Malazan Empire: Dragonlance Vs. Forgotton Realms - Malazan Empire

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Dragonlance Vs. Forgotton Realms

#21 User is offline   Werthead 

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Posted 17 May 2008 - 06:01 PM

The best D&D-related novel is The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King by 'proper' fantasy author Lynn Abbey, which throws the whole argument into chaos as it's actually a Dark Sun novel :D

Anyway, between the two settings:

Dragonlance is slightly more cohesive due to the more focused worldbuilding by Weis and Hickman. Most of the novels take place in the distant past and pretty much only Weis & Hickman are allowed to write the books that further the storyline forwards. This means that there is less arguments about canon and far less cooks spoiling the broth. At the same time, Krynn is a much smaller world than Toril with far fewer landmasses, countries, factions and characters. As a world where anything is possible. Krynn fails badly. The 'different' magic system is nothing of the sort, it's just standard D&D dressed up with some guff about the moons or something.

Forgotten Realms is huge, confusing and intimidating. However, it's just a setting. There are long-running storylines peppered throughout the books but, by and large, the books are generally stand-alones. They just share a common background. A lot of the books actually take place in totally different lands with totally different characters which don't appear anywhere else. The world comes across as a big place where what's going on in one place doesn't affect another. That's pretty cool. Unfortunately, there's so many authors and they tread over one another's toes. Major events in one series aren't mentioned in another even though it's taking place in the same place three months later. There's also a problem as the setting's biggest author, Salvatore, doesn't really give a toss about what else is going on in the setting and his books don't tend to mention anything else (he seems to have very reluctantly included the Time of Troubles - the great war between the gods - in a Drizzt book as people kept asking about it and what Drizzt was up to during it).

That said, the Realms tend to be funnier: One Around the Realms pokes a lot of fun at the setting's flaws and hits a lot of nails on the head. Jeff Grubb is also a genuinely amusing writer (although he's not Pratchett or anything). Salvatore is entertaining. Troy Denning is quite good as well. Jim Lowder is serviceable. Paul Kemp is pretty good and his Erevis Cale books are very promising for his forthcoming original fiction.

Plus the Realms have infinitely better computer games: not just the Baldur's Gate games but the Icewind Dale ones are good and the Neverwinter Nights games are interesting as well. Plus the old-school Eye of the Beholder trilogy is excellent.

I'd put the Realms ahead of Dragonlance by some distance, but because there are so many more Realms books than DL ones, it's a lot harder to find the gems.

Recommended Dragonlance Books
The Dragonlance Chronicles by Weis & Hickman
The Dragonlance Legends by Weis & Hickman

Recommended Forgotten Realms Books
The Icewind Dale Trilogy by RA Salvatore
The Dark Elf Trilogy by RA Salvatore
The Crusade Trilogy by Dave Cook, Jim Lowder & Troy Denning
The Erevis Cale Trilogy by Paul S. Kemp
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#22 User is offline   williamjm 

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Posted 17 May 2008 - 09:43 PM

Werthead;310286 said:

Troy Denning is quite good as well. Jim Lowder is serviceable. Paul Kemp is pretty good and his Erevis Cale books are very promising for his forthcoming original fiction.


Yes, Denning and Lowder tended to be reasonably good. I thought Denning rescued the Avatar Trilogy after the awful first two books by Scott Ciencin and Lowder's follow-up Prince of Lies also had some good bits. Lowder's The Ring of Winter was entertaining as well, if only because there aren't enough pseudo-Victorian British gentleman explorers fighting dinosaurs in fantasy.

I think Kemp came along after I'd given up on Dragonlance/Forgotten Realms books, although I have heard good things about his books.
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#23 User is offline   Sinisdar Toste 

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Posted 18 May 2008 - 12:56 AM

Illuyankas;308642 said:

FUCKING KENDER


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that is all
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