You all know what happened with Battlestar Galacrica. That corny period-piece got not only a facelift, but an entire re-imagination almost from scratch. Most of the character names were the same, and the Cylon Threat remained, but after that it was basically put through some really creative gymnastics, and what emerged was awesome, pure awesome. Well, much of that is the screenwriting and direction, but still, you get my point.

I was thinking that maybe the same can be done to old D&D (or other) campaign worlds. Take the core ideas that are there, and shake them up. Reimagine them.

What I'm thinking is that, if you're tangentially familiar with the setting, that we get a brainstorm session together to think of some things that would awesome-ify the Dragonlance setting. Just list some ideas or statements out. You do not have to build upon yourself or any other ideas (but you can if you want); you are absolutely free to contradict or ignore them. Even in your own post, you are free to contradict yourself (or build upon yourself). It's not group setting building, it's simply brainstorming.

(eventually, I want to do the same for Dark Sun, but I figured I'd throw up Dragonlance first to see what happens. Also, because of the excitement of the upcoming Dragonlance movie, and because Dragonlance is so sissy and eighties and teener, it totally needs to be nuked from orbit with some sizzling Awesome)

A couple more (again, not building on anything)

Dragons have human intelligence, but half serpent as well (so thought is slow, speech is hard, etc. Typical lizard-man stuff): Humans turn into Dragons, there are no natural dragons. The turning is an affliction, and while dragons are respected and honored, the affliction is feared and people view it with horror.

Takhesis and the armies won, the good humans and all have retreated to a chain of flying islands/citadels linked together where they plan to retake the world against the odds.

There are no kender.

There are kender, but they are both curious/childlike and surprisingly hyper-intelligent (like autistic math geniuses or mentat assassins)

The world of Dragonlance is actually two moons locked in a binary orbit surrounding an oxygen-rich gas giant. The dragon-wars are fought between these two moons, and the dragons fly between the moons or the upper atmosphere of the gas giant.

There are more sides than "good vs evil". Perhaps just 5 nations at war. More of a political tale than a good-vs-evil tale

Kender are carnivorous. They don't cook their food. Imagine Kender crossed with Smeagol. But they still have annoyingly chipper personalities, making them twice as horrifying.

Building: The two brothers are actually one person, in a Bruce Banner/Incredible Hulk sense. But one of them has travelled in time and in the process, his memory has been wiped so they are unaware of this. However, they get psychic "crosstalk" between each other's moods and thoughts.

The dwarves don't talk pseudo-medieval and the humans don't have silly names (Cattie-Brie, I ask you!).

When they said that the dragons were gone for ever, they were right, and they never came back. So why do the conquerors call themselves "dragon Lords" ...?

Everything is as cool as that DL2 cover with Verminaard and the dragon. Whooorh! (Well, maybe without the hobgob-whassizface.)

"There are no good dragons. The good guys need to use horses or hippogriffs against the dragons (using Dragon Lances)."

Hot. Building: The process of building inferior Dragonlances is known, but they're widely considered a defensive weapon, useful only when dragons attack a fixed emplacement. Griffons are rare and belong only to the elite guards of a few powerful people. Hipogriffs are widely considered extinct, but rumor has it they've just retreated to an arctic mountain range...

* The dragons are the Cataclysm, and it's happening now.
* Magic is also fundamentally draconic in nature; spend too much time in the presence of strong magic, and you start to change into a Draconian. This is known as the Dragon Curse.
* However, magic is needed to make the Dragonlances and other magical weapons, to defend yourself against the Dragon-Army.
* By all accounts, Raistlin should be a dragonman by now; he's the most pwerful mage on Krynn. To avois this fate, he's cut a deal with somethng else, that may be even worse than the dragons.
* Kender are also immune to the Dragon curse, but they're creepy in a different way.
* Elves are still present, but they are very vulnerable to the Dragon Curse, because of their inherently draconic nature.
* After several major losses, most of the humans are willing to cut a deal with the dragons. Life as a draconic servant is better than no life at all, right?
* A beautiful woman appears from the plains, wielding powerful healing magic but seemingly unaffected by the Dragon Curse. She claims to know where a cure for the Dragon Curse can be found, deep underground...

Just a single measly contribution:

Kender are the results of magical experiments (oh, to darken it up, let's say by the black robers) who were designed to spread out over civilization and bring back valuable objects to their dark masters.

While the experiment was largely a miserable failure (kenders want everything, not just valuables; they suck at returning home), there are occasions when a kender's 'core mission' kicks in--then they get real scary, real amoral, real focused. In the worst cases, they don't have the return function kick on, they just want valuables, no matter what it takes. If that wasn't bad enough, one kender going rogue tends to cause other kender to go rogue, forming little packs of scariness.

Kitiana has to be a guy.

It sounds a bit like Spelljammer is creeping in albeit in the guise of submarines.

A Spellbubbler?

I love and hate this thread. I love it because I've been mulling over THIS EXACT TOPIC for a couple of weeks now, with exactly the same inspiration: could one reboot or revamp Dragonlance in the manner of Battlestar Galactica, scraping off the fromage and (re)discovering the coolness? I hate it because that's all I've been doing, mulling, and now I have to actually sit down and type stuff out. Well, "have to" is a little strong, but what geek can resist the siren call of returning to a guilty old pleasure and squeezing new awesomeness out of it? (See also the Star Trek reboot (PDF link) that's been going around.) I curse/kiss you, Andy.

Lots of good stuff here already, but I'm going to take Andy at his word that we can contradict or ignore the statements of ourselves and others. Lemme see:

Start with the modules, not the books.
There’s a lot of content in the modules that is cool but unfamiliar: the cursed tomb of the archlich Fistandantilus in DL3 creeped my players right out - I dare them to deny it. Then there was the underground dwarf kingdom of Thorbardin with its crazy modular map system and floating fortress tombs. And oh my god, DL 12, which was totally psycho – it had about 50 supporting characters all with their own implied subplots, groovy girl assassins and Fewmaster Toede's obese dragon and noble minotaur pirates, and like 15 mini-dungeons, and it all culminated in the heroes getting sucked down to the bottom of the ocean, to the sunken Romanesque city of Istar, with sexy green aquaelves and sahaugin driving underwater freaking chariots, and they fought a giant miniatures battle there against, let’s not mince words, Great Cthulhu. My point? Just that there's a lot of crazy stuff in the modules that is only sort of part of DL canon. If you use those a playground rather than a script, letting the PCs go where they will, wandering the map, you’ll never be wanting for weird shit.

Everyone gets to be Raistlin
What I mean is: nobody is stuck on the plot railroad. Every PC has their baggage and their secrets and their agenda, and they all get to make big choices and the fate of the world is in anyone's hands. Riffing on the BSG reboot, I think I might have each character take just the name of an original hero of the Lance and construct their own whole Kicker from that.

Post-Apocalypse
I'm with Meg - I'd play up the post-apocalypse angle. It's something the early modules play up that gets forgotten later: Krynn is a post-apocalypse setting. In those early adventures, the Cataclysm was ever present, but its nature hadn't clearly been specified. Xak Tsaroth, the shattered, sunken city in DL1, is full of ghosts, all trapped doing whatever they were doing at the moment the Big One hit. They made me think of those flash-fried Hiroshima shadows. In DL3, I think there’s some implication that the cursed tomb of Fistandantilus is radioactive or something. Or maybe I just made that up. Either way, the Cataclysm and pre-Cataclysm Krynn should be spooky scary shit. The ancients Knew too Much. They angered the gods, who basically roasted civilization. That is hot, and should be front and center in any DL reboot.

So I think I would up the tech level of pre-Cataclysm Krynn and drop the tech level of post-Cataclysm Krynn. Make it less Middle Earth Light, more Hyperborea. Even before the dragons start making trouble, Krynn is a land on whom Night Has Fallen. Our heroes are not sensitive new age elf boys but grim barbarians stalking the wasteland, ekeing out a rough life in the radioactive graveyard of a dead civilization whose infernal engines confuse and frighten them. Our story is to the story chronicled by Hickman and Weis and illustrated by Elmore as the gritty historical Arthur is to Mallory’s romantic Camelot.

I say "radioactive", but I'm just being figurative. I wouldn't make the pre-Cataclysm tech literal modern day atomic stuff. I'm thinking more like the baroque magi-science in China Mieville's Perdido Street Station. So we've got Conan’s Hyperborea in the ruins of Mieville’s New Crobuzon. Places like Xak Tsaroth should be scary as hell. (And yeah, that means No Gully Dwarves.) They should be like the Bad Places in Mike Mignola comics: black science and infernal machines and terrible secrets of the past. When the PCs find a crazy witch woman howling in the wasteland about the Old Gods (ie, Goldmoon), they should be split on whether to join her or burn her at the stake.

[whoa - my comment is too long! cut here]

Still more:

I got it. It's a CHARNEL GODS game. The characters are Sorcerers, with kickers, that whole deal. Except instead of Fell Weapons as Demons, each "Sorcerer" is bound to a Dragon. Dragons are the Fell Weapons. (This way, every PC gets a dragon, which is awesome. It never seemed fair that almost every single NPC in Krynn had a pet dragon - even the hobgoblin Toede gets one by the end - but the PCs get to take like one ride on a dragon in DL9.) Dragons are the only thing that can stop the return of the Old Gods. But at what cost?

Star Trek XI with Captain James "How do you like them apples" Kirk

Rob -- some cool ideas there. A grittier mignola style post-apocalypse is right on.

Reveal -- after the first few adventures the players learn that Cure Light Wounds spells, and all those cool pre-apocalyptic magic items... they eventually turn you into a Dragon Man. Nya-haha.

Dragons are the gods, and the gods are exactly what the world doesn't want -- they've outgrown them. However, the gods aren't just sitting idly by and letting this happen.

building...
Draconians are analagous to angels. Not footsoldiers.

building...
Dragonlances are in fact a new philosophy. The whole situation distills down to sacred warring against secular.

In hindsight, this could actually be pre-cataclysm Krynn, and the Krynn we know could have just gotten the whole "history" wrong.

I can't remember where I saw it, but there is a game somewhere where you are an historical character, like Julius Caesar or Abraham Lincoln or someone. But one where you base your character on a fictional prototype would be very cool - extra richness over just using a "stock character" or stereotype.

The difference between the two is kind of like the difference between the Associated Shades and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Switch "post-apocalypse" for "apocalypse"...Cities under siege and burning...

The dragons are the Cataclysm, and it's happening now.

the dragon armies are the apocalypse and it is happening now. They have belched forth a swath of destruction across Krynn and nothing can stop them.

There are no good dragons. The good guys need to use horses or hippogriffs against the dragons...

nano-fic: the good guys.. don't get me started on the good guys. oh, they'll fight their noble fight until the end comes sure enough, the vainglorious fools. hippogriffs don't graze on grass, do they? common people starving in their hundreds and thousands, fields razed, stores used up and the good guys seize whatever livestock they find--whatever can't be hidden away when they come through--to feed their filthy hippogriffs so some up-jumped jackanapes can get himself gloriously roasted in a rain of dragon's fire.

Clerics didn't leave and return...

they're a despised sect of mystics and letter-counters who still worship the dead gods. they hold the secret to a power that can stop the dragon armies, but they don't know it. it's encoded in their holy books--much is encoded in their holy books, if one but knows the key. their prophecy speaks of one who will come, one who will fall and rise again, one with a green stone in his chest.

the dragonlance is the cataclysm.

Hey, we've got enough here for at least two or three different equally awesome games, I think. I love the bit about the clerics being present but despised.

Andy: your original post started me thinking about "Battlestar Galatica'ing" He-man. Funny, that your post started from the same idea! :-) The He-man Universe, ignoring the cartoon silliness, has some cool stuff.

How about making the Cataclysm a plague or epidemic that still swirls around occasionally throughout the later ages. Now the gods and the dragons are all there, but the dragons become a precious commodity. Not only are they military weapons, but their blood is a cure to the Kingpriest Plague. Now you have people using dragonlances not only to defend against evil dragons and dragon riders, but also to retrieve life-saving dragon blood. This could also be a rationale for breeding dragons, beyond riding them, to offset the major risks of dragon-rearing by having a dual purpose. Now you have dragons as a scarce commodity with two potential uses - military conquest or plague fighting. Of course, the dragons have to die to produce the plague elixir. The plus side is that it makes enough for a small village.