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Tasslehoff Burrfoot
Paired with the Device of Time journeying, Tasslehoff Burrfoot made as much or more of an impact on the fate of Krynn than anyone else. Let’s learn more about that taunting, light fingered and aggressively affable kender Tas. Buy The Art of the Dragonlance Saga: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17389/The-Art-of-the-Dragonlance-Saga?affiliate_id=50797
https://youtu.be/EGkq3FAyCSg
Transcript
Cold Open
Keep him at arm's length if you want to keep your possessions and prepare to hear about that damnable wooly mammoth!
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam and today we are going to talk about Tasslehoff Burrfoot. I would like to take a moment and thank the members of this channel, and invite you to consider becoming a member by visiting the link in the description below. You can even pick up Dragonlance gaming materials using my affiliate link. I am referencing The Art of the Dragonlance Saga, The Annotated Chronicles and Legends, The Lost Chronicles, Dragons of Summer Flame and The War of Souls. If I leave anything out that you find defining about Tas, leave a comment below!
Discussion
Tasslehoff Burrfoot is a difficult character to nail down. In every sense of the phrase. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman see him as a peripheral character who plays the role of the fool in the classic sense. We laugh with Tas, not at him. He is ‘innocence incarnate’ with no reverence for anything or anybody. The authors had difficulty with his race and the characters need for growth, so the deaths of Flint Fireforge and Gnimsh the gnome became moments that changed and defined him. He gained depth and wisdom through the Chronicles and Legends and grew even more, at times relearning the same lessons over and over again, in the War of Souls trilogy. I have always seen Tas like R2-D2. He may get people into trouble but equally gets them out of it. Arguably, they are the real heroes of the story as they provide direction and possibility to overcome insurmountable odds.
Even his appearance dramatically shifted depending on the artist portraying him. Caldwell saw Tas as more impish. Parkinson depicted him as a teenager, and Elmore painted him as both aged, ageless. His personality and even manner of speech were defined primarily by Roger E. Moore in his short story A Stone’s Throw Away, which first appeared in Dragon Magazine. This was what Weis and Hickman called back to and of course Janet Pack’s dramatic reading of the character in the first public reading of Dragonlance at Gencon in 1984. It took artists, writers and performers to truly nail down this character. I can understand why player’s don’t enjoy Kender in their home games, as they can be terrorizing to a party if allowed. But Tas as a character is the audience's IN to the story. It’s through him we understand what is important or scary. What should and should not be done. It is also through him we get to experience divinity in avatar form. Fizban alone is an old man. With Tas in the mix, he is a funny, bumbling power to be reckoned with that is playing down to the audience.
We are introduced to Tas in the same fashion that we would forever know him. By ‘finding’ an item of magic and being transported or transformed by it. One could argue that this is his sole contribution to the narrative and in righting the Dragonlance Campaign itself when it left the rails in the Fifth Age. Tas is known as the hero he is, through his interaction with the Device of Time Journeying, and ultimately through his sacrifice in the Chaos War. His best friend Flint Fireforge was more aggrava...
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By DragonLance Saga
4.1
99 ratings
Paired with the Device of Time journeying, Tasslehoff Burrfoot made as much or more of an impact on the fate of Krynn than anyone else. Let’s learn more about that taunting, light fingered and aggressively affable kender Tas. Buy The Art of the Dragonlance Saga: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17389/The-Art-of-the-Dragonlance-Saga?affiliate_id=50797
https://youtu.be/EGkq3FAyCSg
Transcript
Cold Open
Keep him at arm's length if you want to keep your possessions and prepare to hear about that damnable wooly mammoth!
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga episode. My name is Adam and today we are going to talk about Tasslehoff Burrfoot. I would like to take a moment and thank the members of this channel, and invite you to consider becoming a member by visiting the link in the description below. You can even pick up Dragonlance gaming materials using my affiliate link. I am referencing The Art of the Dragonlance Saga, The Annotated Chronicles and Legends, The Lost Chronicles, Dragons of Summer Flame and The War of Souls. If I leave anything out that you find defining about Tas, leave a comment below!
Discussion
Tasslehoff Burrfoot is a difficult character to nail down. In every sense of the phrase. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman see him as a peripheral character who plays the role of the fool in the classic sense. We laugh with Tas, not at him. He is ‘innocence incarnate’ with no reverence for anything or anybody. The authors had difficulty with his race and the characters need for growth, so the deaths of Flint Fireforge and Gnimsh the gnome became moments that changed and defined him. He gained depth and wisdom through the Chronicles and Legends and grew even more, at times relearning the same lessons over and over again, in the War of Souls trilogy. I have always seen Tas like R2-D2. He may get people into trouble but equally gets them out of it. Arguably, they are the real heroes of the story as they provide direction and possibility to overcome insurmountable odds.
Even his appearance dramatically shifted depending on the artist portraying him. Caldwell saw Tas as more impish. Parkinson depicted him as a teenager, and Elmore painted him as both aged, ageless. His personality and even manner of speech were defined primarily by Roger E. Moore in his short story A Stone’s Throw Away, which first appeared in Dragon Magazine. This was what Weis and Hickman called back to and of course Janet Pack’s dramatic reading of the character in the first public reading of Dragonlance at Gencon in 1984. It took artists, writers and performers to truly nail down this character. I can understand why player’s don’t enjoy Kender in their home games, as they can be terrorizing to a party if allowed. But Tas as a character is the audience's IN to the story. It’s through him we understand what is important or scary. What should and should not be done. It is also through him we get to experience divinity in avatar form. Fizban alone is an old man. With Tas in the mix, he is a funny, bumbling power to be reckoned with that is playing down to the audience.
We are introduced to Tas in the same fashion that we would forever know him. By ‘finding’ an item of magic and being transported or transformed by it. One could argue that this is his sole contribution to the narrative and in righting the Dragonlance Campaign itself when it left the rails in the Fifth Age. Tas is known as the hero he is, through his interaction with the Device of Time Journeying, and ultimately through his sacrifice in the Chaos War. His best friend Flint Fireforge was more aggrava...