What is Dragonlance?

Discover what the world of the Dragonlance Saga is all about, where it came from, who created it and why.

Transcript

Cold Open

We all know and love Dragonlance, but where did it come from? Who created it and why?

Intro

Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam and I am going to attempt to explain what Dragonlance is. Though I am drawing my information from interviews, printed histories and trade publications, I am not Astinus, and I may accidentally overlook some information or misspeak. If you find any information lacking or quite simply incorrect, please leave a comment below and I will make corrections in the description of the video.

Discussion

Now Let’s get into it. Dragonlance has inspired readers and gamers for decades, but what is it exactly, where did it come from, and who created it?

Dragonlance is a high fantasy, or epic fantasy Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting. It was originally conceptualized by husband and wife Tracy and Laura Hickman respectively on a road trip to TSR Inc.. You see, TSR had measurable success with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, an evolution of the Original and Basic Dungeons & Dragons games, but was looking to create ‘the next big thing!’

It turns out that with the help of Margaret Weiss, a writer and editor at TSR, Tracy Hickman was going to deliver them a media smashing, fundamental shift in role-playing which was to deliver the promise of the game system, which was admittedly lacking in the modules released thus far… with both Dragons and Story! It was code named Project Overlord.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons up until then was primarily a dungeon crawling, hack and slash game. Sure players assumed the roles of their characters but it was up to the individual Dungeon Masters to infuse story into the games, and if they were running modules, well it was presented at a bare minimum.

In 1984, Tracy Hickman designed a marketing campaign around this new intellectual property, Dragonlance, including teaser ads in Dragon Magazine, a game module, with the promise of eleven more, one for each color of dragon, a novel co-written by Margaret Weiss, which grew to over 100 novels in the setting by multiple authors, that would be used to introduce the campaign world to players and draw in other potential players to the system, mini lead figurines of the heroes featured in the module and novels for use in gameplay or display, and a calendar to feature the brilliant artwork of TSR’s talented artists Larry D. Elmore, Clyde Caldwell, Keith Parkinson, and Jeff Easley.

This media campaign fired on all cylinders and coupled with the amazing writing and imagery it was easy for players to get swept up and lost in the world of Krynn. But it wasn’t all about the media campaign, it brought dragons, great and terrible to players, and even rewrote some fundamental game rules and conventions.

Dragonlance focused on telling an epic and engaging story about the War of the Lance, a story as deep, rich and compelling as Middle Earth’s Lord of the Rings and Star Wars’ Galactic Civil War. It featured ancient histories, an elaborate pantheon of deities, exciting villains, inspiring and complex heroes, engaging adventure and sordid romance! Through it all it told a tale of the difficulty and consequences of choices made, staying true to one’s moral codes, love and friendship against a backdrop of war, as Margaret Weiss puts it.

Dragonlance ended up being a promise of high adventure spanning five ages, alternate game editions a near endless supply of novels, source materials, and years of player excitement and fandom.

Outro

So what do you think about Dragonlance? Do you have some inside knowledge to expound on the campaign, or did I make any mistakes you would like to see corrected? Leave a comment below, subscribe to the channel and like this video.

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:

“No human in full possession of his sanity, who wanted to keep a firm hold on such sanity, would ever willingly associate with a kender.”