DARK SUN - Your Plans?

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I like where they went with the DS races, but I do wish the Tarek became a PC race.

4e can make it happen rather well now. Tarek are the perfect role for goliaths, even more than mul, IMO.

 

[Mark Hope]

The 3.5 conversion in Dragon/Dungeon was a travesty, mostly (apparently) due to meddling by the editors (Dammit, Erik! Leave well enough alone!).

[ds fanboi nitpick]
Erik wasn't editor at the time - iirc, the editor was Matthew Sernett
[/ds fanboi nitpick]

All the same - some cool ideas in those articles imho. Elan as agents for the Order. Maenads arriving via the Black. Dromites as one of the kreen slave races mentioned in the 2e material. Blood obsidian. A nice map. Some cool art. Great monster writeups. A nifty alternate defiling sytem. Aaand some less successful changes too, lol.

Point is - even in the oft-derided Paizo conversion, there were plenty of gems (no doubt due to author Dave Noonan's genuine love of the setting). I agree with BluSponge in hoping that the material is closer to the original setting with lots of goodies to mine. If the Paizo conversion could offer as much as it did, I'm sure the new books will too.

 

[Scribe Ineti]

My 4e Eberron game will likely be heading into the epic tier by the time Dark Sun comes out, and I'll want to finish that before starting a new campaign, but I've already teased my players with a promo post on our forums that I'll be running a 2-3 session Dark Sun "pilot miniseries" to try out the setting and see how it goes. I'm not sure the grittier, less hopeful setting will appeal to them, but we'll see. If they like it, I'll put a larger scale campaign into motion.

I'll definitely pick up the suite of Dark Sun products either way.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm kind of pumped that this may be the first setting since Planescape that I can actually run out-of-the-box more or less. Eberron is neat, but it's not very distinct, and FR is kind of bland to me (unless I blow it up with Cthulu. ), but DS scratches my itches in a nice way.

I'm looking forward to what they're putting out. It sounds like the priorities are in good shape for this. At the moment, I expect to be able to run it right out of the box when the books are out. I'm excited for that.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

As for Dark SUun being too dark and gritty:
nah, that makes it more fun! DMs just need to be free and loose with it to not over oppress the players.
Templars are powerful, but woefully over-streched, corrupt, always in-fighting etc etc so they shouldn't be a monolithic "flawless" enemy.
They only come down like the hammers of Hell, if the PCs are dumb enough to cause major public disturbance etc. Otherwise it's more like having a corrupt city watch, or the Gestapo, depending on how the city is run etc.
PCs can find a "patron" templar to keep them safe, by doing "wet jobs", thefts, etc

And, when things are bad, that's when real heroes shine! it's harder and more important to do noble things on Athas, than the Realms, usually. Dark Sun "lost" vs the Big Bad Evil Guy's Doomsday plan...stopping the rot, or even reversing it is a major struggle, but a worthy one!
or the "heroes" can just be cut throat freebooters, gladiators, assassins or whatever
you don't have to live up to the heroic model of honour etc.

 

[Wik]

Silverblade - I liked the old weapon materials rule. And in old Dark Sun, you could have magical (or psionic) bone weapons. However, penalties to attack and damage are a big pain in the butt, but I want to encourage that metal items are better. A simple breakage rule works for me - if PCs break their normal weapon, well, they carry spares (hey, I remember in 2e, every character had multiple weapons... had to have a club for those skeletons!). That, to me, is a lot of fun. Plus, it's only a minor action.

Losing your magical weapon sucks, but it only applies for the rest of the combat. And then it's fine (you resharpen it, or whatever).

Anyways, I think it's a simple technique, and it's the one I have in mind - if the 4e design comes up with something better, I'll be taking it.

And KM - I have high hopes for this one, too. But I also know that sometimes, that can hurt me. So, I'm going into this with a "I'll have to do a lot of conversion, but the 4e book will help out with some ideas". Which I think will stop me from being hyper critical of it ("What!? They don't mention that thri-kreen prefer to eat elves! They've *DESTROYED* Dark Sun!").

***

In the past, my Dark Sun games have been very sandboxy. Usually, I'd give the PCs an adventure site they could explore ("The Castle by the Yellow Lake"), and only have it very loosely sketched out in my head. The PCs would have to get there, and I'd use meticulous Encounter tables to build up many mini adventures on the way (and often, these mini adventures would be pretty built up - I love "winging it"). The whole time, they'd discuss what they thought was waiting for them in the Castle By the Yellow Lake... and I'd pick and choose the ideas I liked the most, and run with that.

My personal favourite thing about Dark Sun is how it is a game that is always in motion. It deals with the three major adventure types - urban, dungeon, and wilderness. PCs can play around in an urban area. But when things got tough, they'd go out into the wilderness for awhile, do some exploration, and find a dungeon. Get some money... and find their way to a city. And repeat.

Lots of fun.

Also, my other favourite thing on Dark Sun (and something I *have* to preserve, 4e be damned!) is how easy it is to screw over the players (and how much they love it!). In 2e, you would functionally start the PCs off with leather armour and the equivalent of cursed weapons. After a couple of adventures, they'd work their way up to sort of okay armour. And they'd go crazy for metal weapons... items that are, compared to their normal world counterparts, starting equipment! Not to mention that if you did piecemeal armour, you could reward PCs with decent armour one piece at a time! Really, it slowed the power curve of the game down - plus, if you ignored some rules (Create Water!), even high level PCs would be afraid of the wilderness. Dark Sun was a game where I could keep the players poor, and they loved me for it.

 

[Derulbaskul]

My plans include:
- Buying the setting.
- Reading the setting.
- Drooling over the setting.
- Never playing the setting because we have two games going already which we quite like, and it seems like we have hardly any time anymore.
- Crying myself to sleep with the setting book under my pillow.

Cheers, -- N

This.

 

[I'm A Banana]

And KM - I have high hopes for this one, too. But I also know that sometimes, that can hurt me. So, I'm going into this with a "I'll have to do a lot of conversion, but the 4e book will help out with some ideas". Which I think will stop me from being hyper critical of it ("What!? They don't mention that thri-kreen prefer to eat elves! They've *DESTROYED* Dark Sun!").

Yeah, viewing it as something to loot for your own games rather than as The Way Things Are can be very helpful in realistically saying "Hey. What can I actually use in my game?"

For me, what I hope to be able to use in my game is the whole setting. I'm not tetchy on specifics, but I'm also not one to shy away from criticism (heh, THAT should be obvious. ), so if there's stuff to criticize, I'll do it, and if there's stuff to praise, I'll probably do that, too. I don't expect there to be much to criticize, and the big things that could destroy DS for me (such as turning it into a kitchen sink) seem to be things that the design team is well aware of and on the watch-out for. I'm more worried about turning thri-kreen into peace-loving apple farmers than I am about omitting the elf stuff. Omissions don't bother me that much, I guess -- I'm of the opinion that I can still play a solid Planescape game in 4e, after all, so even the new cosmology and ignoring the old canon hasn't ruined that for me. I'd like to think my threshold for change for DS is about the same as for my favorite setting: don't change the way I play, and I'll be happy.

Still, more on-topic, I think that regardless of if I'm actually engaging in a DS campaign, I would use the details in any game I ran. "You wanna be a defiler? OK, no problem!" or "I'm going to use this hideous mutant monster!" are par for the course -- not limited to Dark Sun, I'll throw them in wherever.

 

[Obryn]

Doesn't your list go directly against WotCs policy of "Everything is core", meaning that the new Dark Sun will contain everything which has been published already including gods, all magic items, warforged, etc.?

It might, or it might not. I can almost guarantee nothing except a DM's ruling will forbid players from playing any given class or race - but it may be handled like non-standard Dragonmarks in Eberron. That is, the book will note that there are no gnomes still known to be living on Athas. And note that if a player runs a gnome, they're probably the only one on Athas and ... dang, that's huge! Prepare for it to be crazy in your campaign, and for a genocidal Sorcerer King to finish their job.

I love Dark Sun and love the original box set, but think there's a chance the new one will be an even better setting. There's a chance, too, that it will be worse. Regardless, it will be an ideal toolbox from which I can loot mechanics to run whatever version of Dark Sun I please.

-O

 

[karlindel]

I'm planning on picking up a copy of the campaign setting, reading it for fun and possibly stealing some ideas from it. If it's really good, I'll probably try to run a campaign in it at some point.