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

[Wik]

NO. Sometimes D&D means mocking the DM for trying to force you all to ride telekinetic surfboards across the dune sea.

Dark Sun is great, but it has its fair share of silly/stupid stuff. Mind Lords of the Last Sea and Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs were both actually pretty cool products, but they always felt "dropped" into the Dark Sun setting, where they don't really belong.

 

[Piratecat]

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.

Tone down the blood, CGI and soft-core boobage of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and you may have one solution. That's a show that is trying to be both grim and cinematic. Make exciting fight scenes that aren't silly, and that have serious consequences, and you'll be a lot of the way there.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

NO. Sometimes D&D means mocking the DM for trying to force you all to ride telekinetic surfboards across the dune sea.

Dark Sun is great, but it has its fair share of silly/stupid stuff. Mind Lords of the Last Sea and Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs were both actually pretty cool products, but they always felt "dropped" into the Dark Sun setting, where they don't really belong.

It's also vaguely important to note that, things going as they were in TSR, it's not unlikely that quite a few things dropped into Dark Sun were never developed much beyond "Oh god we need money, quick make something up and I'll throw a dart at the Wheel Of Settings"

 

[Wik]

It's also vaguely important to note that, things going as they were in TSR, it's not unlikely that quite a few things dropped into Dark Sun were never developed much beyond "Oh god we need money, quick make something up and I'll throw a dart at the Wheel Of Settings"

Yyup.

Both Mind Lords and Wind Riders were cool. IN fact, we played a Windriders campaign where everyone were halflings... and it was amazingly fun. However, neither tied well into the setting, and they really muddied it up. Life-Shaped items never screamed "dark sun" to me. Neither did "Athasian Dolphins" or friendly coastal surfing lizardfolk.

Mind you, if someone were to run a self-contained campaign based off Mind Lords, you can bet I'd jump on it right away.

But if my Dark Sun character found himself heading towards "the last sea", I'd be groaning on the inside. Meh.

But I digress from my own thread topic.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Tone down the blood, CGI and soft-core boobage of Spartacus: Blood and Sand and you may have one solution. That's a show that is trying to be both grim and cinematic. Make exciting fight scenes that aren't silly, and that have serious consequences, and you'll be a lot of the way there.

I think Dark Sun can be "realistic" while still being somewhat over-the-top. The trick is to find that place where the two meet and mesh well together.

When I first played Dark Sun, early on in my gaming years, I was captivated by the various character archetypes and the sheer power of the world. In a sense, the setting was perfect for action.

On the other hand, it was a post-apocalyptic setting based on survival. You don't get that without a bit of realism. Dark Sun isn't the same without environmental concerns. What got me with the original DS was all the time spent on these features when I wanted to be on the way to a new adventure.

But yeah, go with the cinematic feel for a change of pace. You may find it adds a whole new dimension to your DS experience.

 

[Dausuul]

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...

You might be able to leverage the combat-oriented nature of D&D here. The PCs may be able to unleash fiery death on a grand scale, but that doesn't mean they can restore water to a drought-stricken village, or create food for a starving tribe. Or, for that matter, for themselves.

So, explosive action sequences combined with grim reality outside the battlefield.

 

[Doug McCrae]

You can locate your grimness in a variety of areas - the authorities are evil, most people the PCs meet are selfish, horrific acts (such as cannibalism) particularly if those acts are committed by humans or demihumans rather than monsters, PCs lose (beaten in fights, fail their missions), no hope for a better future.

The survival aspect - conserving food and water, man against the elements - is, imo, gritty (ie realistic) but not grim unless you get to the cannibalism stage.

There's no reason why you can't combine any or all of the grim above with high action and lots of cool powers. PCs could lose a fight, which is grim, but the battle itself could've been high octane.

 

[Dragonhelm]

My one concern about the realistic factor is when it becomes bookkeeping. I know it's important to have that sense of no water, resources, etc.

Some people like the resource management, and that's cool. For me, though, I prefer to focus on story and adventure.

Cool thread. This shows me there are a few different approaches to tackling Dark Sun. It can't come soon enough!

 

[Wik]

Thanks for all the advice, guys. I'm busy putting together my campaign arc for when the game ships (basically, it's a combo of Sandbox and Railroad that should be interesting... and it's designed to use as many facets of Dark Sun as possible), and I wanted to have a rough idea where to go. I like the idea of high-action combats combined with gritty "realistic" non-combat environments.

Which now begs the question: what kind of crazy combat scenes can you do in DARK SUN? I mean, there's the giant bee chase through a canyon. And I already have a Ben-Hur style chariot chase figured out. But what else? A battle through a silt storm while lightning strikes everywhere? A magma field with geysers of lava? A box canyon that is flash-flooding?

ANy other ideas?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Ship to ship boarding combats in the Silt Sea.
Combat on the back of any one of Dark Sun's massive beasts, like say, the back of a cloud ray?

Depending on how much "psi-fi" you want in your Dark Sun, you could have a mythical psionically floating city deep out above the sea of silt, populated by any DS4e race that isn't traditional Dark Sun. Getting in or out could be a long high action campaign arc, maybe ending in the PCs crashing the aerial city into the silt.