LE DragonLance Chronicles Mega Mod

[NexusMan77]

Hello, Krynn Enthusiasts !

 

Here's my mod request: the Dragons of Krynn ... Dragonlance Mega Mod ! I know it can be possible because others have tried this before. So ... I'd love to see a big team of Krynn enthusiasts get working on making a Krynn Mod (A total conversion like Nehrim was to Oblivion), featuring the ability to ride dragons and do dragon battles in the air. I'm sure it would take some 3rd party tools to be able to do the real-time flying of dragons part ... that would be the hardest part, probably. And they'd need new mounting animations for climbing onto the dragon, and various new things that would take a lot of work. It'd be extremely hard for just anyone to do this, but I really think the best modders could do this.

 

The mod would, in my imagination, have key locations from the Adventures of the Companions. It would feature

 

1) Dragon Riding. The dragons would come in different colors (fully re-textured) with dragon saddles in which a large mounted spear could be added. You know someone will mod spears when the Creation Kit or whatever it's called comes out.

2) Dragon Lances. The Dragon Lances must be discovered (1st adventure) and then once found, the player will veer off into his own path apart from the Key characters from the books.

3) New Breath Animations, New Dragon Breath weapons.

4) Ties to the original storylines, threaded into and between critical portions that show how you actually affected the outcome of the story whether your actions were evil, or good.

5) Draconian soldiers (a New Race, non-playable at first, maybe some offshoot mods would make use of the race for playable reasons.) Each would have their own color schemes and death animations. (Death animations are already supported, look at how (spoiler alert) .... look at how the flame elementals die for proof!)

 

 

Perhaps the player is an evil NPC who was hired by the overlord to watch the Companions, and he silently followed them down into Xak Tsaroth and later takes control of a dragon to go against the Companions but finds himself immersed into family politics (a sort of powerful family with powerful ties to the Dragonlords, and his own ambitions will be put on hold for the good of the family, and he may even begin to doubt his conviction to follow evil, and make some choices that may end up helping the Companions in the war effort, or not, depending on the choices you, the player, makes.

 

In this mod, my idea for it would be that you would get to ride the dragons in key battles, including the one where the Knight Sturm is killed. It might even be YOUR dragon that kills him with you riding it! It might even be this very event that causes your path to change, diverting into serious conflicts that ultimately may help you do more good for the Companions, silently, behind the scenes, than they will ever know. Perhaps your family is tied somehow to Sturm's family ... and your actions cause serious potential nightmares for your family, to whom you are seriously invested and loyal. Using this kind of narrative, you can see why the character would start off evil, in a political and powerful family, and could choose to retain that status, or watch his beliefs begin to crumble as his own guilt and other factors begin to change him back toward the light .... I think this story would be a fascinating journey to take.

 

The Companions would be in the game as NPC's, and you would interact with some of them, or all of them, at key points along the story progression. These would be written as "asides" from the main story, where in any scene in the books where we don't see what a character is doing for a few minutes, the aside can be stuffed in there, to make it look like in the books, they actually did interact with the character a few times without even knowing he was the one (in this mod) that would contribute so much to their efforts.

 

Like, for example, when finding the Hammer of Kharas, perhaps he does something before their arrival that mitigates or lessons the dangers that would have befallen them... or perhaps in seeking to warn the enemies and help destroy them, he actually sets loose a series of events (unforeseen) that lead to the very things in the book happening exactly as they do, as if by trying to change their fate, to stop them, he creates the very things that happened in the books. This would allow the game design to infuse the previous story, recapture it, while allowing for the freedom of either the good-hearted player to win out or the evil-natured one to do some damage but not actually change the narrative, but to see how the story unfolds within the framework captured by Margeret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

 

The dragons will each have a unique breath weapons. Acid, fire, steam, cold, confusion, lightning, and desolation are the types of breath weapons available. As a dragon rider, (again, in my imagination only) you would sweep down onto key targets and attempt to destroy as many NPC characters as possible to earn fame, bounty, and higher awards in your faction. If you change sides, you must go on a new quest to obtain a good dragon who will trust you before you can aid the armies of light. Only a Dragonlance can kill dragons, or other dragons can kill dragons. A Dragonlance just improves the dragon who wears it's breath weapons, increasing range by TWO, and strength by TWO... so that other dragons are weaker. The game designers could just make the some of the more important evil dragons a touch more powerful to offset the Dragonlance effects.

 

The city of Solace should be fully rendered, meaning the creation of new meshes for very very LARGE trees that blot out the sky. Then the Inn should be built into the tree, and require the player climb over 700 steps to reach the higher branches where a gray-bearded inkeeper dwells, "shouting" at the local barmaids about how his broken "Thu'mb" hurts. (Just a little Skyrim joke haha).

 

As evidence that this community already exists, and should take what they've built forward out of Neverwinter Nights and into Skyrim, there was a massive Dragonlance project that took so long to build, everyone forgot about NWN long before they finished it, and they built all of these things in NWN's modding engine. They have the models and meshes, they should just re-tweak them and port them and texture them for the Skyrim modding community. They created the Draconian soldiers, too. They created millions of new textures for the models, all gone to waste, if they don't carry the idea forward to this new Engine while its fresh, inspiring, and fully capable of creating Krynn in all its glory. Please stop what you are doing on the outdated and forgotten NWN engine, and move it forward to Skyrim's engine. PLEASE. I will love you forever if I can play a mod like this.

 

FAIR WARNING: !! This mod does not exist. Nothing in this idea yet exists for Skyrim. Do not think I am promoting a real mod that is already underway, I want no one to get pissed off by the way I wrote this ... just dreaming. Hoping someone else will dream with me. Thanks!

 

When I heard about Skyrim, the first mod I thought of was the Krynn Mod for NWN and how they should just update it to this system. I hope someone from there is listening and catches this post. Thanks.

[thefinn]

Awesome idea, but a huge undertaking.

 

Starting your own game company? :)

[adembroski]

As a massive Dragonlance fan, this'd be awesome, but it's such a gigantic undertaking it's hard to imagine it ever getting done. A very large group tried to do it for both Neverwinter Nights games, and it never came to fruition despite that team being talent enough that they eventually were contracted by Bioware to produce premium content for both games.

 

Now, build a mod based on a small portion of Ansalon (considering the existing landscapes in Skyrim, the Tarsis area would probably be best, extending from Wayreth Forest in the west to somewhere in the Plains of Dust in the east, and from the south gate of Thorbardin in the north, to the Ice Wall Glacier in the south) might work, especially if you can borrow some other mods to extend it. The nice thing about this is you'd have several of the Dragonlance races represented (Neidar, Hylar, Qualinesti, Thanoi, Ice and Plains barbarians, civilized humans in the various settlements around Kharolis, Silvanesti if you went far enough east) and you'd have the Tower of Wayreth there.

 

The Tower would be tricky. I guess what I'd do is if the individual has a certain number of perks in spell casting trees, you have a messenger deliver a letter inviting him to take the test. He travels west to Wayreth and can wander forever, but unless he actually sleeps, he'll never find it. Upon sleeping, he'll awaken outside the tower (similar to the way Raistlin and Caramon found it in Soulforge).

 

That said, the magic system in Skyrim most resembles Krynn in the 5th Age, after the Chaos War, but before the War of Souls. If you were to set it during that time period, Wayreth would be kind of an afterthought. There'd be no need to go there since Sorcery wasn't regulated by the towers any longer. The trouble is DL fans, for the most part, abhor the 5th Age.

 

If you look at the map from the Tales of the Lance boxed set, there are plenty of locations in that area that it could easily be as big as, if not bigger than, Skyrim. But then, all the work to populate that area... you'd need a hell of a team of content creators, and they'd all have to know the setting and the toolset.

Edited January 10, 2012 by adembroski

[adembroski]

Ok, I've decided to take something on similar to this. I'm not going to recreate Classics as you request, as that's just too big... rather, I'm going to carve out a section of Ansalon and build it in CK once it comes out. I'll get the basics in... races, cities, NPCs, things like that.

 

I'm going to do southwestern Ansalon... as I described above, with Tarsis as the central city. Now, as I said, Skyrim mirrors Krynn best in the Fifth Age, but being that that's the least popular period in Dragonlance, I'm going to set it just before the Summer of Chaos, post-War of the Lance, but before the Fifth Age. Once I get the basics down, and have proven my legitimacy in this, I'll see if I can recruit other folks to fill in the gaps (models, textures, scripts, etc.)

[trentseaton]

Awesome idea!

[fd2222]

OH MAN!!! i was just thinking about this the other day, I would be SOOOOOO Down for this. If anyone actually seriously gets started on a dragonlance mod for skyrim, I am a professional modeler /texture artist working on films and freelance general 3d artist. I would be available to build any art you would need for this mod. I am not much for implementing assets into the game but i can supply you with loads of models for you to use, Also If its not to time consuming i could learn to do setup and getting them in game as well. (this goes for anyone else whos building really cool mods and needs an artist but Dragonlance would be a first choice for me)

Email me at [email protected] if i dont respond on here.

[Briggandearthe]

Should try making a simple abyss mod. a small flat desert like area that somehow loops and enemies appear and attack and then vanish when you have almost killed them. after a certian amount of time takhisis would appear in 3 forms. the first being the naked female. using paralysis type spells and a huge assortment of conjuration type spells until she is beaten down to the next phase where she will be in her armored form. evil paladin or dark knight of takhisis. mostly expert combat attacks and combos and very difficult to handle. *the options to also bring a companion should be made available as well leaving open ideas for the player to follow past quest lines from the novels*. The final battle will obviously be with the five headed dragon. I don't know if this one is possibe but would be crazy if some one was interested in taking this challenge. i would freakin pay for that quest.

[Zealadar]

As a big fan... I would suggest you to change the magic too.

 

When you cast a spell you will forget it, unless you have a good level on a new skill, that would be memory or something like that, with more memory, you would be able to cast a spell more than twice before you forget it.

 

Also the mages will have to carry his most important books and scrolls.

 

Another important fact is the matter of the moons... You have to put 3 moons!!! Or 2, most people cant see Nuitari in the sky, but I can, so you will have to put Nuitari too!!!

 

Each moon would provide more strenght to some spells, you know...

 

And that is all I want to say, and good luck.

 

May the gods of night be with you.

[RobertHalisheff]

Hey folks, im a bit new to the modding of skyrim, but ive seen some impressive quest creation/ armor and wepon sets on top of the general modding of skyrims landscape and I have to say im very impressed with it all though I know nothing of how to do it myself. But to those out there who are making the armor, wepons, and mod makers, perhaphs there is a fan of the dragonlance saga? here are my suggestions.

 

Say you have beaten skyrim/dawnguard/dragonborn/ heathfire and have nothing left to do. What I suggest is a few quest creations or overhauls of the game. Im hoping a company like Bethesda gets the rights to Dragonlance and makes a skyrim type game of it. So what im thinking of is like a Breton/Raistlin, A Nord Caramon, Tika for female Mabey a woodelf version of Tanis, and Laurna for the female version, for the redguard you could do riverwind and goldmoon, and mabey a dwarf and kender Breton type? Also for armor sets and wepons a two handed dragonlance type mace mabey strums sword and solimic armor or dark knight armor. for mages robes raistlins black robes and red, and a redo of the staff of magi in the game into his staff of magius. Also green with poision breath, red with fire breath, black with acid breath (kind like the afflicted) blue with lightning breath would be a cool mod. For those who make quests with the creation kit, a whole choronicles fromt the point of view of tanis or raistlin would be cool. Mabey the ledgends from raistlins point of view would be cool. You guys think this would make a awesome game? Write me on your thoughts. and peace.

[Snapdragons]

Yes! I would love something like this! Glad to see others who like the idea of Dragonlance in skyrim. People are still working on this right?