Gold Box The Dragonlance/Krynn series thread

[Bruma Hobo]

I'm making this thread because I believe talking about all 12 Gold Box games in a single megathread is disgusting, so this place would be about the Krynn series in particular. If you decide to move this post to that ghetto anyway, at least be consistent and also merge all discussions about Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape:Torment into a single Infinity Engine thread, and all content about nu-Fallout and nu-Elder Scrolls games into a Gamebryo thread, to help this place.


So, despite a rough beginning, I've finished Champions of Krynn and I enjoyed it quite a lot. It's a little too linear and combat-centric for my tastes, but that didn't really matter once I started appreciating it on its own terms. This is a comfy tacticool game with a novelesque plot, that is tighter and more focused than Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds, and this arguably makes it the better game. I personally prefer the low-level and less linear feel of slowly reclaiming Phlan from the hordes of evil, while Champions of Krynn had the party flying on top of dragons, exploring flying fortresses and saving the realm despite being technically a low-level campaign, but that's a matter of taste.

I'm no combafag, but combat in this game was very enjoyable, and better balanced than in the Forgotten Realms series (not that hard to achieve when the game itself is linear and balanced around munchkins who waste hours rerolling their characters at chargen, but still). The fireball spell wasn't nearly as satisfying as in other D&D games though, but perhaps it was my fault for not making pure casters (by the time my dudes were able to learn level 3 spells, most enemies were just shruggin their damage). Thieves in this game on the other hand are delightful, they're worthless outside of combat (so they're actually filthy rogues), but backstabbing enemies in this game is sooo rewarding.

I've immediately transferred my party to Death Knights of Krynn after finishing the game, and unlike in most other RPGs (including CotAB and SotSB) I'm retaining most of my loot from the previous game, which feels great. People also claim that this sequel is a better and less railroaded RPG so I'm pretty excited, although I'm not sure if I should give this series a rest to not get burned out.

I've also read Dragons of the Autumn Twilight, the first book in the Chronicles trilogy, to accompany the game because why not. This was my first time reading a Dragonlance novel, and it was as derivative and juvenile as I expected, at its best it's like eating McDonald's tasty but unhealthy garbage, but unfortunately reading many other pages is like finding a turd among the french fries. I did manage to read the whole thing though so clearly I didn't hate it, but I won't complete the trilogy unless I find out that the characters in the sequels are better written (seriously, people like Tanis, Sturm, Caramon and Raistlin are just childish assholes in the first novel).


So, these are great games. I just wish they were also great RPGs.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

As an alternative to reading the trilogy of novels for background reference, you could peruse the original series of 12 adventure modules or, as a quicker method, some of the setting material such as DL5 Dragons of Mystery (which gives an overview of the characters in the novel) and the Dragonlance Adventures hardcover book (an overview of the campaign world, the new classes, the races, the history, and so forth).

Plus, they have great artwork:

 

[octavius]

I must admit that I enjoyed the first Dragonlance trilogy when I reread it about ten years ago. So there must be something to it, since I couldn't stomach Feist's Magician when rereading it, nor really enjoy other juvenile or "entry level" Fantasy or SF books I've read the past ten years.

 

[Dorateen]

There's also the hard cover AD&D DragonLance Adventures supplement. While not necessary, also provides excellent background for the SSI Krynn trilogy.

 

[The Limper]

I'm making this thread because I believe talking about all 12 Gold Box games in a single megathread is disgusting, so this place would be about the Krynn series in particular. If you decide to move this post to that ghetto anyway, at least be consistent and also merge all discussions about Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape:Torment into a single Infinity Engine thread, and all content about nu-Fallout and nu-Elder Scrolls games into a Gamebryo thread, to help this place.


So, despite a rough beginning, I've finished Champions of Krynn and I enjoyed it quite a lot. It's a little too linear and combat-centric for my tastes, but that didn't really matter once I started appreciating it on its own terms. This is a comfy tacticool game with a novelesque plot, that is tighter and more focused than Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds, and this arguably makes it the better game. I personally prefer the low-level and less linear feel of slowly reclaiming Phlan from the hordes of evil, while Champions of Krynn had the party flying on top of dragons, exploring flying fortresses and saving the realm despite being technically a low-level campaign, but that's a matter of taste.

I'm no combafag, but combat in this game was very enjoyable, and better balanced than in the Forgotten Realms series (not that hard to achieve when the game itself is linear and balanced around munchkins who waste hours rerolling their characters at chargen, but still). The fireball spell wasn't nearly as satisfying as in other D&D games though, but perhaps it was my fault for not making pure casters (by the time my dudes were able to learn level 3 spells, most enemies were just shruggin their damage). Thieves in this game on the other hand are delightful, they're worthless outside of combat (so they're actually filthy rogues), but backstabbing enemies in this game is sooo rewarding.

I've immediately transferred my party to Death Knights of Krynn after finishing the game, and unlike in most other RPGs (including CotAB and SotSB) I'm retaining most of my loot from the previous game, which feels great. People also claim that this sequel is a better and less railroaded RPG so I'm pretty excited, although I'm not sure if I should give this series a rest to not get burned out.

In my old man experience, playing this game when it was first released on floppy, be careful of party build if you want to roll with the same crew from game to game. Transferring from CoK to DKoK is pretty easy. Even if you take a non human who caps early in a particular class, it really wont hinder your completion if DKoK. But DQoK is a different ballgame. Mages must be dualled or single class. Its doable i guess without them, but makes the game irritably grindy. Might be better off with a few newbies for DQoK if you are using Multi-class Mages in the first 2 games of the series. Unless of course you love a challenge.

Chronicles was a great trilogy, along with Lotr, when i was a teen. These days I prefer a good Black Company re-read instead.

 

[Null Null]

The books do help--I didn't quite get what was going on in some parts of Death Knights of Krynn until someone explained it to me later. It's probably worth reading the Chronicles and possibly Legends trilogies for the background a gamer of the era would have had, though I don't know how much time you have.

Probably the biggest change from the goldbox series is character generation--if you want to use the same party for all three games I would encourage you to download the Dark Queen of Krynn Adventurer's Journal as there are problems you may run into with nonhuman level limits. (They're still a lot better in this respect than the Forgotten Realms series, where only humans are viable at high levels apart from a multi-classed thief.)

Spoiler

The only races that can reach max level are dwarves as fighters, elves as rangers, mages, clerics, or (Qualinesti only) thieves, half-elves as clerics or thieves, kender as thieves, and humans as anything (but humans can't multiclass). Qualinesti elves can get to 14 as fighters, which is good enough in many cases.

There is also a tradeoff in that the XP curve starts exponential and goes linear, so your multi-classed mages will be 1 or 2 levels behind a single-class mage in Champions and Death, but 5 or 10 levels behind in Dark Queen. This will be important when trying to get through enchanted draconians' magic resistance.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Probably the biggest change from the goldbox series is character generation--if you want to use the same party for all three games I would encourage you to download the Dark Queen of Krynn Adventurer's Journal as there are problems you may run into with nonhuman level limits. (They're still a lot better in this respect than the Forgotten Realms series, where only humans are viable at high levels apart from a multi-classed thief.)

Spoiler

The only races that can reach max level are dwarves as fighters, elves as rangers, mages, clerics, or (Qualinesti only) thieves, half-elves as clerics or thieves, kender as thieves, and humans as anything (but humans can't multiclass). Qualinesti elves can get to 14 as fighters, which is good enough in many cases.

There is also a tradeoff in that the XP curve starts exponential and goes linear, so your multi-classed mages will be 1 or 2 levels behind a single-class mage in Champions and Death, but 5 or 10 levels behind in Dark Queen. This will be important when trying to get through enchanted draconians' magic resistance.

That's useful but in the end it doesn't make a big difference. New characters start off with almost as much experience as veterans at the beginning of each sequel, so it's easy to replace obsolete demi-humans while keeping their loot. People who might start playing Champions of Krynn don't need to think that ahead of time, nor shouldn't be afraid of unconventional party members.

 

[Null Null]

Probably the biggest change from the goldbox series is character generation--if you want to use the same party for all three games I would encourage you to download the Dark Queen of Krynn Adventurer's Journal as there are problems you may run into with nonhuman level limits. (They're still a lot better in this respect than the Forgotten Realms series, where only humans are viable at high levels apart from a multi-classed thief.)

Spoiler

The only races that can reach max level are dwarves as fighters, elves as rangers, mages, clerics, or (Qualinesti only) thieves, half-elves as clerics or thieves, kender as thieves, and humans as anything (but humans can't multiclass). Qualinesti elves can get to 14 as fighters, which is good enough in many cases.

There is also a tradeoff in that the XP curve starts exponential and goes linear, so your multi-classed mages will be 1 or 2 levels behind a single-class mage in Champions and Death, but 5 or 10 levels behind in Dark Queen. This will be important when trying to get through enchanted draconians' magic resistance.

That's useful but in the end it doesn't make a big difference. New characters start off with almost as much experience as veterans at the beginning of each sequel, so it's easy to replace obsolete demi-humans while keeping their loot. People who might start playing Champions of Krynn don't need to think that ahead of time, nor shouldn't be afraid of unconventional party members.

Good point. I was more referring to people who use the same party throughout all 3 games.

And demi-humans aren't necessarily obsolete in Krynn games--elves can be effective as frontline combatants (as rangers), clerics, or mages, and even kender can be used as thieves up until the end. (The YELL command is occasionally useful tactically.)

Small nitpick: Death Knights of Krynn will swipe some powerful items from you like the Dragonlance you would have had if you didn't finish Champions (where you give the Knights your major items).

 

[Lt Broccoli]

So, despite a rough beginning, I've finished Champions of Krynn and I enjoyed it quite a lot. It's a little too linear and combat-centric for my tastes, but that didn't really matter once I started appreciating it on its own terms. This is a comfy tacticool game with a novelesque plot, that is tighter and more focused than Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds, and this arguably makes it the better game. I personally prefer the low-level and less linear feel of slowly reclaiming Phlan from the hordes of evil, while Champions of Krynn had the party flying on top of dragons, exploring flying fortresses and saving the realm despite being technically a low-level campaign, but that's a matter of taste.

I'm no combafag, but combat in this game was very enjoyable, and better balanced than in the Forgotten Realms series (not that hard to achieve when the game itself is linear and balanced around munchkins who waste hours rerolling their characters at chargen, but still). The fireball spell wasn't nearly as satisfying as in other D&D games though, but perhaps it was my fault for not making pure casters (by the time my dudes were able to learn level 3 spells, most enemies were just shruggin their damage). Thieves in this game on the other hand are delightful, they're worthless outside of combat (so they're actually filthy rogues), but backstabbing enemies in this game is sooo rewarding.

I'm slowly plodding away in Champions of Krynn. I agree with you here - love the backstabbing, the plot is tight, though a little too much combat. I ended up picking an all human team including a red and white mages so quite magic heavy, but got access to Fireball quite early. The draconians are quite intriguing to fight against as they all have special abilities including when they perish that tilts the game tactically. Perhaps the most intriguing map I experienced so far was the Knight special map, Tomb of Sir Daargard. That map felt like a bow and a salute to the DragonLance Campaign Setting and so unusual when compared to the other Gold Box title I played, Pool of Radiance. The ample use of dragons is also unusual, but true to the campaign setting.

 

[octavius]

The Draconians, the specialized Clerics, the Dragonlances and Hoopaks, the three schools of magic, the Kender, and the more incloosive racial limits all make the Krynn games overall superior to the GB games set in Forgotten Relams. A shame that the setting was never used in the IE games or even (AFAIK) the NWN games.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I was hoping that Larian go Krynn or Dark Sun route but they, in their finite wisdom" choose Forgetten Realms...

 

[Sykar]

Raistlin was one of the coolest wizards in fiction imho.

Loved this book cover in particular of the brothers.

 

[Null Null]

The genius of Raistlin was to take the adolescent power fantasy and put it on the wizard instead of the barbarian, which of course lots of us geeks sympathized with. He was Drizzt before his time.

(Hey, I liked him too. And I would have told the other Companions to bug off--do the right thing so I can be tortured forever by the Dark Queen? Nah, just gonna sit here in my empty universe, thanks.

It makes sense when you consider Weis & Hickman were Christians--he redeems himself by effectively becoming a Christ figure and saving the universe, though of course he's just undoing evil he did himself.)

On Fourthday, Fifthmonth, 358, the world ends. Genius.

 

[Null Null]

Anyone want to go back to talking about the games, since this is an RPG thread?

I actually thought Champions was nicely plotted and it was my first gold box game.

Death Knights...it was a lot more free form but you could wander around and do stuff and I liked it too.

Dark Queen I wasn't as fond of even with the graphics bump. I also didn't like the move to one of 49 icons, even if they looked better than the cheesy pick-one-of-16-colors-for-your-arm-shading ones they had in the rest of the series. They were mine, and I was really disappointed to see my color-coded elf cleric/rangers (blue for the Mishakal healer, yellow for the Majere undead-turner) go to generic archer icons. And Raistlina's name wasn't funny anymore without the golden skin and white hair.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

I'm guessing this is a generational thing, I didn't read this kind of stuff as a teenager so I can't ignore their faults as easily as some of you do (I for instance grew up watching even dumber crap like Saint Seiya and Dragon Ball Z, and I can be just as blind to their retardation while enjoying the good bits). Still, I must insist, The Hobbit is proper entry level fantasy literature, while Dragons of the Autumn Twilight is just childish shlock. Heck, Champions of Krynn is better than that novel because, although it is also unchallenging comfort-food the way the source material is, at least the cringe is kept to a minimum.

I'm slowly plodding away in Champions of Krynn. I agree with you here - love the backstabbing, the plot is tight, though a little too much combat. I ended up picking an all human team including a red and white mages so quite magic heavy, but got access to Fireball quite early. The draconians are quite intriguing to fight against as they all have special abilities including when they perish that tilts the game tactically. Perhaps the most intriguing map I experienced so far was the Knight special map, Tomb of Sir Daargard. That map felt like a bow and a salute to the DragonLance Campaign Setting and so unusual when compared to the other Gold Box title I played, Pool of Radiance. The ample use of dragons is also unusual, but true to the campaign setting.

Well done, so I guess playing without cheesing at chargen is feasible and I just couldn't do it, maybe I should get good and learn to better use my spells. Still, the game's not as well balanced as Pool of Radiance in this regard, as even the weakest trash mobs like giant rats are too many and too hard to hit, encouraging players to create characters with superhuman strength to ease the tedium.

The Tomb of Sir Daargard is a cool little storyfag detour, the change of pace is welcomed and the end reward is a nice touch. Still, this place exeplifies the limitations of SSI when writting """role-playing scenarios""", where the player's always led by the nose and where faux-dilemmas present the goody two-shoes option as unambiguously the only viable one. Heck, even the +5 sword used in one of their tests was fake, which is so lame.

 

[Fowyr]

The Tomb of Sir Daargard is a cool little storyfag detour, the change of pace is welcomed and the end reward is a nice touch. Still, this place exeplifies the limitations of SSI when writting """role-playing scenarios""", where the player's always led by the nose and where faux-dilemmas present the goody two-shoes option as unambiguously the only viable one.

I wonder how much of it was TSR's Code and how much SSI itself. Just remember how Pool of Radiance had "evil" Animate Dead spell and had some ambiguous choices. For example, remember you could join Tyranthraxus in the last fight.

 

[Null Null]

The Tomb of Sir Daargard is a cool little storyfag detour, the change of pace is welcomed and the end reward is a nice touch. Still, this place exeplifies the limitations of SSI when writting """role-playing scenarios""", where the player's always led by the nose and where faux-dilemmas present the goody two-shoes option as unambiguously the only viable one.

I wonder how much of it was TSR's Code and how much SSI's itself. Just remember how Pool of Radiance had "evil" Animate Dead spell and had some ambiguous choices. For example, remember you could join Tyranthraxus in the last fight.

Yep, you could also attack the town guard (they had some of the best items!) and nomads, and kill prisoners like Skullcrusher. If the code was in place as of 1988 (when Pool came out), it's possible most of Pool was designed beforehand. Curse was pretty good-guy-ish, though you could still burgle houses in Zhentil Keep.

Joining Tyranthraxus just leads to 'the monsters rejoice because the party has been destroyed', though you do get to see a brief shot of the combat map with Tyranthraxus and your party all on the same side for a few seconds.

 

[octavius]

Sic temper Tyranthraxus.

 

[Dorateen]

It is stated in the Champions of Krynn Adventurer's Journal, and throughout the series, that due to the nature of this adventure, evil Player Characters are not permitted.

The heroic quality of the missions and quests, and interactions is embedded in the fabric of the setting. One of the central themes of DragonLance is restoring the balance between Good and Evil, not necessarily the triumph of Good over Evil. It would likely be difficult to reconcile evil role-playing options consistent with such thematic coherency.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

It is stated in the Champions of Krynn Adventurer's Journal, and throughout the series, that due to the nature of this adventure, evil Player Characters are not permitted.

That's no excuse when you have games like Quest of the Avatar, which was about becoming a lawful good hero, but that made morally good options not terribly obvious and sometimes inconvenient, so the player was forced to think about his own actions even during random encounters. The point is that dilemmas in this game are fake, and that the plot doesn't feel driven by the player.

And besides, keeping a +5 sword to better fight an evil army is not necessarily an evil action, using D&D logic it should be considered a neutral one.

 

[Dorateen]

And besides, keeping a +5 sword to better fight an evil army is not necessarily an evil action

However, refusing to surrender the +5 sword to an unarmed man cornered by a pack of wild dogs would be a gross violation of the Oath and the Measure.

If you are role-playing a Solamnic Knight, that is.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Change my class and let me keep the sword then. All I wanted was to use that sword in battle, fuck the consequences.

 

[Berengar]

I was hoping that Larian go Krynn or Dark Sun route but they, in their finite wisdom" choose Forgetten Realms...

These days with Wotc it seems like only Forgotten Realms or the Critical Role setting are available so I imagine that wasn't fully up to them.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I wonder how much of it was TSR's Code and how much SSI's itself. Just remember how Pool of Radiance had "evil" Animate Dead spell and had some ambiguous choices. For example, remember you could join Tyranthraxus in the last fight.

Yep, you could also attack the town guard (they had some of the best items!) and nomads, and kill prisoners like Skullcrusher. If the code was in place as of 1988 (when Pool came out), it's possible most of Pool was designed beforehand. Curse was pretty good-guy-ish, though you could still burgle houses in Zhentil Keep.

The first code of ethics implemented by TSR was called "standards for written material" and was in place by 1982, as seen in the image below:

Although this code expanded over the years with revisions, parts of it were often ignored and nearly every element was open to subjective interpretation. The Ravenloft setting, in particular, allowed evil to triumph over good (1 and 3) and had scenes that were gruesome or gory (2 and 4) as well as presenting seduction if not rape (12), while the Planescape setting invented/borrowed its own extensive slang (8), numerous pieces of artwork were suggestive though stopping short of full nudity (10), and even the Dragonlance setting and novels had an illicit sexual relationship involving one of the protagonists and a villain (11).

 

[Delterius]

NO SEX ALLOWED

and this shit was still considered satan's work