About to start Darksun - What have been your experiences with it?

[reveal]

I am currently wrapping up my d20 Modern campaign and another player will be taking the reigns as DM. He wants to run Darksun.

He has sent us info and pointed us to Athas.org. Most of the group wants to give the world a chance but we all think it's weird and a few players are finding it not that interesting, simply from reading the material. Mind you, we have never played DS before, so this is only from reading.

For those of you that have played in Darksun, did you like it/hate it/were indifferent about it? I just want to know what I'm getting into.

PS: We're doing a one-shot first to see if we like it, so it's not like we're diving in head first.

 

[soulforge]

I haven't played in Dark Sun for at least 5 years, but I have very fond memories of the setting. It's basically a world where although you have more power than normal D&D groups, the evil that surrounds is all the worse.. hehe.. a world of cannibalistic halflings, and menacing elves.. it's a good campaign world in my opinion.. I highly recommend you enter into it with an open mind though as things are a bit different ("to say the least!") from a normal D&D campaign. Weapons are usually made of different materials as metal is so rare. Not sure what the d20 version looks like, but the defilers and preservers added a nice touch, along with the elemental worship.. I think you'll have a good time.. try and picture Mad Max when your viewing the world..

 

[Henry]

Most of the group wants to give the world a chance but we all think it's weird and a few players are finding it not that interesting, simply from reading the material. Mind you, we have never played DS before, so this is only from reading.

For those of you that have played in Darksun, did you like it/hate it/were indifferent about it? I just want to know what I'm getting into.

Dark Sun is very much in the tradition of the "Mad Max/Road Warrior" movies - if you like the idea of survivalist fantasy, then Dark Sun will be very much to your liking. If you don't like the idea of minimal resources, then you may be disappointed.

Characters in general are quite powerful - but the hidden struggles are those for water, freedom, food, and sometimes just to get out of a dangerous situation alive.

Be sure if a DM mentions metal in any description to perk up - steel and iron is precious stuff, and worth even more than gold or jewels.*

Athas.org doesn't mention the campaign stuff, the details that make the world different and exciting. The things every character would know about the world are as follows:

1. The world is a barren waste, with pockets of verdant life-belts here and there. The "most civilized" places are the city-states (7 or them), and the wilds have pockets of nomadic or survivalist camps hidden here and there, wherever there's a trickle of water to find. The city-states are all run by oppressive sorcerer-kings, whose Templars carry out their iron will. Not all are slaves, but all are ruled by these Kings.
2. Later in the timeline, a couple of city-states have overthrown their Sorcerer-kings, but they are in constant states of flux, and the majority of Cities are still owned by the kings.
3. Don't take any race for granted. Halflings can be cannibalistic, Dwarves can be doggedly focused on their goals, Elves can be worse than the most stereotyped Gypsy about deceit and double-crossing, and The weird Thri-kreen locust-men share the struggle to survive with the other races.
4. Water is precious, metal almost as precious. Any metal item costs 100 times what a non-metal item would.
5. There are many hidden treasures in the wastes, left-overs buried under the sands from the previous green ages, many times guarded by the spirits of those long-dead. They are dangerous but rewarding sites to find.

*For anyone reading this and wants to be smart, yes, I know gold's a metal.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Great Flavor.
Terrible Balance.
What did you expect from a world which is centered around 2e psionics?

It's a complicated place with a very complicated history. Even the wildlife is complicated (there are virtually no normal mammals larger than a cat. In fact, there aren't even any cats, which should please the commoners.) Be sure to pick the right time to go to Athas. There are at least three periods detailed for game play.

Before the Death of the Dragon. (Best period IMO.)
After the Death of the Dragon.
300 years later (3.5 revision, in Dragon Magazine).

However, you could try the Blue Age (massive house rules required here), the Green Age, the War of the Champions...

My suggestion is to use D20 Modern. Seriously. There are few other ways of balancing a setting where, not ony are you not going to find a +1 suit of armor, but the armor is just inix hide!

Oh yeah, and be sure to use the XPH psion, even if you're using D20 Modern rules.

 

[der_kluge]

I'm pretty sure my friend from college would take offense to the "Mad Max" association, since he never quite saw that. Still, I used to make the same reference.

I hated Dark Sun. My friend insist that we play it all the time, but I never got into it. Maybe it was his boring DM'ing style, I don't know.

It's good that he's doing a one-shot. That should be enough to let you whet your appetite.

If you're dredging up 2nd edition worlds, Al-Qadim, or Planescape would be a better choice, IMHO.

 

[Davelozzi]

I've run Dark Sun several times and it's always been a blast. Back in the day I ran a campaign in 2e. More recently, I ran a short series using the Athas.org 3/5 conversion and some tweaks from a few other places.

Henry's description of the world above is a good one, as is his point about the Athas.org conversion being (necessarily) more focused on the rules and less on the flavor. I'd encourage you or someone else in your group to pick up the ESD of the original campaign set over at RPG Now and check out the Wanderer's Journal (one of the included books), which describes the world from the point of view of one of its inhabitants.

As for the psionics angle, we used the 3.0 Psionics Handbook when we played as the Expanded Psionics Handbook hadn't be released yet. The XPH is a big improvement, and I'd recommend it, though I'd encourage the DM to look over the various energy powers and astral constructs before throwing everything into play to make sure that they fit his/her idea of the "Dark Sun feel". Also, the XPH gets rid of psionic combat, which I think is generally a good thing, though it has its place in Dark Sun. If the DM wants to use it, I'd recommend the Mindscapes version over the one from the original PsiHB.

 

[Klaus]

Here's a tip on handling the wildlife of Athas:

Get Savage Species.

Apply either the reptilian or the insectile template to any animal in the MM (including the dire variants)

Presto! Instant alienness!

Tip 2:

Take the dinosaurs.

Change their names (and slightly their appearance).

Presto!

Example: Deynonichus with an ostrich-shaped body = Athas' riding bipedal lizards.

And for me, the 2e adventure Freedom is a great way of starting a DS campaign. Just don't feel forced to follow the Prism Pentad storyline.

 

[edbonny]

Great game! Absolutely one of the best campaigns I ever ran. 3e offers a new set of directions to take Dark Sun in. Here are a few I have thought of should I ever decide to run one.

> Magic-Psionic Transparency - The direction of 3e has been to make psionics the 3rd form of magic. This was not the case in 2e Dark Sun where magic and psionics did not usually interact. I would keep it that way in a Dark Sun 3.5 game.
> Paragon characters. This concept introduced in Unearthed Arcana allows for 3 levels of core race - super-elves, super-dwarves, super-humans, etc. - just the right starting level for Dark Sun characters.
> Keep Athas god-free. Have access to all other planes go through the Grey. I did not agree with the direction of the Athasian cosmology in a recent issue of Dragon.

 

[Evilhalfling]

In my survivalist Darksun game life was cheap, it was the most leathal campaign I have ever run. Civilization was a veneer and getting on the wrong side of the kings was easy - being a preserver (good wizard), or have a sense of right and wrong, were good ways to get killed. The original set recomended multiple, inactive characters to offset this.

I had lots of balance problems, many of which were fixed in 3.x, like teleportation avalible as a 4th lvl PC (psionics) or the elven thief with 19 st (+4hit,+7dmg) X3 backstab, as well as the lack of ECL for thirkreen, their advantage vs a similar lvl is enormous. Water concerns were irritating, travel was taxing in terms of bookkeeping and for some reason the party was always fleeing across the open sands.

That said I have some very fond memories of the year gaming on the sands, I turned one dead dwarf pc into an undead whose goal it was to kill another player (dwarven lifequests dont end when life does), the elf was almost eaten by his party members (carnivorus Thrikreen and halfling) and the first of a long line of Evil(Psionic)Haflings was played. The players greatest fear became not the mighty dragon kings but a small posionus prariedog.

 

[Someone]

I also have good memories of the brief dark sun campaing I played once, though it could be the good DMing (but after all, it always depend on the DM) In no other setting you´ll interrupt the DM´s description of a monster with the: "But, Is it edible?" question.