Tag: Dungeons and Dragons

DragonLance Preludes II Volume 3 – Tanis the Shadow Years

This is the 18th of the DragonLance books in the order I have been reading them. Honestly, this one was probably the least favorite so far. It could have or maybe should have been a short story.

The book wraps around and meanders for 160 pages easily in bizarre directions that just don’t feel all that well thought out.

The plot is simple, the book takes place during the 5 years between the Companions making the pledge and returning to the Inn of the Last Home to kick off the Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy.

In this book Tanis meets another dwarf, who claims he can introduce him to someone who knew his human father. It turns out a mage who was 1/4 elf, and 3/4 human had met him, and could give Tanis a chance to do the same if he allows Tanis to magically insert him into his memories. The deal is Tanis has to bring forward the memory love of his (the mage’s) life.

The book started out pretty good but then it was like they ran out of story and through in 150 or more pages of just filler “killer hobo” stuff if I can steal that phrase from the playing style some use while playing Dungeons and Dragons.

I finished the book, but I had to push myself to do so in places, and I will finish just about anything.

I would do a video about this one, but I think I have said it all. Out of the books I have read in the DragonLance series (now with more than 200 books) I have liked this one the least, but it won’t cause me to give up on the series.

Yes, I will read and review more DragonLance books, as I do enjoy many of them, but not this one.

DragonLance Preludes II Volume 2 – Flint The King

In Flint the King by Mary Kirchoff and Douglas Niles we follow the story of Flint as he visits his home before the Chronicles trilogy kicks off.

It was really interesting to me because we get a fairly deep dive into the dwarven culture and learn more about their love of crafting and creating things. It is really deeply rooted in who they are.

We open with Flint just enjoying alone (before he travels to his homeland) and realize that he really is aging and not as adventurous as he might have been when he was younger. He is really more the reluctant hero in many ways.

As he travels he finds that this new Seeker group who claim to be religious and offering people chances at and afterlife, claiming to believe in the “new Gods” are really just kind of bullies that take taxes or donations from people that aren’t really all that voluntary. In Flint’s mind that makes them not to be trusted. These religious zealots have none of the healing powers of the clerics of old, and business owners view them as an absolute annoyance.

As he considers traveling to his homeland we find that Flint hasn’t really been around other Dwarves for years, and as he runs into one he finds that things in the homeland aren’t what they were, that annoys him into going and checking it out.

As Flint travels we see that he really doesn’t mind traveling, what bothers him is other people. We get the impression he is really just a recluse who would rather be left along than thrust into some leadership role.

We do in this book learn why he was invited into the Elven homeland and how he met Tania, which was an interesting side bit of his character backstory. It also serves to show just how respected Flint Fireforge is around Krynn.

Once we reach his homeland we find things are much different, his brother has been murdered and the entire village is not as he left it at all. Now change happens but apparently Dwarves are too stubborn to change quickly. That leads to some great action as Flint has to figure out what the heck is really going on.

There is more discussion in the video on my YouTube channel, but all in all this book I really enjoyed. I kept looking for time to read (I may have snuck the book into a football game which annoyed my fiancé just a little). Highly recommended for any DragonLance fan!

DragonLance Preludes Volume 2: Kendermore

I will say a few things about this book.

First, if you are going to pick apart a book for “not being cannon” or “OMG they rode it off the rails” this isn’t for you. It is a book based on Kender for goodness sake.

That out of the way, it is the most fun DragonLance book I have ever read. If you just enjoy the ride, you will love this thing.

First, as the book opens, Tasslehoff is being escorted back to his home because he violated the Kender code, I didn’t know the Kender really had a legal system so to speak, but they do.

Interestingly, it was because he ran out on a marriage vow, but he can’t really remember her name because they haven’t met?

Weird right?

Now, imagine a few things that you will come across in this book.

Imagine being the mayor of Kendermore and trying to get your citizens to pay attention during a meeting.

Try being a human seeking medical help in a Kender village.

Also, always remember, when following a Kender map, don’t believe everything you see.

Another word of advice, when taking a sailing ship, never ever leave Tasslehoff Burrfoot in charge of that process when he is assisted by Gully Dwarves. Imagine that same group trying to get a cart unstuck from the mud. Hilarity results.

Also, in this book, you will find a doctor that treats people with some “magic potion” that is closer to pure alcohol than anything magical.

I can’t say enough good things about the fun of this book. If you have not read it, and it wasn’t one of the more popular books in the DragonLance series you need to. It wasn’t high adventure, it isn’t “the legend of” it is just fun. Enjoy the hell out of it!!

DragonLance Tales Volume 2: Kender, Gully Dwarves and Gnomes

DragonLance Tales Volume 2: Kender, Gully Dwarves and Gnomes, is a collection of short stories and a Novella by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I want to just give a brief overview of each.

Some of these short stories are absolutely hilarious. There are one or two that greatly expand the Universe of Krynn, one that could easily become its own Trilogy, and one or two that I didn’t really care for completely.

I will give a brief overview of each story/novella, and I will keep my opinion to myself on which ones I didn’t care for that much (hopefully).

Snowsong by Nancy Varian Berberick

A younger, pre War of the Lance Tanis, Sturm, Flint and Tasslehoff are trapped on a snowy mountain. What could possibly go wrong when you have a bored Kender who might at any moment wonder off into a snowstorm and freeze to death! Ok, there is a lot more to this story than that, but it is filled with both comedy and adventure.

The Wizard’s Spectacles by Morris Simon

Glasses of true seeing, allowing anyone to read a magic scroll fall into the hands of someone who probably shouldn’t have them. It isn’t necessarily evil that he does, but he is a bit self serving and not every spell goes exactly the way he wants them to go!

The Storyteller by Barbara Siegel and Scott Siegel

A local storyteller tells a tale that a Dragon Highlord isn’t all that happy about. How do the local people who love the story teller keep him from being put to death! Especially when you have Gnomes and Kender involved.

A Shaggy Dog’s Tail

This one did not end how I thought it would. I was surprised just the twist this story of jealousy, revenge, and magic twists and turns.

Lord Toede’s Disastrous Hunt by Harold Bakst

Lord Toede goes on a hunt, and decides it will be fun to hunt a pair of Kender. You have to be careful, they are pretty sneaky, and fearless. It might or might not be all that simple despite how harmless Kender appear!

Definitions of Honor by Richard A Knaak

A young Knight of Solamnia is hired to help a town with a Minotaur problem. It turns out the problem is much different than he expected and he must question just how one defines honor, and what is and isn’t an honorable solution to the problem.

Hearth Cat and Winter Wren by Nancy  Varian Berberick

The pre-war on the Lance companions come upon a wizard who likes turning people into animals and keeping them in that state. We all know Kender have a short attention span, but what happens when you turn one into a Kender. Can you keep track of it long enough to turn it back?

Wanna Bet? by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Caramon Majere’s three sons go on adventure of their own and end up in a drinking contest with a dwarf. They don’t necessarily win that contest and end up on an adventure of their own. But let’s face it, who ever really wins a drinking contest?

Into the Heart of the Story

Written as a Gnome records the story of the contributions of the Gnomes to the War of the Lance. They have to have their chance to correct the official record as only a Gnome can.

Dagger Flight by Nick O’Donohoe

This is the story of a dagger, from the perspective of the dagger. The dagger goes through some parts of the story you know if you read the Chronicles Trilogy.

DragonLance – Dragons of Autumn Twilight Chapters 10 & 11

Chapter 10

Darken Wood

The dead walk. Raistlin’s magic.

The traveling companions decide to take the risk and enter Darken Wood despite it meaning almost certain death (according to the mage click here for a reminder of that warning). They follow the trail into the woods for several hours without incident or fear. Then the sun starts to set.

They find a cleaning where they plan to rest and spend the night despite Raistlin’s objections to getting off the trail. His words, if you recall from the previous post  they should disturb, drink, consume nothing while inside Darken Wood. Don’t even cut down a tree. It could be bad.

The first sign of strange things inside the woods is when Tanis realizes his elven vision is no longer working. Normally he can see a red outline of living creatures in the dark, but it is gone, even from his companions.

As they set up camp for the night they notice they have been silently surrounded by an army of dead warriors. Each warrior has an eerie glow and appears with ancient armor and weapons. They were so ominous that terror set in! Should they run! Will the die before they get the first few steps? What do they do from here?

Raistlin gets the group to remain calm. He casts a spell that allows them to communicate with the dead, and learn that because of the blue crystal staff, they have been summoned, but by who or what?

Chapter 11

The Forestmaster

A peaceful interlude.

They had been summoned by the Forestmaster! A unicorn, at least by appearance, that has been on Krynn since the time of Huma, and could communicate in the common tongue.

The Forestmaster informs them that they know of the lizard men, they are called Draconians and claim to be part of the Order of Draco.

Sound a bit like Game of Thrones? Which were supposed to be gone from Krynn (this pre-dates Game of Thrones so George RR Martin borrowed it hahaha).

The Forestmaster informs them that they must be in Cat Tsaroth in 2 days, and if they can be they will receive the greatest gift in the world, but leaves it at that. But the only way to get there is to fly. How do you do that before airplanes? There will be more fantastic creatures in the next chapter!! So much more to come in this book.

DragonLance Dragons of Autumn Twilight Chapter 4, 5

Chapter 4

The Open Door

Flight into Darkness

When we last saw the party in Chapter 3 they were running out the back door of the Inn of the Last Home.

Here they are fleeing into the night’s they try to answer questions about what is going on. Can they trust Goldmoon? Can they trust Riverwind?

Is she and the staff really able to hear people or is it all a trick?

Can the barbarians trust the party of friends?

As they find a place to hold up for the night as the town is being searched they try to answer some of these questions. Is the staff blessed by the gods? Is it a sign of the true gods everyone has been looking for?

All is going well until their hiding spot is found and the party may have to run again because they may have accidentally killed a few more guards. While we don’t get many answers in this chapter it does move fast and it does make us try to figure a lot out, and make us want to turn a lot more pages!

Chapter 5

Farewell to Flint!

Arrows fly. Message in the stars.

They have to flee again. This time they have to get out quickly but all of the roads are blocked by guards searching for whomever is hiding with the blue crystal staff.

The answer is to go across the lake in a boat…except Flint really doesn’t like boats. He has a crippling fear of them thanks to that time Caramon almost accidentally drowned him.

As they are trying to get in the boat, and argue with flint a group of Goblins find them. Arrows fly in both directions! Will Flint go or will he stand his ground and fight?

Raistlin shocks everyone when he casts a spell to solve the problem in one shot. As they finally find safety they look up, and notice something missing.

There are two constellations of stars that are no longer in the sky. That of the Queen of Darkness, and the Valiant Warrior. Have the gods of evil and good come to Krynn to fight for control?

 

Slaying The Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons by Ben Riggs

Slaying The Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons and Dragons by Ben Riggs is, in my opinion, the ultimate history of the TTRPG giant as it grew, and ultimately was taken over. It starts with the earliest days of how Gary Gygax was really the driving force (although not the entire creative team) behind getting this thing moving.

Without those guys the table top role playing game world likely would not exist. They grew the company, they made it the place to be for creators to really just do what it is they wanted to do, which resulted in games we all seemed to want to play.

We know that ultimately Gygax and the early crew were basically forced out of their own company once it grew. This is really something that happens far more often than most people think. Some people are just not wired to run a large company, and that’s fine, it is a much different skillset.

The book also digs deep into what caused the company to essentially be dead. It was headed for insolvency and the game for some set of legal challenges that would likely have doomed it forever. So yeah, we may all curse and get upset with Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro, but they kept it alive, and seems like it is making a huge comeback!

It was a great book, highly recommended. Check out the video for more info.

Greyhawk Adventures Book 1 – Saga of Old City

Greyhawk Adventures was a huge add on to the Dungeons and Dragons sets. It creates an entire new world to run adventures. It was pretty cool to play these adventures, and the novels were originally a pretty short lived series, with the first two written by Gary Gygax himself.

We meed the main character, Gord, very quickly as he is a kid and we see that his life is a daily struggle just to have food to eat. Gygax does a good job of giving us the backstory. We find that he is small, people steal from him because he is an easy target, they take his money, his food, anything he has. Gord gets angry at himself for letting these sorts of things happen. Gord, in order to survive tries stealing things and gets caught.

As a result of his theft he is sentenced to three years in prison, which originally Gord is happy about because he will have food people can’t steal from him in prison. It isn’t long before he realizes that prison isn’t the improvement in his life that he thought it would be. It doesn’t take long before he starts trying to figure out how to escape.

He does come up with a plan, one of the guards catches onto that plan, helps him escape, but then sells him into the service of the Beggars Guild, which will teach him a trade, but not an improvement either, at first.

Gord does learn how to make the best of things, but that is before the Thieves’ Guild and the Beggars Guild are kind of at war with one another. And as Gord has been begging, but also stealing he isn’t in a great place with the Thieves’ guild, they don’t like crossovers.

One thing he does learn during this time is how to create entire new personas which helps him as he is a thief, and after he manages to escape this world and starts to adventure around the world this comes in handy as he runs a series of cons for money in different cities.

Gord is a good thief, and great with his hands, so he is good in a fight. The book follows Gord on his first adventures, and that is pretty interesting.

Gary Gygax (and I am a fan of his career) is a fantastic world builder. This book does set the stage with a whole new world. What Gary wasn’t as good at was getting us in the heat of the battle and feeling the emotion of it. However, some readers prefer that world building, some prefer the emotion. It is up to you to decide which you prefer, and enjoy appropriate titles!

I did enjoy this book, as a teenager and now. There are others I like better, but this one is pretty darn good at setting the stage of this entire new world, and that is hard to accomplish for anyone.

Now, if you are fan of Dungeons and Dragons art. Clyde Caldwell did the cover art as well as all of the interior art (one of which is shown above in black and white) to be found sprinkled throughout the chapters. The art of Clyde Caldwell is simply amazing. What that man can do in black and white…just phenomenal.

Dungeons & Dragons (DnD), Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro, oh my

When I was a kid I was at a bookstore one day with my mother and grandmother when I came across this game called Dungeons and Dragons by a then not that well known company called TSR.  My original basic book is up above.

I have been playing this game off and on my entire life since that time. Now, there is something disturbing is going on between the community and those who own the brand name (Hasbro through their subdivision Wizards of the Coast). That is me with one of my very old modules.

Since the dawn of time the game has had the ability through their open gaming license for third party developers to build things to go along with the game for our enjoyment as players. And some of those third party groups are shockingly creative.

Hasbro is trying to change the rules (I’ll stay out of that for a moment).

Why would a company do such a crazy thing instead of controlling their intellectual property?

Because DND is just a set of rules of how to play. The game takes place in people’s imagination. The game gives guidelines, and it gives you mechanics but it doesn’t always give you scenarios. Some of these third party groups have put together highly creative game scenarios to play. That are highly entertaining, and some have made a few bucks at it.

Hasbro doesn’t want that.

Well, without all those third party guys, I would never have bought nearly as many TSR (now Hasbro) books and products over the years. So in a way the third party groups have propped up TSR (now Wizards of the Coast and ultimately Hasbro).

Why change something that is working and get yourself a LOT of bad consumer sentiment in the process?

No clue, but I bet there is a bonus for someone involved somewhere. But, it is going to ultimately fail. Because there won’t be as many side products that I will enjoy, and TSR isn’t innovating the way it once did.

It isn’t that we hate Hasbro, or TSR, or Wizards (ok maybe a little now), but we love the creativity of these smaller orgs.

Below is a YouTube video I recorded on this whole mess!!