Dragonlance is Basic, and That's Just Fine

Being a mega-fan of Raistlin is out, in this house we’re fans of FIZBAN because he’s fabulous. Also I played Journey because I got it when it was free on the PS Store, and now I’m on Uncharted, which I have very little knowledge about and am not very good at! But it’s fun.

Let’s talk about Dragonlance because it’s been in my head for a while. And for the most part, I’ll be sticking to Dragons of Autumn Twilight, because that’s the one that’s the one I just read.

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Dragonlance is Basic, and That’s Just Fine

Dragonlance is, for the uninitiated, a specific setting in the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game. It was made into a series of novels by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman, starting with Dragons of Autumn Twilight, the first in the trilogy that kicked off the bajillion books that came afterward. It goes like this: a group of old adventuring buddies meet up at their favorite tavern after spending years apart to talk about where they’ve been, and of news they’ve heard about trouble brewing up. But they get jumped by bad guys, and they find themselves on the run and on a new quest that happens to involve the fate of the world.

If this sounds like the beginning of a DnD campaign, I haven’t even gotten to the cast, which is made up of different races and classes each with their own specialties: the half-elf ranger, the human cleric and her bodyguard, the dwarf fighter, the mage and his twin the fighter, a human paladin, and a kender (halfling) thief. I remember reading it for the first time and thinking that this seemed as if it was based off of someone’s roleplaying session. It made a lot more sense when I found out that Dragonlance is an actual DnD setting.

And I recall thinking, “Wow, this is going to be a pretty run-of-the-mill high fantasy story,” and it kind of is? But it turns out that that’s not a bad thing?

I would think that most writers today, upon visiting this setup, would think that the way to make this story stand out would be to include massive twists into the story. Someone in the group, out of the blue, will turn out to be completely evil for no discernible reason, or get killed out of nowhere, or that kind of thing. And that’s not remotely what happened. I don’t know if that’s because of the book being written and published when it was, and that the whole idea of trope subversion wasn’t as all-encompassing as it is now, or because the authors consciously decided that they wanted to make this a straightforward fantasy story.

Which works for what it is. There are parts that I think are more heavy-handed than they really need to be. Raistlin, for instance, is cackling in a corner and has ‘WILL TURN EVIL’ printed on his forehead in big letters. At one point he talks to Tanis and says something along the lines of “One day you will all recognize my genius MUAHAHAHAHAHA!” and I think that’s a bit over-the-top.

But I think it still doesn’t hurt the narrative because everyone in the party reacts to that. It’s not like one of those situations where the reader knows something and the characters should but they don’t. No, everyone else knows very well how emotionally and morally unstable Raistlin is, but put up with it (or don’t!) for their own reasons. Whenever it seems like there’s going to be a traitor in the group, Sturm, the paladin, clearly thinks they should just kill Raistlin and get on with it. The other group members are clearly uncomfortable around him, except his brother Caramon. And Tanis, the team leader, is courteous to him because of their past friendship, and also because he knows that he needs him.

Also Tanis wants to sleep with Raistlin’s older sister which probably contributes something to it.

And I think that may be why Dragonlance works: its fully-developed cast. Sure, they’re DnD stereotypes, if we’re being honest, but they’re developed versions of those characters. Sturm is a strict, Lawful Good paladin, but he’s got backstory, and conflict with the other characters, and his own personal vices beyond his character archetype. Flint is a gruff dwarf character, but he’s got his own backstory explaining why he does or doesn’t like certain things (like boats), and he’s explicitly an old man, even for a dwarf. And so on and so forth.

That’s something a lot of authors miss out on when they’re writing fantasy of any sort. They apply the archetypes to characters and move on with the story, without stopping and developing those characters to make them likable, and make the story work because of it. And in some cases you can get by without developing characters too much--for as much as I love it, I don’t think Here, There Be Dragons has great character development, but the Plot moves fast enough that it isn’t too much of an issue. But as that series goes on, and the cast expands exponentially, it starts becoming more egregious.

Dragonlance, to my knowledge, doesn’t have that problem. I’ll get back to you when I finish the trilogy again, but from what I recall, it never felt like it was juggling too many characters, or that I didn’t get a sense for a lot of characters, or that the cast became faceless figures to help one or two protagonists.

Dragonlance is not surprising, but it is fulfilling. It tells the story it set out to tell. Maybe you don’t like all the ways it went, but it ties itself up, taking the characters where they were meant to go and not making you wonder about too many loose ends. You don’t feel cheated by the story; you don’t think it would have made more sense if it had all gone completely differently. And maybe that’s a YMMV thing, and maybe I’ll change my mind upon re-reading the three books. But as for this one, it had an ending that felt right. 

I know I’ve written about Spoiler Culture before, and that creators being so obsessed with making sure their Plot Twists stay as twists often warp things too much or treat their audiences or cast members like crap just to make sure you don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s gotten pretty infuriating at times, and it’s nice to read a story that cares more about being enjoyable than about being a surprise. Perhaps it’s a bit too ‘safe’ to be on a list of greatest fantasy of all time, but it’s a good comfort read if nothing else.

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