You’ll often hear me say that TSR had no idea how to capitalize on the popularity of Dragonlance (or, honestly, most of their campaign settings). The Player’s Guide to the Dragonlance Campaign (1993) is a pretty good example of this.

The book was intended to act as a gateway into Dragonlance. I am not sure for who, though. There’s no mechanical material in the book, so you would think it would be a kind of summation of the series of Dragonlance novels intended to hook those readers into playing D&D. At the same time, the back cover seems to recognize that D&D players might be intimidated by the number of Dragonlance novels in print, so maybe it was intended as a primer. Both those things may be true, but I can tell you, I have yet to encounter a player who would read a book this size just to bone up on the campaign world’s history.

Making things weirder, Tales of the Lance was a soft-reboot of Dragonlance, designed to hook new players and readers of the book, and it saw print just a year before. In fact, a lot of the text here echoes that found in the campaign book. The Player’s Guide also joins a shelf crowded with other mechanics-free Dragonlance sourcebooks, like the Last Home books and the History of Dragonlance. I suppose I should be happy that this one doesn’t have any sheet music or recipes.

It isn’t a bad book. It actually does its job well. It just does little to expand the world.