D&D 5E Dark Sun Spiritual Successor on Kickstarter: Red Dawn: Into the Dawnlands

[humble minion]

To be fair, original Dark Sun was very flaky on the ecological front as well. Where all the crops grew to feed these big city-states in the middle of the desert, and the gigantic draft-mekkilots, giants etc that roamed everywhere. What fuel was burned given the near-complete absence of wood. Why the silt stayed in the Silt Sea rather than blowing absolutely everywhere. And so on and so on.

 

[Zardnaar]

To be fair, original Dark Sun was very flaky on the ecological front as well. Where all the crops grew to feed these big city-states in the middle of the desert, and the gigantic draft-mekkilots, giants etc that roamed everywhere. What fuel was burned given the near-complete absence of wood. Why the silt stayed in the Silt Sea rather than blowing absolutely everywhere. And so on and so on.

They had a very low population in an area the size of Colorado.

 

[squibbles]

To be fair, original Dark Sun was very flaky on the ecological front as well. Where all the crops grew to feed these big city-states in the middle of the desert, and the gigantic draft-mekkilots, giants etc that roamed everywhere. What fuel was burned given the near-complete absence of wood. Why the silt stayed in the Silt Sea rather than blowing absolutely everywhere. And so on and so on.

It's not perfect, but if you make reasonable assumptions and work out the numbers, Dark Sun is somewhat plausible and quite verisimilitudinous.

 

[Staffan]

To be fair, original Dark Sun was very flaky on the ecological front as well. Where all the crops grew to feed these big city-states in the middle of the desert, and the gigantic draft-mekkilots, giants etc that roamed everywhere. What fuel was burned given the near-complete absence of wood. Why the silt stayed in the Silt Sea rather than blowing absolutely everywhere. And so on and so on.

As for feeding the cities, each city was surrounded by a "verdant belt" maybe 5 miles in diameter, with scrub plains some distance beyond that. For example:

The original box also makes mention of rare storms in the Sea of Silt that spread a haze everywhere within 50 miles where you can basically only hunker down and hope you find shelter. However, given the small scale of the setting, that would hit every city-state other than Urik and Tyr. But I'll chalk that up to the designers not really considering how small they made the original setting. The distance between Urik and Draj in the picture above is about 150 miles (or 180 along the road). That's about the distance from Berlin to Hamburg, or London to Sheffield – some distance away, but not exactly the other end of the world.

But yeah, it's weird that in the Horrible Desert Setting, you get lots and lots of really big monsters. If you look at real-world deserts, that's not really what happens. Big animals are mainly found in areas where food is abundant, whereas deserts mostly have small animals that have an easy time feeding themselves.

 

[Zardnaar]

As for feeding the cities, each city was surrounded by a "verdant belt" maybe 5 miles in diameter, with scrub plains some distance beyond that. For example:
View attachment 142831
The original box also makes mention of rare storms in the Sea of Silt that spread a haze everywhere within 50 miles where you can basically only hunker down and hope you find shelter. However, given the small scale of the setting, that would hit every city-state other than Urik and Tyr. But I'll chalk that up to the designers not really considering how small they made the original setting. The distance between Urik and Draj in the picture above is about 150 miles (or 180 along the road). That's about the distance from Berlin to Hamburg, or London to Sheffield – some distance away, but not exactly the other end of the world.

But yeah, it's weird that in the Horrible Desert Setting, you get lots and lots of really big monsters. If you look at real-world deserts, that's not really what happens. Big animals are mainly found in areas where food is abundant, whereas deserts mostly have small animals that have an easy time feeding themselves.

People think you can't farm deserts.
You can you're just not going to be able to feed millions of people or bulk Cattle.

Darksun didn't have that so it's somewhat plausible. It rains in the ringing mountains and water flows underground.

Tyr region is more abundant than parts of the Sahara which is what people tend to think of as deserts.

It's more like parts of the Sahel, Libya or Hejaz in Saudi Arabia vs deep Sahara.

 

[GreyLord]

People think you can't farm deserts.
You can you're just not going to be able to feed millions of people or bulk Cattle.

Darksun didn't have that so it's somewhat plausible. It rains in the ringing mountains and water flows underground.

Tyr region is more abundant than parts of the Sahara which is what people tend to think of as deserts.

It's more like parts of the Sahel, Libya or Hejaz in Saudi Arabia vs deep Sahara.

Utah, Arizona, and Nevada (Great American Desert) have an amazingly large amount of agriculture in those areas, with a lot of Meat production.

California is technically desert in much of it once you are away from the Coast and it produces more food than much of the rest of the world (though I also think they are having massive water problems due to them trying to grow food in the desert as well over the past score of years).

 

[Staffan]

Utah, Arizona, and Nevada (Great American Desert) have an amazingly large amount of agriculture in those areas, with a lot of Meat production.

California is technically desert in much of it once you are away from the Coast and it produces more food than much of the rest of the world (though I also think they are having massive water problems due to them trying to grow food in the desert as well over the past score of years).

Current American agriculture isn't really a good point of comparison, because (at least as far as I know) that relies a lot on water diverted from its original sources.

But herding is generally a thing you do in areas of marginal ability to provide food. Basically, if you can't grow wheat (or other crops easily converted to human-edible food), you can grow grass/scrub and have animals eat that, and then you eat the animal instead.

 

[Mordhau]

This is the area of the world I would be looking at for a Dark Sun environmental analogue.

Or the Tarim basin in what is now western China.

 

[Zardnaar]

Utah, Arizona, and Nevada (Great American Desert) have an amazingly large amount of agriculture in those areas, with a lot of Meat production.

California is technically desert in much of it once you are away from the Coast and it produces more food than much of the rest of the world (though I also think they are having massive water problems due to them trying to grow food in the desert as well over the past score of years).

It's also done with modern technology.

 

[Zardnaar]

This is the area of the world I would be looking at for a Dark Sun environmental analogue.

View attachment 142832

Or the Tarim basin in what is now western China.

View attachment 142833

Tyr region gets more water than Tarim basin (probably).

It's why I used Libya and Hejaz. No rivers but highlands get rainfall an there's underground aquifers. Reasonably small populations not that long ago.