Well, that didn’t take long. Two weeks after Dragonlance co-creators and authors of its most famous novels, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, voluntarily dismissed their $US10 ($13) million lawsuit against Wizards of the Coast for messing with their plans to write a new book trilogy set in the beloved Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting, the duo has announced their plans to write a new book trilogy set in the beloved Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting!
From a press release on Hickman’s website:
Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman are pleased to announce a multi-year licensing agreement with Wizards of the Coast to produce a new, three book series of Classic Dragonlance novels.
The new trilogy will return fans to the most beloved characters from the original novels along with introducing a new strong protagonist. The books will be published by Del Rey Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Although a publishing date has not yet been formally set, they anticipate announcing when the first book will be released later this year.
It appears Amazon UK might have jumped the gun on them; a recent listing for a “Dragonlance 1″ paperback by Weis and Hickman is set for July 29, 2021.
Based on the release, it sure sounds like we’ll be getting more adventures from the original gang of Tanis, Raistlin, Goldmoon, Sturm, and Tasslefoot, assuming they haven’t died or become gods at some point during the 190 or so Dragonlance novels that have been published since Dragons of Autumn Twilight first hit bookstores in 1984. Seeing as I personally have read just three of these novels, it is also possible there were even more beloved characters from Weis and Hickman’s original novels that I have no idea exist, and that “new strong protagonist” will be hanging with them instead.
The authors first contacted Wizards of the Coast about writing a new Dragonlance trilogy in 2017; at some point, things went badly enough that Weis and Hickman sued Wizards of the Coast last October for breach of contract. Spell Theory has a pretty good breakdown of how it went down, if you’re into contracts and rights and such. For everyone else, it’s just nice that they made up, and our return to the world of Krynn is imminent.