An Introduction, or Why Do This?

When I was in primary school, I lived in country Australia, a forty minute drive from the nearest kid my age, and went to school in a class of six, four of which lacked imagination.

I bought way too many of the second edition AD&D books, and spent a lot of time having lonely fun with the systems there, but never had a soul to play the game with. When I was around 9, in a table book sale on the street, I came across the Tales of the Lance boxed set, and I fell in love with Dragonlance. But I never played the adventures.

Twenty years later I rediscovered role-playing, at first through Fiasco and Apocalypse World, and then through D&D 5E and Edge of the Empire. I became a Dungeon Master.

I realised this week that every single Dragonlance product is available on the DMs Guild. So I grabbed a copy of Dragonlance Classics, and realised, horrified, that the players are allowed almost no agency. It reads as a choose-your-own adventure book. That's not my style. I am a lazy Dungeon Master.

But the story is so close to my heart, and I would like to try, so I'm going to attempt to render the War of the Lance into an adventure that I would actually run at my table. I want to capture the spirit if I can of Dragonlance, the romance and camaraderie, the sense of scale and heroism, but I will diverge from the material, in order to make the adventure better suited to the D&D 5th Edition rules and to make the material as exciting and fun to be a part of as I can.

And once I've developed a resource - a DM Binder - I will have to find a group to play it with, as my current group is dwindling as they become time-poor and child-rich. The original story has some forty chapters, and I'd expect this to be similar.

If I do find a group, I'll keep a campaign diary here.

In summary, the thesis of this blog is:

1. To develop a resource to run the War of the Lance in a way that encourages player agency.
2. To publish it here, and give full credit to all the resources I used to assist me.
3. To keep a campaign diary to record how it goes.
4. To reflect on the process on the way.

Wish me luck!