Tracy Hickman. Tracy bleedin' Hickman. In the mid 1980s his name was everywhere in D&D. For those who aren't familiar, he was the co-author of the Dragonlance series, as well as the writer of the original Ravenloft module, most of the Desert of Desolation series, and Rahasia, along with supplements for other games. It was his work that spawned the Dragonlance and Ravenloft settings, which were heavily supported throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Tracy Hickman wrote some classic stuff, that's undeniable. The original Ravenloft is a masterpiece, a ground breaking module which brought home the concept of an intelligent villain who toys with the party and hunts them down, unlike so many other modules in which the bad guys so often sat waiting in their lair. The opening module of the Desert of Desolation series, Pharaoh, is a highly imaginative romp through an Egyptian inspired pyramid. Great stuff.
BUT. His writing style was heavy handed. All too often he started an adventure in an overly forceful manner, even in the 2 adventures above - Ravenloft trapped the party in Barovia, Pharoah had the party convicted of some random crime. Worse though, he was the master of the railroad, adventures which moved the party from one planned location or situation to the next, step by step, no matter what they did or how they resolved the issue. Ravenloft was free of this, but the Desert of Desolation series, for all its merits, was linear. The main culprit however, was Dragonlance.
The opening to Pharaoh, you have been charged blah blah blah, found guilty blah blah blah, of something you can do nothing about.....
The Dragonlance modules tied in with a series of novels. The initial few modules were written 1st, then the 1st novel, then the procedure was reversed with the later novels being written before the D&D adventures. This meant the modules, 16 of them in total including campaign add-ons, told a preset story. A very very long one. They were designed to be used with the characters provided - those from the novels. Of course, with such a lengthy story, using pre-set characters, the adventures were on rails. They had great artwork, many of the maps are among the best ever seen in TSR products, and contained some memorable encounters, but the feel throughout was that you were playing somebody else's story. From the very 1st encounter in the very 1st module when Fewmaster Toede gives his spiel and gallops away, though to the 1st Dragon encounter when Khisanth has specific moves it will do before returning to its lair, there is an overall feeling of 'what the party attempts does not really matter'. What if they want to fire arrows at Toede, what if they block off the Dragon's retreat, or manage to somehow take it down quickly?
Uh oh, big nasty dragon. Don't worry, just hide from its breath for a few rounds and it'll fly away. Because Tracy says so.
This heavy handed style of adventure writing went on to become commonplace. As the 80s progressed, and as we moved in to the 90s and later, thus more adventure writers employed this style. Classic open, location-based town, wilderness and dungeon crawls such as Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Village of Hommlet, and the Giants series, were increasingly replaced by event based 'story' adventures.
So why has Hickman saved our hobby? Covid 19 has forced many games to move online, and online games require much more work for the Dungeon Master - preparing digital versions of the maps, with tokens. This is not a problem for groups who run entirely Theatre of the Mind, but with a slower pace of game, it can be quite hard to maintain that level of focus, thus online games tend to be more centred on visual representations. A traditional open game, often very sandboxy, is very very difficult and time consuming to prepare - thus online gaming lends itself to story based play. Linear. Event-based. Railroady. The Tracy Hickman style.
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