It's Dark Sun

[Phaezen]

I can't wait for the cries of "It's all about Global Warming and Climate Change! It's just an attempt to play off the flavor of the month!" Then they won't believe us when we tell them DS is 20 years old.

ZOMG post apocalypse desert, weapons rare they are sooo ripping off Fallout!!!11!1!!One!Eleven!

/sarcasm

 

[Jhaelen]

I think Kalak will died one way or the other, in the Prism Pentad it's Rikus & Sadira, in game it will be PCs or maybe The Dragon if Kalak succeed with his full metamorphosis killing everybody in the arena (like near the complete Tyr Population).

Well, in my 2E Dark Sun campaign, Kalak survived and Rikus died. I still had the mortally wounded Kalak retreat from the public to later return as a Dracolich

 

[synthapse]

A while back, someone suggested the idea of a planeless world where in all of the planes more or less existed geographically only. So the feywild was when you found yourself in a particularly dark primordial forest, the shadowfell was when you hit that dark graveyard around midnight, the astral sea is where you ended up if you flew too high and when you go down through the underdark far enough, you'll eventually hit the elemental chaos. There are 'shortcuts' that summoners can take when calling creatures to aid them but there is just one world.

This might be an interesting take for DarkSun.

If memory serves, the area south of the Tyr region was supposed to be and endless field of black sand-fused glass populated by an endless supply of undead, including unique undead never seen before. Sounds like the perfect analog for a more "terrestrial" Shadowfell.

I like the idea that defiling magic not only wrecked the environment, but also the planar connections to Athas. I can get behind the idea of Sorcerer-Kings consuming the souls of an entire plane to fuel their wars against rival city states.

 

[kenmarable]

yes the halflings lived on the Forest Ridge, high mountains, a rainforest...with stuff that had evolved for Athas, and to keep the "scum from the Plains the hell out!"...so everything was poisonous, regenerating, camouflaged, psionic etc etc horrors, lol
oh and the halflings ate you and were masters of clerical magic and psionics...and poison..and everyone of them had a book "How to Serve Humans".

Wouldn't that be "To Serve Man"?


IT'S A COOKBOOK!!!

It'll be interesting to see if they try to push the standard 4e "All the PC races get along" theme in Dark Sun. I hope they are willing to realize that PCs are different from standard populations and don't have junk like the dragonborn/tiefling "Yeah, they destroyed your kingdom, but modern day dragonborn don't blame tieflings at all."

 

[I'm A Banana]

It'll be interesting to see if they try to push the standard 4e "All the PC races get along" theme in Dark Sun. I hope they are willing to realize that PCs are different from standard populations and don't have junk like the dragonborn/tiefling "Yeah, they destroyed your kingdom, but modern day dragonborn don't blame tieflings at all."

I'm a little torn. On the one hand, I can really see WHY they pushed that motif: playability. The PC's should not be in-fighting, so we avoid any hints that they might be fighting amongst themselves. LG paladin dwarf adventuring with unaligned rogue eladrin, totally OK! They're buddies! DON'T FIGHT EACH OTHER FIGHT THE MONSTERS YOU GUYS!

In that respect, I can understand that being in place, since Dark Sun hasn't had a whole lot of deep inter-racial rivalry. A lot of suspicion -- some predation -- but little all-out warfare. Halflings still might eat ya if the going gets tough, but it's not personal -- it's survival! Your dwarf might fight you if you stand in the way of his focus, but the dwarf doesn't automatically fight everyone around him. The elf is going to be very suspicious, but you can probably become part of his away-from-home "tribe." The rest of the elves might kill you on sight. Thri-kreen are kind of in the same boat: delicious elves, but it's not like they HAVE to eat you!

On the other hand, the DB/tiefling "peace" IS brain-numbing. I'd hate to see halflings be all "we used to be cannibals, but we swore it off for the sake of Playability!" The PC races are all monstrous in Dark Sun in their own way.

I can envision more "necessary for survival" parties and less "we're all friends!" parties. Which, honestly, is some of what I like to see in D&D!

 

[TrainedMunkee]

It's been over ten years since I've run DS, so please give me a break here.

I can't remember the name of tower that mutates, but that would be an easy way out for the races that aren't typical for DS. You are a Dragonborn and the only of your kind that has been mutated, or you are from the one tribe of Dragonborn that has lived near the tower and mutated. Was the tower in the original boxed set or from the novels, Troy Denning took a lot of liberties with the setting?

 

[Mort_Q]

Eberron was explicitly created to have everything in it. That was the whole point of the setting search.

Plus Drow in Eberron are NOT your typical Drow from Faerun.

Still doesn't mean I have to like it.

 

[SSquirrel]

I like the idea of the avangions - but those were in the Dragon Kings hardcover before they made it anywhere else. I don't want them fluttering about everywhere. I also generally like to keep the game confined to the Tyr Region - but I love having a Kreen Empire out there, as a viciously expansionist adversary.

I don't think there is any danger in that. Avangions were preserver/psionicists who made it to level 20 in both and who then started making their way to 30 thru a very difficult process. If you were in a campaign w/tons of avangions, something was wrong

The entire Dragon Kings book was pretty awesome. The things a PC was able to become later in their career were all pretty epic and gave you something to look forward to. I dug the City Beyond the Sea of Silt and some of the other books like that. I won't complain if they keep some of the interesting bits from the various books and even good bits from the Revised box set. There had to be a few good things in that box right?

 

[BluSponge]

I can't remember the name of tower that mutates, but that would be an easy way out for the races that aren't typical for DS. You are a Dragonborn and the only of your kind that has been mutated, or you are from the one tribe of Dragonborn that has lived near the tower and mutated. Was the tower in the original boxed set or from the novels, Troy Denning took a lot of liberties with the setting?

That would be the Pristine Tower, and yeah it makes a lot of sense. You can pretty much have endless combination of mutations stemming from that.

I can foresee a few problems though. Walking around and calling yourself "dragonborn" is a good way to get yourself killed on Athas, or at the very least thrown into the gladiator pits as a novelty. Nothing "good" comes from the dragon.

Furthermore, if you are going to use the backstory created by Denning and Brown, the reason these other races no longer exist is because they've been wiped out through generations of genocide – not because they didn't exist in the first place. Of course, if you ignore that tidbit, including everything is no problem. But you won't catch me spending a dime for an Athas where orc hordes march alongside gith. Sorry.

Tom

 

[BluSponge]

As a DS fan from way back, I'm somewhat excited about this news. If anything could get me to swallow my pride and forsake my grognard attitudes towards 4e, it would be Dark Sun. But reading the various posts here and elsewhere has me concerned about one important detail:

While it's certainly too early to tell, I'm getting the disturbing impression that in order to run a DS game, I'll not only need PHB II (if 2e "clerics" become 4e "shamans") and certainly PHB III (for psionics, and/or if 2e "bards" become 4e "assassins"). My basis for this comes from lots of talk about the 1 character class feature in the forthcoming DS PG. Now, I'm not ready to get up in arms about all this (the book is a year away and we know nothing about it other than its coming and adheres to the original boxed set), but it does worry me for a number of obvious reasons.

Have I missed anything in the discussion that contradicts this?

edit: I know you needed the Psionics handbook to play DS back in second edition, so I'm alright with a limited additional investment, but I'm worried 4e is going to stack 2, 3, or even more books on top of that just to get started.

Tom