Dark Sun Alternate History

[Achan hiArusa]

Editorial mistakes?

More like an editorial neutering & declawing. The wotc rewriters tore out the setting's teeth and gave it a set of Nerf Dentures.

I don't quite see that. They restored all but one of the Dragon Kings, bringing back all but Kalak. I will agree that the Half-giant is a ridiculous shadow of the original and there is no Dragon. But I like the upgraded versions of the Core races. And I don't know if I'm quite ready for a spellcasting bard. To get the druid from the box set you'd probably have to make a prestige class with the Athasian druid's powers. Ability score generation is very easily changed.

Now, their stated aim was to bring in new people to Dark Sun, ergo the closer adherence to the core books.

 

[reanjr]

Expedition to Giustenal ....

oooooo, that sounds so sexy

 

[megamania]

Burning Sands website has a 3 part adventure dealing with Dregoth and his underground / ruined city.

 

[Mark Hope]

Burning Sands website has a 3 part adventure dealing with Dregoth and his underground / ruined city.

Yes. I helped write it .

Although the site is called Burnt World of Athas - unless there's another site out there with a Dregoth trilogy... . No biggie, though - it's clear what you mean .

 

[hands_miranda]

I don't quite see that. They restored all but one of the Dragon Kings, bringing back all but Kalak. I will agree that the Half-giant is a ridiculous shadow of the original and there is no Dragon. But I like the upgraded versions of the Core races. And I don't know if I'm quite ready for a spellcasting bard. To get the druid from the box set you'd probably have to make a prestige class with the Athasian druid's powers. Ability score generation is very easily changed.

Now, their stated aim was to bring in new people to Dark Sun, ergo the closer adherence to the core books.

I really can't agree. Beyond continuing with the crap that was the revised boxed set, the Dark Sun stuff in Dungeon/Dragon did the best it could to accomodate everything standard to D&D-- which is pretty much not what the original setting was built on. Putting Paladins into the setting was one of the dumber additions to the setting-- the original boxed set had very good reasoning for leaving them out. In general, the update seemed more interested in pulling an Eberron (which was novel there, not here) with Dark Sun, and less interested in keeping the original flavor of the setting. Downplaying slavery in the setting (a heavy theme from the original) is also another symptom of this.

Raymond

 

[Nyaricus]

I really can't agree. Beyond continuing with the crap that was the revised boxed set, the Dark Sun stuff in Dungeon/Dragon did the best it could to accomodate everything standard to D&D-- which is pretty much not what the original setting was built on. Putting Paladins into the setting was one of the dumber additions to the setting-- the original boxed set had very good reasoning for leaving them out. In general, the update seemed more interested in pulling an Eberron (which was novel there, not here) with Dark Sun, and less interested in keeping the original flavor of the setting. Downplaying slavery in the setting (a heavy theme from the original) is also another symptom of this.

Raymond

Yeah, but in 3e, Paladins, Monks and Sorcerers have their place in every setting.

Frankly, Athas.org is a really good go at DS, from what I can tell, and was a lot better than the D/D mags try.

I just wish WotC would collaborate with both parties and make us a bloody hardcover already

 

[Mark Hope]

Yeah, but in 3e, Paladins, Monks and Sorcerers have their place in every setting.

Frankly, Athas.org is a really good go at DS, from what I can tell, and was a lot better than the D/D mags try.

I just wish WotC would collaborate with both parties and make us a bloody hardcover already

I'm not a huge fan of the Paizo version (although it has some very cool ideas in there, such as blood obsidian and their take on the elan), but just to play devil's advocate for a minute, there are ways to include paladins, sorcerers and monks in the DS setting. Monks are probably the easiest, as there are already several monasteries scattered across Athas, from those in Nibenay, to the schools in Raam, to the Villichi convents. Sorcerers are likewise not too hard, once you ditch the idea that they have dragon blood (although there is an interesting angle that makes them long-scattered descendants of fecund sorcerer-monarchs like Abalach-re). Just treat sorcerers as spellcasters who don't need books and learn their spells by some other method. Done and dusted. As for paladins, Xlorepdarkhelm over on the WotC DS board has a great take on paladins. There's a link to it in the sticky archive thread at the top.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

I don't understand how they downplayed slavery. I didn't see that anywhere. As for paladins, they are people inspired to good deeds. I'd allow them just to see how long it takes them to die. And as for Dark Sun being nonstandard D&D, remember that Oriental Adventures was far more different from the Player's Handbook than Dark Sun was. Even Al Qadim and Ravenloft were sometimes further afield that DS in terms of rules changes.

 

[happyelf]

I never liked the official history either and thought it took away a lot of the cool mystery of the setting (and replaced it with halfling and a dragon named Boris). My Athas is basically a post-apocolyptic version of your typical D&D setting, which it seems to me is what the first box set was going for.

It always made way more sense to me that way.

I felt that when the origin was explained, it removed the whole point of the setting, wich (for me) was things were wierd because of the apocalypse. That emphasised the wierdness and bleak, savage and most importantly alien nature of the setting.

Instead, it's just wierd, before and after, in effect it was alien all along and that just negated the impact.

Granted, IIRC the origin states that there was an era in wich the world was like a normal D&D world, only wiht psionics instead of magic, but it just doesn't work in the context. Likewise I preferred the implication that psionics became common after the apocalypse, against that helped emphasise it's wierdness.

 

[Aaron L]

The Athas.org decision to not include Monks is still mind boggling to me. Unarmed and unarmored warriors who use medatative, essentialy psionic, powers arent suitable for Athas? They are like a perfect fit. I plan on using the A.O version if I ever run a game, but incleing Monks is a no brainer.

Apart from that, I think the Athas.org version is just about perfect.