Trivia / Dragonlance

• Creator's Pest: Margaret Weis absolutely did not like Elistan and considered him a character that she would have rather been without in the story and repeatedly asked to kill off his character, but since he was at that point the only Cleric of Paladine on the planet he had to stay in. As a result, Elistan's involvement in Dragons of Winter Night is mostly limited to saying something once in a while to remind readers he's still there.
• Executive Meddling:
  • TSR and Wizards of the Coast listed Dragonlance as a part of the Great Wheel Cosmology that linked all their campaign settings together. The setting creators insisted that it isn't.
  • Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman accepted a better paying job with Random House after being poorly compensated for their work with TSR (making less than 10K per book). Lorraine Williams did not make a counter offer and let them finish off Dragons of Summer Flame with plans for a massive Retool. As such, Dragons of Summer Flame was framed as a way to wrap up their work on the setting.
• God Does Not Own This World: Neither Tracy Hickman or Margaret Weis or any of the other authors who have written novels or game material own the setting. The Dragonlance license is currently held by Wizards of the Coast.
• Reality Subtext: Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman were leaving TSR due to the fact they were only receiving less than 10K per book despite them making millions. As such, Dragons of Summer Flame has a reputation as being a Torch the Franchise and Run. A more charitable interpretation is it is definitely set up as the Grand Finale despite TSR continuing it for years afterward.
• Referenced by...:
  • Several Heavy Mithril songs have referenced Dragonlance, including "Wishmaster" by Nightwish, "Raistlin and the Rose" by Lake of Tears, and "The Soulforged" by Blind Guardian.
  • The Calamity and the Divergence in Critical Role's Exandria are that setting's equivalent of the Cataclysm.
• Un-Canceled: Wizards of the Coast discontinued Dragonlance in 2007, shortly before the announcement of Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. The IP was revived in 2022 during Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.
• What Could Have Been: The War Of Souls was originally going to involve an undead army, and likely other factions as well; the team behind the Fifth Age had already started to work on it, but this plan was abandoned in favor of what Weis & Hickman wrote.
• Word of God: Margaret Weis herself has stated that the story Raistlin's Daughter (which she herself wrote) never happened. The Appendix that was in the hardcover version of Dragons of a Vanished Moon has been said to be non-canonical by Tracy Hickman.
  • Strangely, enough, Brothers Majere, a late 80's novel written by Kevin Stein (and thus the only major work to feature Raistlin not written by Margaret Weis), is considered canon, albeit with some adjusting. For instance, Bast, Lord of the Cats, is described throughout the book as a demigod, even though demigods do not exist in Krynn's cosmology. Later campaign supplements describe him as a Beast Lord, with rulership over all felines on Krynn and power exceeding all but the most powerful dragons, but no divinity. Mereklar, the city where the book takes place, is placed northeast of the Qualinesti forest and is therefore quite close to many of the events of Autumn Twilight, not to mention Solace, the Heroes of the Lance's hometown, but is never listed on any official maps or campaign setting materials.

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