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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7317568" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, now imagine your the DM of a game that has up to 100 semi-regular players associating into different parties on various nights, splitting, rejoining, running their henchmen or lesser PCs in lower level games, their high level guys on nights with the old guard, etc. That was apparently what it was like. Everything was laid out on timelines that handled when people went off on long-term story arcs, etc. Frequently players had their PCs hire out work to lesser groups (no time, gotta do spell research for the big adventure next month) and on and on. Now, project that into the clan system of OA, and you have what I'm talking about. Yes, you could just play your PC and his family is 'background' which is cool and ties you into intrigue and whatever. But what if your main PCs little brother is a monk, and your cousin is a high level Samurai, and next you roll up your sister and she's a Wu Jen! Oh, and of course you don't just have henchmen, you have the family retainers, the samurai, bushi, ninjas, etc that are the associated allies, patrons, and clients of your family. Now the goal is family honor, family fortune, marrying into the imperial clan, etc! Its Gygax's concept on steroids, but with a rather different set of themes. Well, it depends on how far into the meta-plot and backstory and whatever of Athas you're willing to read and how much you extrapolate. I'm no Athas guru, but there's whole cycles of history before the 'Dark Sun', and many hints that conditions could change radically in theory. Apparently it was actions taken by human mages which brought things to their current state, so.... That could be as elaborate as you want.Again though, you have to step out of 'Dark Sun' to get into that conceptual space. The action can be rooted in the dusty sands of the harsh desert, but eventually you're going to change everything and engage with forces that don't fit the genre, especially when you beat them (or whatever happens).In the case of DS it seems like Epic has to pretty much 'break the world', though in other D&D sub-genre that might not need to be the case. A 'Blood Right' sort of concept could see the PCs simply rise to a godlike level where they contest with other equally powerful beings, sort of just a super powered kind of strategic adventuring.</blockquote>

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