The storyline of the original "Dragonlance" series had been plotted and outlined before either the novel trilogy or the games were written. "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" was the first novel of the "Dragonlance series". It was based upon a "Dungeons & Dragons" session played by the authors with some of their friends, some of whom later became "Dragonlance" writers. The novel was written after the completion of the first "Dragonlance" game modules. Weis and Hickman felt this was constraining and made the novel feel too episodic, so they reversed the process for the next books and completed the novels before the related modules were written.