Is Dark SUN Sword and Sorcery?

[Geoffrey]

Here are a few that we did at athas.org. There is other stuff in some of the old issues of Dragon as well - if you have the archive CD you can run a search and pull the pieces up quickly. I also recall reading some cool stuff in the 30 Years of D&D Book and am thinking that there might have been something in the 25th Anniversary Box, but mine is stored right now and I can't check. Anyhow, some links for you - I'm not sure that there's much on Barsoom here, but dig in anyway:

Interview #1 with Troy Denning
Interview #2 with Troy Denning
Interview with Tim Brown
Interview with Kevin Melka
Interview with Matt Forbeck

Thank you very much!

 

[Geoffrey]

Hmm, if they'd stuck with their original vision I'd probably have bought it! I really hate the "every setting must have the same Tolkien-derived races" approach.

Same here.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

Dark Sun > Tolkien by a long shot. Not really a contest, IMO.

If Iron Heroes came out with a Dark Sun setting, I'd be all over it.

Put the word out, I do want that.

Comparing Dark Sun to Dune, even though they are both on a desert world, just seems wrong to me. I couldn't sit through the book or either version of the Dune movies, and I can throw down a 1000 page book in under a week without losing any sleep. At least I could before World of Warcraft...

 

[megamania]

Yep. One true power with spades!

Dragon-kings are so broken, especially for 3e. The whole concept needs to be rewritten in my mind.

Mininum to be a Sorcer-king/queen is 40th level. How do you get that kind of experience points in a desert world with "no other planes or gods" availiable. Even with the in fighting of the champions it can't be done.

I know Rajaat "created" the current kings but they get stated like a 40th level character. Meanwhile, to make it worse- Many of them were successful fighters before being exposed to magic and psionics. So many should be 45+ levels.

I'm running on a tangent. sorry.

 

[Mark Hope]

Dragon-kings are so broken, especially for 3e. The whole concept needs to be rewritten in my mind.

Mininum to be a Sorcer-king/queen is 40th level. How do you get that kind of experience points in a desert world with "no other planes or gods" availiable. Even with the in fighting of the champions it can't be done.

I know Rajaat "created" the current kings but they get stated like a 40th level character. Meanwhile, to make it worse- Many of them were successful fighters before being exposed to magic and psionics. So many should be 45+ levels.

I'm running on a tangent. sorry.

You might already knoaw about it, but athas.org has a 3.5 version of the Athasian dragon, and there was also another treatment of it in Dragon #339. Both are pretty cool (although I have to declare a bias, as I was one of the writers for both versions ).

 

[Klaus]

Dragon-kings are so broken, especially for 3e. The whole concept needs to be rewritten in my mind.

Mininum to be a Sorcer-king/queen is 40th level. How do you get that kind of experience points in a desert world with "no other planes or gods" availiable. Even with the in fighting of the champions it can't be done.

I know Rajaat "created" the current kings but they get stated like a 40th level character. Meanwhile, to make it worse- Many of them were successful fighters before being exposed to magic and psionics. So many should be 45+ levels.

I'm running on a tangent. sorry.

Just make Sorcerer-King an Epic Prestige Class that requires all 10 levels in the Cerebremancer Prestige Class (which itself requires the ability to cast arcane spells and manifest psionic powers). Upon finishing all 10 levels of Sorcerer-King (at character level 30), you become an athasian dragon.

 

[Desdichado]

I disagree on grounds that I do not remember seeing any thing Barsoomian in Athas, other than the fact that Athas is a dying, desert world. The Last Sea is probably the only body of water that has a lot of algae in it.

I still don't understand why you're getting hung up on little details and missing the big picture. Off the top of my head, Athas and Barsoom--or at least portions of both that the authors have chosen to focus on have the following in common:

• Dying planet, desert environment (duh)
• Few major nations, rather a collection of warring city-states ruled by powerful warlords
• Prevalence of a large, greenish vaguely insectoid humanoid race (Green Men of Barsoom, thri-kreen of Athas)
• Pseudo-scientific "magic" on Barsoom--telepathy and other applications as the novels progress compared to psionics on Athas
• Lack of many standard earthlike animals in the environment and instead a focus on alien, unearthly fauna
• Gladiatorial arenas featuring very prominantly in both settings
• Importance of slaves in both settings
• Dark Sun was originally slated to remove all familiar D&D races, which would have granted an even more alien, Barsoom-like feel, but it was decided that that might have been a step too far and would alienate D&D players from the setting

Granted, many of those items are not unique to Barsoom (or Athas) but most of them certainly are unusual in a standard "Tolkienian" setting.

That's just off the top of my head. With a little more effort, I could probably do more.

 

[Desdichado]

What inherent to D&D prevents just such a thing from happening?

If that wasn't happening at your table ever, I submit it's due to the people around the table and their comfort level with those sorts of adventures. I know many people who have had comparable D&D adventures.

Well, the phrase early in my description of the typical Burroughsian story that includes "single protagonist" would nix it already for most groups, and certainly for the way D&D is designed where the expectation is a minimum of four players each with one of four cardinal party roles.

A Princess of Mars can--at best--accomodate two PCs at once, with possibly a third who comes and goes playing Dejah Thoris. The main player is John Carter, of course, and the second player has to play a rotating cast of supporting PCs--for a few sessions he's Sola, then he plays Kantos Kan, then he plays Tars Tarkas--and at times he even has to be stuck playing Woola.

So anyway--yeah. I never claimed that D&D couldn't do a Burroughsian single protagonist romance story, just that D&D itself hardly supports that play style, and I also believe few groups would find such a story compelling or interesting as a game plot.

 

[Sir Elton]

Adventure games work differently than novels. The Storytelling is obviously different, because every player is playing "the protagonist." In a player's mind, the other players are supporting cast.

 

[Desdichado]

Adventure games work differently than novels. The Storytelling is obviously different, because every player is playing "the protagonist." In a player's mind, the other players are supporting cast.

Yes. I'm not sure if you are responding to me or to Whizbang, but if to me, that was exactly my point too.

You could do A Princess of Mars as an RPG--with the right group--but that doesn't mean that you should. The plot is inherently more difficult to pull off as a D&D game, which focuses on an ensemble cast and typically requires different types of character development and motivation to get off the ground.

Not saying that it's impossible, just saying that it's improbable.