Originally posted by Glblbudd3
I love the dragonlance world but I find that the present time line is exhausting itself. I am becoming bored of it especially with the war of the souls series. The exception for me at least, is the past histories of Krynn like the barbarians etc. I think the only way to inject "more life" into this world is by expanding its landmass, creatures, races and even gods. I have to say that I am dissappointed that the "new" god in the war of the souls series was Takhissis. I really thought that they would bring in new gods. Which is why I am recently getting into the forgotten realms world. The one good thing about it is that its world is limitless, where anything is possible. I feel that because Krynn is "small", it would take more than a miracle to breathe more life into it.
Umm..are you talking about just the novels or the gaming side of it? Because 'world is limitless' and 'anything is possible' fit into any campaign settings when you are the DM. You want new gods, just create them.
Originally posted by SageofKaolyn
I think we need more Taladas...mourn the lost novels.
Well, circumstances happen. Hopefully, the project is "on hold" and not dead.
But besides the 4th Age, I'd like "fluff 'n crunch stuff" on Taladas for d20.
I just think that a new expansion of another world would add to the rich world of dragonlance immensly.
James O'Rance has updated all the infor to the fifth age and to 3e.
use it. It rocks.
2 new 'continents' apart from Ansalon.
Does land mass = adventure?
Right now is a great time to be adventuring in Krynn. With the return of the gods, there are now four types of magic co-existing. Certainly, that alone will add some conflict. Add in the elves (who are without a home), the minotaur invasion, and a bit of creativity, and there is plenty of room for adventure.
If you're looking for lands outside of Ansalon, there is Taladas, and the Adlatum project by the Whitestone Council is still in the works (although on hold for now). So there is more coming.
Ask yourself what you want in a game. If you like the elements of Krynn, go with Dragonlance. If you want new lands to explore beyond Ansalon, you may want to try Forgotten Realms. The Realms are quite huge.
If you want to go the homebrew route, you could actually mesh the two together. Just say that Faerun is another continent on Krynn, add in the moons, have the various knights and the Wizards of High Sorcery on Faerun. That can be fun too. It may actually add some twists.
Hope that helps.
Ansalon is anything but boring, nor has it completely been explored. As a matter of fact, certain areas have been over-explored.
Trust me, once the Atlas is out, you'll see that there's a surprising amount of detail left to explore on the main continent of Ansalon...and if you think that it's boring, well...then...*shrugs* who am I to persuade you differently? ;)
Much of Ansalon has changed, so everything that you think you know...well, you might find yourself surprised. Remember, not only did Chaos and the UberDragons change things, but the world continues to evolve.
Christopher
Originally posted by Dragonhelm
Does land mass = adventure?
YES!
Krynn is very much alive!!
Originally posted by SageofKaolynDoes land mass = adventure?
YES!
*sigh*
"You are stranded in a thousand-mile area of barren tundra. There are no settlements, no monsters, nothing. It's just blah."
Compare that to...
"You're within the walls of a small city. The nobles have overtaxed the peasantry, causing unrest. City guards are everywhere. The Thieve's Guild has been quite active lately..."
And so on, and so forth.
Point is, you can have all the land mass you want. It isn't the land itself that provides the adventure, it is what is in the land. It is possible that you can find more adventure within one small city than you can within a thousand-mile desert.
Sure, one can expect that with a greater amount of land, there should be a proportionate amount of adventure possibilities.
However, that is not necessarily the case. It is possible to have more adventures in a smaller area as well.
Something to think about.
I really should post that somewhere. Maybe the tobril has a place for a cult of sirrion...
It took the Q. elves from the 3rd book of war of souls couple of weeks to cross the plains of dust (i think)
I don't think the continent is large, but it isn't small either.
Mainland USA is about 1800 to 2200 miles
Even if its 1200 that still pretty large land mass. And Ansalon is almost as wide as it is long. 1200 * 1200 = 1440000 sq. miles of land, and yes i know there a lot of water spliting the land mass up.
People could be more creative with their campaign it wouldn't be boring. Don't zap your party from one country to the next. as your traveling have an adventure on your way there.
Originally posted by Dragontooth
Mainland USA is about 1800 to 2200 miles
Even if its 1200 that still pretty large land mass. And Ansalon is almost as wide as it is long. 1200 * 1200 = 1440000 sq. miles of land, and yes i know there a lot of water spliting the land mass up.
The U.S. is approx. 2500 miles long (depending on your longitude), with an area of roughly 3.6 million square miles. Ansalon would be slightly larger (in sq. miles) than two Alaskas.I still compare Ansalon to Europe.
Originally posted by Dragonhelm
*sigh*
"You are stranded in a thousand-mile area of barren tundra. There are no settlements, no monsters, nothing. It's just blah."
Compare that to...
"You're within the walls of a small city. The nobles have overtaxed the peasantry, causing unrest. City guards are everywhere. The Thieve's Guild has been quite active lately..."
And so on, and so forth.
Which is why I absolutely despise the desolation realms of the dragon overlords. It destroyed everything (cultures, cities, varied monstrous groups) and replaced them with a huge dragon you couldn't kill, and the dragon's minor minions. That's why I hope the desolations will be shrunk or redefined.
To be a success, a campaign setting should have 5 major villains and 10 subplots that are significantly different from each other in their goals and motivation in a 50 mile radius (on average). It has always been a criticism of dragonlance that unless you were globetrotting there wasn't enough adventure hooks to do a campaign with a decent amount of variety.
Hopefully now with a geography chapter, we can finally be the "heroes of Nowhere" (and other such minor places) and do 4 or 5 adventures set in that location.
Is the Atlas that is coming out going to be like the Atlas for "Kingdoms of Kalamar"? Frankly, a place that showed me the topography and population of the fantasy world in as much detail as "an Atlas of Europe" was very, very tempting. It would also be especially good for the novel line, since the authors would know exactly how much disruption "storyline X" would have on "Area X". I am tired of seeing endless corpses of Dark Knights after all.
Originally posted by ferratus
Which is why I absolutely despise the desolation realms of the dragon overlords. It destroyed everything (cultures, cities, varied monstrous groups) and replaced them with a huge dragon you couldn't kill, and the dragon's minor minions. That's why I hope the desolations will be shrunk or redefined.
Maybe the adventurers are sent in as advance scouts or spies. Or maybe there's some strange disturbance -- parties of spawn or other draconic inhabitants riding out from the desolation and attacking nearby villages.
Even desolate areas have a lot to offer, but you may have to think outside the box a little bit in order to come up with the appropriate "hook". It's definitely not going to be the political intrigue of Palanthas, but there certainly was enough adventure on the Icewall glacier and on the Plains of Dust surrounding Tarsis when the Companions crossed it... Invent something...
Originally posted by Paladin
Even desolate areas have a lot to offer, but you may have to think outside the box a little bit in order to come up with the appropriate "hook". It's definitely not going to be the political intrigue of Palanthas, but there certainly was enough adventure on the Icewall glacier and on the Plains of Dust surrounding Tarsis when the Companions crossed it... Invent something...
Yeah, but why don't I invent it for Icewall Glacier then? Or the Plains of Dust? I didn't need the desolations to create adventures involving snowy wasteland, stretches of sandy desert, and volcanic ranges.
I don't need Qualinesti to be twice its' regular size.
I didn't need adventures that basically revolve around "Fight minor minions, but make sure the big boss dragon (which you can never kill) eats you.
Now Sable I can do something with, because she has the right personality. She created a place of "Heart of Darkness" mixed with the "Cthulu mythos". She is introverted, obsessed with her experiments. She looks inward rather than rampages outword. Thus she has agents, she has armies, she has spawn creatures. However, you can thwart her influence. For example, if Gellidus sends his minions after you, and you destroy them, he'll just come after you himself. Sable however, will either sneer at the dumb monkeys failing and send other more monstrous agents, or else if you slay the monsters spend time making more powerful monsters to send against you.
See.. why does everyone assume that I can't "make up something". Do I sound like I'm short on ideas? Hell no. I just don't find it worth my time. I'll write desert adventures for the Plains of Dust. I'll write Glacial adventures for Icewall. I just simply don't need the desolations and find them completely redundant.
Originally posted by ferratus
I didn't need adventures that basically revolve around "Fight minor minions, but make sure the big boss dragon (which you can never kill) eats you.
As opposed to "Fight minor minions, only to have her send out even more minor minions, and make sure the big boss dragon (which you can never kill) doesn't eat you" with Sable?
You just have an interest in the personality behind the events which happen. I don't think the events themselves, when stripped down as much as you've done, really differ at all whether it's Sable, Frost, or Toede and Hopsloth.
The various Dragon Overlord areas have a lot of things within their regions that aren't in Icewall, the Plains of Dust, or Nordmaar (or elsewhere.) I think there's a fair amount of desire on the part of most people to see them shrink when the dragons die, but it's hardly a show-stopper.
Cheers,
Cam
Originally posted by Cam Banks
The various Dragon Overlord areas have a lot of things within their regions that aren't in Icewall, the Plains of Dust, or Nordmaar (or elsewhere.) I think there's a fair amount of desire on the part of most people to see them shrink when the dragons die, but it's hardly a show-stopper.
I can fit entire nations into those desolations. What do you mean it isn't a show stopper? They take up half the continent, half the continent that can used for variety!
As for the dragon overlord areas... they have ruins. If they aren't ruins, they can exist just as well without the dragon overlords destroying everything around them. Southern Ergoth has Huma's Tomb. I can put a tomb of an important ruler in Icewall's past. The desolation of Malystryx has ruins of various cities and towns destroyed by dragonfire. Somehow, I don't think Krynn has a shortage of those. The only unique thing there is the ruins of Kendermore.
In either case, if you shrink the desolations, you have those elements anyway. The desolation exists around kendermore and in the Balifor desert. Excellent, no one would ever know the difference. Gellidus has the tomb of Huma in the middle of his realm... why not simply have him "glacier up" the Lastgaard mountains, and leave the plains and cities below intact? Huma's tomb would still be smack dab in the middle, and Gellidus could still rule over the entire east of the subcontinent from his mountain lair.
Originally posted by ferratus
In either case, if you shrink the desolations, you have those elements anyway. The desolation exists around kendermore and in the Balifor desert. Excellent, no one would ever know the difference. Gellidus has the tomb of Huma in the middle of his realm... why not simply have him "glacier up" the Lastgaard mountains, and leave the plains and cities below intact? Huma's tomb would still be smack dab in the middle, and Gellidus could still rule over the entire east of the subcontinent from his mountain lair.
Excellent! You've solved your own problem. I expect this is the kind of thing people will do whenever they encounter aspects of the setting they'd rather change or tweak.
Cheers,
Cam
Originally posted by Cam Banks
Excellent! You've solved your own problem. I expect this is the kind of thing people will do whenever they encounter aspects of the setting they'd rather change or tweak.
Of course I've solved my own problem, it isn't as if this is new information on my part. I've always said that I could do it. The question is whether I would invest the time necessary to make these changes. This isn't exactly a minor tweak. It is essentially doubling the amount of geographical information in the setting, and creating ripple effects on any neigbouring realms, forcing me to rewrite those too.
Now, Sean Macdonald rewrote the Desolation without shrinking it much... he simply added variety to it. There were warring barbarian nations, and places known as the "Jade Coast" and "The Kenderwood" and the "Sea of Cinders". He added variety, yet the stamp of Malystryx was over the entire region that once inside her borders on the 5th Age map. Is it exactly what I would do? Not exactly, but it is good.
I have hope that Chris and Jamie have done much the same thing when they said "The Desolation isn't all volcanoes." That made me very, very happy.
Variety and options. That's what I care about. Frankly, it is the only thing that makes a fictional campaign world interesting. If I have cross the entire continent for 20 different plot lines, then it is a pretty **** poor campaign setting. I should have 20 completely unrelated plot lines per nation for it to be worth my money.