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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 9530369" data-attributes="member: 6796468">So here's a thing I didn't touch on, before but really should have:The idea that every character has a "Motivation" as a specific Dark Sun flavor addition.It's the -way- you have hope. Forget about alignments, those are only restrictive straight jackets to characterization and action choices. No, motivations are fundamental, but important, and change over time, and give you something to fall back on.Whatever your motivation is allows you to gain inspiration or other benefits when you call it out and use it.You just took a big hit in combat, you're knocked prone, you're at a level beneath your opponent, whatever the trigger is, you activate your "Spite" motivation to gain inspiration and spit on fate and circumstance to royally mess up your enemy's day 'cause -screw- that guy!Trigger your "Love" motivation to fight harder for the people you care about. Trigger your "Brighter Future" motivation to strain and struggle to overcome your current situation. Trigger your "Found Family" motivation or your "Radical Kindness" motivation or whatever other motivation you have.And then each motivation has a different function unique to it. Like Love could let you do a space-swap or dive in the way of an attack. Radical Kindness can let you nonmagically charm an enemy for a while. Found Family lets you share hit points between characters. Still uses up your Motivation until a short rest or something, so you can't -also- gain inspiration... but, y'know. Unique options to go with the general benefit so depending on need you can use one or the other.And then you can also do characterization through your motivation but it's way more flexible than alignment. A spite character can be your edgelord rogue who spites the party as much as they spite the enemy... Or they can be a protective maternal figure who lashes out at foes after years of abuse and emotional pain because screw them for hurting your people.Thri-Kreen "Found Family" would look a lot different from a human "Found Family" versus an Elf's "Found Family".Also, yes, I would ditch the elves as wandering thieves and tricksters angle. Still keep the nomadic lifestyle and running across the sands, but now they do it with herds of crodlu (for the peaceful groups) or ready violence (for the raiders). If someone wanted to play a more tricksy thiefly type they can, of course, but the "Race as Culture" stand in setup needs to go.As far as halfling cannibals: I ascribe to the idea that eating -any- sapient is cannibalism. Doesn't matter if you're a halfling and your dinner is a dwarf, it's still cannibalism.Also the cannibal halflings are outcasts who tend to resort to cannibalism when kicked out of their communities on the Forest Ridge for lack of better options, though the identity/label/expectation gets assigned to all halflings 'cause the only halflings most people meet are going to be the cannibal exiles who are doing it to survive. Deeper into the Forest Ridge, amongst the actual halfling tribes and towns, no cannibals to be found.Also, again, I can't stress this hard enough: "Race as Culture" needs to go out of the window. That includes nonhalfling Preservers living in Halfling communities. It also means Tyr isn't "99% human plus some demihumans passing through and mul or dwarf slaves from Kled". Way more racial diversity in all the major communities and cultural variety, too. Definitely a "City State" specific culture available, for people who want that, but also different cultural identities that anyone can take.The only exception I'd make is Thri-Kreen, and only because their whole life-cycle schtick doesn't work for pretty much anyone else. Elves might be able to keep pace with their leaping across the dunes and freaky-deaky sleep schedule, but their whole reproductive cycle and socialization structure keeps most people away. Also if you get too near to a clutch of eggs they will go into "Blender Mode" faster than you can apologize. The intent, there, is just to keep them "Alien" as much as possible."But what about humans and dwarves living in elf tribes! They can't run eternally across the sands!" No but they can ride Crodlu, which I have decided can also do the elfrun schtick and carry a sleeping human rider to keep up with the elf runners. Problem solved!Anyway, yeah. Couple more important notes to keep the setting from becoming a racist morass and to highlight the hope.</blockquote>

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