Dragonlance D&D Game Blog

In previous posts, I've mentioned how much I like and use minis, and various other props at my gaming table. Along with all those props are the battlefields they stand on. I currently use a number of different options depending on the need. First and foremost is my trusty erasable battle mat. There are plenty to choose from, but I tend to like Flip-Mats from Paizo. These mats allow you to use dry erase, wet erase, and (according their literature), even permanent marker and still remove it when you are done. On side of the Flip-Mats usually has a specific scene, like a forest crossing, a dungeon, or a town square, while the other side is sometimes a simple color pattern, like dark gray for the dungeon stone, like gray for paved city, or green for forest. Since I'm in the middle of running a lengthy dungeon crawl, I have the handy dark gray mat in the DM kit. The nice part about the scene specific side of the battle mat is that there is usually enough detail to get any D

This isn't going to be a post about how the subtleties of being a really good DM, or player, have vanished in the modern day. No, this post is actually about the lost art of D&D.  Literally. It turns out that back in the early days of TSR, when they were developing and designing all those great classic books, the company had a policy of not returning art originals back to the artists. Compounding the issue, at some point TSR threw away classic art from a number of highly revered books and modules. But there is the next best thing. Artists Jeff Dee and Diesel LaForce are currently organizing Kickstarter campaigns to recreate art from various books, included the 1e version of Deities and Demigods. If you're interested, here are links to their respective pages where you can sign up to be a patron and get some nifty items for your contributions that would make great art for your gaming room! Jeff Dee Kickstarter page . Diesel LaForce Kickstarter page .

In his recent Dragon magazine editorial , Chris Perkins talks about many of WotC's older campaign settings. In particular he sites the Dragonlance Chronicles as the "most iconic D&D story". However, he then goes on to assert that the Dragonlance setting is hamstrung by that fact that it only has one story to tell (the aforementioned Chronicles). I disagree wholeheartedly with Mr. Perkins' viewpoint. Dragonlance supported a huge number of books and even today there are many fans still wishing for more content about this world. Furthermore, Mr. Perkins asserts that after the world spanning War of the Lance storyline, everything else feels subpar. I would ask then, based on that same premise, if the Forgotten Realms were rendered moot after their epic world spanning Avatar Trilogy, or Horde Invasion? Where he sees the end of story potential in the Dragonlance setting with the War of the Lance, I would say that the War opened up vast areas for epic stories fo