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What do you want in a Dark Sun book (sans psionics)?
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<blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 7984125" data-attributes="member: 5948"><p>Hmm.</p><p></p><p>I'm kinda on the fence on this one. I don't think you could have the ONLY Dark Sun product as an adventure, there's just too much variation from 'standard' D&D and the explanation of all that (psionics, cleric domains, templars, defiling, loads of monsters) would eat up much more page count than I'd prefer to see in an standard-sized hardback adventure book, for example. On the other hand, you are 100% correct in saying that Athas has been pretty poorly served for adventures over the years.</p><p></p><p>I think the 'adventure-as-setting-guide' works best for a setting that's heavily defined by a single adventure. I suspect we won't see much more of ravenloft than CoS, for example. Strahd and Tatyana are really at the core of what Ravenloft is (even for people like me who fell hopelessly in love with the 3e White Wolf version and are still sad we won't get the rest of the Gazetteers and see what happened to S). And a 'War of the Lance' adventure/setting would be a very obvious one-book way to 5e-ify Dragonlance - a setting that is very, very heavily defined by a single story. But Dark Sun? The story it's most defined by is ... the Prism Pentad.</p><p></p><p>Frankly, I'm 100% in favour of re-running the Prism Pentad with the PCs as the heroes this time rather than hangers-on watching the NPCs do all the cool stuff. If nothing else is gives the PCs an in-character reason to actually uncover all the backstory of Rajaat, the Champions, the Sorcerer-Kings, etc etc etc which all Dark Sun fans including me nerd out about continually but which is rarely actually necessary for PCs to know in-character in a campaign, because in the published adventures they always seem to end up fighting Gith invasions or random psionic secret societies or whatever rather than grappling with the setting's deep lore. But it's a very hard thing to do in practise. It's a very big, very sandboxy story, and the PCs have a LOT of say in how things pan out (what happens if they give in and give the Dragon his tribute of slaves and the whole plot never happens? What happens if they see the danger of Rajaat early and team up with the sorceror-kings so Rajaat never escapes the Hollow and the entire climax of the adventure gets averted? What happens if they decide to troop out and take on the Dragon immediately on receiving his ultimatum - is the adventure going to describe the entirety of Ur Draxa to account for this possibility?) And also, if the PCs are going to have legitimate options in dealing with late-adventure enemies, then they're going to need to be very high-level (no matter what happened in the novels, Abalech-Re ain't going to be one-shot in melee by a wizard and a mul child on the tabletop!). High-level adventures are hard to write because of the sheer amount of options available to PCs - there's a reason most published adventures don't go much higher in level than the low teens.</p><p></p><p>I'd love to see it done, but I think it's a wishlist thing. It'd need to be damn near 500 pages just for the level 1 to 20 adventure alone, and the setting details and 5e rules conversions and monsters and psionic powers would only add to that. It'd be as epic as hell, and like I said, it'd be a case of SHUT UP AND JUST TAKE MY MONEY for me, but not everyone has my budget or dedication/insanity, and WotC will be wanting to sell this thing widely, and not be too daunting a prospect for the non-obsessives to pick up...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="humble minion, post: 7984125, member: 5948"] Hmm. I'm kinda on the fence on this one. I don't think you could have the ONLY Dark Sun product as an adventure, there's just too much variation from 'standard' D&D and the explanation of all that (psionics, cleric domains, templars, defiling, loads of monsters) would eat up much more page count than I'd prefer to see in an standard-sized hardback adventure book, for example. On the other hand, you are 100% correct in saying that Athas has been pretty poorly served for adventures over the years. I think the 'adventure-as-setting-guide' works best for a setting that's heavily defined by a single adventure. I suspect we won't see much more of ravenloft than CoS, for example. Strahd and Tatyana are really at the core of what Ravenloft is (even for people like me who fell hopelessly in love with the 3e White Wolf version and are still sad we won't get the rest of the Gazetteers and see what happened to S). And a 'War of the Lance' adventure/setting would be a very obvious one-book way to 5e-ify Dragonlance - a setting that is very, very heavily defined by a single story. But Dark Sun? The story it's most defined by is ... the Prism Pentad. Frankly, I'm 100% in favour of re-running the Prism Pentad with the PCs as the heroes this time rather than hangers-on watching the NPCs do all the cool stuff. If nothing else is gives the PCs an in-character reason to actually uncover all the backstory of Rajaat, the Champions, the Sorcerer-Kings, etc etc etc which all Dark Sun fans including me nerd out about continually but which is rarely actually necessary for PCs to know in-character in a campaign, because in the published adventures they always seem to end up fighting Gith invasions or random psionic secret societies or whatever rather than grappling with the setting's deep lore. But it's a very hard thing to do in practise. It's a very big, very sandboxy story, and the PCs have a LOT of say in how things pan out (what happens if they give in and give the Dragon his tribute of slaves and the whole plot never happens? What happens if they see the danger of Rajaat early and team up with the sorceror-kings so Rajaat never escapes the Hollow and the entire climax of the adventure gets averted? What happens if they decide to troop out and take on the Dragon immediately on receiving his ultimatum - is the adventure going to describe the entirety of Ur Draxa to account for this possibility?) And also, if the PCs are going to have legitimate options in dealing with late-adventure enemies, then they're going to need to be very high-level (no matter what happened in the novels, Abalech-Re ain't going to be one-shot in melee by a wizard and a mul child on the tabletop!). High-level adventures are hard to write because of the sheer amount of options available to PCs - there's a reason most published adventures don't go much higher in level than the low teens. I'd love to see it done, but I think it's a wishlist thing. It'd need to be damn near 500 pages just for the level 1 to 20 adventure alone, and the setting details and 5e rules conversions and monsters and psionic powers would only add to that. It'd be as epic as hell, and like I said, it'd be a case of SHUT UP AND JUST TAKE MY MONEY for me, but not everyone has my budget or dedication/insanity, and WotC will be wanting to sell this thing widely, and not be too daunting a prospect for the non-obsessives to pick up... [/QUOTE]
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What do you want in a Dark Sun book (sans psionics)?
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