It's Dark Sun

[Silverblade The Ench]

I believe the correct response for the new cover art is "SCHWING!!"

Very exciting news. Dark Sun fan from way back. I think I have most of the books leading up to the revised box set, which I thought was awful. I even managed a couple of the rarity books like Will and the Way

Quoting Split Second = awesome. always

Split Second = awesomely udnerrated film! Even my mum quotes it...lol!!

"We need big, big ,BIG ****** GUNS!!"

On Athas, that would require a 30mmm Vulcan Cannon, I believe...

New cover art is indeed much better than most of what's been out so far for 4th ed cover art (IMHO)

And most folk not surprisngly agree with ya on the way Dark Sun went according to TSR's tacked-on timeline.

Smokebloke
yes the halflings lived on the Forest Ridge, high mountains, a rainforest...with stuff that had evolved for Athas, and to keep the "scum from the Plains the hell out!"...so everything was poisonous, regenerating, camouflaged, psionic etc etc horrors, lol
oh and the halflings ate you and were masters of clerical magic and psionics...and poison..and everyone of them had a book "How to Serve Humans".

 

[StarFyre]

To the person mentioning that Dragonborn won't fit into 4E Dark Sun...

We use dragonborn as Draj, from Dregoth's city (forgot name right now...from the boxed set, City by the Silt Sea).

Just changed some powers, a few house rules for other things, etc..and voila

You can always modify rules a bit to help whatever you don't like in any edition to fit your player's styles and to ensure they are having fun IF the rules as written is an issue

Sanjay

 

[Somebloke]

Split Second = awesomely udnerrated film! Even my mum quotes it...lol!!


On Athas, that would require a 30mmm Vulcan Cannon, I believe...

New cover art is indeed much better than most of what's been out so far for 4th ed cover art (IMHO)

And most folk not surprisngly agree with ya on the way Dark Sun went according to TSR's tacked-on timeline.

Smokebloke
yes the halflings lived on the Forest Ridge, high mountains, a rainforest...with stuff that had evolved for Athas, and to keep the "scum from the Plains the hell out!"...so everything was poisonous, regenerating, camouflaged, psionic etc etc horrors, lol
oh and the halflings ate you and were masters of clerical magic and psionics...and poison..and everyone of them had a book "How to Serve Humans".

Full of life. Unnatural and strange to others used to a desert wasteland. Filled of unknown and mysterious threats. So far away and dangerous to get to it might as well be on another plane.

Remind me again why would we need the Feywild?

 

[Danzauker]

Full of life. Unnatural and strange to others used to a desert wasteland. Filled of unknown and mysterious threats. So far away and dangerous to get to it might as well be on another plane.

Remind me again why would we need the Feywild?

Maybe, Athas is the Feywild.

Or, more precisely, the part of the Feywild overlapping a blasted desert in the Material World.

Let's say something akin to the Realms of Dread in the Shadowfell...

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Feywild could very much be the Grey, and the Shadowfell could very much the Black, rather than both of the Black and the Grey being Shadowfell.

That would make them very unwelcoming places. Somehow I don't think they'll throw out all that stuff about the Blue and Green Ages, they probably still want a timeline associated with the setting.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Feywild could very much be the Grey, and the Shadowfell could very much the Black, rather than both of the Black and the Grey being Shadowfell.

I don't think The Black fits as Shadowfell beyond the association with shadows cast from light. The Gray is associated with undeath, is accessible in magnitudes greater degrees than The Black, has countless beings that inhabit it (the souls of the departed). The Black in inhabited by nothing except by those Green Age halflings imprisoned there, there is no light there . . . not just shades of gray . . . NO light. Except for some wisps of filaments, there is no matter in The Black either.

Far better to reinterpret 4e Shadowfell as we know it in ways that can work as The Gray as we know it.

There are too numerous ways to slide Feywild into an Athas that can not violate the feel of Athas. For instance, while Lynn Abbey's novels have been decried as not pure canon, we have in her stories an example of a protected druid grove, where the protagonist walks deeper and deeper into the Athasian druid grove and find himself in a cooler, wetter locale with a different colored (yellow) sun. Could we say this was another plane? Feywild maybe? Maybe Feywild is there, tremendously cut off in every way but from a few hidden/protected druid groves.

Maybe Feywild's inhabitants are cutting all connections with the Athasian prime because the Athasian material world is a far harsher world than the Feywild inhabitants can tolerate. Except for druids, who protect the remaining entrances to the Feywild, all Athasian creatures who enter Feywild are attacked on sight to be pushed back into the material world. Druids use Feywild as an eternal "image" from which they reintroduce Green Age fertility to the blasted wastes of Athas slowly but surely.

I'm not sure if this is reasonable, because it would bring up all sorts of other cosmological problems, such as what was the Feywild always a mirror of Green Age Athasian life . . . even during the Blue Age Athas when halflings were the creator species on an ocean planet, living in floating cities shaped out of living coral?

Hopefully, the re-designers of Dark Sun have contemplated how the Athasian planes are affected as the entire planet and sun underwent climatological changes . . . hmm.

 

[Wolfwood2]

probably be pretty evil. And not the sort of distant "I'll get your soul someday" quasi-evil that is an infernal sorcerer, but expressly, obviously, in every city in the world, oppressively evil. It's hard for a Templar to go on adventures alongside a freedom-fighting Mul. It's hard for them to hang out at a bar together. It's hard for them not to kill each other on sight.

As I stated earlier in the thread, I don't think there will be much support for Templar PCs, but I think there will be a lot of support for ex-Templar PCs. It's a fairly obvious background to make for someone in Dark Sun who wants to use the 'former bad boy trying to redeem himself' archetype.

Given that, I'd say that a Fighter who works for a Sorceror-King is a Templar, as is a wizard who works for a Sorceror-King or a Warlock who works for a Sorceror-King.

 

[possum]

I'd kind of like to see how they go with this. I hate to admit it in this thread, but I'm not all that familiar with the setting, but it does sound interesting.

 

[Mort_Q]

I'd kind of like to see how they go with this. I hate to admit it in this thread, but I'm not all that familiar with the setting, but it does sound interesting.

Dark Sun Wiki may, or may not, fill in some themes if not actual details.

 

[Andor]

I can't wait for the cries of "It's all about Global Warming and Climate Change! It's just an attempt to play off the flavor of the month!" Then they won't believe us when we tell them DS is 20 years old.