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

[Wik]

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.

oo la la. Could be pretty fun.

I actually have a bit sort of planned that involves the PCs escaping a ruined city (UnderTyr, maybe?) while it crumbles to dust around them.

Skill Challenge chases have kind of become a favoured tool of mine.

 

[Hussar]

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!

So long as the players are groovy with it, I don't think there's a problem with cinematically taking care of resources. You run out of food or water when it is dramatically important for you to do so. The adventure begins with your resources been very low, your resources are destroyed as part of the adventure, that sort of thing.

Again, depends on what the players want.

 

[pneumatik]

I always looked at the weirder and nicer areas outside of the Tyr region to be examples of how life could actually be better than it currently was, even in a horrible place like Athas. They could certainly go too far, but I liked that if the PCs left the starting area they found better places to live.

If you play the high-level Dark Sun game you realize that what makes Tyr region such a static quagmire is the cost of keeping Rajaat imprisoned. Freeing him is a huge gamble because you don't know what he'll do, but if you don't the Tyr region will stay miserable.