Thread by @hexcrawl

As I come to the end of Volume I of the #Dragonlance Saga, we need to discuss the elephant in the room:

I'm 160 pages into the Saga and I still have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on.

(This is semi-rhetorical. I did read the novels 20 years ago, so I have some vague memories that help orient me.)

We're continuing our Let's Read of the Dragonlance Saga. Pop over here if you'd like to begin from beginning.

The heroes come home to Solace after splitting up and traveling the world.

Like 3 days later, draconian armies have surrounded the entire area and have apparently also conquered the rest of the world? (Although later they haven't.)

But the heroes never heard about any of this while they were traveling?

And I actually still have no idea who the draconians are, where they came from, or what they want.

The DLC1 reprint mentions "Takhisis" once but doesn't explain who she is. The original DL1 thru DL4 don't mention her at all.

If we take a peek at DL5 Dragons of Mystery, it turns out that this is entirely deliberate.

"The First Book of the DRAGONLANCE Chronicles has set forth many mysteries that are yet to be explained."

"There are questions to be answered in future DRAGONLANCE stories."

I honestly don't understand how you're supposed to run any of this crap when you have no idea what's happening.

Something as simple as casting charm monster on a draconian and saying, "Hey. What's going on?" will leave your DM completely flummoxed.

Hilariously, elsewhere in DL5 it says, "As a Dungeonmaster, you give life to the words on the page. The MYSTERY, the excitement, the spirit, and the pacing are your contribution to this story."

(emphasis added)

DL5 Dragons of MYSTERY's pitch is that it provides a setting sourcebook for Dragonlance.

But since its modus operandi is to not tell you anything because it'll ruin the surprise, it's NOT surprising that it colossally sucks as a setting sourcebook.

It does include a world map. Which is a blessing, because up until this point the series had a habit of just dropping location names as if the DM was supposed to know what the heck they meant.

So now you at least have a fighting chance in trying to puzzle things out.

Although, it does change the name of Abanasynia (where the campaign, up to this point, has been set) to Abanasinia.

Why?

No idea.

Not entirely sure why I find this hilarious, but I do.

Honestly, I'm not even asking them to tell me the trade secret of how draconians are corrected.

I just want some basic information like:
- They worship Takhisis.
- They arrived in Abanasynia by ship, landing north of Solace and then marching south.

Even something as simple as this map, from DL11 Dragons of Glory, would have done absolute WONDERS for orienting me at the beginning of the campaign.

The other problem with the DL series' obsessive need for secrecy is that they end up being so busy hiding their cards that they miss opportunities to properly set up the rest of the campaign.

Pacing exposition in an RPG is tough, but absolutely essential for something on the scale of the Saga.

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4371…

This forces them, in later adventures, into awkward exposition dumps that often

(a) make the railroading a lot worse than it needs to be; and

(b) rob the big reveals of their power.

Laying that aside, let's step back and reflect on the totality of Volume I:

It's good stuff.

There are significant issues, yes. But it's pretty easy to see how you can run a really good campaign with this material. And, with a little elbow grease a great one.

On balance, the progress of the war mostly works.

The backbone of the campaign - Xak Tsaroth, Pax Tharkas, the flight of the refugees, Skullcap, Thorbardin - is a pretty fantastic sequence of set pieces studded with epic beats:

- Restoration of the True Gods.
- Freeing the refugees.
- Several varied and exciting dragon fights.
- Final confrontation with Verminaard.

Now, as I say, there are problems here. But there's a pretty clear path to working around those, most of which I've already discussed here:

- Better hooks for the blue crystal staff at the beginning of the campaign (while also motivating the region crawl).

- Cleaner establishment of world affairs as the dragonarmy approaches.
- Revamping DL2 by using the same map from DL1 and just re-keying it to reflect the post-invasion reality.
- Improve the flow to the Pax Tharkas prison break by giving the PCs more agency.

And that's mostly it. The rest is just ignoring the plenitude of imprecations to railroad the PCs in a host of minor ways, and instead just actively playing the world.

(The modules mostly give you the tools to do this, in fact, although sometimes they're obfuscated.)

tl;dr Despite some required patching, the overall shape and about 85% of the required content for a truly great campaign is here in DL1 thru DL4.

And the path to get from the published books to that great campaign is not particularly difficult for an experienced GM to navigate.

When we continue the series, we'll pick up with DL6 Dragons of Ice.

... which is where it all starts falling apart.

As promised, journey further down the dragon hole over here as the Let's Read continues.