Just discovered Dark Sun -- have questions!

[PJ-Mason]

The Dark Sun novels run the whole gambit of good to craptacular.
The Prism Pentad was pretty much "High, i'm Troy Denning. Please enjoy these books as i destroy the Dark Sun setting book by book. Thank you for playing in my sandbox...now get out!"
The first book was decent, the rest were...well...TSR novels, man!!
I liked the Tribe of One books, they did a great job of showing how psionics are the dominant abilities in DS.
The Lynn Abbey books were terrific. They felt more like DS than Denning's books did to me. But, hey, i love everything she writes (can you say...Thieves World!!??..i knew you could), so i admit to some possible bias.

As for the recent Dragon/Dungeon treatment of DS. I for one was quite displeased with it and for a couple of reasons.

First, it was a bit of a slap in the face to the Athas.org people, who have been working for years to create a faithful conversion of the setting. The fact that is was a bad faith attempt (AFAIAC), elevates the level of insult.

Secondly, it was crappy. I don't care so much that they sorta reset the setting. Its like any setting with different "Ages" (dragonlance, greyhawk, Thieves World, etc), you pick which era you want to play in. So fine. It was kinda stupid and not needed...but okay, i'll deal. Its the fact that they homogenized the setting. They threw everything back in that was removed for setting flavor in the first place. They threw in a bunch of races that didn't need to be there, but were Kewl (i guess they were. meh). They sacrificed the setting's uniqueness in exchange for just another watered down generic setting that allows everyone to use their 406 supplements of feats and prestige classes and didn't much care that it made Dark Sun look like a two-bit Wh$re. Rather than reanimate it into a shameless parody of its former self, i'd have much rather preferred they left it staked out for the crows.

 

[qstor]

I'm thinking of picking up one of the boxed sets on Ebay. I never got into DS before but reading over the Dragon and Dungeon articles left me wanting for more information. Plus, I never felt IMC in the Realms and Greyhawk that psionics was good, but Dark Sun seems to work right with psionics with the slight sci-fi feel to the campaign setting rather that pure heroic fantasy like the LotR. Just my two cents..
Plus the elves and halfings are really different it seems. Some of the 2e supplements and modules are cheap on Ebay. I like in print products better than .pdfs

The idea of halfing cannibal raiders with bone weapons sounds cool

Mike

 

[Desdichado]

I might think of going that route; ebay is good; pdf's not so much.

 

[Psion]

Meta plots though are rather easy to ignore or even work around.

True, but it did really dull the possibilities if you were following the metaplot, or for products that were produced assuming the truth of the metaplot.

 

[Psion]

The Dark Sun novels run the whole gambit

Run the whole gamut

 

[Mark Hope]

I might think of going that route; ebay is good; pdf's not so much.

Probably a better idea as you'll hopefully get the full-sized maps as well. If you can, try to grab a copy of the revised box that includes the very sweet cloth map of the central Tablelands. A real gem.

 

[Davelozzi]

Another source for a quick summary of the changes inflicted by the novels is Beyond the Prism Pentad, the last (IIRC) accesory to come out before the revised boxed set. It contains an eight page summary of the events in the Prism Pentad novels. That said, I don't particularly recommend that product, as it's pretty dry.

Like many others, I prefer the original setting, before the changes, and more importantly before all the questions were answered. The original setting was more about the grim atmosphere of the savage world, and history was pretty much a complete unknown to anyone but the sorceror kings.

 

[Desdichado]

At some point, it also needs to be made known to the DMs too, though.

 

[Mark Hope]

At some point, it also needs to be made known to the DMs too, though.

Yes, but only to a certain degree. Apart from the changes to the city-states in the revised boxed set, none of the DS game material involves the novel metaplot to any significant degree and the overwhelming majority of releases ignore it completely. Apart from a few references in City State of Tyr (and the aforementioned Beyond the Prism Pentad), the novel line and the game line exist wholly independent of one another.

At the end of the day, I'd agree with you - it's better to have the overall picture. But you certainly don't need it to make use of any of the game material. I didn't read the novels until much later and when the revised boxed set came out, I discovered that it invalidated huge chunks of backstory that I had designed for my own game. That was my chief gripe with the revised box - that it featured a fair amount of after-the-fact canon that I had been blissfully unaware of up until that point. Of course, not that it matters - I pick and choose as it suits me - but it was a clear symptom of the "wall" between the game department and the novel department that has already been mentioned. (I recall thinking "Biotech hobbits?? You're kidding me....")

 

[PJ-Mason]

Run the whole gamut

LOL. I meant to say Brazen Gambit, because that was the name of one of the novels. But i was already half-way through my next sentence structure as i thought of the joke. I got half of it in there, though.