Thirty years ago, ‘Dragonlance’ was unknown outside the walls of TSR Inc. It was a difficult time for the company. There had been a downturn after the large wave of hirings which had brought me into the company and how many of the creators were faced with layoffs. There was a desperate sense that the company needed a new game to revitalize itself. Our best and top game designers were pulled off of other projects to create the next great game.
I was not among them. Instead, I was working on a project which I had proposed and which my wife, Laura, and I had originally come up with while we were driving our small family across the great American Plains toward a new job and new hope in Wisconsin. It was not supposed to be a great product; it was supposed to be just a bridge to get us to the next great game that everyone else was working on.
Laura and I called it… Dragonlance.
Now, thirty years later that next ‘great game’ has yet to appear but people around the world still embrace the world of Krynn.
Throughout this year, Margaret Weis and I will be celebrating along with you those three decades that have brought us all so close together. We are hosting a Facebook page, Dragonlance Legacy, where the two of us and many other original creators who had a hand in Dragonlance will be posting from time to time. We hope you’ll join us there so that we can all share in our memories and celebrate the journey that started those many years ago.
