How did Dragonlance start?
It all began like this. In the mid-eighties, TSR wanted to create a series of role-playing adventures for their Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game that focused on dragons. Tracy Hickman and Doug Niles each drew up proposals for this series, and Hickman’s “Dragonlance” concept was selected. From that point forward, Hickman was the primary person responsible for the world, theme, and design of the original Dragonlance series. But many others served a role, as well. A designer named Jeff Grubb contributed a pile of notes from his home campaign detailing its pantheon of gods. Hickman incorporated these nearly wholescale. Fourteen role-playing books in the Dragonlance series were published from 1984 to 1986. (These adventures are known as DL1, DL2, DL3, and so on, with titles like Dragons of Despair, Dragons of Light, and Dragons of Dreams.) They were primarily written by Hickman and Niles. At the same time, an editor at TSR named Margaret Weis, working in close cooperation with Hickman, bega
