Is Dark Sun Coming To D&D?

WotC staff are dropping cryptic hints about campaign settings again! A couple of week ago it was Spelljammer; this time, it's Dark Sun. At Gary Con this year, during a D&D panel, WotC's Mike Mearls said of the psionic Mystic class -- "we don't need that class until we do Dark Sun."

He followed it up with with the usual note that he can't make product announcements and that all settings were part of the multiverse. You can hear the seminar on the Plot Points podcast. "Ben recorded a seminar wherein six game designers who worked on Dungeons and Dragons (Skip Williams, Jon Pickens, Zeb Cook, Ed Stark, Steve Winter, and Mike Mearls) talk about game design. During the talk, current lead designer Mike Mearls may very well have let slip what the next classic D&D game world he will be reviving next!"

Dark Sun was a campaign setting released back in the 1990s, and was a post-apocalyptic desert world called Athas, with psionics in abundance and dark survivalist themes. It made a reappearance in 2010 for D&D 4E.

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[MechaPilot]

It depends entirely on the adventure. If the DM has planned on one of the challenges for a low level party is crossing a raging torrent when the bridge is out, then a character who can fly removes the challenge. Even more drastically the DM may have planned out a wilderness adventure based on forest trails (The old adventure C4 I was looking at yesterday had one of these).

The character who can fly removes that challenge for herself, assuming she's going to fly beyond the obstacle and wait for the party to find a way across. That character would have to be quite strong to carry the other PCs, their mounts, and their equipment across the obstacle.

If a character can fly over the trees directly to the destination is could wipe out an entire session.

Overcoming one single terrain feature shouldn't take an entire session, unless your sessions are 15 minutes long.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

1) They take a couple of ropes across and make them secure.

2) I don't know if you have seen this type of outdoor "dungeon" map, but it relies on impenetrable forest to create the same effect as dungeon passages channelling the party into encounter "rooms". The ability to fly at will is then equivalent to the ability to walk through walls in a dungeon. You could potentially bypass dozens of encounters.

 

[MechaPilot]

1) They take a couple of ropes across and make them secure.

And how do their mounts get across?

Also, if it truly is a raging river, that just makes the challenge slightly less difficult, but you still have the potential consequences of the raging river if you fail. Sounds like it's perfectly fine.

2) I don't know if you have seen this type of outdoor "dungeon" map, but it relies on impenetrable forest to create the same effect as dungeon passages channelling the party into encounter "rooms". The ability to fly at will is then equivalent to the ability to walk through walls in a dungeon. You could potentially bypass dozens of encounters.

Assuming the top is open, that sounds like a glorified hedge-maze. If so, then the flier alone has the equivalent ability to move through the walls. Using that ability will require separating from the rest of the party. Going it alone is usually a bad idea, especially so at low levels where you can be felled by one or two ranged attacks.

 

[iserith]

It depends entirely on the adventure. If the DM has planned on one of the challenges for a low level party is crossing a raging torrent when the bridge is out, then a character who can fly removes the challenge. Even more drastically the DM may have planned out a wilderness adventure based on forest trails (The old adventure C4 I was looking at yesterday had one of these). If a character can fly over the trees directly to the destination is could wipe out an entire session.

Obviously, this only applies to adventures below level 5, when Fly becomes generally available.

It would be more accurate to say that the flying PC doesn't remove the challenge, but rather reduces the difficulty. And that's what players DO. If they can't reduce the difficulty by way of making good decisions (or even increase the difficulty by making bad ones), then there is something horribly wrong with the design of the challenge.

In the examples you provide, the difficulty is reduced, but the challenge remains. There's still the rest of the party to deal with when it comes to these obstacles which represents the continued difficulty in the challenge.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Psionics is space magic. And it was part of AD&D long before Dark Sun. Dark Sun just made more use of something that was already part of the game. As already mentioned, Dark Sun is very much based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom, which was one of the original inspirations for D&D.

It's not strictly accurate to describe it as "post-apocalyptic". The apocalypse is something that is currently happening. The phrase was applied because of similarities to Mad Max, but Dark Sun is actually based on much older material. Barsoom is a dying world, leading inevitably to the dead Mars we know today.

"mid-apocalyptic" would probably be a more accurate term.

I was thinking "slow apocalypse" myself, where the conditions of the apocalypse have become the default "way things have always been" for a sizeable amount of the population and things taken for granted in a previous period are mythical in the current one.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And how do their mounts get across?

Also, if it truly is a raging river, that just makes the challenge slightly less difficult, but you still have the potential consequences of the raging river if you fail. Sounds like it's perfectly fine.




Assuming the top is open, that sounds like a glorified hedge-maze. If so, then the flier alone has the equivalent ability to move through the walls. Using that ability will require separating from the rest of the party. Going it alone is usually a bad idea, especially so at low levels where you can be felled by one or two ranged attacks.

Which is another problem. It encourages the party to split up. Because there is a strong temptation to send the flying character ahead to scout, and the DM can't tell the party that is a really really bad idea, and before you know it the flying character dies in a hail of arrows. Which I would consider an undesirable outcome (I know some DMs would laugh and paint another skull on their folder, but that aint me).

So it doesn't necessarily make things easier, it might actually make them harder, but either way it has the potential to mess up the DMs plans.

Now, nine times out of ten it won't, but in a situation where the DM and player don't consult about what to bring to the table before the game it could potentially cause problems, which is why they aren't allowed in AL games.

 

[iserith]

Which is another problem. It encourages the party to split up. Because there is a strong temptation to send the flying character ahead to scout, and the DM can't tell the party that is a really really bad idea, and before you know it the flying character dies in a hail of arrows. Which I would consider an undesirable outcome (I know some DMs would laugh and paint another skull on their folder, but that aint me).

The DM can (and in my view should) telegraph hidden dangers when describing the environment. It would be perfectly reasonable to describe in some way the possibility that splitting up is dangerous and how, then let the player decide whether it's worth the risk. Sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. As long as they are aware of the danger, whatever horrible thing happens to them if they ignore it is fair.

So it doesn't necessarily make things easier, it might actually make them harder, but either way it has the potential to mess up the DMs plans.

If by "plans" you mean "outcomes," the trick is to not plan for those. It's okay to plan for the setup of the challenge, but if the DM is counting on a particular outcome of the challenge that flying could foil, that's the DM's fault in my view.

Now, nine times out of ten it won't, but in a situation where the DM and player don't consult about what to bring to the table before the game it could potentially cause problems, which is why they aren't allowed in AL games.

Sure. I just don't buy most of the excuses DMs put forth about objections to flying characters. It tends to reveal certain issues about how they view the game and their particular role in it.

 

[Eltab]

I dislike - but would not ban - flight at L1.

I currently have a Scout-type character and am aware that I'll be alone a lot and must evade overwhelming force, not pick fights every time I encounter NPCs.

Not everybody else has this understanding, and I can foresee the unhappiness resulting when my NPCs shoot down the bold flying Scout, or duck into a forest for cover, or my recurring BBEG tells his minions / henchmen not to move in the open during daylight, or I drop a very dense heavy object on that fragile lightweight PC. Or for that matter when the flying Ranger PC discovers that my NPCs will try to invent the anti-aircraft gun when they want to operate near his home base.

I would ask the player to create some other character, with the idea that after we have some experience playing together, he can ask me about bringing in the aaracockra character if his PC ever dies. So both of us have a good idea what we might be in for.

 

[MechaPilot]

Which is another problem. It encourages the party to split up. Because there is a strong temptation to send the flying character ahead to scout, and the DM can't tell the party that is a really really bad idea, and before you know it the flying character dies in a hail of arrows. Which I would consider an undesirable outcome (I know some DMs would laugh and paint another skull on their folder, but that aint me).

All of that applies to stealth and darkvision as well as flight.

So it doesn't necessarily make things easier, it might actually make them harder, but either way it has the potential to mess up the DMs plans.

What plans? DM'ing is a lot like watching a herd of 2-year-olds; it's more controlled chaos than it is a planned activity. Now, as [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] said, you might have planned out encounters, but planned outcomes is something most DMs learn to avoid within the first couple of times they want a party to go west to the dungeon and the PCs go East because they want to see what on the other side of the mountain.

Now, nine times out of ten it won't, but in a situation where the DM and player don't consult about what to bring to the table before the game it could potentially cause problems, which is why they aren't allowed in AL games.

You should always have a conversation about what is and isn't allowed at the table (both in and out of game). There's actually a current thread about that. And while that thread has generally spoken about the behaviors of people and of things they'll face in the game, that same need for a conversation holds true about what player options are available, and about what everyone is bringing to the table.

 

[bkwrm79]

Flying
My complaint about flying is the varying speeds and restrictions. I wish they'd standardize it as a race feature, whether you start out as an Aarakocra or Winged Tiefling, or pick up the Winged feat later on. Sure, flying won't fit all campaigns - but where it does fit, if you're acquiring it as a race feature not as a spell or class feature, it should work the same way. And it should definitely be more than 30' when unarmored/lightly armored.


New/Powerful Races
It seems lately they've done a bit with Race Feats, a lot of which are pretty cool. Giving everyone a bonus Feat at 1st (which I gather some tables do anyway) enables races which are more powerful, by subsuming that first Feat. If that's too open for more standard choices, you can restrict that choice to the race feats from XGE.