The Odyssey of Gilthanas is an interesting book. It contains a short novel, source material for Dragonlance role-playing campaigns, and rules for a card game. All this for the cover price of $6.99US. A great deal right? Let’s find out...
(Full disclosure time: I have some familiarity with the Dragonlance setting, and have played some SAGA games in the setting. I am not intimately familiar with the setting, though. Also, I have never read another Dragonlance book, so keep this in mind during this review.)
I believe that quoting from the introduction to the book will best serve to educate you as to the book’s purpose. “This book addresses two distinct needs. First, it tells the tale of what happend to Prince Gilthanas between his final appearance in Kalaman near the end of the Chronicles trilogy and his release from Khellendros’ prison camp in the Dragons of a New Age trilogy by Jean Rabe. Secondly, this book provides source material in the appendix for several intriguing sites that have existed on DRAGONLANCE maps for years but have never made their way into a book or game product. As it turns out, these sites are places Gilthanas visited during his odyssey. For players of the DRAGONLANCE: FIFTH AGE or the ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS games, the information in this appendix applies directly to their campaigns.”
The tale about Gilthanas contains a number of chapters, each of which deals with a specific location in the Dragonlance world, and details what happend to Gilthanas and his companions in the place during his journey. Things happen in a mostly chronological order, though occasionally a chapter jumps into the future before the next one deposits you back in the chronological flow. The story itself is well-written, for the most part. This story likely won’t grab you if you lack background on the prime characters, but you will probably still enjoy some of it, as I did. There are a few editing errors, but nothing that detracts from the story. I can’t really go into the story without ruining it for you, but I can say that the story tells of all the things that happen to Gilthanas as he searches the world looking for his love, the silver dragon Silvara. And it’s not a happy ending, but you’ll have to discover why that is for yourself. For that reason alone, the book isn’t the best read if you are coming in without having read previous Dragonlance books, and without planning on reading future ones, to continue the story. But if you read the Dragonlance books, you should find lots to enjoy here.
The RPG source material in the appendix is very interesting. Each section, ranging from 2 to 5 pages, covers one of the areas that Gilthanas visits in his journey. As mentioned above, these are all places that have not been detailed before in sourcebooks. It is an eclectic mix, including Winston’s Tower on the isle of Karthay, the port of Hargoth, and the town of Stone Rose, among others. Each section gives a history of the place, any secrets about the place, and one or two adventure seeds. The broad range of coverage means that most Dragonlance GMs should be able to use something out of this appendix, and a number of the descriptions and adventure seeds got my imagination going with the gaming possibilities, as a good campaign resource like this should. In fact, a number of these could easily be dropped into non-Dragonlance campaigns with a little work, which gives the book at least some value to non-Dragonlance fans.
The card game in the back seems to be a throw-away. Each player uses regular playing cards to simulate a battle between dragons. I haven’t played it, as all of my friends would rather play Crazy Taxi on my Dreamcast whenever they‘re over. Having read the rules, though, I don’t think I’m missing much. I really don’t know why they put this here.
So what’s the bottom line? If you are a fan of the Dragonlance setting that reads the novels and plays the game, then this book is highly recommended. If you read the novels but don’t play the game, then it is enjoyable, but you can probably safely skip it. If you don’t read the novels but run a Dragonlance game, you should get good use of the appendix. If you don’t have anything to do with Dragonlance, you can get some use out of the information in the appendix, but probably not enough to make it worth the cover price. In this case, borrow a friend’s copy.
Go to forum!
(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)