The Motivation Behind This Campaign The Cataclysm & The War of the Lance The current year for our homebrewed Dragonlance campaign is set during 381AC. Inspired By Trampas Whiteman

Choosing a campaign setting that you want to sink a "lot" of time into is not an easy job for a DM, well, a deranged DM such as myself I should say. I want that perfect setting, "I want it all" and I've found out, a DM can't have it all . . . unless he can. I know, that made no sense at all lol. Let me break it down for you folks.

I want a campaign setting that has that classic feel but at the same time I want to have a campaign setting that has the epicness of Middle-earth while at the same time I want to be able to portray this setting to my players so they fall in love with it. Yea, I know - good luck with that.

I'm a huge Middle-earth fan, and I mean huge, and it seems like every time I work on a campaign setting I end up comparing it to Middle-earth. In the end I would just get frustrated and quit, so I took a step back over the holidays and just kind of looked at it all from a distance - sure, I could run the Adventures in Middle-earth rpg but then I'd be right back in the middle of 5th edition and if I have not made it clear how I feel about WotC and 5th edition then something is for sure wrong lol. So, what other campaign setting could I dive into that would give me this Middle-earth feeling?

In the end, the answer just hit me like a ton of bricks . . . Dragonlance. The problem with choosing Dragonlance was I did not really want to run a campaign during the War of the Lance, that story has been told a hundred time and I really did not much care for the year during Dragons of Summer Flame and everything past that event so now what was I going to do? I could move forward to 381AC "just before Summer Flame" and just homebrew my own campaign - but then I would have to deal with all the holier than thou canon purists bitching at me about changing stuff in the overall story and you know what? Screw em!

Gary Gygax himself said that everything about D&D is printed in the books but it is up to you as a Dungeon Master to mold it to how you like it. This is what I plan to do. I'll write up an epic campaign story that will take the companions right into another war.

The more I thought about this idea, the more I felt like this would easily give me my Middle-earth, Lord of the Rings feel to this campaign and for the first time in a while, I started to actually get excited about writing my own story set in the world of Krynn.

If my changes bother you, ahh well, go find yourself another campaign blog because I plan to do my own Dragonlance story. Everything that happened up to the year 381AC will remain, everything that happens after 381AC will be erased and rewritten. I do plan to try and keep my story as close to the "spirit" of Dragonlance as possible. I mean, Dragonlance is a special campaign setting and I would never try to take away from that.

I want to build my own campaign based off the War of the Darklance alternate timeline that was written by the one and only Trampas Whiteman "Dragonhelm", the owner of the Dragonlance Nexus website and the Dragonlance nexus "now pushing 10,000 members". I do not plan to write my campaign story word for word with what is written in the War of the Darklance but my story will be heavily influenced by the War of the Darklance story. I just hope that I can do it justice.

What was it that Joe Manganiello said, he called Dragonlance the "Star Wars of D&D", well, while I totally agree with him, I would have to say "Dragonlance is my Middle-earth of D&D".