Myself i personally prefer dragonlance, as Weis and Hickman have way better characters and overall talent then salvatore or Niles. The setting too is alot better, krynn is a better area then the Forgotten Realms. For one thing, it doesn't blatantly use real world examples, *cough*Tuigan horde*cough or the *cough* Maztica *cough*. The characters are more developed, (Raistlin, goldmoon, Riverwind, Kang), and stuff does happen to gods... just read war of souls.... [img]smile.gif[/img] , i must say, the ending to that series was NOT what i expected..... In all i say that Krynn/Dragonlance is way better then FR.

BTW raistlin would kick elminsters ass.

Ignore 5th age, and Dragonlance rules.

I make it one of my personal codes of conduct to studiously deny that the fifth age rubbish ever happened. It was all a terrible nightmare that Weis and Hickman had that accidentally got sneezed onto some paper, or somehting. ;)

I agree, the Dragonlance world is alot better. Weis and Hickman are good writers, compared to the FR ones.

<font color = lightgreen>The Forgotten Realms world was a really great place with a lot of promise, until people like Ed Greenwood began to ruin it. Then came the Time of Troubles--ugh. Then they started all that Kara Tur, Maztica, Al Qadim stuff and doing off-the-wall plots like the "Chosen of Mystra", which was designed only to make the authors' old characters invincible and immortal. :rolleyes:
On the other hand, I never could get into Krynn because they had too much godly influence (or interference) and black-and-white good-versus-evil duality. I must admit that Raistlin probably could kick Elminster's ass, and Mordenkainen's, as well.

In short...neither.</font>

War of Souls is... erh, after reading it, other than the part about our all time favor Tass, it made me want to puke. Mina, so cheesy. stealing the world and gods returning, obviously Weis and Hickman has nothing to write about but to somehow clumsily resserruct a dead series.

the Dragonlance series involving ANY of the characters of the original 9 heros of the lance should have ended with the banishment of the Dark Queen. talking about the self sacrificing and dedicating of evil paladins was a absurd failure and lack of imagination. where is the consequences in the evil EVENTUALLY turning upon themselves?

saying the dark queen abandon her followers by the end of the Chaos war was not a conclusion to the dark paladins. it was, in my arrogant opinion, a lame way of avoiding conclusion. why? because Weis and Hickman had nothing to say about it. their petty little attempt at creating a dark honorable evil natured noble warrior were never intended to fall into the pit of backstabbing and power struggling, and that is where it failed. looking everywhere at any reference that the creation of dark knights might base on, any of who would sacrifice another person to progress their 'cause' falls, eventually, into self destruction. that is the very nature of evil. and yet, i never did seen their demise. instead, the dark queen step in with her divine intervention, and we as readers were just innocently taken away by other, more pressing topics (like the invasion the evil huge dragons and stuff).

another reason i dont like about Weis and Hickman. they kill people off way too easily. Tanis, it was so very friggin obvious that because Laurana was going to be trapped in Qualinasti, and it would add to the complexity of writting, that he just simply died a 'so-called' heroic death. there was no foreshadowing other than, at the last day before his death, the poor excuse of "we will go back through the kitchen". it was shallow, pointless and stupid compare to Sturm Brightblade, whom his entire life story had been foretelling his final tragic but ultimately heroic sacrifice. while poor old Tanis, "well you know, this is a last minute thing, Old Buddy, it is time to go packing."

Caramon's two sons, Sturm and Tanin. this one is more absurd you had to laugh. reading through the entire book of Dragons of Summer Flame, you would find no place for their chance to act heroic, if they lived through their last encounter, without sounding too much like Sturm Brightblade. and isnt it obvious for me to point out that the author wrote em off because it would somehow make Palin/Caramon suffer? lets see, Guy needed a terrible lose to show that he is real enough to experience loses in his life, and this dude happened to have two sons that no one else really cared about, and no one would miss them too much if they didnt show up for the next play, say, shouldnt we get rid of them?

next, the thief guide in Palanthas. need I say more? they are the only, dominating, thief guide in the city, which by itself is rare enough. maybe that explains why they are so stupid. cause survival of the fittest simply does not apply here. but dont get me wrong, I liked their funny descriptions of the thieves fairly.

and there are many many many more cheesy, stupid, obvious to the eye plot you can spot right away. one last example, when Tanis was delayed at the Tower of High Clerist, Dalamar had offered Tanis to escape by teleport him back to his house. lol, how unusually friendly was Dalamar? Cannot you see the connections here? Tanis was not needed later, because Laurana would be trapped in Qualinasti. If Tanis escaped at this point, then our authors will have to write more stories about him, which undoubted adding immense work to an already complicated epic. We must not let that happen, right? Thus, Dalamar, with our authors' best interests in mind, persented this chance for Tanis (who had little to say in the matter) knowing our friend would turn it down anyways. Tanis would die looking prettier, and our authors would no doubtly save probally a couple months of contemplating.

oh well, that is a lot bad things said about the later works of Weis and Hickman. but i am a really big fan of the War of the Lance series. that includes Dragons of Autaum Twilight, Winter Night and Spring Dawning. btw, Tass and Fizban are definitely the spotligths.

well, as for Salvatore's works, I've never found anything like the above. lets say that the difference does not lie in realms, but rather authors. if R.A. Salva writes Dragonlance, he would probally do better. ppl say nothing bad's ever happened to Drizzt series' characters, that is ok because we know eventually Drizzt or Bruenor's gonna get it. probally the dwarf gets it first trying to save a certain skinny elf butt or protecting his daughter. Catti Brie is too stern and bright to die, despite the common belief that beauty withers. only the die hard noble ones like Drizzt and the unbreakable ones like Bruenor will be caught in a dire situation where he cannot turn away. the halfling is never gonna die, and Wolfgur already died once, somehow the previous death diminishes the marginal meaning of the second one.

anyways, like I say, that is ok for them to continue to live on and adventure on. and Drizzt will probally see Cattie Brie die of age. we know, in the end, Drizzt will find an opponent he cannot outfight or outrun or outguess or simply outluck, and we know Bruenor will die in a groundbreaking adventure, die of saving his friends, or defending a village, or slaying a dragon, or banging his many notched axe on the head of an evil wizard while the whole fortress crumble on top of him. until then, they continue to adventure, and their life is continously fullfilled.

but, Raistlin would DEFINITELY own Elminster, lol. just show the cranky wizard a topless female, and kill elminster while he was distracted

[ 04-15-2003, 06:39 PM: Message edited by: Ken Rauhl ]

Nice post, Ken Rauhl. It's nice to see someone willing to explain his opinion, instead of simply saying something like "This world suck". As most people usually do.

I quit reading those after the gods had left. That's the 4th age, right? From what I can see, it seem they really messed their world with the last age. Good thing I quit before getting there. :D

I don't agree with you about R.A. Salvatore, I think he is good when it comes to adding "morals" to his story, I really like the comments he make between chapters, and I like the characters he created, but I think they are too powerfull to give us any suspense, but this is off topic, so I won't say any more about this here. ;)

thank you [img]smile.gif[/img] you are right about the last age. it was REALLY messed up. another thing I forgot to mention was, the authors seem so desperate that they want to make money off Krynn that they dont give the world a rest. there was always war, there was never a peaceful place and time for our old friends to have some rest. Qualinasti was invaded and ravished again and beaten so badly, finally, into the a lake. sorry for the plot spoiling, but you really shouldnt read it. Laurana died a violent death, so did Tanis, so did Tas. I dont know what happened between Palin and Usha, but judging by palin's cynical state of mind in the War of Souls series, you know nothing good happened. Caramon was the luckiest of them all, and he died without any of his sons by his funeral. At laest he died at home.

my little conspiracy theory is, the authors are too afraid of trying new characters, thus they revive the old topics, continuing the orgininal tales over and over, until they turned the original into tasteless. because there was always a new evil after every happy ending, and every struggle against the new evil requested a sacrifice, and every sacrifice had to be bigger than the previous ones in order to make the book worth reading. thus Krynn would never have peace. all the sacrifices made by the fathers would not dminish or even delay the arise of another evil at the sons' time.

back to R.A. Salvatore, well, I like a LOT about his morals too. I pretty much agree with most of them. about chivalry, defending the weak and rejecting evil. sometimes I am not required with certain skills to do what I believe, say if I see an armed robbery, I probally stay the hell out of the way. but Drizzt, in his world, it is different. he is the righteous and self righteous ass kicker that represents all that I couldnt do. plus, it is good to see that certain ideal of good and kindness are common, and are played out from time to time.

[ 04-15-2003, 06:58 PM: Message edited by: Ken Rauhl ]

Damn! I was hoping Tanis and Laurana would get to live in peace. It suck that all the characters got killed. I also like it when authors write about the old heroes's childrens, I was hoping they could become legends too. Look like most didn't.

So, what happen at the end of the 5th age? Who is left alive? Did the good guys win or what?

As for your conspiracy theory, while it's possible that they are trying to get as much money out of the Dragonlance world as they can. They do have other characters. They created their own world that is not asociated to dungeon and dragon. Here is an example or a novel. So my own conspiracy therory is that they are trying to kill the Dragonlance world. It might be because they don't want TSR to bother them with Dragonlance again so they can concentrate on their on world, or maybe they feel Dragonlance is a competitor to their new world and need to get rid off, I don't now, but I'm sure they butchered it on purpose.

Most of the 'original cast' got killed off when Dragons of summer flame came out, Tanis died an unspectacular death at the hands of evil minion #1 and Tasslehoff Burrfoot aka most anoying character in a fantasy series ever was quite literally squashed to death at the hands of Chaos, or so it seemed because unfortunately he got resurrected by Weis and Hickman for the War of the Souls trilogy. Aaargh! Anyway I haven't read that trilogy by the way. Waiting for all three of the books to be out on paperback. IMHO, Dragonlance, which started off as an interesting setting has become nothing more than a cash cow for Weis and Hickman these days.

Most of the 'original cast' got killed off when Dragons of summer flame came out, Tanis died an unspectacular death at the hands of evil minion #1 and Tasslehoff Burrfoot aka most anoying character in a fantasy series ever was quite literally squashed to death at the hands of Chaos, or so it seemed because unfortunately he got resurrected by Weis and Hickman for the War of the Souls trilogy. Aaargh! Anyway I haven't read that trilogy by the way. Waiting for all three of the books to be out on paperback. IMHO, Dragonlance, which started off as an interesting setting has become nothing more than a cash cow for Weis and Hickman these days.</font>[/QUOTE]u are tooooo right, except i personally disagrees the Tass thingie. we love tass! lol

oh, one more annoying matter on Dragonlance is the expression of [i]Everything and Nothing[/]

I mean what the f*** i see this SO MANY times it doesnt even make sense any more.

dark queen is every color and none, F*** A
chaos is the father of everything and none
the dragon orb is everything and nothing

omg, whenever i think abt it, I go crazy with the willing of beating Weis and Hickman to death, it is SO cheesy I feel embarassed every time.

anyone got a link to a site diagramming an order to read series of dragonlance books in?

Try the official site. Its kind of hard to mark a specific order, though you should start with Chronicles.

Funny post.
1. Ed Greenwood *created* FR, it did not exist until he showed up at TSR one day with reams of maps and papers detailing the world his gaming group played in. Why do you think he wrote the original boxed set. [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img]
2. Kara Tur and Maztica existed before the Time of Troubles. They were boxed sets, in purple and white boxes respectively.
3. Otherwise, I agree with you.

I find it especially ironic that the title of this thread includes a phrase that is only 1 letter away from FORGOTTEN REALISM. [img]graemlins/evilhaha.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/yippee.gif[/img] [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Try the official site. Its kind of hard to mark a specific order, though you should start with Chronicles. </font>[/QUOTE]There's a chart lying around somewhere on the net. But here's my take:

1. Dragons of Autumn Twilight.
Dragons of Winter Night.
Dragons of Spring Dawning.
(The original trilogy, THE BEST)

2. Time of the Twins
War of the Twins
Test of the Twins
(First two books were so-so, last book was good. Not as good as the original trilogy but continues the story of the brothers and it was fun to get to see most of the interesting characters return along with some new ones.)

3. The Second Generation. (A collection of 4 or 5 short stories detailing the lives of the Heroes kids. Not very interesting, a sign of thing to come, which is....)

4. Dragons of Summer Flame (The Worst, the story of Chaos destroying his childrens creation of Krynn was eerily similar to Weis and Hickman destroying their own campaign setting of Krynn in this book.)

5. The War of Souls Trilogy (Haven't read this yet but what I heard isn't good)

As you probably know, W&H farmed the series out to other less established artist (great moneymaking venture btw), of these I recommend books by Douglas Niles, Richard Knaak and The Combat Engineer books by Weis and Perrin. All others should be viewed with suspicion.

<font color='white'> DL is way better then FR.

Better characters, better plot, its more 'focused' then FR. Tas comes back the War of Souls Trilogy? I just started reading Dragons of Fallen Sun. </font>

I would have a hard time deciding which world would be my favorite.
I think that the "Drizzt" stuff would ultimatly decide it for me; but
I read and enjoy both.

<font color=lime>I have read about 30 of the DL series. Have not touched the new stuff, for fear of it ruining my vision of Krynn. I have heard many bad reviews of the 5th age. I am reading "Dragons of Summer Flame" right now. I took a long break from fantasy, to read non-fiction science material, came back to find out they released this book. Quite a surprise what happens to Tanis. My favorite trilogy of all by far is "The Dwarvin Nations" by Dan Parkinson. I loved it. [img]graemlins/awesomework.gif[/img]

I have not read any Forgotten Realms material, but have "played" in the world alot with BG, etc.
I think I am to biased towards DL to read any FR.

The picture I get here, and other places, is that DL is better than FR acording to popular vote. So, why the hell dont they make a game for DL?!? I mean can you imagine a game like BG set in Krynn? Would be fantastic!!!
Anyway, my two cents are worth even less than that, so there you go. ;) </font>

As far as games set in Krynn, there were a few, back in the old gold box game era (ie Eye of the Beholder engine) alongf with a ravenloft adventure or two and at least one dark sun. I think the reason they didn't do a dragonlance crpg with the infinity engine is simply because 1: Forgotten Realms is TSR/WotC/Hasbro's flagship product (until 3E D&D anyway) 2: many many people were disappointed by 5th Age and they would have wanted to tell tehir own story rather than rehash an old module or two, and 3 the games (most anyway) are set in a semi-current time in FR, doing so in dragonlance would necessitate using 5th age products (see reason 2) 4: Dragonlance requires alot of changes to the basic ruleset (ie paladins AND solamnic Knights are valid classes, Kender special abilities, Tinker Gnome PC's- ok so Jan is essentially a tinker gnome with some bonus powers-, Elven Paladins are allowed, Irda -'nuff said-, etc etc)

things that break from standard D&D and are alot of fun to read about or rp, don't necessarily translate well into CRPG's

A personal opinion is that the Dragonlance series is like Raistlin's revelation about the snake which consumes everything... runs out of stuff and ends up consuming itself. Seems like just one big money spinner. Another bad thing is that the DL characters seem to have been prostituted to every tom dick and harry writer that wishes to write about the Dragonlance world. That has the effect of disrupting the character development and general impression.

The Original series of Dragonlance [Chronicles, Legends + Tales I, II) was probably the best and they really should have left it alone. Dragons were mighty and feared above all..... kinda like the classic fantasy storylines. The level cap of the original Dragonlance series although limiting in some ways, really did help to keep everything believable too.

Forgotten Realms is almost a totally an opposite world. With almost godlike characters possible and the world itself is so huge. So it actually makes great campaigning AD&D-ing, but from a book/literature point of view is almost too huge to write about. I think for most people FR revolves around IWD and for those computer players BG and such. I have read all of RA.Sal's stuff and various misc books and other minor bits.... frankly the "Avatar" series was a real let down. Others again range from mediocre to really good....

Here's my two cents

For reading: Dragonlance has the advantage of perhaps having the best three books in the history of fantasy writing (the chronicles Trilogy). Then half a million spin-offs books milking the characters for they were worth.(Actually I liked Kendermore). Then the 5th age fiasco.

ok so then for dragonlance we have 3 great books and a bunch of spin-offs

I will honestly say that none of the forgotten realms books are better than that trilogy.

I do think that:

The Icewind dale trilogy
Spellfire
The Empires Trilogy

Are very fine books that read better than most of the Dragonlance books

As far as gaming worlds go The FR is just so much better. Between 9000 box sets, cd-rom maps of everything and litteraly thousands of characters. Your Party can never get bored in the realms.

I found Dragonlance too small and too tightly wrapped around the books to make a good role playing enviroment.

<font color='white'> Dont know if you play pnp (pen and paper) or not, but sumtime this summer (June, suppousedly) they are going to launch a set of DL products. Its going to be awsome...I hope anyway. </font>

Edit- Just checked dragonlance.com , the date is actually August sometime.

[ 05-28-2003, 11:27 PM: Message edited by: Iron_Ranger ]

Krynn is based over the Heroes of the Lance's eroic advantures, there is no room for additional storyline. Something like Bladur's Gate saga would have no room in Krynn, in my opinion.

[ 05-29-2003, 03:46 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]