D&D General Dark Sun as a Hopepunk Setting

[Vaalingrade]

I mean, I understand why at a gamist level. I was more curious about an in-depth justification at the cosmological and narrative layers.

The other route is that the names and SFX in the books are not the names and SFX in-universe. The cure light of Set is not the cure light of Zeus (and less socially awkward)

 

[TwoSix]

Hang on, I'm gonna need to dig out the 4e Dark Sun book to see what they have to say about them...

Huh, Dragonborn as Dray. I guess that works. Now what do they have to say about Tieflings...


...oh

Yeah I think I would have gone in a different direction there.

I still prefer the 4e presentation, overall. It just seems more "adventurable".

 

[Corinnguard]

Do Clerics still make sense in a world without deities?

Good point. Athasian Clerics back in 2e were more like today's Warlocks in that they made a pact of sorts with elementals.

 

[TwoSix]

The other route is that the names and SFX in the books are not the names and SFX in-universe. The cure light of Set is not the cure light of Zeus (and less socially awkward)

But why does Set have healing magic?

 

[Chaltab]

Now what do they have to say about Tieflings...

...oh

Yeah I think I would have gone in a different direction there.

Yeah... definitely not how I'd handle it. If anything I'd make them either demon or Rakshasa-based and leave devils off the table.

 

[Steampunkette]

See, that's the kind of thing I'd like to avoid; see: @Remathilis's post above. Because once you set that at the baseline, where do you stop? Do Clerics still make sense in a world without deities? What about literally every spell that would make life on Athas (or its off-brand equivalent) substantially better?

When Dark Sun was introduced it had Clerics. Well. Okay. "Priests". But you know what I mean.

Rather than working with the Gods, which didn't exist, they were "Kind Of" elementalists. They worshipped the Sun, the Rain, the Mud, and the Ash.

You'd just need to make those domains and have them be the domains for Clerics in the setting. Though you could allow the other domains and just have the player describe how they're getting "Life" from Rain or "Death" from Ash.

As far as spells like "Create Water"... just pull a Ravenloft and say "Those spells don't work in this reality".

But it's WAY easier to say "No" to a specific spell (Silvery Barbs, anyone?) than it is to a whole class or race. Especially when there's in-narrative solutions already written (Wasteland Mutants were a thing in 2e Dark Sun)

I'm not saying that I don't think it's possible to make a Dark Sun or inspired setting utilizing everything in the PHB (<side-eyes create or destroy water, a 1st level spell), but it would be significantly easier (and less disappointing to the @Remathilis's of the world) to have your own list of species/heritages/classes/spells (borrowed or not from the OGL) rather than handing them a list of what's forbidden.

Oh, for sure.

My thing is "Making room for the core materials" which means coming up with an explanation for Tiefling and Dragonborn (and Dray does work!) and classes (for which there's already some wiggle room so long as you're comfortable with 'Templar' being an organization with different kinds of Templars in it, rather than all templars being the same class).

And then cut out the spells and features that make it too easy, replace them where possible.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Hang on, I'm gonna need to dig out the 4e Dark Sun book to see what they have to say about them...

Huh, Dragonborn as Dray. I guess that works. Now what do they have to say about Tieflings...


...oh

Yeah I think I would have gone in a different direction there.

Just checked the book.

Woof.

Now there's a real mistake instead of 'I hate 4e'.

 

[Zardnaar]

Which is great if you have a group willing to dig through books and such, but there's no OGL supported database, no legal way to to get all the options in a character builder anymore. If Insider still existed I'd probably run a 4E game in addition to my 5E games, but as it stands it's just too much hassle.

So that's a flawed in 4E design then? 5E runs fine phb only.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, I understand why at a gamist level. I was more curious about an in-depth justification at the cosmological and narrative layers.

There's no good justification by those metrics IMO.

 

[TwoSix]

So that's a flawed in 4E design then? 5E runs fine phb only.

Part of the fun of 4e is its crunchy character design. It does run fine PHB only, but it limits the enjoyment of character building. (For what its worth, I feel the same way about EVERY edition of D&D that I've played.)

But let's not derail the thread with 4e discussion, outside of discussing 4e implementations of Dark Sun material.