[Briar King]

What do you think is better as far as story, world, magic, characters etc. How many of the books do you have?

I believe I like DL better then FR from what I have read which is the original Trilogy of DL and The Icewindale Trilogy of FR.

[Qlberts]

Never read any books in either setting, but I have played the Baldur's Gate CRPG, which is set in the Forgotten Realms. I really loved the game but the setting never struck me as anything more than a standard fantasy world. Although the books might explore the setting more deeply, I don't know.

By the way, what about other shared worlds? I've read a fair deal of Magic: the Gathering novels, although most aren't very good and some are terrible. (If you must try try some, read those by Jeff Grubb: those are the best, especially The Brothers' War.)

[Mentalist]

I have been a huge Weis + Hickman fan, as they were the ones that got me into fantasy
As such, I am a DL fan

Forgotten Realms used to intimidate me, as in, I didn't know where to start with it.
So I've never read it

As for DL, I own:
Chronicles Trilogy
Legends Trilogy
Dragons of Summer Flame(linking book, start of the Fifth Age)
Dragons of a New Age Trilogy
War of the Souls Trilogy
First two books of the Taladas Trilogy (have to get the third one still)
"Preludes", books 1 + 2-- the "Sturm and Kitiara go to the moon" and 'Tas meets the wooly mammoth", respectively--they're mentioned so often in the main sequence, I just had to get them
Also, Books 1 + 2 of the Raistlin Chronicles, and book 1 of the Lost Chronicles
At some point I need to get "Legend of Huma", "Kaz the Minotaur", as wel as the second Lost Chronicle, and th third one (if it ever comes out, I've heard there were some complications)

[Obdigore]

Meh. Some FR writers are better than Weiss and Hickman, and some aren't. It is a toss-up to me. If we are saying what is the best easy-read universe? I would have to go with Modesitt's 'Recluce Saga'.

As to what I have - All the Drizz't books except the most recent one, The Cadderly books, some stuff from Ed Greenwood, some Elminster stuff (The Ed Greenwood is a different series than the elminster stuff. I _think_ it is set in the Forgotten realms area, if it isn't, then its a rip-off, although he pretty much created that setting). As to the Dragonlance, some Minotaur series, and the War of Souls stuff. A couple of random 'heros' books, and 'Knight of the Crown' or some such...

[Mentalist]

@ Obdi: aside, from Weis + Hickman, I find Knaask's DL stuff to be quite good (the best hero novels + everything to do with Minotaurs).
Also, Taladas trilogy by Chris Pierson takes place on a differnt continent than the classic Weis + Hickman story, is several shades darker than it, and in general strikes me as the most mature DL stuff out there.

[Mentalist]

Had a bunch in the 80s... nothing recent, afaik

[Obdigore]

Mentalist;308506 said:

@ Obdi: aside, from Weis + Hickman, I find Knaask's DL stuff to be quite good (the best hero novels + everything to do with Minotaurs).
Also, Taladas trilogy by Chris Pierson takes place on a differnt continent than the classic Weis + Hickman story, is several shades darker than it, and in general strikes me as the most mature DL stuff out there.

Yea I read the Minotaur stuff, it was pretty good. Some of the other stuff is pretty crappy, but I'm sure a lot of the random FR stuff is pretty crappy too.

[Tif the Barber Boy]

To be honest i never really read much from the Forgotten Realms world. It always seemed like a generic AD&D world to me, while Dragonlance seemed more interesting. It had a unique magic system [the 3 moons/gods that represented the 3 orders of mages] and the dragons and, ummm... of course the dragonlances. Also the history seemed richer and more interesting with the Catacylsm and all. I don't think the Forgotten Realms world was anywhere as interesting.

[Illuyankas]

FUCKING KENDER

[polishgenius]

I've read a little from both, but Dragonlance struck me as more cohesive, probably because of the guidance of Weiss and Hickman. I've never really got that far into the FR books though, I think it was literally one or two. It seems to have a nice vibe, but as said really does seem to be a more or less open generic-fantasy setting.

As for other shared universes, the Star Wars EU is the only one I've read extensively (I always plan to get into Cthulthu but somehow never do). As more or less everyone is probably aware, it's a very mixed bag.

I'd love to come up with a shared universe someday. Come up with an interesting world and just go "g'ahn people, have a go". It's something I can see myself doing if I ever get any momentum writing.

[QuickTidal]

DL (Weis and Hickman) got me into fantasy, so I'm a DL supporter.

To be honest, I tried to read the first Forgotten Realms books (Spellfire trilogy) and I wanted to throw the first book down and piss all over it and light it on fire. Ed Greenwood couldn't write his way out of a paper bag....which disturbs me cause he's Canadian and so I ought to support him, but I can't. He's just a bad author.

I tried one other FR series, and The Sapphire Crescent: The Scions of Arrabar is hardly worth the effing paper it is printed on. I doubt I'll read any other FR books ever.

There's FAR better fantasy too read out there.

[Gwynn ap Nudd]

I read a fair bit of both at one time or another. Both are hit and miss as far as quality goes. Many of the spinoffs are terrible in both worlds.

FR suffers from two big problems. It's not really a single world, it's a jumble of different worlds, pantheons and ideas thrown together. The second is that there are a huge number of uber-powerful NPCs who can (and do) just pop up all the time and do what they want and there's nothing anyone else can do about it.

On the history side, FR has a longer running deeper history than DL, at least as far as back when I read DL. DL had the Cataclysm, but FR had the Crown Wars, Netheril, the Fall of Myth Drannor, etc.

As for magic, I don't see a big difference between DL and any generic AD&D setting. In real terms the only difference in functionality is that DL specifically limited the power level. It was also supposed to be a "low magic" setting, in that magic wasn't used as much and things like magic items weren't common, but I don't think that lasted very long. In short, the big difference between the two is that there are far more powerful wizards running around in FR and they are far more powerful than those in DL.

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I will say I really enjoyed Neverwinter Nights and both expansion packs on the PC. I don't know if DL has any games based on the books besides D&D?

I think there was one based on Dragon's of Autumn Twilight, but it would be at least ten years old now. There was also a community group putting together a Neverwinter Nights module/campaign based on the DL chronicles (or theAD&D modules of the series, I forget which). I'm not sure if they ever finished though.

[Illuyankas]

Did someone say Dragonlance games?

[QuickTidal]

Illuyankas;308727 said:

Did someone say Dragonlance games?

Oh my god. The second video made me piss my pants! "Man, these elves tend a fucked up forest! This whole world is made up of impenetrable forest infested with deadly hornets!"

[Trull's son]

I'm currently reading the twins series from DL, and i have to say that it is at least better, ALOT better, than soulfourge. in FR, I enjoyed Drizzt series as a quick "fill in" between better books. From what I've read of FR and DL, i would have support FR a little more, at least until i read some more DL.

[Slum]

Meh, I never read these books when I was younger and I doubt if they'd be of much interest to me now...

I did play Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 as well as D&D Heroes on XBox. They were lots of fun.

[RodeoRanch]

I enjoy both. I've read numerous books, many of iffy quality, from both settings. I've played PnP D&D in both settings and had a lot of fun.

Of course I've played all the Infinity engine games set in the Forgotten Realms and the Neverwinter games as well.

[Macros]

Only read Salvatore from FR, the drizzt books, fun mind dump but not worth re-reading

ETA, enjoyed BG1+2 to play, never finished IWD though, I must re-download it to finsh......

[Mentalist]

Lost Chronicles?
It does nothing of the sort (that I know of)
Book 1 fills in a gap b/w Book 1 + 2 of the original Chronicles, with occasional mentioning of some of the bad guys
Book 2, afaik, is split b/w teh story of the Icewall Dragon orb (summarized in a SONG in "Dragons of Winter Night") and the story of how Kitiara (semi-evil) got involved with Lord Soth (death knight)
And Book 3 is all about Raistlin--and even though he switched to Black Robes, calling him "evil" is a big stretch..

Once again, I only own book 1 of that, but so far it's not really "looking at it from the other side", more like "filling in stuff that supposed;ly happened off screen that we were all lost and confused about"

[williamjm]

It's been years since I've read anything from either setting, but at the time I thought the Forgotten Realms probably had better books overall than the Dragonlance series. The best of the Weis & Hickman books (particularly the trilogy focusing on Caramon and Raistlin) were better than any of the other books in either setting but most of the non-W&H Dragonlance books I read were awful (Jeff Grubb's Lord Toede and Richard Knaak's The Legend Of Huma being the exceptions). There were plenty of awful Forgotten Realms books as well (anything by Ed Greenwood or Scott Ciencin, for a start) but more that were reasonably good (I wouldn't say any of them were particularly great). I liked Salvatore's series (although it went on way too long) and some of Elaine Cunningham's and Jeff Grubb's books in the setting.

To be honest, I don't think I'd really recommend anything from either setting particularly highly, they may have had quite a few entertaining books but there are much better fantasy series out there.