflamed with the 1992 soft reboot of Dragonlance with the release of the Tales of the Lance boxed set.
Fan flame wars would ignite online in USEnet groups like alt.fan.dragonlance, and would only be reduced with the late 1990’s return of Weis and Hickman. The Second Generation and Dragons of Summer Flame novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman set the stage for Dragonlance’s next epic storyline, and the condensing of Dragons of Summer Flame from a Trilogy to a single novel by TSR didn’t sit well with the authors. The fan base was about to become divided yet again, a common experience now for Dragonlance fans, with the release of the SAGA role playing system in 1996 and the shifting of the timeline to the new Age of Mortals. This would be echoed in part with the return of Dragonlance to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition in 2003 and the creative control of Dragonlance returning to Margaret Weis’ publishing arm Sovereign press. With the War of Souls novels and the combination of disparate ages and interpretations of the IP from the various contributors over the years, by the original creators of it, we have finally arrived at the present state of Dragonlance.
There are rumors of Dragonlance’s return to Dungeons & Dragons in the current 5th edition, and the new novels being released in 2021 present a promise of Dragonlance’s future development.
Outro
But what do you think? Do you have further insights into the creation of Dragonlance? Do you want to see an official Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition campaign resource? And would you be interested in other game engines than D&D for Dragonlance to exist in? Leave a comment below, subscribe to the channel and like this video. You can support this channel and pick up some Dragonlance gaming materials by using the affiliate link 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:
First the kender gets us charged with inciting a riot, then he disappears. Now the knight gets us thrown into prison. Next time, remind me to stick with the mage. I know he’s crazed!
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