DARK SUN "Action": over the top or "realistic"?

[Wik]

Ever since I first touched the cover of the revised boxed set, I've been in love with Dark Sun. And since then (sometime in 1998 or so?) I've been running DARK SUN games on and off. What can I say? I love the setting.

I've always run the game as being very gritty and almost "realistic" (when you take away all the magic, of course). I was emulating movies like Conan the Barbarian, and not LOTR Two Towers (particularly the part where Legolas skateboards down a stairwell - not that there's anything wrong with that). While characters would fight in bizarre environments (a silt storm, near a volcano, etc) these scens were still pretty much sword fights with magic - they were not over the top cinematic scenes. They were, instead, the type of scenes you'd expect to see in a Post-Apocalyptic film as opposed to an action flick.

And I was pretty sure that was the intended way to present the system in actual play.

LAtely, though, I've been looking through my old DARK SUN books and realizing I may have been missing something. Was the game, perhaps, aimed more towards action scenes than I previously thought? After all, there's a fight with people riding giant lizards on the cover of one book (with lightning in the background!). And in the same book, there's a chase scene involving riding flying wasps. Not to mention halflings leaping from one airship to another thousands of feet above the ground.

So, was Dark Sun aimed more towards an Eberron "high action" feel than, say, a Conan "Sword Fight" model? Because I have to admit, I'm kind of intrigued by the possibilities of a high-action Dark Sun game, but I'm not entirely sure super heroic action meshes well with the Dark Sun setting....

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Playing a setting how it was intended to be played by the authors is something of a strange thought for me - no plan survives the first contact with the gaming group. But you didn´t ask about that.

Dark Sun was a 2e world. That meant you got lots of interesting flavour, but if you stripped most of the funny names and concepts away and looked "under the hood", there was still classic D&D there. That is, forget about realism, kill orc, eat pie (yesyes, you see original D&D as a sponge filled with verisimilimilimiilitude - i don´t).

And of course, it´s the revised set, which changed the tone of the setting a lot (and is subsequentely hated by many people like RPG settings can be hated by RPG players). But if you really get down to it, Dark Sun wanted you to play D&D, period. And sometimes, that means riding giant bees.

 

[Mouseferatu]

But if you really get down to it, Dark Sun wanted you to play D&D, period. And sometimes, that means riding giant bees.

If I did quotes in my sig, this would be the new one.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

So, was Dark Sun aimed more towards an Eberron "high action" feel than, say, a Conan "Sword Fight" model?

Where would you place John Carter's adventures on Barsoom? I'd place them further towards Eberron than Conan.

ERB's Barsoom books were a critical influence on the original Dark Sun setting's design. I always tried to evoke Barsoom when I ran Dark Sun. IMO, if 4e Dark Sun steps further away from the Barsoomian roots of Dark Sun, it will be a bad thing.

 

[Wik]

Good point, Keefe. And yeah, Eric, re: John Carter... I've never really seen Dark Sun as a high-octane, action-based game. Whenever I play it, it's always been more inspired by post-apocalyptic movies and westerns more than anything else.

And the funny thing is, I never even CONSIDERED that it would ever be run differently, and that high-action games were somehow "wrong". And then I saw the giant bees picture, and realized I was missing a whole subset of the game.

And then I had an awesome idea for a magma-based encounter.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Eric, re: John Carter... I've never really seen Dark Sun as a high-octane, action-based game. Whenever I play it, it's always been more inspired by post-apocalyptic movies and westerns more than anything else.

I'm a fan of the Grim and Gritty, too. Before 4e was even a glimmer, I attempted a Grim Tales compatible Dark Sun. Never completed it though . . .

 

[pdiddy]

Whenever I play it, it's always been more inspired by post-apocalyptic movies and westerns more than anything else.

I think that the Man with No Name trilogy could be played in Dark Sun with very few changes.

 

[Piratecat]

I remember a later Dark Sun supplement that had hippie surfers riding telekinetic surfboards across a dune sea. It was awful, and the polar opposite of grim; for a long time this soured me on Dark Sun as a whole.

I got better.

I can definitely see Dark Sun as a cinematic, action-packed game. It shouldn't need to be one, though.

 

[Wik]

Piddy: Yes. A man with no name DARK SUN campaign would be amazing. I kind of have this idea of running an adventure based entirely around The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (The PCs get one part of the treasure map, their rivals get the other part, and they have to work together to get to the treasure before the templars do...)

PCat: Yeah. You can go Grim, or you can go high action. I'm kind of wondering how one can do both, right now... without ever really alternating the overall "tone" of the campaign. It's got me stumped. I spent a long time of my slow time at work wondering how to do just that...

 

[Teemu]

Sometimes playing D&D means riding telekinetic surfboards across a dune sea.