dark sun novels: where should i start?

[vagabundo]

That's my take, as well.

Back when I DMed my Dark Sun campaign I've read all of the novels and (most) were extremely important to be able to properly portrait the setting - especially Prism Pentad. If I'd only bought them for a good read, I'd probably have been disappointed and stopped reading after the third novel or so.

If you guys are reading a novel for gaming purposes how do you do it?

Do you take notes and work up ideas or just take the general flavor away from them and then to your game?

 

[Obryn]

I re-read the Prism Pentad not all too long ago. At least, the first book or two... I don't completely remember. I love the Dark Sun setting... I think it's an outstanding and even somewhat visionary fantasy world, miles away from most anything else that's come out before or since.

At any rate, the Pentad is far from the worst gaming series out there. I could pretty easily overlook the writing and characterization for its excellent portrayal of a fairly well-defined, exotic world. More than the box sets, they provide a glimpse into what life on Athas would be like.

However, like most, I absolutely hate how they more or less blow up the setting by the end of them. "Look, D&D players! Here's a compelling, detailed, exotic setting with a ton of stuff your players can do! Now, please sit back while we write novels to do it all for you, so you don't need to trouble yourself with an actual campaign. Don't worry, there'll be plenty of water eventually!"

-O

 

[Obryn]

If you guys are reading a novel for gaming purposes how do you do it?

Do you take notes and work up ideas or just take the general flavor away from them and then to your game?

I never take notes. It's all about the flavor - and maybe some plot ideas or character ideas.

-O

 

[Alzrius]

[snip]

Lynn Abbey's Dark Sun books canon deviation was a result of this environment, not her disregard for canon. She wasn't kept in the loop, and TSR's RPG department had no incentive for them to overcome departmental inertia and bring her in to the loop.

This is a fairly good excuse, but I don't think that gives her a free pass for how her books deviate from the canon.

The actual Dark Sun materials were already on the market when she wrote her books. It's not like she really needed TSR's secret notes on the setting or anything...she could just have picked up the boxed set and read through it, maybe even a supplement or two.

Authors do research on subjects that they write about all the time. It doesn't seem that unreasonable that Lynn could have looked at some of the Dark Sun products to understand the setting better. Communication with the "insiders" at TSR would have helped, but if the fans can have such a dedicated sense of the canon without ever seeing such material, so can the people who write the books.

Does this mean they are good in general, or just the best of the Dark Sun novels? How well did they stay on canon or was there even much canon at the time they were being written?

The books were pretty good in a general sense; I certainly didn't think that they were badly written. They were easily the best of the Dark Sun novels, IMHO. As I mentioned, I particularly liked how flawed the characters were; that seemed to be the best way of portraying what life on Athas was like - Sadira was willing to defile to cast spells when she really needed to, Astinus initially saw no problem with keeping slaves, etc.

They stayed in canon fairly well, though there were a few snafus (though it never got as horrible as it did in other books). For example, in an early book a halfling uses arcane magic, something that's retconned in a later book. Likewise, defiling magic is presented as something that preservers can use if they want to cast spells more quickly/powerfully, which the rules didn't quite support at the time (though later revisions tried to make that more correct). Overall, however, the books kept quite close to the canon, and even set future canon for the setting. I really think they're the best Dark Sun novels to date.

 

[megamania]

allo

i'd like to start reading the dark sun novels. where should i start?

messy

* Prism Pentad - Troy Denning
1. The Verdant Passage (October 1991), (ISBN 1-56076-121-0)

Drops into the middle of what jump started the campaign. The characters here relate to the most important social and activist groups within the campaign.

2. The Crimson Legion (April 1992), (ISBN 1-56076-260-8)

Leaps directly from the novel into war time. The word "war" seems to be an exaggeration and the outcome seems wrong when considering we talking about several roughly mid-level characters leading many under 4th level vs an experienced army with a 40+ level leader. If this battle was done within DnD rules it would have ended VERY differently but that's novels. Okay read.

3. The Amber Enchantress (October 1992), (ISBN 1-56076-236-5)

Begins to describe the past history of the world and its main antagonist. We get to travel through the valley a bit and explore somewhat the differences of societies and races. The super empowerment of the lead character seems wrong but then again the other characters (foes) are all 40+ levels themselves.

4. The Obsidian Oracle (June 1993), (ISBN 1-56076-603-4)

Okay. More about the world and its races. Much about Silt and giants. Lead up to the next novel

5. The Cerulean Storm (September 1993), (ISBN 1-56076-642-5)
Frankly a convient wrap up to a story where the bad guys should have won easily. 50+ level characters are destroyed with one blow. Very over the top game wise.

Over all- to get a feel for the game world this is the best bet but what started good quickly power leaps into something that is unrealistic (even for fantasy DnD) leaves one wondering and wanting more for the guys removed than the survivors.


* Tribe of One - Simon Hawke
1. The Outcast (November 1993), (ISBN 1-56076-676-X)

Okay book. I actually did like it but as someone else mentioned earlier- Darksun is about grit and despair. Survival is key. The hero of the book is so powerful and so good he doesn't fit well but that was the intention. It gave DMs a way to possibly make Darksun less dark. It also gives the origins (that rarely make sence) of the forces of good.

2. The Seeker (April 1994), (ISBN 1-56076-701-4)

More of the above.

3. The Nomad (October 1994), (ISBN 1-56076-702-2)

I like the villian and the site of the final battle the most here. The way the main character is treated at the end bothers me. So much time related / pockets of ancient time that it somehow takes away from the Darksun

Overall, An decent read but not Darksun.

* Chronicles of Athas - Various Authors
1. The Brazen Gambit (July 1994), by Lynn Abbey (ISBN 1-56076-872-X)

Introduces a character that I like but I get lost in the storyline at times. Seems more like a lead up to the final book in the series.

2. The Darkness Before the Dawn (February 1995), by Ryan Hughes (ISBN 0-7869-0104-7)

?!? Level one people become gods?!? Psionics at the most powerful levels that includes traveling to..... Central park, NYC roughly 1995? Ruined the entire book with that section alone.

3. The Broken Blade (May 1995), by Simon Hawke (ISBN 0-7869-0137-3)

Follow up to the Tribe of One. The fact I honestly don't remember what happens in it is a poor sign.

4. Cinnabar Shadows (July 1995), by Lynn Abbey (ISBN 0-7869-0181-0)

Like the first book, it feels like an unneccessary intro to the final book. It was okay.

5. The Rise & Fall of a Dragon King (April 1996), by Lynn Abbey (ISBN 0-7869-0476-3)

The BEST book of the series but yeah- it gets away from Darksun's canon material but name a resource book that didn't.

The last series of books was okay with the exception of the last book which I enjoyed completely. The ending was a bit "convinent" but how else to end it?

thanx

I doubt this helped a lot but what it comes down to is-

Back story to the campaign world?

Neat but impossible character that doesn't fit in his world?

Series of lead-ins to the NEW (possibly improved) origin of the campaign world?


as another note- read each book twice but Rise and Fall I have read at least 4 times (research for time lines)

 

[megamania]

If you guys are reading a novel for gaming purposes how do you do it?

Do you take notes and work up ideas or just take the general flavor away from them and then to your game?

I read the books twice at least.

The first time I noted on the inside cover a page and name/item/place of interest. This was my general guide to the Darksun campaign.

I reread them later for creating a timeline. For the most part there was a time line that was kept.

When ever there a conflict in times / places/ people I used the best fit for the series and what I had envisioned. Thus much of Rise and Fall's creation of the Sorcerer-Kings was kept and overruled the prior origins. Over a score- there were more races and destroyers of these races that what was in the core books and novels. I had fun creating and describing these "forgotten" sorcerer-kings and queens.

 

[Jhaelen]

If you guys are reading a novel for gaming purposes how do you do it?

Do you take notes and work up ideas or just take the general flavor away from them and then to your game?

I made lots of notes.
I noted down monster names and created stats for them (and replaced them with official ones after they'd been published, e.g. in Dragon articles).
I added descriptions of the city states and other places of interest and I noted all of the names of characters to both use them as npcs and add them to the resource files for my random name generator app.

I also accumulated a ton of house rules - enough to fill a three ring binder, e.g. I created complete stats for all the (monstrous) humanoid races, different spell lists for clerics, etc.

I'd like to note that since I also recommened my players to read the novels, I had decided right from the start that I wouldn't use the novels' metaplot as written in my campaign.

In my campaign Rikus was killed when he attempted to slay the sorcerer king of Tyr. The sorcerer king wasn't killed but his ritual was botched, so he was forced to retreat and later returned as a dracolich.

The Revised Setting was a major disappointment and combined with the horrible revised psionics rules eventually caused the campaign to die. Looking back I should have simply continued playing and stopped buying supplements that had become useless to me...

 

[vagabundo]

Thanks for the ideas guys. I've always been really interesting in running a dark sun campaign - it is an amazing place - but have been a bit daunted at portraying the world as it is very different from a standard DND fantasy. And the adventures didnt help as they set about destroying what I like about the place.

 

[Obryn]

Thanks for the ideas guys. I've always been really interesting in running a dark sun campaign - it is an amazing place - but have been a bit daunted at portraying the world as it is very different from a standard DND fantasy. And the adventures didnt help as they set about destroying what I like about the place.

It's a fun setting and system, but you need to walk a fine line between overwhelming the players and making it a cakewalk.

(1) Starting out in slavery is fine. Being thrown repeatedly into slavery is not.

(2) The world is basically a big desert, and if you don't pay attention, that's all it will look like to your players.

(3) If you are running in 2e, be sure you grab a copy (PDF, since the actual book was $$$ on eBay last I checked) of Earth, Air, Fire, Water (or whatever it's called). Otherwise, elemental clerics will have very few spells.

There's a lot to do in the campaign if you give it a structure of some sort. Both the Veiled Society and Dune Traders give some excellent ideas... The typical root-through-dungeons-finding-treasure gig needs some tweaking to work in Dark Sun.

-O

 

[Melba Toast]

I was kind of enjoying the Tribe of One series until, in the middle of the third book, Sorak actually sits down at a game table and plays himself playing D&D.

I sh*t you not.

It actually happens.

I threw the book across the room.

Here's an actual quoted text from the book (pg. 116). Here, Sorak is observing a "game" in a Casino in Salt View:

"The first this they notice was that no cards were being used, nor were there playing pieces. There were no wheels or boards, and players were in a team. Instead of a dealer, there was a sort of gamemaster who directed the play. Each player assumes a character... The gamemaster then presents them with a scenario... the game that had stopped to watch happened to be called, ironically, "The Lost Treasure of Bodach".

It was ironic, because Sorak was searching for the Lost Treasure of Bodach. And you see, Sorak then plays the game, rolls polyhedral dice and everything, then, it turns out, he's the first player to ever "win" the game. Turns out the game was a "test".

Now, if this were just a comic aside, it would be fine, but this goes on for 20 pages! The worst part was this comes midway through the last book of the series. By this point, anyone who read this far was heavily invested in the character and the story. This chapter is a mockery of your time and money.

****

I'm less critical of the Prism Pentad series. It's not Shakespeare, but Dark Sun was Troy Denning's world, and the books are respectful.

I haven't read (or even seen) any of the other novels but I liked some of the short stories that came with the modules.