Darksun Teasers

[Silverblade The Ench]

1) I'm a HUGE Dark Sun fan, that and Spelljammer are my faves, followed (in no set order) by Ravenloft, Undermountain, 1st boxed set Realms and Planescape as my fave settings.
I've been making art about Dark Sun for about 8 years now, fyi. (though my early efforts were poo, hehe)
So, I am NOT a "Johnny Come Lately" to Dark Sun. I've been playing Dark Sun adventures since it was released, I even ran an Athasian campaign online for several years.

2) I love 4th ed. I've played since 1st ed, but I love 4th ed, anyone who doesn't like that choice may have forgotten that D&D is supposed to be about fun, not bitterly clinging to nostalgia.
If you genuinely love 1st, 2nd or 3rd ed because it's more fun for you, good luck to you, enjoy! But many folk cling to the prior editions out of, as said, badly thought out nostalgia. You can never ever "go back", I adored 1st ed, but I was a teenager, it was new etc.
I don't mean to start an edition war, but, when comparing the old Dark Sun, to new release, please understand that kind of thing People, gamers too, often view things through rose coloured glasses...

Original Dark Sun was marred by the messed up psionic system, remember.

the early 1st ed AD&D adventures were HORRENDOUSLY badly set out, for example: tight blocks of text etc, ugh!! That wasn't the fault of Mr Gygax etc, it was all new, you don't make things perfect with your 1st effort, it's been a long learning curve. Things do improve over time!
Example: Dark SUn added in the flip book adventure style, which was a real break through! it wasn't perfect btu was miles ahead of the previous ideas on presenting adventuresin an easy to use format.

I was upset with 4th ed Realms because of a lot of reasons, but nostalgia wasn't it.
I have always preffered the very first Realms boxed set because it made the Realms a more wild, interesting, barbaric, unexplored world. I loathed how it became so over popullated, over mapped, over detailed etc and made it a place I didn't want to DM about I liked the Forgotten Realms, not the Elminsterized Realms
*hides behind an oak table* hehe

4th ed kind of tried for that more wild feel, but blew it in lacking the gorgeous interior art, stylistics to evoke the feel of a world, huge font/spacing so less bang for the buck, lack of a coherence, screwing spellcasters yet again etc etc.
It felt "cheap", alas :/
Rich Baker's "Swordmage" books so far have evoked a 4th ed Realms that is damned good, much better than the campaign guide.

So I hope WOTC have learned from that debacle' and from what's been said, they realize this. the Eberron guide seemed better, anyways.

the 4th ed Dark Sun Guide should have very strong interior artwork borders etc, sounds silly but the old settings *WERE* helped by the simple drama of colour schemes, fonts, border artwork etc, please note how Ravenloft, Spelljammer, Planescape and Dark Sun each had very evocative interior design that was CONSISTANT.
It helped give me a real "feel" of the consistancy and feel of the setting. WOTC damn well needs to get back into that verve.

So if it was me, I'd use the Papyrus font, have orange gradient borders, obsidian weapons, gems, belgoi bells etc on page corners and so forth.

3) I don't give a damn what races they put in Dark Sun 4th ed, provided they "feel" Dark Sun-plausible, because it always WAS a place of mysteries and mutants, so anything may be out there!
People moan about dragonborn, when giant bugs are a standard player race, eh?!
Go back, read up and you'll find mutations and weird things coming from the desert were commonplace in Athas!

4) I HATE HATE BLLOODY WELL HATE the "official" history, and so have the majority of gamers I've talked to about Dark Sun.
I can nerdrage, too!
So, cutting the craptastic mess of Athas' enforced history will please me enormously. If a DM wants Athas ruled by a flying two-headed learnen giant mutant space hamster, fine by me!! it's their campaign

We, as DMs do not need histories laid out for us in every campaign setting, it's BAD. Please let us have more freedom to imagine, and Athas sure as heck fits into the idea of a mysterious world you are better NOT knowing the distant history of.
Knowing everything does NOT make things better, see the Realms problems.

For my version of Athas, I go for an ancient apocalypse caused by the illithids who tried to darken the Sun, screwed up, sun went Nova, gods stopped it but got ganked/banished in the backlash. And Athas is millions of years old...perhaps, because no one knows except the sorceror-kings, and they sure as hell aren't saying!

I also love mystery and see Athas like Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E Howard may have written it: strange, barbaric, but sophisticated in ways/places and down right blasted dangerous.


5) Geography
See the original Dark SUn map? GOOD! fair sized area but small chunk of the world. for a barbaric mysterious world like Athas adding in a whole world map, see boxed set #2 for Athas, is a self defeating waste of paper.
Let players and DMs make things up, "Here be dragons" and lo ! there is!
If the designers want to fix inconsistancies, fine by me I just do not wanna see a majority of Athas mapped.
I loved the map of Tyr though, great starting city a DM beginner can work from.

The essence of Dark Sun is oppression, savagery, abusive magic, lack of metals, slavery, gladiatorial combats, arenas, psionics, survival, horrendous heat, death by thirst, tyrannical rule by sorceror kings.
Dark Sun adventures are about survival, slaughtering your enemies and if you manage to act with morals or honour then you really ARE a hero because you've achieved something difficult indeed.

Sorry if that was a little heated, but the way Dark Sun was screwed up all those years ago: history, novels forcing metaplot, etc etc, bugged the hell out of me and I dont' want to see it again. :/


*boils up with passion for Athasian fun!* damn it, in middle of Spelljammer piccy or I'd do another Dark Sun one, hehe

Andor
well, devas could be the Villichi? (female reincarnated/fey humans..and by fey I mean the English language useage of the word, not D&D creature type)

 

[Betote]

Another thing I'm curious about: what did you people think about the 3.5 version of Dark Sun which was published in Dragon and Dungeon (Paizo era)?

 

[keterys]

Loved Dark Sun.
Love 4E.
Black Text.
Tieflings ok.
Dragonborn=Dray ok.

I think it may be worth noting that I didn't end up liking Dark Sun because of its ample use of 2nd edition rules - I actually think those harmed the setting, and tried running Dark Sun in 2E, 2.5E, and 3E. I liked the attitude, the ambiance, the differences.

I think 4E will be, by far, the best fit for the setting. I'm already mentally preparing some set piece gladiator battles and dreaming up showdowns with defilers whose destruction in casting against them spurs awful sand beasties to emerge and try to eat the players the next round...

I'm also hoping they take the opportunity to put in some better rules for dealing with lack of magic items.

But I'll be patient, wait to see how things go.

 

[Herschel]

Ah, but you can't have that, because Dark Sun has no outsiders. Permanent. It has no Baatezu, no Devas. At most it has some sort of Genies since they are more Elemental creatures than Outer Planar, but they do not produce Tieflings and in fact I'm not sure they can even crossbreed with humans.

And if you still have Gnomes and so on, what the hell's the point of the Cleansing Wars? If the Cleansing Wars just cut down population numbers a bit and maybe mauled some races no one was ever going to play anyway, what's the point? Then you might as well excise that MAJOR DAMN POINT from the setting entirely.

The other races weren't eradicated, they were just exiled with very few surviving members in to remote places and in hiding. That was one of the things "Discovered" in the setting.

 

[deadsmurf]

The other races weren't eradicated, they were just exiled with very few surviving members in to remote places and in hiding. That was one of the things "Discovered" in the setting.

I want xenophobic and paranoid gnomes driven underground in the cleansing war please!

 

[Dice4Hire]

Another thing I'm curious about: what did you people think about the 3.5 version of Dark Sun which was published in Dragon and Dungeon (Paizo era)?

A few art8icles do not a seting make. I ignored it in 3.5, as I wanted a full bore effort into it.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

??????

What am I missing here?

You are not missing anything except for Cirno trolling yet another 4E thread.

Cirno: You don't like 4E, we understood that months ago. Go play AD&D Dark Sun if that's what you want to do. Nothing prevents you from doing that.

___

Back to topic.

First of All. Races:

I can perfectly see Dragonborn, Genasi, Goliaths and Tieflings in Dark Sun.

I can more or less see Gnomes, Shifters and Half-orcs (renamed to something else) in Dark Sun with some minor modifications

I have some problems with Devas, Drow, Eladrins and some of the funky D&Di options (Revenant, Warforged, etc). I might disallow them in my game.

Regarding classes, if I were to play a Dark Sun 4E campaign today (without seeing the new stuff made by the more-talented-than-me WotC people), I would do the following:

1. No Divine power source. This means no Avengers, Clerics, Invokers, or Paladins. (I would have to reread the original box set to see how I would come up with the Templar class)

2. No PC Defilers (I didn't allow them back then, why start now?). All PC arcane classes are preservers. Warlocks with extraplanar pacts need to be reskinned or banned.

3.- All classes have an "Athas Awesomeness Bonus" to AC as long as they don't wear armor. This is +0 for controllers, +2 for strikers, +6 for leaders and +8 for defenders.

Defilers and Templars would be, at least until someone comes up with a better idea, NPCs only, and made with the Monster Generator

I'm sure others here have some other ideas to improve here... What do you think?

 

[Obryn]

Another thing I'm curious about: what did you people think about the 3.5 version of Dark Sun which was published in Dragon and Dungeon (Paizo era)?

It wasn't even a blip on my radar, frankly. I checked out the articles, and they were sparse, at best. I didn't get the sense that it was in any way close to a complete setting.

I paid a lot more attention to Athas.org, although I never actually ran 3e Dark Sun. Those guys put a lot of love into their work, and it shows.

-O

 

[ProfessorCirno]

You are not missing anything except for Cirno trolling yet another 4E thread.

Cirno: You don't like 4E, we understood that months ago. Go play AD&D Dark Sun if that's what you want to do. Nothing prevents you from doing that.

Mmm. Allow me to state why I - and, I assume, the others who agree with me - find the idea of a drastically changed Dark Sun to be so distasteful.

It's not because of the "purity of the setting." It's because of what becomes the new baseline. If I talk about Dark Sun, others around me will not think about the old version, they will think of the 4e version - with all the changes that come with it. It's the same tiefling problem. When I talk about tieflings in god knows what has to be the nerdiest conversations imaginable, and start talking about outsiders, I get blank looks. A while back, there was a thread where someone mentioned that Paizo was having difficulties finding an artist to draw a tiefling, as all the ones that responded did 4e styled ones.

That's why I'm so..."displeased" with the idea of a drastically changed Dark Sun. Because, quite frankly, yes. A new Dark Sun would prevent me from potentially playing an old one.

Also, for the record, I don't hate 4e, and I certainly don't hate everything attached to it. 4e Eberron was rather nice. I've heard a lot of good things about DMG2. Just 'cause it ain't the edition for me doesn't mean I despise it.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Another thing I'm curious about: what did you people think about the 3.5 version of Dark Sun which was published in Dragon and Dungeon (Paizo era)?

Never even saw it.

I've looked over the Athas.org version, and while it looks well made, I think the older editions were really better at portraying the setting.