Short answers, pulled from the story.
TSR created Dragonlance as a campaign setting for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in 1982. Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis developed the project after Hickman drove from Utah to Wisconsin for a job interview with TSR.
The world of Krynn unfolds across five distinct ages including the Age of Dreams, Age of Might, Age of Despair, Age of Chaos, and Age of Mortals. The Age of Despair is where most stories take place following the Cataclysm that obliterated the empire of Istar.
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman wrote the main storyline of the original Dragonlance series before moving on to other trilogies. They returned to write Dragons of Summer Flame in 1995 thinking it would be their final novel before leaving TSR.
Eight video games emerged across six genres between 1988 and 1992 including Heroes of the Lance, Dragons of Flame, Shadow Sorcerer, War of the Lance, and DragonStrike. Gold Box trilogy comprising Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn, and Dark Queen of Krynn remained only role-playing titles based directly on Dragonlance.
By 2008 the franchise contained more than one hundred ninety novels selling over twenty-two million copies worldwide. Twenty bestseller lists featured their work translated into German Japanese Danish Dutch Finnish Spanish French Italian Hebrew Portuguese Greek and Turkish languages.