Darksun Teasers

[Obryn]

All the sorcerer-kings, being dragons, or partial dragons of Athas, and having numerous harems through their incredibly long lifespans may have inadvertantly spawned the dragonborn.

Honestly, as someone above pointed out, Dark Sun has a deus ex machina already built into the setting for new races: the Pristine Tower.

-O

 

[SSquirrel]

Okay, folks, here's the thing...
*snips Ari's long, thoughtful post*

We'll have none of your reasonable logic here mister!! I really don't understand the issue either. Clerics worshipped no gods and instead were focused on the elements, which we will have access to via the Elemental Chaos, which also has Primordials (aka elemental lords). Oh no, Dray might be Dragonborn! Who cares?

Dark Sun is being made for people who are playing 4th Edition. There are many of us with very fond memories of DS. When did the Cleansing Wars come about exactly? Was that part of the Revised box set or one of the other later books? I ask b/c I stopped picking up Dark Sun around teh time of the Revised box set b/c I thought the changes were terrible and the whole Cleansing Wars thing and Rajaat was pretty lame. So if they remove some of that, great. Retcon away.

The designers think they can make Dark Sun a fun and interesting place for peopel playing 4th Edition. I never expected everything to be teh sdame and I think it's silly if anyone ever did. We're talking 2 editions later people, D&D has changed a lot since the early 90s.

Oh yeah, Firefox, grey text, white background, annoying to read.


EDIT: Oh yeah, and I'm all for a logical thought process being used to examine things like geography and terrain and seeing how these things happen in the real world. Explaining the Sea of Silt was always interesting, b/c you would usually end up with one person that had some background that would have them disputing it which would lead to "look dude its magic", which gets really old. Dragons Bowl as old supervolcano? Awesome, that even makes some sense. Sounds good, make it so, roll on. Nothing major here.

 

[catsclaw227]

Honestly, as someone above pointed out, Dark Sun has a deus ex machina already built into the setting for new races: the Pristine Tower.

Yep.

And, what I don't understand is why there would be so much hate if WOTC added a race or two to Athas anyway. Didn't TSR do this themselves as they revised the setting?

 

[catsclaw227]

The designers think they can make Dark Sun a fun and interesting place for peopel playing 4th Edition. I never expected everything to be teh sdame and I think it's silly if anyone ever did. We're talking 2 editions later people, D&D has changed a lot since the early 90s.

<snip browser stuff>

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I'm all for a logical thought process being used to examine things like geography and terrain and seeing how these things happen in the real world. Explaining the Sea of Silt was always interesting, b/c you would usually end up with one person that had some background that would have them disputing it which would lead to "look dude its magic", which gets really old. Dragons Bowl as old supervolcano? Awesome, that even makes some sense. Sounds good, make it so, roll on. Nothing major here.

This. Too.

 

[Pseudonym]

Again, MOST people are seeing black text. A minority (but enough to be meaningful) are seeing gray. So, I am not sure what is going on, but I am nearly certain it was not intentionally gray.

I saw grey text on a white background, fwiw, but it wasn't difficult to read; at least not as difficult as some other posts would indicate.

 

[Rechan]

And to repeat as above, Dark Sun is being made for 4th Edition.

If you don't like 4e, why the hell should you care?

 

[SSquirrel]

The other big thing I'm worrying about is the resource model of Dark Sun. 4e is very much a gamist perspective on things, where treasure parcels are synced up to fit with equivalent-level magic items. Dark Sun, in my mind, has always been a game about scavenging for resources, where PCs are rewarded small treasures that prevent them from becoming rather rich. There are no magic item stores in Dark Sun (or, rather, they're small scale and illegal). I'd be a bit bummed if 4e Dark Sun was a game where PCs could buy and sell magic items, and by 6th or 7th level had every item slot filled with a magic item of some sort.

The math for leveling is very clear in 4E and has been balanced very ssytematically. The designers have even talked at length about how you could take the bonuses you would gain from items and roll them into the levels, run a game with no magic items, and see no problems. I doubt we'll see anything as extreme as that in Dark Sun, as that would render books like Adventurer's Vault useless, but it isn't a hard thing to imagine that they might boost the progression slightly and reduce the magic item progress. You would need less of them and, after all, those who live on Athas are tougher and hardier b/c they have to be. This reflects that.

 

[Wik]

The math for leveling is very clear in 4E and has been balanced very ssytematically. The designers have even talked at length about how you could take the bonuses you would gain from items and roll them into the levels, run a game with no magic items, and see no problems. I doubt we'll see anything as extreme as that in Dark Sun, as that would render books like Adventurer's Vault useless, but it isn't a hard thing to imagine that they might boost the progression slightly and reduce the magic item progress. You would need less of them and, after all, those who live on Athas are tougher and hardier b/c they have to be. This reflects that.

My honest guess is they'll use legendary training and the like (from DMG 2) to fill in the Magic Item gap. If they do that, I'm golden. It doesn't really bug me too much, though, because I'm going to cut out magic items for the most part in my home Dark Sun games anyway.

Just one of those things, where since I'm not using so many magical items, every page devoted to items is a page that would be of better use to me on something else.

A minor point, though. I can't convey just how excited I am for Dark Sun 4th edition. Most of my group can't wait for it.

 

[abyssaldeath]

I love Darksun. I don't even really know why, but I do. The only thing about 2e Darksun that I didn't like were the food and water rules. I get why the rules were there, but I always felt like they got in the way. Of course, I feel the same way about the encumbrance rules so that may have something to do with it. Hopefully 4e changes that aspect of Darksun.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

Again, MOST people are seeing black text. A minority (but enough to be meaningful) are seeing gray. So, I am not sure what is going on, but I am nearly certain it was not intentionally gray.

Firefox 3.5 on Ubuntu - Grey text on white. Very hard to read

Don't think we are the minority, I think WotC needs to take a look at this.