https://youtu.be/6KDuO656tDc

Dragonlance would end up being one of the most popular Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, but how did it come to be?

Intro

Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam and I am going to explain how Dragonlance was created. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to this channel, ring the bell, and you can further help this channel and pick up Dragonlance Gaming materials using my affiliate link in the description below. Dragonlance seemed like an overnight success for TSR, but it took time, planning, creation, and frustration before it would be a fully realized campaign world. 

Discussion

Before Tracy Hickman was hired at TSR in 1982, he and his wife Laura Hickman ran a small adventure publishing company called DayStar West Media. During his time writing adventure modules, Tracy would pen a manifesto that required each new module to have an intriguing story that is intricately woven into the play itself. The first ideas they would have ported over to Dragonlance years later was the mix of story and gameplay, and dragon riders, i.e. dragons used as mounts.

When an opportunity arose to work at TSR, Tracy and Laura Hickman drove cross country for an interview. On the way they continued their development of a dragon centric world which would put the dragons back into Dungeons & Dragons. They developed the first Heroes of the Lance on that road trip, Tanis, Kitiara and Laurana.

TSR found themselves in difficult times around 1983 and with their blessing, Tracy create Project Overlord, his dragon centric adventure trilogy with others at TSR including Harold Johnson who insisted Tracy should develop the three adventures into a campaign world spanning 12 adventure modules with fellow designers Jeff Grubb & Doug Niles, editor Carl Smith, and artist Larry Elmore to name a few. In fact when Larry Elmore was presented with the concept he was so thrilled that he developed the first four paintings, depicting main events that weekend!

They would collect their documents, images and ideas and bring them all to the powers that be at TSR. TSR was blown away and told then to get it all ready for release in 1984. Part of that release was TSR’s first novel effort, so they reached out to their newly hired editor Margaret Weis, and asked her to write an outline for a novel based off the 12 adventure modules. TSR would take them and hand them over to a writer they would hire for this specific project. The first draft was not well received so Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman wrote the Dragonlance trilogy of novels themselves which was distributed by random house. They teased the world in issue #83 of Dragon magazine with Margaret’s short story “The Test of the Twins”. 

The media campaign for Dragonlance was a huge success with every novel making the New York Times best sellers list, selling more than two million copies and the adventure modules selling over a half a million units. 1986 signaled the end of the module releases with DL14 Dragons of Triumph, but TSR wasn’t done with Dragonlance, rounding out Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1.5 Edition product line in 1987 with Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home, the Dragonlance Tales Volume 1; Magic of Krynn novel, the Dragonlance Adventures campaign sourcebook, and then a few months later the Atlas of the Dragonlance World. These releases signaled the end of an era. Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis went one way creatively and TSR went another preparing for their release of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition.

The schism between Dragonlance fans and TSR certainly began with the s...