Knights & Knaves Alehouse

garhkal wrote:When you say 'not a slave to canon', what are you meaning?

The way I look at it is, for example, The One Ring Roleplaying Game works on the assumption that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings fall out exactly as they do in the books. So, your party in the RPG has to dance gingerly around the fringe of those stories, and not really affect them, or even do anything as important as them. It’s important to some people to be able to imagine they are in the “real” Middle-earth; “Tolkien’s” Middle-earth. But in my games, anything can happen. It’s an alternate timeline, if you want to look at it that way. But nobody has really batted an eye or demanded an explanation. Perhaps because we play board games where the LotR falls out differently, all the time.

With DL, if I were to run a game there, I would go even further. Right off the bat no Kender or steampunk gnomes. I would replace all Gully Dwarves everywhere with the degenerate Theiwar (derro). I would toss out the whole War of the Lance storyline and just let the players loose on a post-Cataclysm landscape where individual dragons had carved out domains. After the oceans drank Istar, whole cities lie in ruin or sunk beneath the waves; there is no shining knighthood (only a rusted and corrupt one); no gods save for hypocritical or corrupt cults (Duerghast the Spider-god, Belzor the Snake-god, Luerkhisis the Volcano-god, Highseeker theocrats, barbarian princess-priestesses…); haughty and hated Melnibonéanesque elvish enclaves; STEEL is the only thing that MATTERS!; barons with roving war-bands; minotaur slave ships; mysterious draconians=serpentmen… I would play up all that shit. You can quest for the Old Gods, but you’ll find super-monsters (the Bison-minotaur, the Winged Griffon, the World Tree, etc.) that for the most part have little love for men. You can quest for dragon orbs and the dragonlance, but just as artifacts, not to arm the forces of light or anything like that. There are some good dungeons and even sandboxes on Krynn if you know where to find them, but you skip the script.

Falconer wrote:With DL, if I were to run a game there, I would go even further. Right off the bat no Kender or steampunk gnomes. I would replace all Gully Dwarves everywhere with the degenerate Theiwar (derro). I would toss out the whole War of the Lance storyline and just let the players loose on a post-Cataclysm landscape where individual dragons had carved out domains. After the oceans drank Istar, whole cities lie in ruin or sunk beneath the waves; there is no shining knighthood (only a rusted and corrupt one); no gods save for hypocritical or corrupt cults (Duerghast the Spider-god, Belzor the Snake-god, Luerkhisis the Volcano-god, Highseeker theocrats, barbarian princess-priestesses…); haughty and hated Melnibonéanesque elvish enclaves; STEEL is the only thing that MATTERS!; barons with roving war-bands; minotaur slave ships; mysterious draconians=serpentmen… I would play up all that shit. You can quest for the Old Gods, but you’ll find super-monsters (the Bison-minotaur, the Winged Griffon, the World Tree, etc.) that for the most part have little love for men. You can quest for dragon orbs and the dragonlance, but just as artifacts, not to arm the forces of light or anything like that. There are some good dungeons and even sandboxes on Krynn if you know where to find them, but you skip the script.

Sounds pretty good. I'm not very familiar with the DL products. It seems to me that Krynn was spread throughout a whole bunch of novels and modules. Is there any one product that a man could buy and then use only that as the basis for his variations of the setting?

T. Foster wrote: The World of Greyhawk ... feel and mindset comes more from the modules and novels than it does from the gazetteer (which is, of course, full of dry numbers and specific details).

This could explain why GH never captured my imagination like Glorantha did, and explain why RQ and Glorantha are inextricably tied together in my mind. There's no doubt to the feel of Glorantha just through a read of the RQ2 rules. Add the RQ Companion to that, and you have all the textures needed to adventure in Prax and Dragon Pass for years.

I wanted to like GH when I got it, but it had all the charm of a high school social studies book. Though I had several TSR modules, I never connected the dots on what they meant within the setting, except for their locations.

Geoffrey wrote:Sounds pretty good. I'm not very familiar with the DL products. It seems to me that Krynn was spread throughout a whole bunch of novels and modules. Is there any one product that a man could buy and then use only that as the basis for his variations of the setting?

The closest thing to what you’d want that I can think of is the DL11 Dragons of Glory wargame, which has the best overland map, and can give you a sense for the world as only a strategic game can.



Other than that each region or site was indeed published as a single module.

The best thing in terms of flavor to me is Jeff Grubb’s The Matter of Theology which is the “Supplement IV” from his OD&D home campaign.

Chainsaw, that is totally crazy.

Where do you find that stuff?

Here is something like what (I imagine) my home brew is going for:



(Thanks, Ragnorakk, for helping me figure out how to embed that video!)

You decide whether it is rad or sad.

Falconer wrote:

Geoffrey wrote:Sounds pretty good. I'm not very familiar with the DL products. It seems to me that Krynn was spread throughout a whole bunch of novels and modules. Is there any one product that a man could buy and then use only that as the basis for his variations of the setting?

The closest thing to what you’d want that I can think of is the DL11 Dragons of Glory wargame, which has the best overland map, and can give you a sense for the world as only a strategic game can.

Other than that each region or site was indeed published as a single module.

The best thing in terms of flavor to me is Jeff Grubb’s The Matter of Theology which is the “Supplement IV” from his OD&D home campaign.

I'll go ahead and plug Taladas here.

If I were to ever run anything in the DL vein, it would be on this continent. I don't care much for the history of it, and I could do without the gnomes (and kender), but there are some interesting ideas in it. Much darker and wild than anything presented in the novels, and completely open to one's own imagination (as there isn't much canon for it).

tetramorph wrote:

(take the 's' out of the https)

Thanks, Ragnorakk!

Got it.

AD&D-wise it's Greyhawk ('83 boxed set), Lankhmar ('85 book), and Hârn (the original '83 book).

Sometimes I don't use a setting , besides what I sketch out myself, other times what I start with merges and is combined with a published setting.

Falconer wrote:

Geoffrey wrote:Sounds pretty good. I'm not very familiar with the DL products. It seems to me that Krynn was spread throughout a whole bunch of novels and modules. Is there any one product that a man could buy and then use only that as the basis for his variations of the setting?

The closest thing to what you’d want that I can think of is the DL11 Dragons of Glory wargame, which has the best overland map, and can give you a sense for the world as only a strategic game can.

Other than that each region or site was indeed published as a single module.

The best thing in terms of flavor to me is Jeff Grubb’s The Matter of Theology which is the “Supplement IV” from his OD&D home campaign.

There's also an orange-binding AD&D hardback called Dragonlance Adventures. I think it provides a comprehensive setting overview (my vague recollection).

Chainsaw wrote:I’m kinda going for this in my game. \m/

I mean, yeah, it looks fucking fun as hell, but I don't see many opportunities for me to deeply roleplay a character in that setting.

Dragonlance Adventures is garbage. Utter garbage. Ignore it.

Jeff wrote:

Falconer wrote:

Geoffrey wrote:Sounds pretty good. I'm not very familiar with the DL products. It seems to me that Krynn was spread throughout a whole bunch of novels and modules. Is there any one product that a man could buy and then use only that as the basis for his variations of the setting?

The closest thing to what you’d want that I can think of is the DL11 Dragons of Glory wargame, which has the best overland map, and can give you a sense for the world as only a strategic game can.

Other than that each region or site was indeed published as a single module.

The best thing in terms of flavor to me is Jeff Grubb’s The Matter of Theology which is the “Supplement IV” from his OD&D home campaign.

I'll go ahead and plug Taladas here.

If I were to ever run anything in the DL vein, it would be on this continent. I don't care much for the history of it, and I could do without the gnomes (and kender), but there are some interesting ideas in it. Much darker and wild than anything presented in the novels, and completely open to one's own imagination (as there isn't much canon for it).

I was going to suggest Taladas as well..

Ermanaric wrote:AD&D-wise it's Greyhawk ('83 boxed set), Lankhmar ('85 book), and Hârn (the original '83 book).

I've a bunch of the Harn stuff (the world book, many of the kindgom ones as well, but NOT the harnmaster RPG book itself..
I adapted the gods for my home realm..

This is more my wardrobe department for D&D:

Chainsaw wrote:I’m kinda going for this in my game. \m/

Fuck yeah. \m/ This video was done by our boy Skinner (the same guy who did the monster pics that I posted here a couple years ago, and he also did the cover for Mastodon's Once More Around the Sun album. He also just put out a Necromonicon Pop Up Book that just looks awesome, for those into a different vision of the Mythos.

- Wheggi