Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Windjammer" data-source="post: 5161784" data-attributes="member: 60075">So am I, and I expect the setting to receive a major overhaul due to the implied level bandwidth of 4E which frankly wasn't there in 2E and certainly not in the original Dark Sun. My own Dark Sun campaigns in the 90s never had the PCs hit more than level 8. It was a gritty fight for survival for them, trying to cut out their own nîche in a forbidding, unforgiving world. The setting started them out at the lowest of possible corners, with the fewest of possible resources - recall that short story in the original box, which has the protagonist not only tricked to a miserable fate but (before that) glorify something as mundane as a piece of glas bereft of actual magical properties? Recall the starting adventure which had the PCs starting out as slaves on a vessel? That's it, lowest social point of entry, little hope to advance.Now I'm not saying that 4E can't give you any of that; in fact, one of the plot lines in Draconomicon 2's suggested campaign arcs has the PCs start out as slaves in a vessel. But that arc quickly progresses them beyond that, and that's what I'm talking about. Dark Sun 4E will be about a 30 level experience, and thereby of necessity it needs to address and include stuff that the original setting never did (or at least, not out of the box). 3E Dark Sun - in the Paizo magazines - had Dave Noonan highly hesitant about including stats for the Athas Dragon Kings, the implication being that that'd be way out of what the PCs can take on, ought to take on.4E will be different. 4E Dark Sun will be a setting where the PCs can be the heroes... of the whole world... changing the whole setting, from start to finish, and basically be the big names everyone's talking about and will be talking about in the next 500 years. That's quite a change of pace. Instead of no-names "will die by level 8" it's "yeah, you gonna be the gods of this world... level 30, baby".It's exactly what happened in Eberron 4E. Eberron 3E had a presumed level cap around level 15, what with few antagonists, NPC organizations etc., statted up in that area - literally, PCs hit level 15 and there were perhaps the Dusk Lords in the setting but nothing else. So 4E Eberron comes up with this major plot line... the PCs are going to be the ones fulfilling DA PROPHECY... as in... THE MAJOR PROPHECY OF THIS WORLD...! 11 !! Yeah, because seriously, you can't take a previous edition setting with a low-level cap like that and simply assume it will cater to 4E's 30 levels of play. You just can't.So there, that's Dark Sun 4E for you. We'll get it all - high level foes, intergalactic mayhem, fey gods vs. primordial titans, and what not.I suggest to not be too shocked by it. Enjoy the ride. Enjoy the change of pace, the change of premise. Ask yourself... how would YOU expand Dark Sun to make it a level 1-30 setting? Think hard. And then give the dev's some credit for coming up with apparently interesting stuff that may even merit consideration. And you know what? If you don't like it, as in: not any of it, just level cap your 4E Dark Sun campaigns at level 15 (or earlier) as we always did.</blockquote>

Verification