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Message: <blockquote data-quote="squibbles" data-source="post: 8272700" data-attributes="member: 6937590">Thanks for the explanation of the Athas map [USER=27051]@Mark Hope[/USER] & [USER=6805135]@briggart[/USER] I'd have never known otherwise.I'm not sure I'd want to do that with Dark Sun, but it's a sensible way go, for sure. In any case, thanks for the succinct description.Yeah, that'd make sense. An equal population in villages isn't enough to support the cities agricuturally--and they'd probably struggle to feed themselves--but if the cities are principally fortified shelters, as I described, they would still benefit from having a surplus rural population. And, from the point of view of the villages, the cities would offer at least some protection, even if it's only the protection of having lots of other people nearby. Some individuals would prefer to sacrifice their independence for that marginal increase in security.That's a good point. I hadn't thought of it this way, but I suppose the pentad/later lore implicitly explains that puzzle.Fair critiques. It's always dubious to apply IRL assumptions to a constructed world for which IRL assumptions do not apply.I assumed away the use magic to some degree because of the heavy tradeoff of defiling. How useful is it to create 260 cubic feet of stone if it costs you a several yard radius of the city's painstakingly cultivated vegetation? Maybe that tradeoff is worthwhile, but it's a big one--it is inconvenient enough to deter anyone who has to live in a place from using convenience spells freely in that place. As a defiler, you'd mainly want to cast spells in places you have no intention of coming back to, or to deliberately desolate your enemies' turf.Regarding Athas unique creatures and monsters, I did mention some of them briefly. Erdlu or Kanks would both be bred and ranched intensively as well as being used for muscle power--which would considerably raise the utility of raiding and banditry. I'd expect most Athasians to have a visceral hatred of this in the way that the people in the American west looked down on horse thieves.Giant creatures--as a technology--present a tradeoff similar to defiling. The mekillot caravans that the 1991 set pictures so evocatively are very high cost; they need lots of meat and lots of water, and this would seriously dampen their impact. Each major merchant house likely wouldn't run more than a handful of mekillot caravans, if any.The prevalence of monsters out in the world would, I think, do the same thing to Dark Sun that it does to any D&D setting; make it into more of a 'points of light' world--harder to travel and maintain communications, harder for small groups to survive, more of a self-help outlook, heavy militarization, walls wherever they are affordable, concealment wherever they are not. This seems to me to be built into the 1991 set's descriptions already. And, again, it reminds me of the American west.Psionics... well, I dunno. They're prevalent enough on Athas that they affect every part of daily life. But I don't have very good intuitions about what they would affect. What do you all think?</blockquote>

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