Gygax on DRAGONLANCE from 1989

[geneweigel]

I just saw this where Gary comments on DRAGONLANCE in an old 1989 magazine (GM):

www.deartonyblair.co.uk/2017/08/gary-gygax-untold-story-interview-from.html?m=1

Classic Gary!

[GRWelsh]

Thanks for the link, I never read that article before.

Anyone ever read SHRIKE: THE COMING AVENGER (1991) by EGG? I've never even seen a copy. Was it even published? This is what shows on Amazon.com:

Paperback
Publisher: Berkley Pub Group (September 1, 1991)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 042511726X
ISBN-13: 978-0425117262

If it was never published, that's kind of weird that it would have ISBN numbers listed.

[geneweigel]

It doesn't exist as far as I know.

I think Mentzer tried to sell his copy but got sandblasted for it:

www.acaeum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?cache=1&f=10&t=15611&c=1

[GRWelsh]

According to Wikipedia: "Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation (except reprintings) of a book." So, it may be one of those rare cases where there was a deal with the publisher and it was going through the process with some steps completed but got aborted prior to actually getting printed.

As far as EGG's comments on DRAGONLANCE, yeah, nothing surprising there. He's made many remarks over the years about fiction being plot-driven but gaming being player-driven (or should be). The DRAGONLANCE modules, although they looked nice, had that weird assumption that players would want to assume the roles of the DRAGONLANCE heroes and re-enact the books scene for scene.

Who has ever wanted to do that?

OTOH, you can't just be a purely neutral referee, more is required of a DM. I think the best DMing hits a sweet spot of providing some rumors and hooks that have the potential to develop into a story, with player actions anticipated but not scripted, and a strong ability to improvise. EGG may be implying something similar in the article when he's talking about the difference between computer games and human DMs and "the infinity of the human brain and its capacity for creativity." Certainly he had many colorful stories about "winging it!"

[Scott]

Gary was consistent with his comments on story driven adventures, and DL probably leaves an especially bad taste in is mouth since it had such a push at TSR as he was losing control.
My guess on SHRIKE: THE COMING AVENGER is that it was tied up with New Infinities, and when they went under there were probably legal/debt reasons to shelf it.

[geneweigel]

All I can remember was everyone making kender at some point and it was just pure acute mocking goofery then absolutely nothing game-wise but people asking about getting more of the upcoming material as if it was going to have a payoff.

In DRAGON #101 (SEPTEMBER 1985), the article ALL ABOUT THE KENDER by Roger E. Moore at the end of the article it credited Harold Johnson but that immediately didn't ring right with me as Harold was the 83 boxed set guy who Gary thought was "one of the good guys" (at least that is what he told me.). So I just spotted this on Wikipedia as to who created exactly what:

Conception and development

In preparation for the Dragonlance setting, Tracy Hickman ran a series of Dungeons & Dragons adventures.[2] Harold Johnson, one of those involved in the games, chose to play a halfling thief character whom he called Almar Tann. When Hickman, Johnson and others moved to the Dragonlance setting for their games, the character of Almar Tann went with them. It soon became clear to those involved, however, that halflings were unsuitable to the Dragonlance world.[3] As Johnson described it, this was especially due to his character's possession of a ring of invisibility, so that "it all sounded too much like another story,"[2] referring to Bilbo Baggins and the One Ring. Halflings were then dropped from the campaign, and Johnson developed both the initial concept of the kender and the first representative of the fantasy race, Tasslehoff Burrfoot. To solidify the distinction, they were originally described as "thinner, more wiry, and more cunning and streetwise" than halflings.[4]

Roger E. Moore introduced the kender, and Tasslehoff Burrfoot, to the wider community through his short story A Stone's Throw Away, published in April 1984 in Dragon.[3] While Hickman was involved in some of the development, he stated that it was Roger Moore who contributed the most in defining the kender's final iteration.[5]

The original concept of the kender held that they were "savage, warrior children, ever curious, ever alert."[3] This concept was altered dramatically when Janet Pack became involved in dramatic readings of the works, as Pack's personal characteristics had a strong impact on how those involved in the process viewed the kender. According to Jeff Grubb, she, "and as a result all kender since her, was cute. Extremely cute. Sweetly, lovably, frustratingly cute.... And it's hard, after seeing Janet play Tas, to imagine them any other way."[3] Two of the other key characteristics of kender—their curiosity and kleptomania—were introduced by Hickman.[4][6] Hickman was uncomfortable with the notion of a "race of thieves" in his games, but still wanted the skills typically associated with thieves, so he added their "innocent tendency to 'borrow' things for indeterminate periods of time."[3]

Originally, kender were to be called "kinder", in reference to kinderkin, but Hickman has reported that readers tended to read the name as "kind-er" rather than "kin-der" in print, leading to the decision to alter the spelling.[3]

Can I get a bucket? BLARRFFFF!!!

Okay, so this leads to the inevitable question I must ask: Is the Johnson halfling concept "savage, warrior children, ever curious, ever alert" still salvageable? Or is it too far gone?

Lets say the Blume's fortunes ran out sooner rather than later and everything went Gary's way. Hypothetically, is there something viable that would have "Greyhawked" out of that? The GH game material/novels mention halflings constantly so it would have to be an offshoot.

[Scott]

Oh man, I must have suppressed all of those traumatic Kender memories. I haven't thought about them in years. They were terrible, and for a while Kender PCs were popping up everywhere.
The more I reminisce, the more I realize DL was much worse than I remember.

[davegibsongreyhawkdm]

I'm glad I missed all of that!

[geneweigel]

I just shot Johnson a message about this. Lets see what turns up.

[foster1941]

So Gary had two Shrike novels finished by the fall of 88 (not just the one that briefly resurfaced a couple years ago). Even though Gary wasn’t much of a novelist it’s a shame these were never released. Also interesting to see Castle Dunfalcon vol. 1 by Gary and Steve Sullivan (the former TSR artist?) scheduled for a spring 1989 release. If he’d set a release date it must have been reasonably far along in writing and development. I wonder how it compared to what was later done as Castle Zagyg.

[geneweigel]

If there was a comprehensive database of Gygax efforts there would be so much more interest in future products.

Lejendary Adventure registers nothing on the interest scale from what was put forth in the TLG repackaged essentials books. Altogether the prior releases have some interesting stuff in there and while the art was shitty it wasn't fruity tooty shitty. The biggest problem with LA races in the original books is that they are not illustrated correctly at all and it all seems repulsive. I told Gary that I hate the illustration but liked the books. So he immediately rectified this by handing it over to Arkansas.

You know its like there seems to be a consensus that Gail Gygax is a harpy no matter what she says or does.

Its like one more wall of stupidity for fans from my angle to deal with.

How can we be fans of a panned out offer for a film franchise as a final resting place for what we hoped for?

The only real undiluted interest to ignite our spark towards lost Gygax products would be total reunification of the Gord with the D&D while unhatching some massive hidden files on the public that we're not aware of.

Highly unlikely.

[geneweigel]

Here is an interesting related quote from DL5 DRAGONS OF MYSTERY (1984):

The DRAGONLANCE™ game project was
begun in 1982, when Tracy Hickman proposed a
three-module series featuring evil dragons. As other
members of the TSR design staff looked at
his ideas, it quickly became clear that here was a
major epic—something that could not fit into
the normal categories. It was even bigger than
the famous Giant/Drow (G/D/Q series)
modules by Gary Gygax.

When Gary saw the initial proposal, he
was very excited, for this project happened to
work well with an idea he had been kicking
around for some time: a twelve-module series
that featured each of the official Monster
Manual dragons.

With Gary’s active approval, a special
design group was set up within TSR: Project
Overlord. A veil of secrecy settled over the
planning process, and regular meetings
began. The original planning group was led
by Tracy Hickman, and included Harold Johnson,
TSR’s Director of Design, Larry Elmore,
Carl Smith, Jeff Grubb, and several others

I wonder if this had something to do with Grenadier's Dragon of the Month series that were coming out in 1984-1985? They discontinued with Grenadier starting in 1983 and this Dragon of the Month club looked like it must have took time to set up because they were light years ahead of what they did before and each one was straight up D&D. The 84-85 original Series One Dragon of the Months :

2501 Black Dragon
2502 Red Dragon
2503 White Dragon
2504 Brass Dragon
2505 Green Dragon
2506 Silver Dragon
2507 Blue Dragon
2508 Copper Dragon
2509 Bronze Dragon
2510 Gold Dragon
2511 Platinum Dragon
2512 Spectral Dragon
The Dragon Lord

Page that has images:

www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/?title=Dragon_Lords_-_Dragon_of_the_Month#VOUCHER

My brother had most of these but I don't know what happened to them I think I have pieces of some of them in a box. I only bought the white dragon because I didn't have anything that looked like a white dragon.

[geneweigel]

I was comparing kender to halflings and its pure shit. Its a lot of arbitrariness not any negatives. Just super halfling.

For the Harold Johnson "kinder" variant I would suggest a simple keeping the fear part (See below) but swapped with the CON bonus for magic/poison (which the kender gets better than the halfling automatic +4 regardles of CON) to keep it fresh and real:

Fearlessness applies specifically to any
form of magical fear generated by magical
items such as wands and monsters such as
dragons, androsphinxes, demons, and the
like, as well as to spells like cause fear,
scare, emotion (fear), symbol (of fear), and
fear.

Also, I would imagine them having swapped INT and WIS scores as well as DEX and CON scores for minimums and maximums.

And have them cohabit with people perhaps to keep them "streetwise" as well keep them in the D&D real world zone and not the Elmore mega-valley universe.

[GRWelsh]

I don't think Kender are worth salvaging. They were such obvious "not-Hobbits" that it was ridiculous. If you don't want your fantasy world to seem like a Tolkien-clone, then don't include them. I don't think I ever played the DRAGONLANCE modules (except maybe the first one, which may just seem familiar since I've owned it for so long), but I did read the books and I liked them well enough at the time. They were disposable page-turners that had some stuff I hated like Kender and gully dwarves but also had decent action scenes and an intriguing character in Raistlin. In the mid-80's I wanted more Tolkien and I loved playing D&D so of course I was going to gobble up anything fantasy published by TSR! Discernment wouldn't come until later.

There was a podcast interview from Tracy Hickman from a few years ago, where he talked about how DRAGONLANCE got started:

saveordie.info/?p=463

In the EGG article I just noticed he said that "Necropolis" was set in the Kingdom of AEgypt on "Yarth"! Isn't that the world Kothar is on, in the Gardner Fox stories?

Interesting how EGG plugs the DARKSWORD RPG at the end of the article. I read that trilogy, which was another offering by Weis & Hickman, when it first came out in paperback. But I didn't know there was a game. That fantasy world was more original and distinct that the DRAGONLANCE world, but by the time I finished that series I was done with Weis & Hickman fiction. I must have been developing some discernment by then. I think the next fantasy series I read after that was the LYONESSE trilogy by Jack Vance.

[foster1941]

3E D&D’s halflings were de-hobbited and come off sort of non-cutesy kender. Harold Johnson was still at WotC and worked on development of 3E (though I believe he had let before it was released) so maybe some of his pre-Hickman kinder concept got recycled there.

[geneweigel]

Mar 17, 2018 13:35:47 GMT -5 GRWelsh said:

I don't think Kender are worth salvaging. They were such obvious "not-Hobbits" that it was ridiculous. If you don't want your fantasy world to seem like a Tolkien-clone, then don't include them. I don't think I ever played the DRAGONLANCE modules (except maybe the first one, which may just seem familiar since I've owned it for so long), but I did read the books and I liked them well enough at the time. They were disposable page-turners that had some stuff I hated like Kender and gully dwarves but also had decent action scenes and an intriguing character in Raistlin. In the mid-80's I wanted more Tolkien and I loved playing D&D so of course I was going to gobble up anything fantasy published by TSR! Discernment wouldn't come until later.

There was a podcast interview from Tracy Hickman from a few years ago, where he talked about how DRAGONLANCE got started:

saveordie.info/?p=463

So Tracy Hickman was an ultra-conservative bum? That sounds about right! Youch, he is a little annoying sounding. I love how he is giving honorifics to the trash men of TSr like Cook and Grubb. I couldn't listen to it anymore. Did he mention Johnson?

Mar 17, 2018 13:35:47 GMT -5 GRWelsh said:

In the EGG article I just noticed he said that "Necropolis" was set in the Kingdom of AEgypt on "Yarth"! Isn't that the world Kothar is on, in the Gardner Fox stories?

Thats from the end of the Gord series DANCE OF DEMONS last page:

"As Tharizdun unmade the sword by the same progression of evil which had given Courflamme such might, he
thought he was demolishing the truth of the weapon. Of course, the blade was augmented incredibly by addition of the
destructive and creative forces which came into it during the time of confrontation. Basically, however, Courflamme
was of Balance. Tharizdun should have remembered that. It was shadow and dawn through dewdrops, forged in and of
the elements. All in all, a very mundane weapon."
"As he destroyed it, its three components were freed to give life again to Gord and Leda and the bard too," Chronos
ruminated. "Entropy then helped to send them into our prepared alternate existence, with the blessings of Weal, as he
destroyed the rings.
The Mistress of Probabilities became solemn. "The price which had to be paid . .
"Most of the good ones, the ones of neutral aspect as well, are now incarnated here. Those who were instrumental in
the war, the ones who paid with the greatest suffering and even death agonies, are now rewarded too."
"You refer to Gord, now Lord of Cats, and Leda who rules the shadowsphere, I suppose. Those two are well suited
to their domains — and to each other!"
"Do you forget the old troubador? Gellor has much before him, and most of it wealsome, I should suspect. They are
but three of the many now finding their new lives on the rich lands of Yarth. Bah! I begin to run on insufferably, and
with things you know better than I, lady."
True Proctor Chronos, but I enjoy hearing you say so, for it is ever satisfying to hear praise." She laughed, and the
Dance of Demons
Lord of Time smiled ruefully. He hadn't meant to shower Lady Tolerance with such admiring phrases. Friends or no,
they could well be at odds soon, although of most friendly manner. The contest between them now had yet longer span
ahead than ever before. "Well. . . ?"
"Well indeed. Changing Lady! Let us two see what we can devise in the way of new prospects for ourselves."
"Proctor! I am shocked!" Chronos stood up. "Wait," Lady Tolerance implored. "Not so shocked as to refuse your
suggestion! If you have the time, I am the one for variations."
* * *
If indeed a whole cosmos was gone, a world devastated and sunk into forgotten nothing, the gray city depopulated,
and all that went with it consigned to the flames of gross Evil, life still persisted. In truth, it burgeoned in freshness and
vitality throughout the multiverse, in the conjoined realms of shadow and of the felines who walked through the night,
Gord and Leda, and on a riotous new world called Yarth. The one-eyed overseer of its precincts was likely to prove a
worthy Demiurge.
Evil won . . . and lost. It is the way of things, and always a new adventure awaits — just around the bend of the
road.

Mar 17, 2018 13:35:47 GMT -5 GRWelsh said:

I know
Interesting how EGG plugs the DARKSWORD RPG at the end of the article. I read that trilogy, which was another offering by Weis & Hickman, when it first came out in paperback. But I didn't know there was a game. That fantasy world was more original and distinct that the DRAGONLANCE world, but by the time I finished that series I was done with Weis & Hickman fiction. I must have been developing some discernment by then. I think the next fantasy series I read after that was the LYONESSE trilogy by Jack Vance.

I don't remember the DARK SWORD series its a blur.

[geneweigel]

Mar 17, 2018 14:45:01 GMT -5 foster1941 said:

3E D&D’s halflings were de-hobbited and come off sort of non-cutesy kender. Harold Johnson was still at WotC and worked on development of 3E (though I believe he had let before it was released) so maybe some of his pre-Hickman kinder concept got recycled there.

I think his heart might have been in the right place at the time and it was processed by the touchy feely performance artist they had on staff. Plus people were doing urban demi-humans and there is kind of a city gnome legend in the city of Cologne in Germany so maybe thats what he was aiming at with the "Hoff" and the kennings.

[Merkholz]

I Think there are some salvegeable dungeons in the DL modules. I liked the city turned on its head in the first one, just remove those dirty, comedic runts and replace them with flesh-eating grimlocks!

[GRWelsh]

Mar 21, 2018 3:03:43 GMT -5 Merkholz said:

I Think there are some salvegeable dungeons in the DL modules. I liked the city turned on its head in the first one, just remove those dirty, comedic runts and replace them with flesh-eating grimlocks!

Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. Remember when the isomorphic maps were all the rage and everyone thought they were the future of all mapping? There were nice, in a way. They would certainly helpful in building 3D terrain such as with Hirst Arts. I like dungeons with a strong vertical element involved. The dungeon in DL1 was a memorable setting and I've always loved the theme of buried or lost cities... that's very pulp.