Is Dark Sun an alternate future Forgotten Realms?

[Phototoxin]

I posted my theory here

Ignore the rest of the site it's not finished.

 

[jamesmanhattan]

The inspiration is mostly historical Earth, Middle East, Africa and other ancient cultures. Just Post-Apocalyptic and D&D'ified.
Plus the Den (comics) - which are essentially "A Princess of Mars" so Mars is the other influence.

There was a real world city named Tyre, (on earth, in Lebanon) one of who's most famous exports was purple dye.

The Wikipedia article on Dark Sun is great.

The inspiration for Nibenay may have been Angkor, capital of the Khmer Empire.
Lalali-Puy is loved by her citizens since she is the bringer of rain and wheat. The city of Gulg may take inspiration from the jungle cultures of Africa.
Urik may have been inspired by the ancient cities of Babylon and Uruk.
Aspects of Balic can be compared to Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome.

Take a real world historical city and change one letter. Urik

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

It's certainly not canon as published ... but sure, why not? It might make for a really interesting time-travel campaign. Start in Athas and travel back to prevent the rise of the dragon-kings that destroy the FR, or start in FR and somehow set something free, then get turned to stone or trapped in stasis and only get free when the world has become Dark Sun ...

I like it. It's like the ultimate Realms-shattering event.

 

[Zardnaar]

No they are separate but a 1993 issue of Dragon IIRC actually mentioned an Athasian invasion of Faerun (basically grab metal and YOINK). Ravenloft also would not scare the average Athasian. Athas was probably worse than RL.

 

[SkidAce]

Yeah, to answer the OP. It's NOT but I think it SHOULD be and you should run with it.

The ocean and halfling historical inconsistencies could simply be LOCAL legends for the area, or you could ditch that back-story and mod a replacement for halflings.

I think its fantastic...and with so many people always wondering about it, there must be something resonant about the idea that makes it so appealing.

If I ever need a new setting (I homebrew) I'm going to do it.

JUST DO IT!

 

[Warunsun]

This was definitely a fun rumour back in the day, but, Athas and Toril are separate worlds, each in their own crystal sphere (Athas in a closed one) floating in the phlogiston.

And yeah, originally Athas had a blue sun and was ruled by psionic halflings, all the other races and magic came later (and yellow, then red sun).

Phlogiston is gone man. I am a big SpellJammer fan and DMed it back in 2nd edition and am even DMing it right now with Fourth Edition. Even if you don't use Fourth Edition you should check out the planer books for 4E. The Astral Sea is one of the best innovations of the whole 4E era. Makes perfect sense for SpellJammer and much more sense than the boring empty void described in 1e/2e Manual of the Planes. Arcane Space was a weird conceit that worked mechanically OK but it never should have been invented. It was created by a TSR that thought they could do science fiction television shows and cartoons. Spelljamming ships sailing the astral sea is awesome stuff and likely to remain in fifth edition. It still works with the Great Wheel cause you can sail around it.

 

[Zardnaar]

Phlogiston is gone man. I am a big SpellJammer fan and DMed it back in 2nd edition and am even DMing it right now with Fourth Edition. Even if you don't use Fourth Edition you should check out the planer books for 4E. The Astral Sea is one of the best innovations of the whole 4E era. Makes perfect sense for SpellJammer and much more sense than the boring empty void described in 1e/2e Manual of the Planes. Arcane Space was a weird conceit that worked mechanically OK but it never should have been invented. It was created by a TSR that thought they could do science fiction television shows and cartoons. Spelljamming ships sailing the astral sea is awesome stuff and likely to remain in fifth edition. It still works with the Great Wheel cause you can sail around it.

No offense but that is so far from the original source material it ios not really Spelljammer anymore. On of the main dislikes of 4th ed was how they screwed up the older campaign settings and thought that their new and improved ways were better. Market proved them wrong. Original DS is better than 4E same with Spelljammer, and FR.

 

[Warunsun]

No offense but that is so far from the original source material it ios not really Spelljammer anymore. On of the main dislikes of 4th ed was how they screwed up the older campaign settings and thought that their new and improved ways were better. Market proved them wrong. Original DS is better than 4E same with Spelljammer, and FR.

I am not a fan of what they did with Forgotten Realms but the Dark Sun World material was pretty good. Originally they made some big mistakes with DSW and basically invalidated their entire boxed set very quickly (during 2E). The Dark Sun themes were an excellent use of the 4E rules. Also, Dark Sun works a lot better under 4E. It matches up nicely. A lot of the new planer material is fantastic and I fully expect most of it to be retained. Not talking about the whole Dawn War back-story but rather implementation of the Shadowfell, Astral Sea, etc.

 

[Zardnaar]

4E Darksun was terrible especially the retcons to Half Giants and the Dray erm Dragonborn. Eberron seemed to be the only previous setting they did not drive into the ground in 4E. Dray went from 2 sub races hidden away to walking around no big deal despite the SKs believing Dregoth was dead for centuries.

 

[nijineko]

i prefer the official 3.x version of darksun.