D&D 5E Help With My Dark Sun One-shot

[mattcolville]

I'm running D&D for a group of friends who I don't normally get to hang out with in person and I want to make it epic and memorable. We're going to play once, so I don't need a ton of content, but we may play for 10 hours and I want to give them some freedom. I'm looking for ideas, resources on Dark Sun, anything you can think of that will help.

I've played but never run Dark Sun before, so I need help translating some of my ideas to Athas.

The Hook: Blake's Seven Meets Fury Road

The players don't know this is a Dark Sun one-shot. They're going to make normal D&D characters and I'm going to covertly convert them to Dark Sun. I will tell them;

• You're a prisoner of the Mad King. What did you do?
  • Are you a political prisoner? A dissident?
  • A thief? A murderer?
  • Innocent? Someone who made the wrong enemies?
  • A spy? An enemy agent?
  • Whatever else is true about your dude, don't make a dude who wouldn't at least stick with the team for self-preservation. If freedom means you'd off on your own, you need to make another dude.
• Make two characters. Or at least have a second one in your mind ready to roll up. Life is cheap under the Mad King's rule.

I'm going to pick one player and make him Blake. He will know ahead of time "You're the heroic leader of the resistance. They won't execute you for fear of making a martyr out of you."

I'll take their characters and make them Dark Sun races, and give them Psionics. What I'd really like to do is just hand them each a card with their Psionic Talent on it, based on their class. A cool, even 4E-style "power" that's separate from the rest of their character sheet. No idea what those class-powers are, but I have the 4E Dark Sun stuff. Actually this would probably be easier in 4E, but I don't want to also try and teach these guys a new system for what is a One Shot.

The Setup

The heroes are criminals, on a Prison Barge. They don't know this at first because they're in the windowless hold of the ship, but the barge is an ornithoper. Do they have flying vehicles in Dark Sun?

The adventure begins with a little roleplaying. There's a high-ranking military/political officer onboard the barge, just to make sure these prisoners get to their destination. This character is evil and the brother or sister to the main character. Imagine an SS officer in Dark Sun. What is that? I dunno, may have to make something up. The Officer gloats over the captured sibling.

After this, the players are alone with their guards. They hear only the thrumm, thrumm, thrumm of the wings. They don't know that's what they're hearing, because they don't know they're flying. I mean the players probably don't yet know they're on Dark Sun!

Then they hear shouting from above. The barge tilts one way, then another. Then a GIANT CLAW pierces the wood (wood? Would it be stone? Maybe some giant insect carapace?) of their prison and destroys the mechanism that keeps the jail cells locked. The prisoners are now free!

On Dark Sun, what would the bars of the prison be made out of?

Leaving the hold, they emerge to their first sight of the BLACK STAR. The desert below. They're on a flying ship! It's under attack!

There's a fight with $HUGE_FLYING_DARKSUN_CREATURE which I don't know what is, but I'm thinking like a Roc, after which the ornithopter is mortally wounded, and augers in to the desert floor.

The heroes all survive, maybe the rest of the crew die, and I'm going to have the Hero PC roll to see if their brother/sister lived. So the SS Officer's fate is literally in his hands.

The heroes now have to survive on this desert world. I think the Flying Prison Ship had at least one, possible two, sand-skimmers on it as like emergency life boats, so they can get one of those working.

At this point they are free to start making choices. The Cinematic Opening is over. "What Do You Do Now?"

This is important: it's a one shot, so I want to put something in front of them, a goal, that they can achieve. Finish. Feel like they did something. But I also want some freedom of choice. So I want an Adventure with the opportunity for some Detours.

The Adventure
Ok, so it's not literally Fury Road but I want the players to have that feeling of speeding across the desert toward an objective while bad guys chase them.

One of the players knows the location of a fallen, buried pyramid. It's "fallen" because it used to be a floating pyramid (do they have these in Dark Sun?).

This is their dungeon crawl and their Liberator. Once they have this, they have a weapon they can use against the Dragon King. So it's something they can get in one (epic) session, feel like they accomplished something, but it also makes them think "Man I want to USE this!" so they want to play again.

I presume I can just grab a short dungeon and declare it a Buried Flying Pyramid and make it work, but is there anything already like this in Dark Sun?

Detours

These guys are highly social gamers, they need people to talk to. In a situation like this, with the party on the run, where would those NPCs come from?

A town?
A city?
An oasis?
A caravan?

I like the idea that they need supplies. Water and food. Constitution checks every hour under the Sun without food. Effects include stat penalties, loss of hit dice. "We need to find water." That leads them to the town/oasis/caravan.

And obviously people are coming after them. There's a Servalan and a Travis. And sand creatures.

Does this sound cool? Any ideas?

 

[Zaruthustran]

I like the idea of starting in a flying ship which crashes. I did the exact same thing for a one-shot I ran for my buddy's bachelor party. It's an effective way to get everyone amped up quickly, and limit options / railroad.

For a one shot, railroading is a *good* thing. It's important--essential, really--that the players have a complete experience. So when planning your session, err well on the side of short. If you finish early, you get to hang out socially with your friends. If you run long, everyone is aggravated because you had to either rush to the end or not end at all.

If you think you've got 10 hours, plan for a 4-6 hour experience. Don't do open-ended sandbox encounters, like "they wander around and have to make Con checks" or "they meet some villagers and RP". No. You've got to have a solid plan with a realistic time budget. They're on a Ride, not in a Sandbox.

Here's a specific adventure outline based on your ideas:
1. Intro and opening scene (30 minutes). The flying ship could be a bug. An animated bug: either undead, or via Animate Object-like spells. The players are inside the hollowed-out abdomen, bound and blindfolded with hair rope.

When they crash, they've got three ready-made goals: 1) survive, 2) find out who attacked them*, 3) get revenge on whoever imprisoned them. Those are Big Esoteric Goals. Give them an immediate goal by placing some obvious destination in the near distance, and a threat to get them there. Like a ziggurat on the horizon, and a giant sandstorm bearing down on them. They know they need to get to the ziggurat to have any chance at survival.

Note: from here until the Ziggurat, do not let the players drink any water. Place a giant glass pitcher of ice water on the table, but do not let them drink it. Turn up all the lights, too. Go buy one of those cheap floor lamps to really sell the sun. Trust me on this. Your players will talk about your commitment to the bit for years to come.

2. Assess, repair, first chase (1 hour) After the crash, the giant bug's in bad shape. The wings are completely wrecked. But it can still crawl. Give players the means to patch it up, while interrogating their prisoner (he's crippled, but alive, and bargains well for his life). Then chase the characters to the ziggurat. Elves in Dark Sun are essentially the bikers from Fury Road (they run fast). Put some on kank-drawn chariots. You've now replicated the Buzzard tribe encounter from the first chase scene in Fury Road.

3. Betrayal, into the sandstorm (45 minutes) After the PCs deal with the elves, their prisoner somehow alerts his superiors. Now a new Templar-led force is on the way. More chariots. More scuttling up-armored animated bugs. On-again, off-again combat as forward elements catch up to the bug and try to slow it down. Crazy environmental dangers as the sandstorm nears. Keep moving toward the shelter of the ziggurat, which they reach just as the sandstorm engulfs them, sweeping away nearby pursuers and driving them into its unknown depths.

4. Explore the ziggurat, reveal the truth (45 minutes) It's been all-out chase and combat and storms, and you need a break. For pacing, and probably also for the players to eat (and drink). This segment is mostly-narrative exploration of the ziggurat, and dealing with the prisoner (probably killing him). Find a puzzle or some other way to occupy the players, and challenge them in noncombat.

How about they discover a huge reservoir within the ziggurat, a huge columnar pool taking up the entire middle of the ziggurat, and this asset (coupled with the threat of the Templar army) leads to a segment where they shore up defenses. Montage-style as they jury-rig traps and prepare hard points and fallback positions for a siege. Give them a map and some resources and let the players collaborate and go nuts. All the while, tease out story elements.

I suggest something like revealing the ziggurat was the intended destination the entire time; the NPC was bringing them here to sacrifice, or hand over to something even worse than the Sorcerer King. Maybe the SK was going to give the PCs over as tribute to the Dragon. Hey now, that's something.

5. Stunning conclusion (1.5 hours) This is when the players realize they've got a bigger problem than the Templar army. The Dragon is on the way, and he wants them (for some reason). Maybe one of the characters is a prophesied threat. Maybe one of the characters is the prophesied parent of a prophesied threat. Maybe a character is already a threat.

Whatever the case, the conclusions sees the PCs recruiting/strong-arming the Templar soldiers who survived the fight and sandstorm--those guys don't want to be killed by a sure-to-be pissed-off Dragon either, and they can't leave because the sandstorm is still raging. So they and the PCs must fight off The Dragon's minions before a showdown with the big boy's main enforcer/emissary/avatar. I suggest making things go such that they shed Redshirts (the conscripted Templars) and are forced to fall back repeatedly until they reach the reservoir, where they feel trapped before they realize they can somehow release it all at once and thereby flood the tunnels and drown all of their enemies. And lose all the water, forever destroying a priceless resource. Hey, that's Dark Sun.

And that's 4.5 hours. Figure 5.5 hours with normal time for screwing around and long combats. That's a solid amount of gaming by any measure, and you'll be 100% guaranteed to fit it all in. You can always pad it out with additional combat and exploration in the ziggurat, and/or RP with the Templar soldiers recruitment scene.

* the attack on their flying bug was orchestrated by a rival Sorcerer King, who wanted their captor to earn disfavor of The Dragon.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Addendum: here's more development that covers some plot holes (why the PCs? why the NPC captor villain? how did this water-tower last this long without being plundered?)

The PC and the NPC captor villain are two keys to the ziggurat. Without the keys, the ziggurat is impregnable. Maybe it doesn't even exist on the plane unless the two keys are together, and near.

The keys are generational. They turn up from time to time, evidenced by distinctive birthmarks.

The NPC was in the employ of a Sorcerer King. The tattoo was noticed and recognized for what it was. He wasn't told it's significance, but was promoted (so they could keep an eye on him). With one key in hand, the SK started a search for the other. They finally found it, in the form of one of the PCs. This PC and the NPC are related (the keys turn up in a specific lineage).

So: THAT'S why the NPC and PC are on this mission, one as captor, one as captive, both unwitting tools. THAT's why the party doesn't kill the captor immediately (he's family!). THAT's why the Dragon is interested.

The last bit needs elaboration. The ziggurat was a safeguard against The Dragon's ancient depredations. It was the last stand and last hope of a rival faction. They knew they were going to lose so they warded it strongly and hid it away, hoping that their values and bloodline would persist and, sometime in the future, this resource used to heal the world. The faction died but the bloodline didn't. The SK recognizes the significance of the PCs to The Dragon but doesn't know the extent of their purpose. He doesn't know about the ziggurat or it's treasure, he just knows that The Dragon wants these two delivered to a certain place between two landmarks.

The Dragon wants them because it's his chance to acquire an important resource and eliminate a threat.

Heck, if this is a one-shot... maybe have the actual dragon show up instead of an avatar, and have the PCs pin it in the tunnels and drown it in water. That's crazy epic for a Dark Sun one-shot adventure.

Think of it like this: if you were doing a one-shot Star Wars adventure, you'd for-sure want to include Vader. Right? What's the point, if you don't throw in the setting biggest and baddest villain? If you're going Dark Sun, go all out.

 

[Wik]

A quick question... why Dark Sun? You seem unsure of what's in the game, beyond a few sources. And while that's fine, why are you attached to that particular setting? From what you've described, you could just do a post apocalyptic setting of your own design... and since you don't know much about Athas, it's not like that's what you'd be doing already.

The reason I ask is because, well, a lot of the ideas you're suggesting don't exactly strike me as particularly Dark Sunny.... awesome, sure, but not really Athasian. At least, not how I see the campaign. If none of your players know Dark Sun, then that's fine - there's nothing wrong with cribbing a map and putting in your own ideas. But if you have even one guy who's read a Dark Sun novel or played a game before, well then, it's gonna create a disconnect.

Flying Ornithopters, Ruined Pyramids, and SS Officers? To me, you could get the exact same feel and a better fit by putting the game in the Eberron setting's Mournland.

Of course, all of this is coming from a Dark Sun purist of sorts.

 

[Melba Toast]

I think Wik is being a little hard on you. The basic components of a Dark Sun game are all there, its just missing some of the flourishes that make the world distinctive. Having said that, you could easily set your game in a generic desert setting and save yourself a lot of headaches (sorting out how defiling magic works, psionics, lack of metal, very different races). Still, it's your game and you can do what you want with it. Campaign settings are designed to inspire your imagination, no box you into narrow interpretations.

If you do want to stick to Dark Sun, I'd suggest the Air Drake are your flying monster, but the PCs won't be able to kill it because its seriously bad-ass.

http://whinehurst.com/darksun/index.php?title=Drake,_Air

Your "SS officer" would be a Templar, a bureaucrat and quasi-priest in service to a Sorcerer King. The Sorcerer King "Nibenay", King of the City-State of Nibenay (how's that for arrogance!), is a good choice for baddie as he's probably the most Fascist of the Sorcerer Kings. His Templars are all women, and their initiation requires them to marry Nibenay. Thus, their official titles are "the Brides of Nibenay". Nibenay is said to have hundreds of children as well. Nibenay's most favoured son is a manscorpion, and he would make a great boss villian for your game.

I'm not sure how your flying barge works? Magic is rare, widely-feared and closely-guarded in Dark Sun setting. A magical flying ship doesn't really work for the setting in my opinion, but if the barge is attached to the back of a gargantuan flying animal that could work. There are also hot air balloons in Dark Sun, so there's another option.

When I've run Dark Sun games, the prison bars are usually made of cross-hatched bone, fastened together with leather, clay and glue. A prison can be constructed entirely from the full rib-cage of a giant monster. Just about anything that you can think of that is normally made of steel I imagine is made from the bone or chitin of large beasts. Strengthening techniques using lacquers made from animal fat have been perfected by bone-smiths over a thousand years so that bone can be more resilient and withstand heavy impacts.

I'll be impressed if you could finish the game in 10 hours. An escape, a desert chase, and a dungeon crawl? That's 3 to 4 long sessions for me. My average game is around 6 hours and it usually only gets us 3 role-play scenes and 1 to 2 combat scenarios.

 

[Melba Toast]

Did I kill this thread? Sorry.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Yeah, I'm kind of regretting the time I spent on that reply.

 

[Wik]

Yeah, I'm kind of regretting the time I spent on that reply.

No worries - wasting awesome ideas and writing on a limited audience is kind of what Dark Sun is all about.

 

[CM]

If it's any help, here's the list of custom 2e-style 4e-compatible wild talents I use in my 4e Dark Sun game. No, they're not balanced, nor are they supposed to be.

4e DS Wild Talents

 

[transtemporal]

No to the flying ships and flying pyramids but that doesn't matter. If I remember correctly, there was a vehicle which was basically a giant hollowed out zombie-beetle, so theres no reason you couldn't have a similar giant flying-zombie creature. Or actually, the halflings of old were accomplished biomancers (or whatever the equivalent psionicist version is) so maybe they developed a Avatar-style flying vehicle?

As for the pyramid, the sorceror kings doofed over a bunch of non-human races. You could say it belonged to one of these races (Yuan Ti? Do they make pyramids?).

Sounds like fun!