Home :: Books :: Science Fiction & Fantasy  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy

Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Dragonlance Campaign Setting

Dragonlance Campaign Setting

List Price: $39.95
Your Price: $26.37
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 >>

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A disappointment
Review: Perhaps I am bias because when I was young I read the original three Dragonlance novels, but I find this edition of the Dragonlance campaign setting to be very disappointing. I have seen the AD&D 2e boxed set of Dragonlance, and it was very fascinating.

However, I think that the main reason for my disappointment is that the authors felt it necessary to include the novels written in the Dragonlance world that occurred after the 2nd Edition boxed set, which gives the world of Krynn a very different flavor from its previous incarnation. I suppose I feel alienated because of this, but there are other reasons.

The basic classes are redefined, edited, or left out in this book, which is both good and bad. Some new basic classes are added for flavor, some of which seem redundant since other basic classes essentially do the same thing. There are prestige classes that could have been modeled better in terms of mechanical progression (3 progressive classes for an Order of Knights seems silly). The writing style failed to make the material interesting, as well as trying too hard to cover many novels in a short space of text.

For these reasons, I cannot possibly recommend the purchase of this book unless you're a D&D collector or a diehard Dragonlance fan.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An extensive history and chronology
Review: The collaborative effort of role gaming experts Margaret Weis, Don Perrin, Jamie Chambers, Christopher Coyle, Dragonlance Campaign Settings is an extensive and detailed role-playing game resource designed especially for players familiar with the Dragonlance campaign setting -- a war-torn world where good and evil dragons and their kindred clash, along with their human and nonhuman allies caught up in the storms of conflict. An extensive history and chronology, unique spells, information crucial to generating player characters and NPCs of various races, a basic bestiary, sample ecologies, and so much more, distinguish this excellent and highly recommended role gaming resource.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A great read for all Dragonlance fans
Review: This book is an excellent resource for the running of a Dragonlance campaign. The choices and handling of the races, character classes, and prestige classes is fantastic. There is a good rundown of the deities,magic, history and geography of the Dragonlance world.
My complaints are that the book is mainly set in the "current" timeline of the books, where as I am mainly interested in the War of the Lance era. I think a whole War of the Lance supplement should be created seperately. There are too few character profiles in the book, and the bestiary is rather small. An example Death Knight is given-why not just give us the stats for Lord Soth? That's what everyone wants! Also, I couldn't find the 3.5 edition stats for the hoopak stick! What gives? If it were not form these mostly minor omissions, I would have given it 5 stars.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: very good
Review: This book is great, it provides all sorts of cool stuff about the dragonlance campaign. New monsters, new races, new classes, new prestige classes, new spells, everything. However, its art is mostly terrible, theres only about 3 good pictures in the book. But if you are looking for a campaign setting, this one is very good.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Mainly for campaigns set during and after the War of Souls.
Review: This is a pretty good campaign setting.

Though not without a few errors here and there, it is better produced and edited than the "World Book of Ansalon" that came with the AD&D 2nd ed. "Tales of the Lance" set. The main things it seems to be missing are details of non-standard weapons and equipment (kender in particular), information on famous heroes and NPCs from before the Age of Mortals (no Heroes of the Lance or Dragon Highlords), details of many famous locations (Foghaven Vale, High Clerists Tower, Istar) and almost anything regarding the Dragon Orbs, the Device of Time Travelling, the Portals to the Abyss and several other key artifacts from the Age of Despair.

What it does have is enough to run fairly detailed adventures in the post War of Souls period and somewhat generalized campaigns in all the major time periods since the Cataclysm (or First Cataclysm for Age of Mortals folks). It is effective for updating older Dragonlance settings, modules and characters to 3rd edition or 3.5. What it lacks in detail of maps and NPCs it makes up for with sections allowing for PC Draconians and Knights of Neraka (or Takhisis) among others, as well as very detailed chronologies and geographical information.

I am running a game using both the old, out of print Dragonlance Classics reprints of the original DL module series AND this new campaign setting. I am finding this combination very effective for running the original campaign using v.3.5 rules. The Classics series and the original DL modules are all available from retailers such as NobleKnight.com and TitanGames.com. If you like modules the old ones definitely still stand up, but 3rd ed. has many significant changes. If you want to make your own campaign in the old period I recommend the Sovereign Press book coming out later this year (see next paragraph).

So once again I emphasize that this product is designed mainly for playing in or after the War of Souls period. It is also (currently; see below) the only good way to play in the Dragonlance setting using D&D 3 or 3.5. Hopefully the "War of the Lance" expansion (published by Sovereign Press, due out later this year) will solve many of the problems I have mentioned here. Ideally, it will give enough information to allow play in that period without purchasing this WotC Dragonlance campaign setting, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Decent
Review: Well, I waited and waited for this book to come out. When I first bought it, I was quite disappointed in the material presented within. Where were all the cool spells that aren't in FR or D&D 3.5? What about the other races, better statistics on the gods?
So I took my time to read and re-read the book. Well, I've gotten used to it and have found a lot of useful info for running a campaign. Kind of like that cd you buy where it takes listening to it a few times to like it.
I would still recommend going to the unoffical Dragonlance website because it has a lot more useful info than this book. But I still give this one my recommendation.
Oh yeah, the biggest disappointment: No Fold-Out Map! It has been put on the WOTC website for download, but it doesn't make up for this book lacking one. They should have released a map with the Dragon magazine to make up for this.


<< 1 2 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates