Somebloke said:
Didn't the haflings live in some verdant, gorgeous rainforest area- nature turned up to 11- that was a) almost utterly inaccessable and b) horribly dangerous?
Wouldn't this do as a Feywild substitute?
I still don't know why Athas needs a Feywild substitute. That region works for what it is: a "Green Hell" version of the jungle.
D.Shaffer said:
Nature is always going to be there so long as life still exists. It might be a twisted mockery of what existed before hand, but you're still going to have ecosystems and cycles that happen in somewhat predictable cycles. Nature still exists because of this and so the archetype of an exaggerated version of the land is still a valid one.
It doesn't have to be that way, and I don't see any compelling reason why it SHOULD be that way. Life doesn't have to generate nature: Athas's schtick is that it's hostile to life: everyone's slowly dying, and the only people capable of even making it a little better are, of course, the PC's (the big fat heroes). There aren't ecosystems or predictable cycles, there is a slowly dying world. You're lucky to eke out a living. The world is in the long slow decay. It's been destabilized and only heroic action can restore it to any semblance of stability. Nature is broken, the world is dying, everything is going to hell in a handbasket, and it will not find stability, it will not find a stable cycle (unless the PC's intervene, of course).
Without that, it's just "Oh, it's a desert." It's not just a desert, in my mind. It's a broken world, a shattered existence, one that is very unnatural, and one that does not have anything like regular cycles of life.
Sandstorms are not an uncommon occurence in Athas, but ones that blot out the sun for days, sucking all the moisture out of anything it encounters like some living terrible thing?
Again, in a world where the natural order has been shattered and broken, what's wrong with that being IN THE WORLD? What's wrong with some straight-up summer-popcorn-blockbuster apocalyptic Day-After-Tomorrow OMG, everyone is boned
environmental event, right there, in the same world as the bug-farmers and the nomadic elves.
In other words, what ALREADY EXISTS is turned up to 11. Does this make it very difficult to survive as a normal person on Athas? Yes. Yes it does. That's part of the setting's appeal. That's part of what makes it brutal, post-apocalyptic fantasy. That's part of why characters need to be Big Fat Heroes to eke out survival. The population is declining, people are dying, the world is overrun with monsters. This isn't a setting in a dark age: this is a setting that is dying, a world that has lost the final battle of Good vs. Evil. There's nothing natural or normal about any of it. It's not like everything would be fine if everyone just left it alone: it requires active intervention to make better.
I mean, Dark Sun was a product of the '80's postapocalyptica and the Cold War stuff, too. What kind of natural world exists in a region of nuclear Armageddon? The entire idea is that the world has been made unnatural by the acts of mortals.
As for the actual argument itself, how is this different from arguing against the Feywild in ANY setting? There's just as valid a reason to have the Feywild in Athas as it is in any other setting.
To a certain extent, it is.
The Feywild is not necessary for any setting.
In a lot of fantasy settings, though, it is appealing and great to have: otherworldy extreme nature and emotion with tricksy fey and capricious nature-beings is a wonderful fantasy archetype, and the Feywild does a nice job of doing that.
Athas does not need that. In fact, for reasons I've outlined, I think it would
detract from the appeal of the setting, from what makes the setting unique (the two big notes being: nature is broken, and the world is isolated from the planes).
TheFan said:
People keep picking on the Feywild, but can you imagine the Athasian Shadowfell?
"The Grey" is fine, but even that doesn't need any more than a sidelong mention, because by and large it is not a place to go have adventures or meet friends and enemies or get treasure.
amysrevenge said:
I think the motivation for trying to make these things work is to be able to use as much of the standard 4E cosmology as possible in a way that doesn't compromise the "feel" of Dark Sun.
Even if you keep the Feywild, if you change it to be some plane of extreme deserts and sandstorms, the Feywild as presented in the MotP is
already practically useless.
But the bigger puzzle in my mind is that anyone playing in Dark Sun needs the standard 4e cosmology.
Why would they?
Isn't part of the appeal of a different world, you know, playing in
a different world? One where the normal rules don't always apply? Isn't this especially true of a "weird" setting like Dark Sun? One where part of the concept of the world is that it is cut off from the planes, and that nature is broken?
I mean, I'd think the Divine power source would be more core to the game than the Feywild, but they even seem to be pretty OK with abandoning that, so why bother keeping the Feywild around?
This would also make the setting a bit more accessible to new people. You can describe the world sucinctly and capture most of what is different, without having to list all of the individual changes instead: "Dark Sun is about a world that has been turned into an unnatural desert by the irresponsible use of arcane magic. The Feywild and Shadowfell are now reflections of this sand-blasted land, with all the changes this would imply about their denizens." An example of the kind of thing that you wouldn't have to explain further with this setup, but would have to explain otherwise: Eladrin can still step into the Feywild to teleport.
I think it would be more effective to say: "Dark Sun is a setting about survival in a dying world. Arcane magic ripped apart nature, making it a heroic effort simply to survive in the unforgiving environment. There are no gods, there are no angels, there are only the impersonal elemental forces to hear your cries, and stone has never cared about your feelings. Death is a release, but it is nothing more than oblivion. Nature is dead, reduced to oblivion, the Feywild is destroyed and the bones of gnomes and pixies and shee and eladrin are rotting beneath the dunes. On Dark Sun, arcane magic has destroyed nature, and only the efforts of heroes, your characters, might have a hope of restoring it."
Eladrin don't have to even
exist. If they can abandon the entire Divine power source, they can abandon the Feywild, easy.
avin said:
Shadowfell and Feywild are an intrinsec part of 4E and will be in.
I don't see them as more intrinsic than the Divine power source, which is apparently out. In fact, I'd say they were significantly LESS intrinsic.
It's questions like this that make Dark Sun a make-it-or-break-it kind of setting, though. If WotC kow-tows to the cross-compatability dogma, it will showcase the limits of their imagination and courage, here. If they suck it up and make the setting truly different, it will show that they're willing to go in new directions.
I am not looking for a Dark Sun that is "D&D in the Desert." I'm looking for a different kind of game experience. It sounds like the team might be somewhat in line with that thinking, because they're kicking out the divine power source, and they're not shoehorning in 4eisms (according to the notes in this thread, anyway). That's good. That's excellent. If they go back on that, it will be not so good, not so excellent. Probably, in fact, for me, making me really disappointed with 4e as a whole, knowing that even when they're trying something new and courageous, they have to shoehorn the Feywild (or whatever) into it somehow.
But DS has, for better or worse, in my mind, grabbed the baton for 4e's potential to do things that are different. If it turns out, despite my optimism, being the same old drag with an orange coat of paint, it won't just be DS that disappoints me.
