2010: Is it Dragonlance? (hint)

[mhacdebhandia]

Hmm, interesting idea about an "alternate Cyre". However, the new world map of Eberron shows a vast desert located on western Xen'drik. My Eberron knowledge is limited, but this seems like a rather large area that hasn't been used or detailed.

The whole continent of Xen'drik is left somewhat undefined - Secrets of Xen'drik, rather than describing the continent, presented discrete sites, encounters, and adventure hooks which could be placed virtually anywhere on the continent that had the right population or geography. That vast desert, Menechtarun, was said in Third Edition to be the home of thri-kreen, asherati, and bhuka (the latter two are from Sandstorm).

Xen'drik is really not "open" for use in the way you seem to think.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I think people are overestimating the difficulty of importing 4E core material into Dark Sun.

AMEN...preatch it brother...

Almost any race can be Dark Sun-ified with very little trouble. I mean, look at the races they imported back when the original Dark Sun came out. Delicate forest-loving elves and fat hobbity halflings - can you imagine any races less suited to life on Athas? That didn't stop them from turning elves into long-legged thieves and halflings into cannibals.

and how many paragraphs would it take to get eather poitn across...I think no more or less then the two settings out used...

Divine classes need an alternative to traditional gods, but again, they faced the same problem in 2E. That's why Dark Sun has elemental powers, sorceror-kings, and spirits of the land.

The best part is that it is soooo easy to refluff the entire powersource at once...watch

All Divine characters aact a little diffrent in this setting (See campaing guid pg XX) becuse there are no gods. When you make a divine character instead of chooseing a good choose a Dragonking, Avengion, or Elemntal lord from the list below.

For equipment, simply say that regular equipment is made of bone, wood, stone, or obsidian; metal gear is so rare as to be effectively magical. All bronze equipment is at least +1 and all steel equipment is at least +2.

heck add in a side bar for masterwork armors and it is perfect refluff...


Heck elves already have a +1 to there speed, imaign a feat that gives them the Orc +2 for chargeing and there you go...

 

[Leatherhead]

I'm going to disagree here, as Dragonlance has some pretty specific themes, a limited amount of deities, and a world that has moved to a new place in the 'verse (amongst other things).

You could plop down the pantheon on an island easily, it's not like FR isn't known to have different subsettings. And if Dragonlance has all ready moved once, well a second time isn't that hard to see. Even FR has been subject to some cosmology manipulation recently.

What I thought about at one point was merging the Realms and Greyhawk. At one point, I was thinking separate continents. Then I got the Hollow World idea and thought Greyhawk could go on the inside. This would break Spelljammer continuity, but this wouldn't be the first time that's happened.

I thought Hollow World was part of the hook for Mystara?

 

[Leatherhead]

The whole continent of Xen'drik is left somewhat undefined - Secrets of Xen'drik, rather than describing the continent, presented discrete sites, encounters, and adventure hooks which could be placed virtually anywhere on the continent that had the right population or geography. That vast desert, Menechtarun, was said in Third Edition to be the home of thri-kreen, asherati, and bhuka (the latter two are from Sandstorm).

Xen'drik is really not "open" for use in the way you seem to think.

Xen'drik is supposed to have a mutable interior geography IIRC. Constantly changing so that maps don't really work.

 

[CasvalRemDeikun]

You could plop down the pantheon on an island easily, it's not like FR isn't known to have different subsettings. And if Dragonlance has all ready moved once, well a second time isn't that hard to see. Even FR has been subject to some cosmology manipulation recently.

The entire planet moved, not just one continent. That is why having Krynn just be part of FR is impossible. That and, Ansalon(in the southern hemisphere) has a continent on the opposite side of the planet, Taladas(in the northern hemisphere) that was also hit by the Cataclysm(a freaking meteor hit the planet, kinda hard for people in Faerun to miss that). Where a large portion of Ansalon's landmass sunk into the ocean, a huge volcano formed in the middle of Taladas. There is way too much preventing Dragonlance be anywhere but its own planet. And then you have to take into account the third continent, Adlatum, which flooded during the Cataclysm.

I really hate the idea of mixing worlds. Just leave them apart so we can take Spelljammers to all of them.

 

[Dragonhelm]

This could work, but then why bother? If the two settings are separated by a giant ocean and have no knowledge of each other, what is gained by putting Dark Sun on the same planet as Eberron? All you're doing is restricting what you can put into Dark Sun, with no benefit.

Dragonlance has this very issue with the continent of Taladas. Only a limited few sages know of Taladas and vice versa. Taladas is, for all intents and purposes, another setting. Yes, it has Dragonlance elements to it (i.e. minotaurs, gnomes, kender), but many are turned around. In a sense, Taladas is the "anti-Ansalon." In a sense, it's a way to use some DL elements without going full on Ansalon.

I thought Hollow World was part of the hook for Mystara?

It is. I just stole that idea. Didn't do much with it, though. In retrospect, it didn't add much.

The entire planet moved, not just one continent. That is why having Krynn just be part of FR is impossible. That and, Ansalon(in the southern hemisphere) has a continent on the opposite side of the planet, Taladas(in the northern hemisphere) that was also hit by the Cataclysm(a freaking meteor hit the planet, kinda hard for people in Faerun to miss that). Where a large portion of Ansalon's landmass sunk into the ocean, a huge volcano formed in the middle of Taladas. There is way too much preventing Dragonlance be anywhere but its own planet. And then you have to take into account the third continent, Adlatum, which flooded during the Cataclysm.

Exactly right. One theory suggests that the meteor that hit Ansalon went straight through the world of Krynn and actually exited through Taladas. That's a bit far-fetched, though.

I really hate the idea of mixing worlds. Just leave them apart so we can take Spelljammers to all of them.

If you're going to mix worlds, then there needs to be some sort of benefit. Otherwise, spelljammer or planar travel works just as well, and could offer some other cool adventures. If you just want an element from one world in your own (i.e. warforged or half-giants), then take the 4e approach and mine those other worlds for ideas to transplant into your setting.

For example, let's say I was really keen on playing a warforged in Dragonlance. They don't exist naturally, and on top of that, draconians already fill the role of the artificially-created soldiers that fought in the last great war. But I really, really want to play a warforged! No problem. Just say that the warforged in question is a creation of a tinker gnome, given sentience by the god Reorx in order to fight against the draconians and restore the Balance to the world. Now he roams the world, wholly alone and unique, looking for a purpose now that the war is over.

Wow, that's pretty good! *scribbles down notes*

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Ugh, do not make normal steel weapons "magic" for Dark Sun, ye gods the problems that would cause, and I've warned others of it often enough in the past elsewhere!

"Oh so we find a +1 steel longsword...does that make it a +2 then?"
bad bad bad!!
Inferior materials = penalties not benefits. Don't screw up the baseline

With 4th ed though, it's easy, just say inferior materials do not get the bonuses to hit you normally get with proficiency with a weapon, or less of the bonus, dead easy!
They are after all Inferior.

wood -2 attack, stone -1 attack, obsidian varies, as small pieces of obsidian are every bit as good as steel for somethings, better in fact (razor sharp) they just break now and then, larger chunks though break too much so an obsidian shortsword is largest youd likely get without magic/psionics.
See also South American obsidian edged swords..they could slice you to bits.

So, say a shortsword of wood would only give +1 attack, rather than +3?

But it's easy to imagine materials as good as steel (there is already in Dark Sun, agafari wood for example, also drake hide for armour etc). So, psionically tempered obsidian, drake claws etc could stand in for steel.

You need steel on Athas for beasties like the braxat which have damage reduction against everything but metal (which makes sense), and they don't break. You could say stone/obsidian weapons break on a roll of "1", nice and simple.

If you think about it, on Athas, wooden clubs/staves or ones made of ivory; daggers/spears/javelins and handaxes edged with obsidian or flint, and the sling, are the most likely weapons by logic.
Good wood is uncommon and valuable (compared to Earth and the Realms etc)

Longblades require very high tensile strength materials, and obsidian etc has too many flaws so it owuld shatter too often (though psionics or magic could fix that), so long and greatswords would be very rare.

Athasians are ignorant due to lack of chance to learn by books and culture etc, so skills would be kept to secrets in families/clans etc. They not stupid though, quite the opposite, so crafting skills would be damn good, or they'd have all perished!

One clan would know how to psionically temper obsidian, another how to make chitin armour as good as scale mail, and jealously guard their secrets.

 

[Orius]

Just a strange idea that occurred to me.

What if Dark Sun is released as an AREA of another campaign world (probably Eberron).

Wouldn't work anyway, because defiling magic and all the other problems messed up the entire world on a global scale, even if we only see a small part of it. Athas used be covereed with a big ocean, but not anymore.

Besides, taking that approach would probably just piss off a good chunk of the settings fans. Look how some Greyhawk fans like the Greyhawk Wars or how some Realms fans like the Spellplague. Heck, look at how much DS fans didn't like Dragon's 3.5 approach.

 

[Novem5er]

Sounds to me like you want Al-Qadim or another Sandstorm book rather than Darksun. Once you take out the "death spiral" the word goes from apocalyptic to just another sandbox.



They don't mean all of every book at the same time. It takes much more work to place Thay and Thrane on the same map than it does to have an artificer and a swordmage in the same group.

Which also brings up another point: You are tying to shove an entire world onto another entire world. Ravenloft and Sigil weren't anywhere near that big to begin with, and even when integrated with the Points-of-Light setting, they are separated from the main world on different planes.

My original post was only meant to provoke conversation I could care less how Dark Sun is done, or if it really is. It was really more of a lightning bolt of an idea of what other people might do. I would not put it past WotC to "shove an entire world into another".... See Forgotten Realms and Returned Abeir. WotC has shown the hutzpa (or the gall) to disregard the wishes of some existing, devoted fans. Again, see the new Forgotten Realms. The ONLY reason that Eberron wasn't dramatically altered is because it wasn't really needed.

I believe that only the most devoted Dark Sun fans could name more than a single city from within the setting, let alone draw a world map. It's been my experience that most gamers liked the idea of Dark Sun, played a few games, and moved along. The IDEAS behind Dark Sun are what survive, not the geography nor the specifics. The death spiral is important, and it is more dramatic if it's a global event... but I don't think that detail is neccessary for books to sell.

However... with only 2 boks to publish and a starter adventure; I think WotC would do just fine by making Dark Sun a standard campaign setting. The PROBLEM with making DS a campaign setting along with FR and Eberron is that it breaks the idea that parts of D&D are interchangeable. It would be the first 4e campaign where lots of other material just wouldn't work. Warforged in Dark Sun? Anything from Divine Power? Any Divine classes? Anything from Adventurer's Vault 1 or 2? What about all the monsters from MM1 and MM2?

Though I think Dragonlance is less interesting than Dark Sun (though I love DL novels), I think that DL is a better fit for 4e with cross-product support.

 

[CelticMutt]

Warforged in Dark Sun?

Blue/Green Age relics with skins of chitin or bone instead of metal.

Anything from Divine Power? Any Divine classes?

In service to the Sorcerer Kings, Elemental Spirits, Avangions, etc. Domain Powers/Feats from Divine Power make this inevitable.

Anything from Adventurer's Vault 1 or 2?

Different material constructions, refluffed as psionic items, etc.

What about all the monsters from MM1 and MM2?

What about elves, or halfings, or gith, etc.? Easy to refluff - the bread and butter of 4e.

You are severely overestimating how difficult it would be to make a 4e Dark Sun.