Thread by @hexcrawl

The original #Dragonlance Saga was a massive multimedia project, of a sort that hadn't really been seen before: RPG adventures, novels, wargames, etc.

Another example of this are the songs included in the adventures.

Music is not my forte, so I'll have to speak softly here.

(Pun intended.)

But TSR hadn't done anything like this before, and apparently the sheet music in DL1 was screwed up.

This is a testament to how complicated and difficult the DL project was.

We're continuing our Let's Read of the original Dragonlance modules! Jump back to the beginning over here!

A few years later, TSR probably would have released a CD. But they weren't quite there yet.

You can find a number of these, in various performances, on Youtube.

I'm guessing that Tracy Hickman was the major influence here.

Hickman had been a folksinger in his youth.

Here's a recording of the Song of Goldmoon made by a member of Hickman's folk group.

He apparently joined her in singing some of the tracks on this album. I'd love to hear the whole thing, but good luck finding a copy.

Hickman wasn't the only one involved, though.

Frank Menzter (perhaps most famously the designer of the Basic/Expert/Companion/etc. D&D boxed sets) composed the Wedding Song,

Along similar lines, early during the Innfellows journeys in DL1, the DM is supposed to frame up a scene where, resting around their campfire at night, they take turns reading verses from the Canticle of the Dragon.

I really like this moment. I think it's important to frame color scenes like this, and particularly so early in the campaign: Give space for the players to get a feel for what really LIVING in the world feels like.

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/3152…

And baking the lore into this little ritual is a great way to get twice the bang for your buck.

This also sets up a really fantastic moment in DL3 Dragons of Hope, where one of the new priests of the True Gods declaims a new version of the Canticle, which has been expanded to feature the heroes' acts.

They have been literally woven into legend.

(This moment is completely f'ed up in the DLC1 reprint, BTW: The imprecation to read the Canticle is repeated in the same place, but they didn't include the revised version. So you just read the same Canticle again with no payoff.)

A similar element are the excerpts from future history books printed at the beginning of most of the DL modules.

The primary function here seems to be a clever recap in the extremely unlikely circumstance that a DM tries to run one of these without the rest of the series.

But handled carefully (and with adjustments), you could probably use these as a Star Wars-style opening crawl to, once again, establish the truly epic scale of the PCs' actions.

Continuing on with the back half of DL2 Dragon of Flame, the PCs head to Pax Tharkas to break out the prisoners of war that have been gathered by Verminaard's dragonarmy.

There's some interesting character work among the villains here (although the presentation can feel a little forced).

In particular, the whole concept of the series is that the PCs fight a different dragon in each adventure. But they're still a little low-level in this one, so Douglas Niles arranges for a little strife among the villains to help the PCs out.

One of the dragons - and older, somewhat senile one - has been charged with holding the prisoners' children as insurance against any uprisings.

But the dragon has imprinted one the kids and considers them her own children now.

So after the PCs free the kids, Verminaard mounts his dragon and shouts (all villain-like): " YOU'LL RUE THIS DAY! I'M GONNA KILL YOUR KIDS!"

... and the mama dragon does not like this.

Cue an epic dragon fight while the PCs scamper away, leading hundreds of refugees to freedom.

The Let's Read continues over here with DL3 Dragons of Hope!