Sovereign Press has acquired the rights from Wizards of the Coast to publish new material featuring the  Dragonlance campaign setting.  It has been over a decade since the last Dragonlance RPG product appeared, but now it's being revived in a big way.  First, Wizards of the Coast will publish a new Dragonlance Core Rulebook in Fall 2003.   Sovereign Press will then begin publishing its licensed products based on the updated rules.  Once Sovereign gets its Dragonlance program in high gear, the company is looking at producing a very ambitious schedule of 8-10 releases per year including campaigns, adventures, and sourcebooks.

 

Sovereign Stone, the RPG publisher created by Margaret Weis, her writing partner Tracy Hickman and fantasy artist Larry Elmore, switched to the d20 system last year for all its roleplaying games (see 'Sovereign Stone to Adopt d20 Rules').  In addition to utilizing the d20 system, Sovereign Press plans to take Dragonlance into the future using the world created by Weis and Hickman in their best-selling War of Souls novels, though there are also plans to delve back into Krynn's exciting past for other possible adventures. 

 

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (and Larry Elmore, for that matter) were important players during TSR's heyday.  Weis and Hickman penned numerous fantasy trilogies (including the original Dragonlance novels) based in D&D worlds that helped TSR penetrate and thrive in mainstream bookstores and specialty shops alike.  Considering that Weis and Hickman wrote the original Dragonlance novels, there is a certain poetic justice to the return of Dragonlance to life and to the embrace of some of its original TSR creators -- like the Golem being resurrected by the friendly Rabbis who created him.