Dragonlance

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Dragonlance began in a car. Laura and Tracy Hickman were driving from Utah to Wisconsin in 1982, heading to a job interview at TSR, when they started sketching out the bones of an entire fantasy universe. Two ideas they had been carrying for years finally collided: a world built to support a single epic storyline, and a world ruled by dragons. By the time the Hickmans pulled into Wisconsin, Dragonlance existed in outline form.

  What followed was one of the most commercially successful shared fantasy universes ever built. More than 190 novels. Sales exceeding 22 million copies for the novels by Weis and Hickman alone. Translations into German, Japanese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Spanish, French, Italian, Hebrew, Portuguese, Greek, and Turkish. And an origin story tied up in a single road trip and a job interview that changed both of the people who took it.

  How did a pitch from an unemployed writer become a franchise that made TSR one of the most successful publishers of science fiction and fantasy in the 1990s? And who were the people who built the world of Krynn from the ground up?

• 2. The Road to TSR

  ›

  Tracy Hickman was not a stranger to world-building when TSR called. He had already written and self-published, with his wife Laura, the adventure modules Rahasia in 1979 and Pharaoh in 1980. He then wrote TSR's Ravenloft module in 1983. TSR noticed the submissions and offered him a job in 1982, when he was unemployed.

  The marketing department at TSR had a clear-eyed view of what they were missing. They had enough dungeons, the team said, but not enough dragons. Hickman proposed a series of twelve modules, each built around a different dragon. TSR employee Harold Johnson pushed Hickman to build a coalition inside the company. Over a period of months, Hickman gathered the support of Jeff Grubb, Larry Elmore, Roger Moore, Doug Niles, Michael Williams, and others.

  Meanwhile, Margaret Weis was already at TSR, editing and writing books in the Endless Quest line. Hickman met her there, and the two would form the creative partnership that carried the entire project forward. The internal code name for the project was Project Overlord, and Hickman served as its design coordinator. What Project Overlord would eventually become was the Dragonlance saga.

• 3. Writing the Books

  ›

  TSR had decided that novels would accompany the game modules, a significant departure from the company's usual product line. They hired a writer for the job, but Weis and Hickman were not satisfied with what he produced. Over a single weekend, the two of them collaborated on a prologue and the first five chapters of what would become Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first novel in the Chronicles trilogy. TSR liked the treatment, gave them the assignment, and fired the other writer.

  The module Dragons of Despair was released in March 1984. The novel Dragons of Autumn Twilight followed in November 1984. TSR had doubts about the novel's sales potential. They attempted to order thirty thousand copies but ended up ordering the minimum print run of fifty thousand. The novel sold through that print run, and TSR had to order more copies to meet demand.

  Weis and Hickman found the early process creatively frustrating. Writing the first novel after the game modules were already complete made it feel too episodic, too tethered to the structure of a tabletop game. They reversed the process for all the books that followed, completing the novels before the related modules were written. That shift gave the fiction room to breathe on its own terms.

• 4. The World of Krynn

  ›

  Krynn, the planet on which Dragonlance is set, holds most of its action on Ansalon, a small continent. A second continent, Taladas, lies to the northeast of Ansalon and has appeared in some novels. The fictional history of Krynn is divided into five ages, running from the age of creation through the Age of Mortals, which was introduced with Dragonlance: Fifth Age in 1996.

  The majority of the novels and gaming supplements are set in the fourth age, called the Age of Despair, which includes the War of the Lance. The world's divine structure is intricate: the High God sits at the top, with children including the good god Paladine, the neutral Gilean, and the evil Takhisis. Wizards in Krynn draw power from three moon gods, with Solinari governing good magic, Lunitari governing neutral magic, and Nuitari governing evil magic.

  Hickman's two years as a Mormon missionary in Java left a direct trace on the setting. He used Indonesian in the Dragonlance spells. The draconians, the reptilian soldiers who fill out the armies of the evil factions, are created by corrupting dragon eggs. Good dragon eggs are most commonly used for this process, because the evil kings want more evil dragons to hatch from uncorrupted eggs. The contradictions built into the world's design are part of what gave it staying power.

• 5. Characters and the Gaming Table

  ›

  The Heroes of the Lance did not emerge from a writer's outline. They began as player characters in gaming sessions held at Hickman's apartment. One player at that initial session was game designer Terry Phillips, who was playing Raistlin. Hickman quoted the moment in the foreword to The Soulforge: "we were just settling in to the game when I turned to my good friend Terry Phillips and asked what his character was doing. Terry spoke...and the world of Krynn was forever changed. His rasping voice, his sarcasm and bitterness all masking an arrogance and power that never needed to be stated suddenly were real. Everyone in the room was both transfixed and terrified. To this day Margaret Weis swears that Terry wore the black robes to the party that night."

  Weis had her own character to wrestle with. She struggled to write the half-elf Tanis Half-Elven until Hickman gave her a single sentence of direction: "he's James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise." That framing resolved the problem. The authors also ran a Traveling Road Show to publicize the novels, with the Heroes of the Lance played by various people. Authors Gary and Janet Pack played Tanis and the kender Tasslehoff Burrfoot. TSR employee Harold Johnson played the Solamnic knight Sturm Brightblade. Weis herself played Fizban the Fabulous.

  The antagonists were equally alive. According to Hickman, Lord Soth, the Death Knight, was the most unpredictable character to write: "Every time that character made an appearance in one of our books he would try to run off with the story."

• 6. Rifts and Returns

  ›

  By the mid-to-late 1980s, the relationship between Weis, Hickman, and TSR had soured. The authors felt under-appreciated. When TSR rejected their Darksword series, they took it to Bantam Books. Bantam made them an offer, they accepted it, and they stopped writing Dragonlance novels for TSR entirely.

  They came back in 1995 to write Dragons of Summer Flame, expecting it to be their last Dragonlance novel. At that point, the gaming side of Dragonlance had been converted to the SAGA System, a card-based rules engine that had met with limited success. TSR was in general financial trouble. Wizards of the Coast bought TSR in 1997, and the acquisition opened a new chapter. Weis and Hickman proposed the War of Souls trilogy to the new owners. Published between 2000 and 2002, all three novels made the New York Times bestseller list. The original Dragonlance trilogy had already sold well over three million copies worldwide by 1998 and spawned dozens of sequels. The commercial revival put the setting back on solid ground.

  In October 2020, however, Weis and Hickman filed suit against Wizards of the Coast for breaching a licensing deal for a new novel trilogy. According to the lawsuit, the two authors had agreed with Wizards in 2017 to write a capping trilogy, but the company pulled the plug in August 2020. By December of that year, they voluntarily dismissed the suit without prejudice. Their publishing agent confirmed shortly after that a new trilogy was still in the works, and the first novel of that trilogy was released in August 2022.

• 7. Beyond the Page

  ›

  Eight video games set in the Dragonlance world were released within five years, from 1988 to 1992, spanning six different genres. The first two Dragonlance modules, Dragons of Despair and Dragons of Flame, were adapted as platform games using the Silver Box game engine, titled Heroes of the Lance and Dragons of Flame. A third adaptation, Shadow Sorcerer, released in 1991, functioned as an early real-time strategy game. The Gold Box trilogy, comprising Champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn, and The Dark Queen of Krynn, are the only role-playing video games based on the setting and tell an original story beginning after the tabletop modules end.

  The character of Raistlin Majere drew particular attention from musicians. Nightwish wrote "Wishmaster," drawing on the master-and-apprentice dynamic between Raistlin and Dalamar. The Swedish metal band Lake of Tears recorded "Raistlin and the Rose" on their 1997 album Crimson Cosmos. The German group Blind Guardian wrote "The Soulforged" for their 2002 album A Night at the Opera. A Russian concept album and musical titled The Last Trial, by Anton Kruglov and Yelena Khanpira, adapted Raistlin's story, with the album recorded around 2009-2010 and the musical premiering in 2014.

  In 2008, an animated film adaptation of Dragons of Autumn Twilight was released direct-to-video. Produced by Toonz Animation, it featured the voices of Lucy Lawless, Kiefer Sutherland, Michael Rosenbaum, and Michelle Trachtenberg. The December 2022 return of the setting via the adventure module Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen brought a companion board game, Warriors of Krynn, designed by Stephen Baker and Rob Daviau and released in 2023.