It's Dark Sun

[vagabundo]

YEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYY!!!

That is all

 

[avin]

Anyway, I can't say much about it. I will mention that people who are looking for new, innovative crunch won't be disappointed!

What about fluff? Fluff must prevail!

 

[Kez Darksun]

I was hoping for Brom, naturally, but yes, that cover is still pretty sweet.

From the Critacal-Hits tweets it seems that Brom is very busy but will try and do some work for the new 4E Dark Sun setting books.

 

[Obryn]

No gods is the most important decision so far. How the DS team handles the "planes" will also be vital.

Well, the planes are kind of an odd duck IMO. I don't remember the planes being very vital to DS at all, except for the elemental cosmology. Still, those were more forces to worship than places to visit.

Now, I do remember a module with a planar invasion of Githyanki. But that was just a weird one...

They better be careful about how they include all the various 4e races.

I expect you'll see them, but I expect they'll be intensely modified, flavor-wise. I don't think WotC is going to release a setting which says "YOU MAY NOT PLAY A GNOME" nowadays. I think they might say "Gnomes are intensely unusual on Athas. You might be the only one. Also, you eat people" or something like that.

Campaign crunch from the Forgotten Realms and Eberron settings must NOT be included in the setting. Period.

I don't expect it will be referenced at all. So I wouldn't expect to see stuff about Artificers or Dragonmarks. But I also wouldn't expect to see something like, "You may not have a Dragonmarked character in your game."

Paladins do not belong in Dark Sun; however, I have a feeling that the class will get shoe-horned into the setting.

I think 4e Paladins can fit very well into Dark Sun. It wasn't the class that didn't work for 2e; it was the Lawful-Goodness of the class. At least IMO. An Unaligned paladin serving Primordials could work decently well. So just because 2e DS had no Paladins doesn't mean 4e DS shouldn't; a 4e paladin is not a 2e paladin.

Bards need to be assassin-like. Dark Sun bards are NOT happy lute-stumming minstrels.

I think the DS version of Bard is very well-served by both the new Assassin class (as previewed), and the existing 4e Rogue. Whether or not there will be a place for the PHB2 arcane leader called the "Bard" remains to be seen. Again, just because the poison/assasin/minstrel character was called a Bard under 2e doesn't mean a character filling the same niche in 4e must also be called a Bard.

Dune Trader should be a class and there must be an option for players who want to be a gladiator in the Dark Sun-style.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a base Dune Trader class. It'd be cool, but I dunno. I think there should be a Dune Trader paragon path, though.

-O

 

[Dausuul]

I'm more than a bit cynical about the stated desire to avoid pushing 4e default material into Dark Sun when other statements openly talk about the 4e primordials being part of 4e DS.

The word used was "shoehorning." As in, trying to cram something in which doesn't fit. Primordials fit quite well in Dark Sun. They're basically just uber-elementals, after all.

(There will in fact be a lot of stuff shoehorned in - but the shoehorning took place in 1991. I mean, look at elves, dwarves, and halflings. They all had to get massive makeovers in order to have any kind of a place on Athas. Clerics make no sense in a world without gods, but 2E couldn't stomach a campaign setting that got rid of the primary healer class, so they cobbled together something about elemental powers. Et cetera.)

 

[kitsune9]

Was hoping to hear about a ToEE mega adventure after they released the revised Hommlet. Glad its Darksun for the next setting.

Love the cover for it.

That really is a nice cover!

 

[Mircoles]

 

[filthgrinder]

I'm a fan of Dark Sun too. However I liked the expanded setting as presented in the Revised DS campaign setting box set.

The revised DS box set did more to ruin Dark Sun than 4e FR did to ruin the Realms. The fact that they recognize it and are retconing it out is fantastic.

I'm a Dark Sun fan, and I'm excited about this announcement.

 

[malraux]

As someone who has basically no exposure to the Dark Sun setting, what is the big deal with races? How does it break the setting to have all the 4e races as playable?

 

[Obryn]

Maybe my worry is overstated, believe me, I would like nothing more than to be totally and completely off-base here and have 4e Dark Sun come off as ten flavors of awesome, just using 4e rules alongside well written flavor that's respectful to the original. We'll see. I want to be wrong here, but my inner FR fan keeps having flashbacks.

I'm expecting a reimagining of Dark Sun. I'd be thrilled if it's similar in theme, and uses familiar elements, but adds stuff that just never existed in Dark Sun before in ways that attempt to be thematically appropriate.

I don't expect it to be 100% - or even 80% - faithful to the original set. I expect it will be a great and flavorful setting of its own, much like New Battlestar Galactica was to Old Battlestar Galactica.

-O