Dark Sun Hopes & Dreams & Fears & Nightmares

[Korgoth]

I do agree with Professor C in that I think that anything an "Athasian feywild" might have would probably just be better on Athas itself. Athas is already turned up to 11. There's not supposed to be a higher setting. Any higher setting makes Athas not the highest setting anymore, which weakens it.

Right. You don't need other planes because Athas is hell. If there were other planes that you could actually survive on, the campaign would be over as soon as the PCs could access them. Because only a total screwball would stay on Athas willingly... the place is just one jot above "all human life dies" on the scale of habitable planets. The one consolation is that everybody gets to be a Sardaukar/Fremen thanks to selection pressures.

There shouldn't be some nice retirement home in boca raton that you can just BAMF into whenever you want a nice ice tea.

Unless it was actually located within the mouth of a ginormous rat that was slowing closing and there was no way to stop it. Then you'd have the doom and pathos back. And the rat's throat is really dry.

I hope they make Dragonborn Cool.

Even if they all drove Lamborghini Gallardo SEs (Ithaca Verde of course) and dated clones of Scarlett Johansson that would barely put a dent in their uncoolness.

I hope they let everyone dabble in psionics.

And here I break ranks with DS traditionalists. I hate psionics. That's just me I guess.

 

[Pbartender]

I can't think of *any* setting that I would want to play in for more than 1-2 campaigns. At least not without a good long break in between.

I can think of several... Of course, they are all more generic settings with a wide variety of climates, terrains, cultures and such included. If you didn't like the tropes you were playing with, you simply have your characters travel somewhere else for a change, instead of starting a whole new game.

You don't need other planes because Athas is hell.

I know you meant that metaphorically, but what an interesting concept it could be if taken literally.

 

[ArcaneSpringboard]

If they start invoking Primordials and the 4e PoL Feywild et al on Athas, start to lose hope.

They truly need to just make 4e PoL an actual developed setting rather than forcing it into every other established setting where its elements, assumed history, cosmology, and races make little or no sense. If they needlessly force Athas into being an awkward hybrid of Athas and PoLand it's going to be a trainwreck. The setting deserves better.

I've made the comment to my players that the PoL setting is as much of a setting now as Eberron or the Forgotten Realms is. I wonder what the page count would be if you took all the PoL fluff and compiled it. I'd bet it's on the order of a Campaign Guide.

 

[M.L. Martin]

People I game with face-to-face have said that exact same thing. These days I'm thinking that's true of all of 2e. It doesn't really want to be D&D. It would be happier if it had Prince Valiant's rules.

Which would explain why, as someone shaped by 2E and that era of the game (especially Ravenloft and Dragonlance), I'm not really a D&D fan.

[snark/Not to be taken 100% seriously, although there's a grain of truth at bottom.]
Granted, given that D&D seems to mean "nasty, chaotic, amoral, antiheroic, power-mad and ruthless," I'm not that upset about it. It's also why I don't take any side in the edition wars--I'd be just fine if the OSR, 3E/Pathfinder and 4E destroyed one another. After all, isn't 'kill them and take their stuff' the essence of D&D? And aren't the Edition Wars just extending that from the tabletop to the hobby as a whole, in a metaphorical way? [/snark]

 

[Wormwood]

I loved Dark Sun back in the day, and am very enthusiastic to see the new version.

Like the good Professor, I don't really see a place for the Feywild in Athas. However, some of the ideas posted in this thread have made me much more receptive to the possibility.

If Wizards comes up with a novel approach that fits the setting, I'll happily embrace it. If they don't, then I can ignore it with zero difficulty. After all, it's easier for me to remove bits than add them.

 

[AllisterH]

I can think of several... Of course, they are all more generic settings with a wide variety of climates, terrains, cultures and such included. If you didn't like the tropes you were playing with, you simply have your characters travel somewhere else for a change, instead of starting a whole new game.

.

Query:

Are Al-Qadim and Kara-tur Forogtten Realms expansions or stand alone campaign settings in their own right?

The former, personally I see as its own separate setting while the latter was simply a regional supplement...

 

[Fifth Element]

I only ever played in one brief Dark Sun campaign back in the day, but I loved the heck out of the setting. As with everything 4E, I'll go with cautious optimism.

IIRC, Al-Qadim was a stand-alone setting. (Again, only played one brief campaign but loved the setting to pieces). Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but I don't have the energy to dig out my books at the moment.

Kara-Tur was specifically FR, but I always treated it as its own setting since I didn't play FR.

 

[Pbartender]

Query:

Are Al-Qadim and Kara-tur Forogtten Realms expansions or stand alone campaign settings in their own right?

The former, personally I see as its own separate setting while the latter was simply a regional supplement...

If I remember my TSR history right, you've got them backwards... Sort of.

Kara-tur first appeared in the original Oriental Adventures book in '85, I believe. While the intention was there from the beginning, it didn't officially become part of the Forgotten Realms until the FR boxed set came out two years later.

As far as I can remember, Al-Qadim had always been a sub-setting of the Forgotten Realms.

They were both meant to be regional supplements -- either as a part of teh Realms, or appropriately dropped into any other setting -- rather than stand-alone settings.

 

[Mouseferatu]

At the risk of irritating some FR fans...

Both of them were spiritually their own settings, and were more or less written that way, but were shoe-horned into FR for marketing purposes.

And no, I don't actually mean that as a slam against FR, but c'mon. There was no real cause for them to be part of anything else. There's nothing less "self-contained" about them than any other setting, and they were pretty much written to stand alone. There's no real good reason for them to have been shoved into FR (or any other pre-existing setting) other than either marketing and/or fear that a non-Western-focused setting wouldn't find an audience.

 

[I'm A Banana]

There was no real cause for them to be part of anything else. There's nothing less "self-contained" about them than any other setting, and they were pretty much written to stand alone. There's no real good reason for them to have been shoved into FR (or any other pre-existing setting) other than either marketing and/or fear that a non-Western-focused setting wouldn't find an audience.

...this holds remarkably true for the way I feel about the Feywild in Dark Sun, too. There's no real cause for Dark sun to have a feywild. It's not "missing" anything without a feywild. It stands without a feywild. There's no good reason for the feywild to be shoved into Dark Sun (or any other pre-existing setting) other than pointless dogmatism and/or fear that you're going to alienate purists.

I'd add that just as Kara-tur and Al-quadim and Maztica didn't add anything to an FR game (certainly they never warranted more than a token mention after that), the feywild won't add anything to a Dark Sun game.

And, like the spellplague, I think a feywild in Dark Sun may actually weaken the setting, making it, at core, have a remarkably different feel from the original setting.

Again, though, I have more hope than pessimism at this point.