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I get it. We all like different things. Different genres of music. Different fast-food restaurant offerings. Different official TSR campaign settings with associated adventure modules and New York Times bestselling novels and short story collections. Tastes are subjective. One person's 2001 is another person's The Number 23. I try not to boo when someone cheers, but I'm going lay out my case in a series of posts: Dragonlance sucks. You're welcome and encouraged to refute support my points. You might also call me an old and degenerate nerd, if you manage to turn on your monitor, but I'd rather hear why you do or don't agree that this sucky IP is sucky. Let's delve.
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Aug 20, 2020 21:28
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Krynn I'll start slow. I do not like the name "Krynn." It looks as though it is a current child's name. Weis and Hickman could not have known this in... gently caress, 1984? Christ, that's old. They couldn't have known then that the name would sound like the planet has sibling planets names Brayland and Coffree and Keighlert. But a fantasy world needs teeth: Middle Earth, Toril, Greyhawk, Lake Geneva. [put image here when imgur works again] Krynn dekenda est.
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Aug 20, 2020 21:43
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Big Beef City posted:I don't know what the deal was with Raistlin. As the kids say: this. Motherfucker got into an accident and now his pupils are hourglasses. And his skin is golden. Everything after that makes even less sense. Grem posted:You guys remember Dragon's Lair? That weird arcade game where you didn't do poo poo just pushed a button then watched a cartoon for 30 minutes? poo poo sucked. Man, I played Dragon's Lair in 2018 with a tutorial open in front of me on my phone and I still couldn't get poo poo done. I have a soft spot for the other one, and will occasionally say "you should've used a time reversal cube" in the most Ed Wynn voice I can do.
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Aug 20, 2020 21:49
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NC Wyeth Death Cult posted:Dragonlance sucked so bad that in Spelljammer, you could tale a magic space barge between fantasy world settings but once you got to Krynn you couldn't leave because of the Phlogiston flow or something. So even your imagination wouldn't let you leave that dumbass world without sucking off a powerful wizard and they were too busy at their enclaves torturing children under the guise of testing them like some kind of hosed up Hogwarts arm of Penn State. loving goddamn yes. I'd completely forgotten about this. Spelljammer is a glorious mess of space hamsters and British colonial hippo men, and even it couldn't do anything interesting with Dragonlance. edit: Asterite34 posted:The magical fantasy land of Karen 
Empty Sandwich fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Aug 20, 2020 |
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Aug 20, 2020 21:51
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Asterite34 posted:You say that, but I just remembered Tinker gnomes were from Dragonlance, and those little assholes were born to build ramshackle spaceships powered by rubber bands and giant hamster wheels. Course, the fact it was space meant you encountered them AWAY from Dragonlance proper most of the time gently caress I forgot about the space gnomes. But they were luckier than us... they got away from Dragonlance.
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Aug 20, 2020 21:55
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RepeatingMeme posted:Hard agree OP, its trash fantasy thats about as interesting as listening to some idiot droll on and on about the fifth generation of the homebrew DnD setting their friends have been playing since 1987 where all of the cool themes are actually incredibly shallow and unimaginative, and you can't keep track of all the one dimensional characters they keep making references and jokes about Let's start there: The Campaign Hickman and his wife had an idea. "Dragonlance," they said. "What if Dragonlance?" And then just after that, TSR said, "Hey... what if indeed Dragonlance?" And they paired Hickman with Weis. But the way they wrote the novels was by running a goddamn Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Every character is therefore a kind of Mary Sue. But it's worse than that. Have you ever set foot inside a game store? If you have, then I'm sure that some cheerful but unpleasant guy has buttonholed you to tell you about his character in his favorite game. This is the entirety of everything in Dragonlance. And they're not just telling you about their own characters. They're telling you about the other players' characters, like Raistlin, mentioned above but I have to work up to him for reasons involving both research and anger management. And it's still worse than that. These stories sold millions of copies. These adventures sold... whatever a whole bunch of copies is a lot for adventures. There were computer games, sorta. Large chunks of America, perhaps large chunks of the world, were paying money to read a Cliff's Notes version of a group of people's epic D&D campaign.
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Aug 20, 2020 22:05
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Khanstant posted:yeah ive been through the wikipedia synopsis of it before after seeing it on tvtropes or some poo poo. sounds really bad, wont read it. I fully support this course of nonaction.
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Aug 20, 2020 22:06
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Kender Now we're loving getting started. I'm going to limit my quotes from the Dragonlance Fandom Wiki, which is by the way the worst written Fandom Wiki I've ever read. This statement should be chilling. Let me set things up: you know halflings, right? They're basically hobbits, except that the estate of JRR Tolkien send a letter to E Gary Gygax that more or less read "stop calling them hobbits or we'll sue you to death." (EGG did stop but also apparently took the lesson that everybody should be sued constantly. That's a different gripe.) Anyway: halfbitlings. Short folk. Capable of being sneaky. The only way to improve them would be to make them look like children and have no sense of personal property, viz: Dragonlance Fandom Wiki posted:Kender are unique to Krynn. They are like the Halflings which many other worlds sport, but they are much more interesting than that. Kender appear to be small Human children—slight of build, beardless, about three and half to four feet tall. Kender generally live for 100 years (or until their curiosity kills them). Much more interesting indeed. While this is the one obvious fantasy arena that I don't recall any weird perverts settling into, I am willing in a Schroedinger way to be disproven: I will acknowledge it, but I do not want to see the evidence. (I'm aware even though I do not actually know that it's on Deviantart.) But this isn't the worst thing about kender. The worst thing about kender is that they constantly steal poo poo, but they "don't" "know" "that" "it's" "stealing". They will straight-up take your poo poo, but oh dang, they don't consider it stealing, and to accuse them of doing so is hardcore cultural bias: anyone not a kender [in a calm voice]: Why did you steal my coin purse? a kender, in response: A bloo bloo bloo bloo! Steawing? I would never do such of a thing! I found this, and what's more I'm unconsciously crafting a justification! If they were just communists, that would be rad. But let's just assume that personal property is not private property, and these guys don't give the slightest poo poo about either, in the most boring way. SPECIAL EXTRA NERDY NOTE: There's a... Anyway, it wields a polearm known as the tol-kendar, the body wrecker. I am interested in etymology, but I'm lazy. I haven't chased this down further, but I'm blaming these fake Oliver halflings for being one of the wreckers of Dragonlance. But there are so many others.
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Aug 20, 2020 22:43
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mekyabetsu posted:I'm gonna binge the trilogy again, and you can't stop me. I salute you and I support your decisions and you are a handsome person. I would never stop you; I just can't abide this for me. Tiny Tubesteak Tom posted:thought it said Dragonforce at first I was aboutta kramer into this thread I don't even know what that is and so would never impugn its fans. Who What Now posted:I know he's Forgotten Realms and not Dragonlance but Elminster sucks poo poo I like FR, but holy poo poo that smug unhelpful bastard. Like a Gandalf who's even more hamstrung. Colonel Cancer posted:It was an enjoyable read when I was 13, I even have some fond memories that I will definitely not dispel by trying to open one of those trash novels as a bitter adult. I'm glad these are pleasant memories, and I'm not trying to ruin them. I just dislike these books.
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Aug 20, 2020 22:48
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Fastball LIVE in concert posted:Dragonlance is good only because it inspired this song I disagree, and I say that as someone who has listened to Manowar and Bolt Thrower on purpose. But it sounds as though these guys paved the way. I must respect that. Sorta. Numlock posted:Some Dragonlance highlights I half remember from when I was 10 and read these garbage novels. I like the steamroller; I cannot abide these other things.
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Aug 20, 2020 23:06
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Colonel Cancer posted:I started my sword and sorcery adventure with Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories at the age of maybe 11 so thank gods all the D&D adjacent garbage didn't spoil it for me until advanced age Are you Incredibly Old or is this like me discovering Lovecraft as a small child? Either way, I think you did it right. Reading Vance as a D&D proxy/inspiration is... not great. mind the walrus posted:Dragonlance was legit the reason I thought swords n' sorcery fantasy was lame as a kid. I will tell a parable: Many, many years ago I went to France, everybody I saw on public transit was reading DBZ. I don't know what this means. I didn't like any of the Elminster poo poo, bc dang. I liked the Drizzt novels, but I don't... think they're good. Except compared to the Dragonlance novels.
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Aug 20, 2020 23:13
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Evil Bob posted:I read the series when I was a nerdy preteen and literally nothing you can say will change my mind that dragonlance rules. And for this reason I will never read it again I don't want to poison your memories. I just want to protect future generations
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Aug 20, 2020 23:14
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Dragonlances Oh, cool! The thing that the entire series is literally named after. Clearly this artifact will make an appearance. Haha, no. Let's compare, oh... the Lord of the Rings. In the first book: - the ring [the main one] - the Lord [at least by implication] Now let's try Dragonlance: - dragons [none] - lances [who gives a poo poo, unless they're on dragons, which QED they're not] "We'll call it Lord of the Rings! Nobody will give the slightest poo poo about either of those nouns until it frankly doesn't matter anymore."
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Aug 20, 2020 23:27
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Hell Yeah posted:thread full of ppl who hate a thing they know every detail about. hmm. Know Your Enemy, my dude. Gologle posted:You seem like a man who would enjoy some Michael Moorcock 
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Aug 20, 2020 23:37
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You don't give a poo poo about the annoying klepto pedo halflings. Understood. But what of the enemies? Oh poo poo, it's time for the Draconians So there are no dragons now. None. Bupkis. But and so yet still the major enemies (the orc standins) are... draconians. Draconians are made from the eggs of good dragons, which there aren't any of, bc science. I don't know why they are loving everywhere and are the generic opponent, but I can tell you the following: each draconian that dies does so in a spectacular way. Let's start with the grunts. They're the effective orcs, here. I'll quote again from that thing: the goddamn wiki thing posted:With small wings Baaz are able to flap their wings allowing them to run very fast intimidating their enemies. Baaz draconians turn to stone upon their deaths, usually trapping any weapons left inside the dying body there. If you're using a sword (objectively and subjectively the best D&D weapon), that sword is gonna get stuck in the stone guts of the lazy reptilian orc standin that just lives here.
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Aug 20, 2020 23:48
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Nigmaetcetera posted:I want to know the op’s thoughts on gully dwarves. As did the other poster, I straight-up forgot about those guys. But ugh. I'll get to them. Unless I give up in disgust.
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Aug 21, 2020 00:15
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Draconians, but more so Let's have another drink from the font: that wiki again posted:While bozaks are not as gifted as their aurak cousins, their arcane mastery is still quite formidable. The second most powerful not-an-orc, who comes from dragon eggs that... where are the dragons again? And how many bad guys come from the good eggs? Haha, I'm just kidding. No answers exist to these reasonable questions. Anyway, they're named after 80s West Coast slang for the scrotum. I'd accuse the creative team of slipping one over on TSR, but no. One half is Mormon; the other half came up with the Dragonlance setting. All I can do is flaccidly link to the Digital Underground song that most frequently says bozack; you might also refer to various Achewood comics: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wtc8xMnPf1U
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Aug 21, 2020 00:27
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DarkSoulsTantrum posted:They named the half-elf guy Tanis Half-Elven Yes.  I know that people say this often online, but this literally brought tears to my eyes. (The bad tears, in case I somehow haven't yet been clear.) Colonel Cancer posted:Kender represent a Mormon caricature of communist hobbite I am thoroughly critiquing everything about Dragonlance and I cannot even handle this right now. Please give us more. Holy poo poo. CPA Hell posted:Raistlin is the mascot of toxic nerdery and the wizard supremacy that has damaged so many editions of the game: You are a gentleman and a scholar, sir.
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Aug 21, 2020 00:33
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Big Beef City posted:doesn't touching raistlin also suck the life out of you too, or am I misremembering that? I don't even remember. But reading the books sure gave me that feeling. A Pack of Kobolds posted:Steel pieces as currency? gently caress that poo poo It is amazing how much I've forgotten about Dragonlance in my dotage. Points to them for innovation, minus double points for using modern fiat currency ideas but dumber. Colonel Cancer posted:I thought he was just a nerd who meddled with things no mortals wot of and became even shittier as a result. I don't doubt it, so great are the crimes of Weis and Hickman. Kharnifex posted:Dragonlance sucked so much that Takhisis packed up and left Krynn and moved to Forgotten Realms and started loving that up instead. Good for her! She needed a better class of protagonist.
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Aug 21, 2020 00:41
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Colonel Cancer posted:I'm pretty sure they used a lance to kill some dragons so idk maybe the real Dragonlance were all the friends they made along the way? That brings us to the next crime: The Dragonlances I don't mean to hold up LotR as like some aspirational thing. It's the progenitor and (for better or for worse) the gold standard. But let's just go by the titles: The Lord of the Rings: The ring is there from the jump. Heck, it was an afterthought from a kids' book, worked into a fake Bible. The titular Lord is there by implication. These sound like criticisms, but they aren't. Dragonlance: No dragons are around, except that a nebulous number of good (metallic) dragon eggs have been held back, like so many eggs in whatever early 20th century American farming scandal I'm thinking of but can't successfully Google. Good eggs make bad dudes: draconians. I've already groused about them, but it really annoys me that every species has a kamikaze death: acid, explosion, petrification, whatever. Entirely aside from that: no dragons. And no lances. What in the hell. I mean, instead of Dune, let's call it Waterworld, and instead of Star Trek, let's call it That 70s Show. If it's called Dragonlance, I want to see a Dragonlance even before the Chekhov-mandated third act, even. (Not the Star Trek Chechov, dammit.) Word is they show up later, but word also is I don't give a poo poo. loving call it No Dragons Right Now. Spoilers, right?
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Aug 21, 2020 00:59
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Tom Gorman posted:Caramon and Raistlin became Thor and Loki and starred in their own blockbuster film franchise I like this version much better, frankly. Big Beef City posted:I'm glad someone mentioned not remembering anything climactic really because even though it's been for freaking ever since I read these I still only remember them just journeying forever and none of the actual 'boss fights' in any of the stories. Like..any of them. Yes. I remember everybody bickering, and I remember the dwarf loving dying of cardiac arrest, which I would spoiler of any of us gave a poo poo, and also what the hell, but I remember gently caress-all else of consequence. CPA Hell posted:Also on Raistlin: smugly keeping silent and inscrutable instead of helping with the group project "Hmmmmmmmm, I am sarcastic, and I emotionally abuse my twin brother who literally keeps me alive. Also, our half-sister is one of the major villains. [smug chuckling]"
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Aug 21, 2020 01:06
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Colonel Cancer posted:Idk there was definitely at least one, maybe two dragons in the ones I read. One was pretending to be an elf 90% of the time but I think that still counts? poo poo, that sounds vaguely familiar. Is that the dude where he has 7 sparrows flying around him? But hang on OH FCUK he is a gold dragon and they are 7 silver dragons? I honestly don't remember. That's from some D&D thing. super sweet best pal posted:Eberron is a much better setting. Someone asked "What if we took everything about the game and made it slightly different," and then gave it a magical industrial revolution flavor. I have never played Eberron; I agree with you 100%. Nigmaetcetera posted:I don’t get how kender can remain alive. On any other world they’d be exterminated. I want somebody to write a story about a group of kender who get marooned in Sigil, and their gruesome deaths at the the hands of the Mercykillers after pickpocketing a hardhead. Or better yet, Athas, where they get eaten by psionic plants, or thrown into a gladiator pit and torn apart by thri-kreen, or just die of dehydration and heat stroke. I just finished Planescape: Torment, the best computer RPG ever to exist, and it warms my heart to know that nobody from Krynn is in there, and if they were, everybody would be so mad at them they would make them die. Literally anything could be a portal, but none of them lead to Krynn. The Lady has taste.
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Aug 21, 2020 01:12
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Internetjack posted:I will cede one single point though; the Dragonlance movie/cartoon, with Lucy Lawless as one of the voice actors? That sucked poo poo, hands down. Like no one involved in the production even bothered to crack a single book open. I'm totally not trying to gently caress up anybody who enjoyed Dragonlance, but drat am I sorry that you had to see it brought to life. The very very very old D&D cartoon is the only one that sits at all well out of all the non-game media, and that's despite the 80s-mandated rear end in a top hat character (who was played by Don Most, so at least there's that). Nigmaetcetera posted:There was one guy from Krynn, he was a very confused young knight hanging out in a bar with an old hardhead. You have the opportunity to explain to him that he has not traversed the plains, but the planes. I'm replaying it, so I'll see if I can track him down. And slay him. Blurry Gray Thing posted:There was also a Knight who is really ugly and creepy and sickly and subverts your expectations by being exactly as evil as he looked this whole time. Subversion of expectations in Dragonlance works much as it does in a Rion Johnson Star Wars film. [smokes bubble pipe; coughs a bunch]
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Aug 21, 2020 01:47
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Flint Fireforge, Dwarf Stereotype He can't swim. He's scared of horses, but won't admit it. (This is a major running trope.) He's a real rear end in a top hat to the kender. (That last one is fine.) He has an axe. True, he comes from the era when all dwarves were grouchy Wilford Brimleys, rather than these more enlightened times when they're all Scottish Wilford Brimleys, but he's just kind of a nothingburger of a character, viz: Dragonlance Fandom Wiki posted:According to author Mark Anthony, "Flint believes that there is something more to be had in life, though he follows many different paths in his search for that elusive something." Or worse: Wikipedia posted:Lauren Davis of io9 called Flint "the group's father figure whose crankiness serves as a bromantic foil to Tasslehoff's good cheer". A dadbromance for the ages. Wikipedia posted:The character of Flint Fireforge was listed in UGO Entertainment's list of "The Best Dwarves Ever". I hope he was below Bombur on that list. Really what makes me crabby is his death, as I mentioned: he's battling alongside his friends. Gradually, he gets more and more fatigued and his is felled. No, haha. That was just a dream that also happened in the story. He has a heart attack and sits down and dies. I can't remember if this is part of the third-book cliffhanger or it happens in the middle of the story. Either way, not a good narrative choice.
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Aug 21, 2020 16:28
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Sturm Brightblade, Knight of Solamnia He has a mustache. And armor. And uh a sword. Another cipher. He's stiffly devoted to his paladin poo poo, and the only thing I remember about him is that at some point the party has to retreat, and when it's couched like that, he refuses. So they have to be like "No we're actually taking up arms back here, dude," and only then will he not suicide by... I don't remember the attacking force. One of my problems with these books is how much everybody is a complete rear end in a top hat. "I can't retreat unless you obviously lie to me, so there's an insane loophole." ("I'm not stealing; I'm constantly borrowing poo poo without permission." "I'm not scared of horses, I'm allergic." "I'm not an rear end in a top hat to my siblings... hahaha, no I am.") I'm only now learning that he wasn't even an actual knight. He was a squire, and lying about it. And from the same source, I'm learning that he was fired from being a squire and then promoted directly to knight. Maybe the truth is... somewhere in the middle. Really makes one think.
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Aug 21, 2020 19:04
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Aug 21, 2020 19:04
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Father Wendigo posted:One of my friends gave me a big compendium of Dragonlance to read, with forwards for each section by the writers. The only one that wasn't masturbatory gushing over Tolkien and the blandest ideas of fantasy was the guy responsible for gnomes. I can't remember much about the gnomes, but they seem a colorful spot in this sea of taupe. I'm kind of glad they were conceived in frustration, if only because I sometimes use" engineer" as a pejorative.
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Aug 21, 2020 19:42
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Coolio I can no longer find any evidence of this. Coolio loving loves Dragonlance. I read a profile when he was at his career zenith where he was like "Oh poo poo! Dragonlance!" and bought some novels. I can find zero evidence of this now. This one isn't a dig, regardless. Coolio spent a lot of his childhood bedridden with asthma. That's some tough poo poo to deal with. But I do wish some more interesting rapper could have stood up for, say, the Forgotten Realms. Like, hearing Prince Paul talk about leading his party through the Mines of Bloodstone or whatever, you know? This one is more a fun fact than a case against this terrible pretend world.
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Aug 21, 2020 20:36
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Lord Soth The badass bad guy. He was a paladin, and now he is the biggest possible jerk: a death knight. Oh dang, his fall was because he was boning someone who wasn't his wife. Eventually he became a skellington because of that. Well, poo poo. That's how it goes. Please enjoy this picture of the most badass foe on Krynn: 
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Aug 21, 2020 22:27
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"I have to go to my followup appointment." "I clearly stated that I was GOLFING today, you harridan." And scene.
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Aug 21, 2020 22:28
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Galewolf posted:
Oh no. What is this?
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Aug 21, 2020 22:29
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Galewolf posted:Certain actions had "trump" Ah, I see.
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Aug 21, 2020 22:47
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Catpetter posted:The classic: I have never seen this thing, but I'm not surprised that other scholars are reaching the same conclusion. If I'm understanding the unaltered portions correctly, kender are terminally chipper libertarians. edit: Here's a cartoon about a plot point I only vaguely remember now that I'm seeing this cartoon. Dude's partner turns out to be a dragon. We've all been there... haha! Right? 
Empty Sandwich fucked around with this message at 13:11 on Aug 22, 2020 |
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Aug 22, 2020 13:06
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Soapy_Bumslap posted:A) Hating the name "Fistandantilus", just a trash name Fistandantilus He's the Sauron of Krynn, but look at his name. Fistandantilus. Good ol' Fistin' Dan. Surely he must have a nickname? One that's not so generic even a 13-year-old who posts dark ambient songs to YouTube wouldn't use it? Respectively: yes; no. 
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Aug 22, 2020 13:28
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hell astro course posted:
Oh, it's the opposite. That bumper sticker is aggressively mediocre. Dragonlance is that bumper sticker spread out over dozens and dozens of books that sold millions of copies.
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Aug 22, 2020 15:29
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hell astro course posted:this describes the type perfectly, down to the dirty house. Absolutely a type. God drat. Didn't specifically mention ferrets (my only note). edit: Black August posted:rabbits I was so close!
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Aug 22, 2020 15:31
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In late 90s TSR culture, mentioning White Wolf in any positive context could get you fired. This is (as I understand it) not an exaggeration.
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Aug 22, 2020 18:18
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Salt Fish posted:I can tell that whoever made this image is a top-level expert in the field of making cringey media, so I trust their opinion on dragonlance completely and don't need to read any of the text in this image. While this researcher's points are astute, this is basically a hosed-up graphic from the 2001-era frontpage.
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Aug 22, 2020 20:23
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Tanis Half-Elven Diet Aragorn, down to the elven blood, except more of it. He grew up shunned by the elf racists on his mom's side (who aren't supposed to bone down with humans) and the human racists on his dad's side (humans hate everybody). He has a rugged, manly beard. Still cliché, but more interesting. Lets see where they went with it: Dragonlance Fandom Wiki posted:In the beginning, Margaret Weis had problems depicting Tanis Half-Elven in the novels. Tracy Hickman finally told her "He's James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise." After that explanation, Margaret had no more difficulty writing about Tanis. Oh. Alas, there is no evidence for the validity of this statement anywhere in the novels.
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Aug 22, 2020 20:39
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Bismuth posted:All lovely fantasy started as horny star trek fanfic and no one can convince me otherwise Oh, gently caress.  
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Aug 22, 2020 20:50
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