Salvaging Dragonlance: DL11 and DL12

DL11: Dragons of Glory

DL11 isn't a adventure, it's a wargame of the "War of the Lance." There is very little here that is a quick steal for a fantasy RPG. The best thing worth stealing is the idea that there are whole nations of minotaurs who have powerful-but-slow naval units. Minopirates.

As a wargame, DL11 was a lot of fun. It combines both recruiting neutral countries and conquest. This could be fun as you'd start small and work up. But I was a sucker for that buildup in the GDW Third World War series game Persian Gulf, so I liked it here too. Boardgame Geek has a nice set of pictures and a review or two. If you find a copy and play it, I'd make sure you read the errata in Dragon #107.

DL12: Dragons of Faith

Dragons of Faith is one of the later Dragonlance modules. It is set up as a sandbox with an event line, but the events are really railroady (which fits the series.) It's also co-written by Bruce Heard. It's pretty big, but there are just a few things worth stealing from this one:

Counters! - Yes, the original came with Battlesystem counters. Pretty nice bonus here, and easy to snag.

Cards - the cards, and rules, for some fantasy-world cardgames are here. Could be a stealer for another game.

Magic Items - there are few non-standard magic items here, but mostly ones which combine the powers of existing magic items. One of them is a spell-deflecting sword, which is cool, but with a pretty weak name ("Mantooth"). Oh well, probably sounded better in the 80s.

Monsters - four draconians make it in - the previously published baaz, bozak, and kapak, plus a new wingless mind-controlling energy-shooting one called the Aurak. It has its own odd death throes, where they go into a frenzy killing things before exploding. Seriously. Either wacky or gonzo, depending on your outlook.

There are 11 other monsters in here:
Amphi Dragon (dragon/sea monster crossbreed)
Sea Dragon
Sea Elf (pretty standard swimming elves, basically)
Prickleback (spine-shooting fish)
School of Salmon (seriously, this is like a GURPS swarm, but of Omega-3 rich fish)
King of the Deep (a unique aquatic boss monster)
Death Statues (killer statues with special powers and a nasty origin, at least on Krynn)
Skyfisher (a bird-monster)
Sligs & Ghagglers - upgraded hobgoblins, and their aquatic version
Whisper Spider - a hunting/trapping giant spider
Undead Beast - another big boss undead.

But that's about it. Lots of stuff if you were playing out the adventure for Dragonlance but not so much to just grab-and-go elsewhere.

This ends my review of the Dragonlance modules. I am missing the other ones - I just stopped buying them. I am rather surprised I coasted this far on momentum, because we didn't play far into the series. I hope people found this worthwhile, and maybe dusted off their modules to grab stats for some exploding dragon men to sic on their PCs.


The Rest of the Series:

DL1 Dragons of Despair
DL2 Dragons of Flame
DL3 Dragons of Hope
DL4 Dragons of Desolation
DL6 Dragons of Ice
DL7 Dragons of Light
DL8 Dragons of War
DL11 Dragons of Glory / DL12 Dragons of Faith