> Dragonlance is supposed to be about dragons, and as I said, the
> Overlords were a great concept, badly executed. So, I'm not going to
> scream bloody murder about the fact that they attempted to make dragons
> completely relevant to the setting again, rather than just a monster to
> kill at the end of the dungeon.
Having thought through the concept of Dragon Overlords, I wouldn't say
it was so great, for several reasons. The execution was bad because
you couldn't go anywhere with the concept.
And when you say that dragons are only a monster to be killed at the
end of the dungeon, you gotta be kidding me. DL1-6 has a pattern to
that extent, yes, but part of the appeal of Dragonlance was that
dragons were so much more, something that has been stated by several
people. Matafleur, Silvara, Skie? The dragon battles in the skies? The
novel The Black Wing? Do you really mean that 4A (post-WoS)
Dragonlance wasn't about dragons, and that Overlords were needed for
the setting? Quite the contrary, the Overlords removed most of the
other dragons, including the good ones. 5A made dragons completely
irrelevant to the setting, only Overlord Dragons were relevant now. So
I think that you are thoroughly misguided in claiming that 5A was
making "dragons completely relevant to the setting again."
> That relevance included changes to show how powerful these guys were;
> how much of an effect they would have upon the world. I don't have a
> problem with that.
Which shows your double standards. Destroying half the continent is OK
if it shows how powerful the dragons of Krynn are, even though they
never were that powerful in the first place?
> When you get down to it, Weis and Hickman gave us a great world, but
> DoSF was all about destruction. WoS was all about destruction.
Again, you ignore my point:
What is it about DoSF and WoS that is all about destruction, while the
5A isn't? You completely ignore that point again and again. Or is the
answer: "5A isn't about destruction because in its destruction it
showed that invincible dragons exist on Krynn?"
> And yet everybody complains about the destruction wrought by those not
> named Weis and Hickman.
Many were unhappy with DoSF. During the 5A days, there were a lot of
loud people online complaining about W&H, praising the destruction of
the 5A. Few people complain about the destruction in WoS for the
simple reason that they didn't like the things that were gone. (And
these things were disliked for a reason, the concepts were often poor
and amateurish, such as the dragon overlords.)
> > (Especially considering that without WoS, thre would've been no more
> > DL due to lack of sales.)
>
> The announcement alone of WoS killed SAGA, regardless of sales, so, I
> don't think we should jump to that conclusion.
Yes we should. SAGA sold poorly, you know that and I know that, and
was at the brink of cancellation. Using WoS as a scpaegoat (which
really is jumping to conclusions with no basis in reality) is just
deluding yourself. Get real.
> It also killed any chance of the SAGA team cleaning up any of the mess
> they helped create, which I've read that they did have some plans to
> deal with.
Such as bringing back the gods, which every single 5A fan were up in
arms about WoS doing?
> But the HotL long outlived their usefulness in terms of advancing the
> setting, and nothing else was advancing the setting either. In the end,
> DoSF opened new doors,
I agree with that.
> and when somebody went and walked through those
> doors,
and W&H wanted to (at least Weis, as she has stated), but were kept
out of the loop.
> they were basically thrown back out and told that they wasted
> their time getting there. That's the impression I get from all of this.
Well, what they created simply wasn't very good, and wasn't rooted
enough in Dragonlance. So the reaction is understandable.
> The 5th Age did not come along completely at the expense of the 4th Age.
> Now the 4th Age lives again and we're supposed to forget the 5th Age
> ever happened, since every effort has been made to remove or ignore said
> elements. Tossing the 5th Age out has been just as contemptible as the
> mistakes made during and post-DoSF.
I don't really know enough about post-WoS DL, but if it is true that
it has basically returned the world to 4A, then there is one thing
that you miss in your argument: The mistakes made post-DoSF created a
world that was unfamiliar to fans and very far removed from the
Dragonlance people fell in love with. Post-WoS seems to return to the
that setting that most fans like. For that reason alone, I prefer what
WoS did to both DoSF and 5A.
Using the word "contemptible" implies a moral judgement, even though
you deny it. Good thing, though, that you admit the "mistakes", as you
call them, in 5A as "contemptible". But you still seem biased in the
5A team's favor. I openly show my bias, the features of 4A Dragonlance
are much more enjoyable and of better quality in my opinion, it's that
simple. You really should define your bias for the 5A a bit better.
You sometimes sound as there is more to it than that you simply
enjoyed the 5A.
> In the end, WotC certainly shares some of the blame. They've wasted so
> much time and resources on HotL rehash after HotL-relation rehash, it's
> not even funny.
True, but that is another story. If they had actually advanced and
developed the setting within the limits set, there wouldn't have been
any need for the shock treatment that DoSF was. Poor management after
Legends and the original module series and sourcebooks is probably
what can be credited with creating the whole mess that Krynn's post
WoS history became.
> And this doesn't even begin to describe some of the other stuff, like
> the Chaos War books, where shadow wights seemed to have wiped out half
> the population of Ansalon, or great story threads, like Severus
> Stonehand, to this day have been ignored.
Yep. Not to mention the many post-WoS stories, such as the cold war
between the Whitestone and Dragonarmies, high ogre ruins, etc.
Morten
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