“It’s the sensible, logical thing to do, of course, which is whay we don’t do it.”
-Tanis Half-Elven, Dragons of Autumn Twilight
I'm a long-time Dragonlance fan and happened to notice a criminal lack of DL games on the site. After no small amount of discussion on the Game Planning forum, I now propose this game to you all, gentle players.
This is going to be a War of the Lance Era Dragonlance campaign focused around two parties: a group of defectors from the Dragonarmies (Or at least would-be defectors) and a Group of Solamnic Knights tasked with infiltrating the Dragonarmies' stronghold of Sanction.
The Defector party will consist of 6 players and the Solamnics of 4. The defectors' story will begin with the would-be defection and the infiltrators' story will be them attempting to smuggle themselves into the City of Doom itself. From there it will sandbox a bit, as the players will have to decide what they want to do, where to go and who to trust. The parties may work against each other or work together, depending on how the players handle it. Either way, the Dragonarmies themselves will be nipping at your heels.
This is a setting that requires a bit of research. The Campaign Setting and War of the Lance books will cover all of the essentials in terms of the setting, deities, plot, etc. (and the motivations, history and objectives of the Green Dragonarmies), though Towers of High Sorcery is essential reading for any spellcasters.
The races are detailed in the Campaign Setting and get significantly more detailed descriptions in the Races of Ansalon supplement, which I highly recommend flipping through. Wikipedia and the DLnexus are good sources for a quick read up though and I put up a pretty quick and dirty Beginner's guide to Krynn up on the forum before I got the Ad up. However, if something is unclear or you have a specific question, always feel free to pester me. As I said, I'm a long-standing Dragonlance nerd, so it's pretty rare that there'll be something I won't be able to answer in short order.
If the Ads running time seems a bit long, there's a reason for it. While I don't think it'll impede me too much, I'm currently re-applying for my VISA to stay here in the U.K. and I've got until the beginning of February to get is squared away, thus I wanted to leave myself a bit of time to get that squared away before the game proper gets rolling.
Also, up in the forums are a couple of Prelude threads. They're to help me get an idea of the role players I'll be dealing with and the kinds of personalities your characters have. Anyone who has an app up may RP in them, but keep to the one specific to your particular app.
Game Description:
The year is 350 of the Ansalon Calendar and darkness reigns. The armies of the Dark Queen have taken Nordmaar and Balifor, driven the Elves from Silvanost and started skirmishes along the borders of Solamnia and Icereach. The Draconians, foul spawn of dark magics and the eggs of dragons, have helped bolster the success of the ground troops. The forces of light are scattered and weak, having lost much of their power with the disappearance of the Gods and the fallout of the Cataclysm.
But, all is not lost.
The Solamnic Knights, once proud defenders of good, have risen once again to face the forces of evil along their borders. However, in secret the Knights stationed in Solanthus have sent a unit of four specially selected knights on a stealth mission to investigate the emergence of the Draconians.
Meanwhile, in Sanction, the center of the Dragonarmies' power, Mages of the Black Robes have joined their hands in a most unusual experiment and have created Draconians from a batch of Chromatic Dragon eggs. These so-called Noble Draconians have exhibited greater power than their metallic brethren, but they seem less eager to fight for the Dark Queen. One such Draconian, a Noble Draconian given the name of Irian, has been looking for those who disagree with the Dragonarmies' methods within the Green Dragonarmy of the Dragon Highlord Salah-Khan, hoping to find allies with which to flee...
__________________ "I am kami, and you need not flee, or fear. I am the voice of the sacred places, from the highest mountain temple to the most hidden shrine of the valley, and friend to all those who pay them respect."
That's a dangerous subject to get me on freefallin, I can go on about the Norse and the Celts for hours and often do when I get on the subject. I'm also one of the few medieval literature scholars whose currently attempting to analyze Norse and Celtic influences on Anglo-Saxon imagery and poetic structure, so this is really my bread and butter.
I'm a Quarter Norwegian and Italian (along with Scottish, Swedish, German, and a few other things to make me a goood ol' American mutt), but my paternal grandmother is very proud to be full-blooded Norwegian. When I was about 7 or so, she gave me a copy (unabridged) of the Gylfanning and the Skáldskaparmál, with a few poems like ∂rymskvi∂a tossed in. I pretty much instantly fell in love with it, and that's essentially why I'm now writing papers on violence in the Beowulf manuscript. Well that, and that translation of the Mabinogi I got a year later.
"I am kami, and you need not flee, or fear. I am the voice of the sacred places, from the highest mountain temple to the most hidden shrine of the valley, and friend to all those who pay them respect."
If my post comes across as angry/ aggressive/ offensive/ whatever, it is not intended as such. At worst, it is merely incredulity, conveyed through the inflexible format of an internet forum.Don't flatter yourself thinking anything to the contrary.
Wow, you've just given me more reason to want to pick your brain Especially on the influences on imagery and poetry ... very cool.
I think I have a German in there somewhere on my paternal grandmother's side. But maternally my grandmother and grandfather are full blooded Scot, he even spoke Scottish Gaelic when I was a kid. We're part of the McKay clan, my great-grandfather's name was changed slightly to McKee ... I don't know how it happened, but is still widely accepted as a McKay. My wife is full blooded Irish, her family is from Cork ... and she can't stand lamb or fish ... go figure
See, I am amazed how people like to show as many mixes in their racial up-make as possible (probably not intentional, but some really try to show off on it, just discussion wise, not saying Siberys was doing it.)
I am simply 50% Dutch/ 50% German (as far as I know atm), with a Black-Latino Step-dad, that's more then enough for me :+)
If my post comes across as angry/ aggressive/ offensive/ whatever, it is not intended as such. At worst, it is merely incredulity, conveyed through the inflexible format of an internet forum.Don't flatter yourself thinking anything to the contrary.
Don't worry too much Burning Spear, I'm pretty hard to get riled up. Unless you happen to be a Renaissanist. Then we might have words.
I share it mostly because my heritage is a fairly big defining feature for me. My mom's side of the family only immigated Stateside sometime around 1904, so we're only a couple of generations off. Thus we behave very...meditterranean and that's influenced a lot of my views and mannerisms. Conversely, my dad's side of the family's a pretty strong mishmash of Norse cultures nad they're all incredibly proud of that fact, so again, that's defined a lot of my perspectives on things. The other various heritages I have all factor in to some extent as well, but much less than the Norwegian/Italian.
@ freefallin: Thanks, I think my subject's quite cool, but we Anglo-Saxonists are a pretty rare breed so not a whole lot of medievalists agree.
Scots Gaelic is absolutely gorgeous, I'm a bit envious you got to grow up listening to it. My maternal great-grandmother was Italina born, so she spoke that quite often at family get-togethers, but that was the most linguistic exposure I had until I got to high school and had to take 3 years of Spanish that I've never used.
Name changes are always a bit funny, aren't they? My last name's Grant, but that's only because my dad's side of the family wanted to sound more American when they immigrated to the U.S. after the civil war. Thus they changed their last name from Jonasson to Grant in honor of the president at the time. Ironically enough my maternal grandfather (who has the scottish blood in the family) has a bit of the Grant clan in him. It's weird how things like that work out.
"I am kami, and you need not flee, or fear. I am the voice of the sacred places, from the highest mountain temple to the most hidden shrine of the valley, and friend to all those who pay them respect."
My grandfather told me the name change from McKay to McKee when his father or grandfather came over and the officer at Ellis Island spelled McKay phonetically as the man said it, which the Scot's draw out the second syllable that sounds like a long 'e'. But I don't know if it's true
@Burning Spear: A lot of Americans like to spell out their racial diversity, probably due to the fact that 98.5 percent of Americans are from somewhere else ancestrally. Only about 1.5% of the American population is native to the country.
@Burning Spear: A lot of Americans like to spell out their racial diversity, probably due to the fact that 98.5 percent of Americans are from somewhere else ancestrally. Only about 1.5% of the American population is native to the country.
Don't get me started on that one :+), goes to show how hypocritical the U.S. in general is, putting the original people in reservations and ignoring their plight, but dictating the rest of the world how to behave..harf, But I think if want to continue this kind of conversation we should go to this part of the site, or not? :+)
If my post comes across as angry/ aggressive/ offensive/ whatever, it is not intended as such. At worst, it is merely incredulity, conveyed through the inflexible format of an internet forum.Don't flatter yourself thinking anything to the contrary.
I'd rather not start a possibly inflammatory thread like that one, especially jumping off with a generalization all Americans are like that and not blaming the corrupt politicians instead of the citizens. Suffice it to say I agree that the Native Americans were screwed, just as any conquered people are. And they weren't abused by Americans, remember ... they were British defectors first If anything, they were second generation Brits.
Subjects & Citizens: Gender, Race & Class in American History,
is the name of the class I am having regarding American history, and its not shining a good light on American general attitude of their history, regardless of the influence of English or others. Our teacher is very critical of how history is perceived in general, and how skewed it can be via certain versions of goggles, mostly American history is written as he says "from a dead white rich dude's perspective" :+) I love that phrase.
If my post comes across as angry/ aggressive/ offensive/ whatever, it is not intended as such. At worst, it is merely incredulity, conveyed through the inflexible format of an internet forum.Don't flatter yourself thinking anything to the contrary.
Last edited by Burning Spear; Jan 15 '12 at 4:56pm.
Yes, history all over the world is skewed by the biases of its writers Take the works of a 19th century scholar, Samuel George Morton. He wrote how he "scientifically" measure human skulls from different "races" to prove equality or the inequality in races. He said all races were proven inferior to the "White" race, where it was proven a century later that he tweaked his "scientific" measurements to match his own biases, keeping only what back his theory and throwing out any evidence that was against his biases.
