Fourward Path

[rabindranath72]

That would certainly what the fantastic flavor of Epic PCs would lead one to expect they would accomplish. The best DS should offer is maybe overthrowing the local tyrant and then trying to deal with the consequences (which is exactly where the meta-plot of 2e DS went). Seems very paragon. DS themselves seem more like paragon figures than epic. Like maybe they've hit level 23 or something, they have the DS ED, but they got a long ways to go still.

Both in 4e and 2e the Sorcerer Kings are very powerful, but none of them achieved Dragon status, which both in 2e and 4e is an Epic Destiny (in 2e these epic characters are detailed in the Dragon Kings expansion). Similarly for becoming Avangion or Pyreen; these creatures, together with the Dragon, have definitely world-shaking impact, something which the 4e DS book also addresses (though sadly not in a lot of detail.)
In this sense, Dark Sun doesn't really follow the Sword & Sorcery tropes.

 

[darkbard]

Your 4e comment definitely segues into the DS discussion. See, DS, being 'Sandals and Sorcery' isn't SUPPOSED to give your character too much real power. S&S is a genre where in the long run fate gets you. Everyone is mortal, everything eventually turns to dust, gold disappears in dens of iniquity, etc. So its hard to map that onto the 4e paradigm of world-shaking heroes. DS loses the inevitable harsh aspect when the PCs could actually overthrow the SCs and maybe even end the defiling and bring a new world. That would certainly what the fantastic flavor of Epic PCs would lead one to expect they would accomplish. The best DS should offer is maybe overthrowing the local tyrant and then trying to deal with the consequences (which is exactly where the meta-plot of 2e DS went). Seems very paragon. DS themselves seem more like paragon figures than epic. Like maybe they've hit level 23 or something, they have the DS ED, but they got a long ways to go still.

I don't disagree with this in the least. Nevertheless, it does present a model of how an Epic DS campaign would likely play out, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's just that in its arc it seeds its own demise, at least with regard to using the setting again for a new campaign set after the events of such events.

Isn't that, though (and I'm asking as someone who has never played Epic tier), the fallout of any successful 1 - 30 campaign arc? The Epic heroes have fundamentally impacted the world/its planar set up/etc. in such a way that the very basic premises of play at the beginning no longer hold true?

I can see a DS Epic campaign culminating in the overthrow of all or most of the SKs and the defeat of the Dragon and the introduction of healing to the world of Athas. And any subsequent campaigns set therein would be tremendously different than that first campaign. But that need not definitively remove the setting from the S&S tropes. If gods are reintroduced, there might be battling factions between evil cults and overzealous self-righteous sects for political power. Perhaps the death of the Dragon brings about a rebirth of chromatic dragons (of standard D&D fare) who seek to set themselves up as new tyrants. In the face of revitalized land, there are petty despots setting up shop across the landscape and seeking to monopolize the new agriculture. Etc. None of these new plotlines would be inapprpropriate to the genre....

 

[Garthanos]

I don't disagree with this in the least. Nevertheless, it does present a model of how an Epic DS campaign would likely play out, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's just that in its arc it seeds its own demise, at least with regard to using the setting again for a new campaign set after the events of such events.

Isn't that, though (and I'm asking as someone who has never played Epic tier), the fallout of any successful 1 - 30 campaign arc? The Epic heroes have fundamentally impacted the world/its planar set up/etc. in such a way that the very basic premises of play at the beginning no longer hold true?

I can see a DS Epic campaign culminating in the overthrow of all or most of the SKs and the defeat of the Dragon and the introduction of healing to the world of Athas. And any subsequent campaigns set therein would be tremendously different than that first campaign. But that need not definitively remove the setting from the S&S tropes. If gods are reintroduced, there might be battling factions between evil cults and overzealous self-righteous sects for political power. Perhaps the death of the Dragon brings about a rebirth of chromatic dragons (of standard D&D fare) who seek to set themselves up as new tyrants. In the face of revitalized land, there are petty despots setting up shop across the landscape and seeking to monopolize the new agriculture. Etc. None of these new plotlines would be inapprpropriate to the genre....

Elric blowing the horn of Fate and remaking his reality...

 

[Manbearcat]

A flip side of this is that I personally wonder whether Dark Sun can really work all the way to 30th level, because I'm not sure the relative mundanity of Sorcerer Kings etc can fit with the mechanical and fictional "heft" of epic tier PCs. It seems that it might work better as a setting that caps out at paragon. The general lesson (if I'm right - and I'm conjecturing, not talking from experience) would be that if you don't want your D&D to take cosmology seriously, and are going to focus on more worldly/mundane challenges, then recognise that and don't force your most gonzo elements onto that setting. (But then, to reference the other part of my post that you quoted, you better be prepared to make that mundane stuff sing, and I worry a bit that even 4e doesn't have quite enough to make that work - although I think [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] would disagree, if he's paying attention, as he always has interesting ideas - a lot better than mine! - for how to make skill challenges work for mundane physical/geography challenges of the sort that Dark Sun should involve.)

Nevertheless, I do agree that much of the appeal of a Dark Sun game lends itself to challenges that are most easily engaged and defined by PCs at the Heroic tier. I look forward, eventually, to finding out how these can hold their charm and develop further for PCs at higher tiers of play.

I too would like to hear [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] 's ideas about skill challenges for Paragon or Epic tier play on Athas, but I fear he is no longer posting these days....

On Dark Sun and Tiers:

1) Epic Tier is about cosmological significance/adventure.

2) The Dark Sun setting of Athas is cosmologically isolated. There are no Gods.

3) Inherently then, it would seem that Dark Sun Epic Tier play is incoherent. However...there are dormant Primordials (I believe). I think the question then becomes about the premise of the setting and the potential themes of an Epic Tier (and how they could bear cosmological significance).

We have Dying Earth as the backbone of the setting. We have a sun that is reddened due to sorcery. But what does that mean? Is the sun in a Red Giant phase like our own, ever-swelling and soon to extinguish all life? If so, maybe you have a modern sci-fi premise that could be worked into Dark Sun:

We need to find a way off of our dying planet/away from the impending exogenic or extraterrestrial extinction event.

So now the quest to undo the cosmological isolation and deliver the Athasian refugees from extinction commences! My guess is the Primordials wouldn't be pleased with that!


On desert-based (climate, topographical, fauna) threats:

a) lack of freshwater

b) intense heat during the day and intense cold at night

c) flash-flooding

d) sandstorms

e) dangerous fauna and territorial predators (this shouldn't be a problem for D&D!)

f) sparse vegetation and lack of game (food)

g) mirages

h) high mineral content (damages goods and drinking water with significantly high mineral content is a health hazard)

i) the fatigue-burden of traversing on foot through sand

j) lack of navigational landmarks

Then there should be plenty of fantasy-based dangers. I suspect there could be the equivalent of a desert crevasse covered by thick sand that shifts and pulls people underneath into the deep dark. Lightning sand. Etc.

All Skill Challenges need the context of a game to discuss in granular detail, but I think all of these threats can be amped up for Tier-relevance. Further, (a) and (f) need to systemitized in Dark Sun I'd think. The Disease/Condition Track is something that should probably be regularly attacking PCs (one for Exposure, and one for Thirst/Starvation). Surge-loss should be significant. Extended Rests should be impacted.

That is enough to start discussion.

 

[pemerton]

Have you played with the old d6 Star Wars system? It is kinda fun too, and can really work well as a more modern style game. I think I like Traveller better, but d6 Space isn't bad. I ran a short campaign with it, and it did what I wanted (Space Opera, not surprising).

I never played that one. I remember friends who did, but they weren't very hardcore RPGers, and so I never really got a sense of how it works in a serious way.

Troupe play is actually kind of an assumption of all Gygaxian play too, though it isn't QUITE the same as OA's version. I think OA was intended to elaborate troupe play and kind of revive it, as it was a lot less prevalent by the 80's. If you read the 1e DMG and all its talk of timings and henchmen and whatnot you get a very clear idea.

In the first AD&D game I ran the players would sometimes run their henchmen rather than their PCs, so there was a hint of troupe to that. But in OA, the focus was on the particular PCs - more character development focused, I would say, than our "classic" AD&D.

DS, being 'Sandals and Sorcery' isn't SUPPOSED to give your character too much real power. S&S is a genre where in the long run fate gets you. Everyone is mortal, everything eventually turns to dust, gold disappears in dens of iniquity, etc. So its hard to map that onto the 4e paradigm of world-shaking heroes. DS loses the inevitable harsh aspect when the PCs could actually overthrow the SCs and maybe even end the defiling and bring a new world. That would certainly what the fantastic flavor of Epic PCs would lead one to expect they would accomplish. The best DS should offer is maybe overthrowing the local tyrant and then trying to deal with the consequences (which is exactly where the meta-plot of 2e DS went). Seems very paragon.

Well, no surprise that I agree with you here!

I don't disagree with this in the least. Nevertheless, it does present a model of how an Epic DS campaign would likely play out, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's just that in its arc it seeds its own demise, at least with regard to using the setting again for a new campaign set after the events of such events.

Isn't that, though (and I'm asking as someone who has never played Epic tier), the fallout of any successful 1 - 30 campaign arc? The Epic heroes have fundamentally impacted the world/its planar set up/etc. in such a way that the very basic premises of play at the beginning no longer hold true?

I agree about "replay": epic tier makes the gameworld unreplayable.

For me it's probably more about scope and theme. But may be I'm being too narrow in my conception of what DS involves? That said, is there enough content for 10 levels of "redeeming Athas"? In the past I've disagreed with AbdulAlhazred that there's not enough content to support 10 levels of Epic, but DS might be a case where I change my mind on that point!

 

[pemerton]

a desert crevasse

Return of the Gorge!

 

[darkbard]

All Skill Challenges need the context of a game to discuss in granular detail, but I think all of these threats can be amped up for Tier-relevance. Further, (a) and (f) need to systemitized in Dark Sun I'd think. The Disease/Condition Track is something that should probably be regularly attacking PCs (one for Exposure, and one for Thirst/Starvation). Surge-loss should be significant. Extended Rests should be impacted.

Indeed, the DSCS does address travel in terms of the disease/condition track, with the introduction of Sun Sickness for daytime travel (Target is cured < Target loses 1 HS or HPs equal to surge value <> Target takes -2 penalty to all attacks/defenses > Target dies) and a simpler mechanic for nighttime travel (Endurance vs. Moderate DC or lose 1 HS). But this is an underdeveloped subsystem IMHO and could be expanded greatly, though I've yet to give thought as to how.

As for survival in a harsh desert environment (to put it mildly), the DSCS once again reduces this to a simple, abstracted mechanic: the Survival Day, at a cost of 5 gp/SD.

A survival day serves as a shorthand method for managing the resources needed for a trip through the wastes. Each survival day represents sufficient water and food for one person to get through a day’s walk across the countryside. The supplies also include
salve to protect the skin from the sun, clothing designed to retain body moisture, and insulation to ward off the night’s chill after the sun sets.

The DSCS goes on to note that an Athasian can survive on 1/2 gallon of water per day (i.e. 4 lbs / 2 kgs), so encumbrance limits impose another, albeit not truly meaningful, factor here.

 

[darkbard]

For me it's probably more about scope and theme. But may be I'm being too narrow in my conception of what DS involves? That said, is there enough content for 10 levels of "redeeming Athas"? In the past I've disagreed with AbdulAlhazred that there's not enough content to support 10 levels of Epic, but DS might be a case where I change my mind on that point!

Certainly, there's more to "content" than merely the Level of the foe, but the DSCC lists the Sorcerer-Kings as Level 22 - 30 threats, with the Dragon as Level 33, so I do think it's the intent of the designers to see storylines addressing these foes as Epic Tier play.

 

[darkbard]

d) sandstorms

<snip>

g) mirages

Both of these have tremendous potential for meaningful terrain challenges, beyond what one might find in "standard" D&D fare. I envision the former as a Skill Challenge, but the latter (so inventive!) gives me pause as to how to implement dramatically and effectively.

 

[MwaO]

Certainly, there's more to "content" than merely the Level of the foe, but the DSCC lists the Sorcerer-Kings as Level 22 - 30 threats, with the Dragon as Level 33, so I do think it's the intent of the designers to see storylines addressing these foes as Epic Tier play.

Yeah, if you made it to Epic Play, tackling the Sorcerer-Kings is a likely element of play.

I'd probably focus on some element of renewal. Remaking the world or the Sun or figuring out what happened to the gods(or becoming the gods)

There's a fun Ben Bova series called Exiles. Scientists get exiled because they're too smart for their own good. They eventually aim for a star then realize there's a better one. They've got this overarching plan to get there. Then all the remaining scientists are dead and just a bunch of feral super-children are left to try to figure out their way onto the new planet they're landing on.

Each book could be its own part of the campaign - book 1 is the PCs achieving godhood and their destinies allow them to launch a world into space towards another world. Book 2 is a metamorphosis alpha, everything goes wrong, and the PCs have to fix things. Book 3 is the PCs realize there's something better than their feral existence, but not sure what to do. And then they can crash into orbit on a world such as Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk and cause all kinds of havoc.

Could be some fun ideas(and the books are a quick fun read if you've never read them before...)