Dark Sun in Dungeon #110

[Estlor]

What I expect is this:

The Expanded Psionics Handbook, Darksun in Dragon, and Darksun in Dungeon will all interlock to some degree. What I mean by this is elements of Dark Sun, it's races, and the psionic culture will show up in the EPH. Then everything that is Dark Sun but can't be pasturized into "core" will be in Dragon and Dungeon.

Of course, what you should expect from Dragon is mechanics and nothing else. The tiny nubbins of flavor that show up in Dragon will be just to explain what a Defiler is, what a Preserver is, and so forth. Don't look for any info on nations, cultures, races, whatever that isn't mechanical in some aspect.

Dungeon ought to delve slightly more into the flavor of the setting, but again, don't expect much more than mechanics.

Reason being is this: Paizo is attempting to bring the mechanics of DS into 3.5e so gamers with old DS books can still use them, just referring to Dragon and Dungeon for mechanics. If you don't have old DS sourcebooks, don't expect to be able to play DS from those two issues alone.

Likewise, don't expect a "direct conversion" of mechanics. DS will be converted to 3.5e, not 3.5e to DS. That means some things will change to encorporate how the EPH handles things and so forth.

Bottom line - don't get your hopes up too high. It'll be passible for running the setting if you have an extensive DS library on your bookshelf, but it won't be the end-all be-all for newbies. This is Dragon and Dungeon we're talking about here, not a 400 page DSCS.

 

[Staffan]

In the same way that the Black and the Gray are window dressing for Dark Sun.

That's not a bad comparison. The Black and Gray were not described in game material until Defilers & Preservers - one of the last books to come out for Dark Sun. There was stuff about them in the novels, but as for the game they were rather tangential.

I liked the Spelljammer minigame. It provided rules for spelljamming ships (that didn't punish people for being spellcasters), while providing a setting that I think would have been more successful than the old SJ stuff, had it been of the same size. The major problem with original Spelljammer was that a large part of it was dedicated to "hey, here's a way you can travel from Greyhawk to Dragonlance - isn't that neat?" rather than giving it an identity of its own (they tried to fix that with Astromundi Cluster, but that was both sucky and too late). Spider Moon does give it that identity.

 

[Ranger REG]

Bottom line - don't get your hopes up too high. It'll be passible for running the setting if you have an extensive DS library on your bookshelf, but it won't be the end-all be-all for newbies. This is Dragon and Dungeon we're talking about here, not a 400 page DSCS.

We pretty much got the gist of the whole thing. But I'm still getting them anyway.

I used to buy Dungeon/Polyhedron for the sole purpose of mini-games, but these days I have to be selective.

 

[Alzrius]

That's not a bad comparison. The Black and Gray were not described in game material until Defilers & Preservers - one of the last books to come out for Dark Sun. There was stuff about them in the novels, but as for the game they were rather tangential.

Actually, Spatula was probably right in that the comparrison wasn't that good at all. You could have a DS game without the Gray and the Black (since they mostly related to planar travel), but you cannot have an SJ game without crystal spheres and the phlogiston (you can try, but then you get that crappy mini-game again).

I liked the Spelljammer minigame. It provided rules for spelljamming ships (that didn't punish people for being spellcasters), while providing a setting that I think would have been more successful than the old SJ stuff, had it been of the same size. The major problem with original Spelljammer was that a large part of it was dedicated to "hey, here's a way you can travel from Greyhawk to Dragonlance - isn't that neat?" rather than giving it an identity of its own (they tried to fix that with Astromundi Cluster, but that was both sucky and too late). Spider Moon does give it that identity.

Spider Moon solves, what admittedly was probably the largest, problem of the original setting, but in doing so only makes things worse. Giving the setting a feel of its own by utterly eliminating 99% of what it had to make it unique before is more than overkill - its madness. It's the equivalent of cutting off someone's hand to stop any chance of infection from a papercut; it solves the initial problem, but ultimately, more has been lost than gained.

 

[Matafuego]

What are the Black and the Gray???
I read a lot of things about DS but never heard of that

 

[Alzrius]

What are the Black and the Gray???
I read a lot of things about DS but never heard of that

The Black and the Gray are referenced a lot near the end of the Prism Pentad series of novels, and are given pretty good treatment in the supplement Defilers & Preservers: The Wizards of Athas.

Basically, the crystal sphere around Athas has no Border Ethereal. Instead, its nearest planes are the Gray, and the Black.

The Gray is what replaces the Border Ethereal. It's a realm of mostly shadow and little substance. It is also the place where creatures on Athas (indeed, in the entire sphere) go when they die. Undead also draw their power from the Gray. It is the Gray that makes it so difficult to reach other planes of existence; you have a 95% chance of failure when trying to reach the Astral/Outer Planes, and a 66% chance of failure when trying to reach the Deep Ethereal/Inner Planes (failure here means that you end up in the Gray instead of your destination; these values also go for beings trying to plane shift to Athas from another plane). If you get there when trying to plane shift to another plane, you can make a check once per day to go back to your origin point. Being in the Gray is difficult for living beings, who take (IIRC) Con damage from being there.

The Black is a realm of pure shadow and no substance. It's much less understood. Creatures of shadow draw their power from the place, as do the mages who dare to tap into its power (IIRC, such mages are in the supplement mentioned above). Rajaat is imprisoned in a subsection of the Black, known as the Hollow.

 

[Matafuego]

Thanks a lot ... never heard of that

 

[Mach2.5]

It's odd that you say this, but then below mention that you think he'll do a respectable job by using the same techniques that made the SJ mini-game suck so horribly.

Sorry, but I allow everyone to have a few hits and a few misses under their belt. All in all, I've like most of Noonan's work. Just not the Spelljammer conversion.

I want to play 3.5e, plus Dark Sun. Not Dark Sun Converted.

Amen to that. That's why I've stuck around with the Athas.org conversion of Dark Sun (with my own personal tweaks). Its not a 100% purist conversion. Strutinan made a decent purist conversion of the DS rules, but you'd have to track him down off the WOTC boards (and likely beg and plead) for it.

That said, I'm sure Dark Sun 3.5 will not make everyone happy.

I would be shocked to the point of having a massive coronary if any conversion for any setting actually found majority appeal. To my knowledge, there's at least 4 major conversions of Dark Sun out there:The Burnt World of Athas , Strutinan's conversion, Shei-Nad's d20 style conversion at The World of Athas, and one other that I've lost track of, not to mention the incomplete conversion by Steffan here at Enworld (as an aside, hope you haven't given up on it yet, Steffan ). Couple all this with the Dragon/Dungeon conversions as well as the hundreds of rules tweaks at the WOTC Dark Sun boards and I'd say there's more than enough material out there that would appeal to the majority.

 

[irdeggman]

The problem I have with Dragon and Dungeon is that the way the magazines are structured this will be a one time only appearance. Paizo can't make a profit if they devote any more time to something like this.

So it won't be supported by the general Dark Sun devotees due to that fact. This is why I like the process and in general the product that Athas.org put out.

And I'm not even going to go into the legal issues here. The "Official" fan sites had a contract with WotC that they had exclusive authority to publish any 3rd party info on their setting. Since Dragon and Dungeon are now no longer owned by WotC anything they issue is considered 3rd party.

There has been a lot of discussion on these topics at the WotC OtherWorlds boards (both the Dark Sun and Birthright ones).

Having done that little venting exercise, I'm glad that some attention is being given to these abandoned worlds - I only wish that Paizo had involved the "Official" fansites more prior to proceeding down the path they chose. Oh yeah it really ticks me off that Paizo insists on puting the label "100% Official D&D" on Dragon, specifically in this case. Also the info they include is generally not OGC so people can't 'freely' use it.

 

[SSquirrel]

How many times do we have to go through the same stuff? Flavor text doesn't need to be converted. You want phlogiston back in the game BAM it's in there. You want crystal spheres? Wonderful they're in there. The minigame was good IMO as it gave basic rules and a nice small interesting setting.

Polyhedron is NOT the place you go for a fully fledged setting, it's a starter for a creative DM. Most of the people who were excited about the SJ minigame coming out will just pull out their old material and add it to the new 3E bits they were given and play SJ...which is EXACTLY how it should work.

I always thought crystal spheres were kinda stupid and felt that spelljamming should allow you to more easily go between the various realms. I could always imagine the craziness of someone jamming and running across athas or vice versa with an athasian templar discovering say the Realms. He reports back to his Sorceror King and then you start seeing tons of jamming ships built for an invasion of the realms by the world of Athas. Heh.

Hagen