Dragonlance, a Shared World of Fantasy Fiction and Role-Playing Games

The Dragonlance Chronicles (1984) is an American fantasy trilogy written by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis, who created and developed the world of Krynn (the secondary world of Dragonlance) with the help of a live role-playing session. After the success of the first trilogy of this shared world more and more authors joined the creators to build up one of the most popular fantasy series. The novels serve, though, not just the purpose of reading materials for fantasy fans; learning about the origins of the series groups of role-players chose the world of Krynn as the setting of their playing sessions and the heroes of Dragonlance as characters. This thesis tries to find the answer to the question about what makes the world of Krynn and the characters of DL ideal for live role-playing, involving the theories of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Tzvetan Todorov about fairytales, fantasy fiction, and theories about live role-playing.