Dragonlance D&D Game Blog

I've kept commenting turned off for a while now, but when I looked at the blog stats recently, I've seen a lot more numbers than when I first started this. Since I don't want the conversation to be one sided, I'm going to turn on the comment feature. If you're a casual reader or first time visitor, I hope you'll take a moment to leave a comment, add to the discussion, and otherwise help enrich the experience here. You've heard me ramble on for months, now I look forward to hearing from you...

For many years, TSR tried to come up with ways to bring new players into the D&D game. Their own research had shown that there was a steep learning curve to the rules set (something that I think has persisted to this day). To that end, TSR created various versions of D&D lite, usually in the form of a board game, sometimes with cards and plastic pieces, and always with a full set of polyhedral dice. One such game was Dragonstrike . One of the things that made this game different was the inclusion of a video. Only a small part of the video casette (remember those!) is actually instructional, most of it is a live action/computer graphics short film depicting one adventure. Be warned that the CG is pretty bad, the acting not too much better, and the plot straight out of a basic adventure... on the other hand, it does have it's moments, illustrates some basic concepts and has a disembodied floating head DM (where else are you going to see that!) So grab a soda, and a small popc...

My Honor Is My Life The story picks up shortly after the events of issue 3 . Kitiara, top her dragon Skie, is leading her army, along with an unmounted red dragon, toward Castle Silvercrown. Inside, Riva and Vandar are talking with Fizban, without getting much information out of the old wizard. Riva leaves, with the dragonlance that was recovered from the monestary of Majere in issue 1 , to join up with the castle knights. She tries to bolster their spirits before the attack, but is quickly dismissed since she's a woman. Meanwhile as Vandar and Fizban talk, the young boy, Tip, appears, happy the old wizard is still alive. As Vandar leaves to meditate on his own, Fizban questions weither or not Angriff really died the way Vandar remembered it (as seen in issue 3). Outside, as the battle rages, Riva single-handedly kills the red dragon. This event turns the tied of the battle and instills the knights with renewed vigor. Just then, Kit arrives and launchs her attack on Riva. Back insi...

Continuing my review of DC's Dragonlance comics series. Nightwatch The issue starts at night in Riva's bedroom at Castle Silvercrown. As Riva and Vandar kiss, Vandar is revealed to be a draconian. Riva quickly kills the creature before setting off to find the real Vandar in the castle. She encounters her father and brother (who was revealed last issue to have been killed several months earlier by a Sivak draconian) tethered to strings like puppets trying to stop her. After Riva cuts the strings that control them, the two crumple to the floor. Elsewhere in the castle, she finds Vandar chained and tortured by a hobgoblin. She quickly kills the creature and frees the monk. As they talk, it appears Vandar is trapped in the same dream as Riva. While taking a break to rest, Riva hears Vandar talking, but then sees that he's talking to his brother Angriff (Sturm's father). As the scene plays out, Riva sees the two argue about how to deal with the angry mob outside the castl...

I was recently writing up a post about one of the recent game sessions (I'm about three sessions, or two posts, behind the actual campaign) when I started going off on a tangent about Training. As I started writing more and more on this "tangent" I realized this should be it's own post... Here's the conundrum I run into with training in the D&D game... on one hand I like the logic that characters need to train to gain new abilities and powers. On the other hand, I hate the fact that long term adventures need to "grind to a halt" to allow PCs a couple of weeks to train. I especially have this problem when the characters are in the middle of a big, epic, "save the world" kind of adventure. There are a couple of solutions, adventure-wise, but none that I like. I could just stick with dungeon crawls, so the characters can stop, train, and resume the crawl at their leisure. But I think a good campaign should have a bit more than just "break...

Continuing my review of DC's Dragonlance comics series. Rites of Passage The issue starts with Riva and Vandar looking at the dragonlance they recovered in the first issue . Riva claims Vandar should carry it, or at least one of the other weapons they have, but Vandar's pacifist beliefs don't allow it. That night he notices that the constellations of the Queen of Darkness (Takhisis) and the Valiant Warrior (Paladine) do not appear in the sky. He believes that the two gods are on Krynn and no one will survive their battle. As Riva tries to comfort him, we see her attraction to Vandar while he seems to brood on a past betrayal. Note: The sight of the missing constellations ties in to a similar scene in Dragons of Autumn Twilight. In the middle of the night, Riva is alone in a dense, thorny forest, where she confronts Lord Soth. As she tries to use her dragonlance against him, he easily disarms her with magic. Just then, Riva wakes up from her dream to find herself being atta...

Kender were created for the Dragonlance setting as a replacement for halfings. Tracy Hickman didn't like the idea of a race of thieves (as halfings were thought of at the time) and wanted something different. Harold Johnson, another designer on the Dragonlance project, suggested the idea of them being driven by curiousity instead of greed. In the 2nd edition source book, Halflings and Gnomes, kender are referenced as an example of convergent evolution, as they arose to "fill the gap" of halfings on this one world. In addition to Kender, there are also Kendar in the subterranean realm of Chorane near the south pole, Marak Kender on the content of Taladas, and even half-kender. In the Demiplane of Dread known as Ravenloft, there are also kender vampires (which had abilities that were different from the "standard" vampire of 2nd edition).

After my recent post about the history of Dragonlance comics , I've been itching to go back an re-read those issues. So here is the a synopsis and review of the first issue. Issue#1: Fire & Ice On his way to Solace, Sturm Brightblade comes across a female warrior in need of help fighting off a band of hobgoblins. Sturm comes to her aid and then carries her to a nearby monastery. At the door steps of the monastery (of Majere), Sturm passes out. When he awakens, Sturm prepares to leave and resume his journey to Solace, first getting his sword that a monk stored in a nearby shed (their order does not allow weapons on their living premises). After Sturm leaves, Riva finds out that the monk who had been attending them is Vandar Brightblade, Sturm's uncle who was once a knight, but abandoned the knighthood for the monastery. The action then cuts to Lord Soth, who is obviously in Dargaard Keep with a dragon highlord, revealed to be Kitiara. The two are in the middle of some plan ...