Dragonlance Nexus - Nexus Era

Nexus Era

The origins of the Nexus date back to January 2001, when a flurry of events were happening at once. Jim Butler, who was an employee of Wizards of the Coast at the time, announced that Wizards of the Coast would no longer publish Dragonlance gaming materials in December 2000. With the backing of famed Dragonlance author Tracy Hickman, a group of fans on the Dragonlance-L mailing list volunteered to create a new Dragonlance site that would take over where Wizards left off, updating Dragonlance to the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition rules. This group came to be known as the Whitestone Council.

Under the guidance of Tracy Hickman, and with feedback from fans from across the world, the Whitestone Council created the Dragonlance Nexus, which was launched in mid January 2001. As previously noted, the key focus of the Dragonlance Nexus was to create a set of Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition rules for Dragonlance, which would be the foundation upon which the future of Dragonlance gaming. This online product was called Dragonlance Adventures 3rd Edition, or DLA3e for short.

Work continued on the project, and the Nexus expanded to include recipes, artwork, news, and many other features over the course of the next year. However, in March 2002, the Dragonlance gaming line was licensed to Sovereign Press. Beginning in April, the Whitestone Council soon found itself working with Sovereign Press on a new sourcebook, the Dragonlance Campaign Setting (or DLCS for short). Materials from DLA3e were incorporated into the DLCS, and the Whitestone Council continues to serve as an advisory board for future projects Sovereign Press projects to this day.

Later that summer, the Nexus partnered with Dragonlance.com to expand the reach of its content. Many of the Nexus's fan gaming rules were hosted on Dragonlance.com; in return, the extensive reference material from Dragonlance.com was added to the Nexus in a sharing agreement set up between the two sites.

This arrangement continued until June 2003, when the two sites were formally merged into the current Nexus site, and the Dragonlance.com domain name was transferred to Sovereign Press to promote the d20 Dragonlance gaming line.

Today, the Dragonlance Nexus, along with the Whitestone Council, serve as an advisory board to Sovereign Press, and review each product that Sovereign Press releases to check for continuity errors. The site also has well over 15,000 articles of fan artwork, gaming rules, articles, music, recipes, and many other items related to the Dragonlance setting.

To further expand to meet the needs of the fans, the Dragonlance Lexicon was launched on September 16, 2005 with high anticipation. Not only was the Lexicon built for the fans, but also it was to assist authors in being able to find information on what they were going to write about. Following the launch of the Lexicon the very first author submission was by Douglas Niles on his character Jaymes Markham, with other authors such as Nancy Varian Berberick, Mary H. Herbert, and Kevin Stein all submitting articles.

Following the launch of the Lexicon came the launch of the new Palanthas Herald on October 20, 2005. This was created to allow fans to create adventure ideas in the settings of the city of Palanthas. This would also assist Game Masters in quickly getting ideas on how to run a campaign.