Dragons of Autumn Twilight

[A_Really_Big_Cat]

For some reason I misheard "Dragonlance" in the first video as "Dragonlands" which really confused me, haha. I've considered reading the books before but never got around to it. It's sometimes hard for fantasy settings to draw me in; I find that they can be either too derivative or not derivative enough. So for instance while I love Tolkien's Legendarium for how it draws from real mythos and legends, I can't get into many DnD settings or Warhammer because I don't feel the same mytho-historical connection, despite them taking heavy inspiration from Tolkien. And on the flipside I love the Elder Scrolls because it flips almost all the conventions on their heads.


Tangential: intrigued and surprised by the unexpected reference to Elder Scrolls Online. I love the TES setting and would be quite interested in seeing it covered in the distant future. Morrowind or ESO review in the future?

[Taurian Patriot]

Part of Morrowind's success in making the Elder Scrolls mainstream was the very alien feel of its setting. Colossal insects, mushrooms, and ash-covered lands all over. Dark elves being the majority population, soldiers wearing bone armor, the smooth rounded stone architecture, and a handful of Roman and Viking types clashing with all of it. It was definitely a fresh take.

I think I was maybe thirteen or fourteen when I read the Dragonlance books, and even as someone who grew up playing D&D and enjoying fantasy fiction, it just felt sort of okay, rather than truly great. Maybe if it was somebody's first dip into fantasy, it'd be a lot more impressive... or maybe there's some really good stuff in it that just went over my head because I was too young to pick up on it.

Then again, few fantasy series really get my interest, despite my enjoying the genre in general. Maybe I'm being too hard a sell? I'm looking forward to the rest of these videos and seeing if maybe I've been the problem, and not the books.

[stellar_coyote]

I'm in the same boat as Chuck, I know of the Dragonlance novels and the game setting but I don't really know anything about them.
I do find it a bit amusing that like any good adventuring party they meet at a tavern; it's a cliché but one that rarely feels played out.

[AllanO]

It has been some years but I read these novels more than once. Things I had forgotten, one was that the story moved as slowly as it did (I thought they were in the haunted forest pretty quickly). The other is the pronunciation of the names. I have never heard any of the names pronounced, I am sure Chuck's attempts are reasonable, but for example I always just ignored the second i in "Kitiara" and pronounced "Kitara" in my head. I am not sure how I thought "Xak Tsaroth" is pronounced but not as Chuck does, Chuck's pronunciation makes way more sense than whatever I was thinking (I think of it as that place with X in the name?).

I liked these books as an adolescent and I think this original trilogy has some strengths in plot and character compared to the schlock that goes on in later novels in the series, but they are still pretty basic and I am not sure I think anyone needs to read them. I am not sure I noticed and certainly did not remember stuff like Goldmoon showing off her diplomatic skills, so Chuck's eye seems sharp as ever in the review...

Edit: I finally figured out that it is not that the story is moved slower than I remembered , it is that Chuck is only going through a section (book) of the first volume (I think). Anyway he is putting way more thought into this book than I ever did...

[Marveryn]

i actually started the series on the second book so i was disappointed with the first when if finally got around to read it cause i enjoy the second book better. the main problem i had was with Sturm who is feature greatly in the second book. while in the first he more of a tag along fighter that there to give the group an extra sword

[Taurian Patriot]

It definitely is a 1st Edition D&D party though - one magic-user, one cleric, one thief, and how many fighters? Five?

In those days, a fighter-heavy party was a good starting bet because most of them had a decent chance of surviving to 2nd level. Magic-users, on the other hand, were more likely to see their careers abruptly and painfully ended before they began.

[TGLS]

In those days, a fighter-heavy party was a good starting bet because most of them had a decent chance of surviving to 2nd level. Magic-users, on the other hand, were more likely to see their careers abruptly and painfully ended before they began.

/shrug

If you're playing old-school D&D with an adversarial DM, you play r-strategy. Program your Apple II to generate a thousand level 1 mages, take the fifty best ones, and just chug through them.

[cloudkitt]

I love Dragonlance and it's pretty exciting to see Chuck examine it. It's funny the difference between the first two trilogies, how obvious it is that the first trilogy was a campaign first (Town-Encounter-Dungeon-Loot-Repeat) and a book second, while the second trilogy (Legends) was definitely written as a series of novels first. The cadence is so different. But they're both still enjoyable and this review is reminding me of a lot more happening in the first book than I recalled.

[ThatThingISentYa]

This review has actually gotten me thinking about re-reading the books. I had read them as a kid, long long before I ever played D&D or even knew what it was, but haven't touched them since.

One thing that I'd be curious to see on re-read is how "well-played" the characters are from an AD&D perspective. I started much later but love OSR retro-clones, and it's a very particular set of incentives. Raistlin's interactions with the Gully Dwarves sounds like classic play by having 'hirelings' to carry torches, scout or do minor tasks without directly contributing to combat. On the other hand, the amount of divine intervention undoing character deaths or railroading the Companions around also sounds depressingly realistic as someone who's sat on both sides of the DM screen...

Kind of a shame that Chuck didn't touch on it, even in a follow-up video. As someone with D&D experience himself it would be interesting to hear his thoughts on the dynamic.

[Independent George]

I have a soft spot for this series, as it was the gateway drug that led me to the fantasy genre as a whole (yes, I read Dragonlance before reading Tolkein). I remember my Mom taking me to the mall so that I could spend my entire allowance at Waldenbooks as a kid. Before there was Amazon, you had the 'Science Fiction' section tucked away in the back corner of the bookstore. I lived there.

Now that I'm older and a bit more jaded, I might now eye-roll at some things (like the mages' strict and codified adherence to the D&D alignments), but Dragonlance still occupies a big place in my heart, and it definitely helped reinvigorate the fantasy genre in the 80s. It's certainly better than any of the books Gary Gygax wrote.