Tracy Hickman met his future writing partner Margaret Weis at TSR, and they gathered a group of associates to play the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.

[2] That year, while driving from Utah to Wisconsin to start a job with TSR, Hickman and his wife created the Dragonlance universe concept.

TSR employee Harold Johnson suggested that Hickman should try to get additional support from other TSR staff members and, after a period of months, Hickman had the support of Jeff Grubb, Larry Elmore, Roger Moore, Doug Niles, Michael Williams, and others with whom they discussed ideas for the project.

The Dragonlance group decided that novels should accompany the game modules; TSR reluctantly agreed and hired a writer.

[4] TSR decided to create a franchise, including modules, board games, lead figures, and - for the first time - novels.

Weis and Hickman were feeling under-appreciated and, when TSR turned down their Darksword series of novels, they went to Bantam Books.

At the time, Dragonlance gaming had been converted to the SAGA System, with limited success, and that, combined with TSR's general financial troubles, put the setting's future in doubt.

Wizards of the Coast bought the troubled TSR in 1997, and Weis and Hickman then proposed the War of Souls trilogy, which was published in 2000-2002.

[10] The central books of the Dragonlance series were written by the authoring team of Weis and Hickman, but many other writers have made contributions, including Richard A. Knaak, Douglas Niles, Roger E. Moore, Don Perrin, Jean Rabe, Paul B. Thompson, Tonya C. Cook, Michael Williams, Nancy Varian Berberick, and Chris Pierson.

[3] In April 2007, Wizards of the Coast had not renewed Sovereign's license, and Dragonlance RPG game supplements and accessories were only released through the end of the year.

[20][21] An integrated board game, titled Dragonlance: Warriors of Krynn, was released in 2023, designed by Stephen Baker and Rob Daviau.

In 2002, Margaret Weis's company Sovereign Press acquired the license to publish 3rd Edition Dragonlance material.

[24] In March 2022, Wizards released the PDF Heroes of Krynn which is part of the "Unearthed Arcana" public playtest series for the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

[29] The series has inspired mention in music as well, including "Wishmaster", a song by Nightwish based partially on the master and apprentice relationship between Raistlin Majere and Dalamar.

The Swedish metal band Lake of Tears also recorded a song called "Raistlin and the Rose" on their 1997 album Crimson Cosmos, while the German group Blind Guardian wrote "The Soulforged", another song inspired by Raistlin's story, which appeared on the band's 2002 album A Night at the Opera.

[31] A Russian concept album (2009-2010) and musical (premiered 2014) based on Raitslin's story, The Last Trial, was created by Anton Kruglov and Yelena Khanpira.

Humans are Krynn's most common humanoid race, but elves, dwarves, kender, gnomes, and minotaurs occupy the world as well.

The history of the world of Krynn, and thus the settings for both the novels and gaming supplements, is roughly split into five separate ages.

Following the Third Dragon War, in the Age of Might, the Cataclysm obliterates the great empire of Istar and changes almost the entire surface of Krynn.

According to Hickman in the foreword to The Soulforge, "[we] were just settling in to the game when I turned to my good friend Terry Phillips and asked what his character was doing.

Authors Gary and Janet Pack played the half-elf Tanis Half-Elven and the kender Tasslehoff Burrfoot, respectively.

The rest of the Heroes are the barbarians Goldmoon and Riverwind, elf Laurana Kanan, and humans Caramon Majere (Raistlin's brother) and Tika Waylan.

[45] Other noteworthy antagonists, and sometimes protagonists, are the Death Knight Lord Soth and Kitiara Uth Matar, the half-sister of Raistlin and Caramon, and leader of one of the Dragonarmies of Ansalon.

Some of the key countries and areas on Ansalon are the Plains of Dust, Solamnia with its great metropolis, Palanthas,[47] the Blood Sea Isles, the Empire of Ergoth, Istar, and Sancrist, the elven kingdom of Silvanesti,[48] as well as the dwarven realm of Thorbardin.

[49][50] With the species in many cases clearly assigned to "good" and "evil",[51] some critics have suggested that the setting had the potential to raise racist expectations.

[50] The authors take an active stance against racist ideology and ensure that a "fascistic genocidal campaign to wipe-out species that are considered 'impure'" would have catastrophic consequences.

According to The 1990s by Marc Oxoby, what is most notable about the series is that "what may at one time been considered disposable, escapist literature" found "unprecedented popularity" in the 1990s.

[5] Weis and Hickman's Dragonlance novels have made over twenty bestseller lists, with sales in excess of 22 million.

[56] The pair's novels have been translated into German, Japanese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Spanish, French, Italian, Hebrew, Portuguese, Greek and Turkish and have sold well in the United States, Britain, and Australia.

Hunt feels that it is unusual for authors to receive such loathing among "fantasy's literary mafia", saying that "behind every critic's scorn laden insult, there lays [sic] that unsaid thought at the end: 'But I could have written that!