The Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman

[Darth Richard II]

From what I can see there are 171 DL novels plus a few that are considered more sourcebooks then novels(leaves from the inn of the last home and such) plus some young readers novels. Lets see how many of these I've read.o.O

Also on a Weiss/HIckmann note, I still say Death Gate is a great series and will defend that one til the day I die.

Oh and The Rise of Solamnia by Douglas Niles is probably the best trilogy out of all of them and is probalby as close to GrimDark/modern fantasy as DL ever got. I actually kept those when I purged all my tie ins.

[felice]

27 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Oh and The Rise of Solamnia by Douglas Niles is probably the best trilogy out of all of them and is probalby as close to GrimDark/modern fantasy as DL ever got. I actually kept those when I purged all my tie ins.

I recall liking his Forgotten Realms books, though I'm not sure how well they'd hold up today.

[Jaxom 1974]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Heh yeah, TSR around the time of Summer Flame really fucked over every author it could.

 

Don't know much about what happened with the authors, but as a reader who'd gone away for a while from Dragonlance, but who was willing to be pulled back in by Second Generation and Summer Flame, it was still confusing as all get out if you hadn't been reading the dozens of other books leading up to it...and it got worse with the later trilogy that tried to clean up the lack of magic mess...

[Werthead]

10 hours ago, Rhom said:

I think there was a book about the companions going to Icewall and obtaining the Hammer of Kharas to secure the dwarves help.

ETA:  Oops.  Almost right.

ETA2:  Holy shit.  From the same Wikipedia article:

 

There's actually exactly 200 Dragonlance novels and short story collections in existence (a few more came out after the Wikipedia article was written).

The current status of the franchise is a bit weird. When Wizards of the Coast took over Dungeons and Dragons, they released exactly two Dragonlance campaign books: a "super-adventure" version of the original Chronicles modules (which I have; it's pretty need and covers all the stuff they missed in the novels) and then a campaign setting for D&D 3rd Edition. After that they licensed out the setting to Margaret Weis's company Sovereign Press, who released a whole range of Dragonlance sourcebooks, adventures and materials for D&D 3rd Edition, from 2001 to 2008. There was also a range of new books at that time, which took the setting up to 200.

In 2008, when D&D 4th Edition was launched, WotC withdrew their licence and cancelled the novel line, which confused people because the new books had sold excellently (despite being dire). There were also widespread reports that WotC was going to release Dragonlance as a 4th Edition setting, and those reports seemed pretty solid; the same reports later predicted the release of the Eberron and Dark Sun settings for 4th Edition. Oddly, Dragonlance never appeared.

It turns out that now we may know why. According to Jim Butcher, he was approached by WotC around the time 4th Edition launched, because he'd been waxing lyrical in interviews over his love for the setting. They asked him to write a new version of the Dragonlance Chronicles, possibly as a longer-than-a-trilogy series, which he was intrigued by. It looks like he thought it was kind of an alternate universe take on the setting, like the Marvel Ultimates or Elseworlds version of Dragonlance. However, WotC wanted his new work to replace Weis & Hickman books. He thought that was pretty disrespectful and bailed on the project. WotC seemed to drop the idea. However, they never licensed out the setting again and it's just remained completely dormant for eleven years with no new releases at all. There's some speculation they might bring it back for D&D 5th Edition as this year is the 35th anniversary of the franchise but nope.

Joe Manganiello is still trying to get the live-action Dragonlance movie off the ground, although I think Wizards and Hasbro will be looking at how the Forgotten Realms movie does in 2021 first.

[Darth Richard II]

Damn, 200? That's insane.

Also holy shit, I just remembered the existence of the animated movie. I have to go scrub my brain with bleach now.

Do we know why Wotc/Hasbro pretty much stopped tie in novels? I think all that comes out now is the occasional Drizzt book.

 

Edit: Holy shit Ebberon is coming back for 5th edition. I loved the shit out of that setting. Still have all the 3rd edition sourcebooks.

[IlyaP]

8 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Here you go.

Age 14:  Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy

Age 15:  Dragonlance Legends trilogy

Never:  All the rest of them. 

*Shia Labeouf clap*

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Also on a Weiss/HIckmann note, I still say Death Gate is a great series and will defend that one til the day I die.

It did have some very imaginative world-building. The world in Fire Sea with the society based on necromancy living underground among rivers of lava was particularly memorable, and probably also the darkest story Weis and Hickman ever wrote

1 hour ago, felice said:

I recall liking his Forgotten Realms books, though I'm not sure how well they'd hold up today.

I remember liking Niles' Moonshae trilogies at the time I read them, although in retrospect it did have a lot of Celtic fantasy cliches. I read his Maztica series as well, the Aztec/Incan influence made it quite different to the other Forgotten Realms novels, although I don't think I liked the plot as much as the Moonshae books.

[C.T. Phipps]

1 hour ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Don't know much about what happened with the authors, but as a reader who'd gone away for a while from Dragonlance, but who was willing to be pulled back in by Second Generation and Summer Flame, it was still confusing as all get out if you hadn't been reading the dozens of other books leading up to it...and it got worse with the later trilogy that tried to clean up the lack of magic mess...

This is probably only a layman's understanding of the matter but TSR had milked Dragonlance as a cash cow exceptionally well due to the fact the books actually made a lot more money than Dungeons and Dragons as a whole was. However, basically, as often is the case--the authors felt undercompensated for their work as well as that TSR was very much happy to screw with their toys behind their backs. Infamously, they REALLY disliked what was done with Lord Soth by putting him in Ravenloft.

The announcement of the SAGA system (card-based RPGing) was accompanied by, essentially, telling them to write another book in order to set up a new setting edition. However, they were given no real instruction on how to do it so they decided to basically wrap up all of the plots as well as have all of the elements that made Dragonlance Dragonlance leave. No Moons, No Gods, no Dragons or lances.

After it was published with seemingly no one bothering to read it first, the publishers told the developers to write up a new setting for SAGA more or less from scratch--which they did by making Epic Level Dragons. It was a disaster poorly reveived by almost everyone. Then WOTC came around and offered a nice(r) deal for the writers to "fix" the setting.

And the War of Souls was written basically around the premise of untorching the franchise.

[Darth Richard II]

Ohhhhhh yeah the giant super 3000 level dragons.

[IlyaP]

3 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Ohhhhhh yeah the giant super 3000 level dragons.

WHAT. 

In what book is this depicted?!

[Darth Richard II]

13 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

WHAT. 

In what book is this depicted?!

It's the 5th Age stuff, post Summer Flame pre War of Souls. The idea was super giant uber dragons from other dimensions or some shit show up and take over large parts of the world. Like..imagine dragons 100 the size of smaug. It was...stupid mostly.

[IlyaP]

43 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

It's the 5th Age stuff, post Summer Flame pre War of Souls. The idea was super giant uber dragons from other dimensions or some shit show up and take over large parts of the world. Like..imagine dragons 100 the size of smaug. It was...stupid mostly.

This sounds like a gloriously fun bad thing. The book equivalent of a good bad movie. 

This I gotta see! 

[Darth Richard II]

Yeah one of them settles near the Kender and fucks some of them up mentally.

[Werthead]

15 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Do we know why Wotc/Hasbro pretty much stopped tie in novels? I think all that comes out now is the occasional Drizzt book.

I think I answered that already. WotC were going to relaunch the setting around 2009-10 by completely remaking it from scratch, with Jim Butcher rewriting the original Chronicles trilogy and them doing a new 4th Edition campaign setting. He didn't quite understand they were asking him to effectively replace Weis & Hickman's work and as soon as he did, he bailed on the project, believing it was disrespectful. WotC dropped the whole idea and Dragonlance along with it.

[Rhom]

32 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I think I answered that already. WotC were going to relaunch the setting around 2009-10 by completely remaking it from scratch, with Jim Butcher rewriting the original Chronicles trilogy and them doing a new 4th Edition campaign setting. He didn't quite understand they were asking him to effectively replace Weis & Hickman's work and as soon as he did, he bailed on the project, believing it was disrespectful. WotC dropped the whole idea and Dragonlance along with it.

I loved Butcher’s Codex Alera books from the fantasy side, but I can’t imagine his writing style which typically features a strong first person protagonist working in Dragonlance setting.

[Darth Richard II]

5 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think I answered that already. WotC were going to relaunch the setting around 2009-10 by completely remaking it from scratch, with Jim Butcher rewriting the original Chronicles trilogy and them doing a new 4th Edition campaign setting. He didn't quite understand they were asking him to effectively replace Weis & Hickman's work and as soon as he did, he bailed on the project, believing it was disrespectful. WotC dropped the whole idea and Dragonlance along with it.

Yeah, I was more thinking of what’s up with them now abouts, having far as I know all but killed all tie ins.

[kuenjato]

21 hours ago, Werthead said:

snip  

This is really fascinating. Why was WotC engaging in such a Scorched Earth campaign with their most profitable brand?

[Werthead]

46 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Yeah, I was more thinking of what’s up with them now abouts, having far as I know all but killed all tie ins.

WotC brought back RA Salvatore to write more Drizzt books, and Weis & Hickman are the only authors who can match him on sales, so it's not impossible they'll also do some kind of relaunch of Dragonlance, likely to coincide with the addition of the setting to the 5E game. That won't happen for another year or two though, as Eberron is their focus for now and then they'll shift back to more Forgotten Realms stuff to tie in with the release of Baldur's Gate III next year.

[Werthead]

2 minutes ago, kuenjato said:

This is really fascinating. Why was WotC engaging in such a Scorched Earth campaign with their most profitable brand?

They had form at the time. They also blew up the Forgotten Realms setting right at the very height of its popularity, to the utter horror of both the creators and fans.

Also, Dragonlance wasn't remotely their most profitable brand at the time: that was Forgotten Realms and I believe even the Eberron setting had been far outselling the Dragonlance material at the time. Dragonlance is popular, but also fairly narrow in appeal: anything to do with the War of the Lance tends to do really well, anything beyond that not so much, at least in game terms (a new Weis & Hickman Dragonlance novel will always sell well, for curiosity value alone).

[Darth Richard II]

Oof. Yeah, I remember all the 4th ed Forgotten Realms, uh, events. Blowing it up almost literally. Then advancing the timeline like..60-100 years so pretty much all the known characters were dead.