Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wik" data-source="post: 4992741" data-attributes="member: 40177">Okay.  Time to muddy the waters a bit while I try to clear things up.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />DARK SUN was made in the early 90s, when most of the major game designers had made a pretty big discovery - novels were huge sellers of product, and they helped sell game product (at least, in theory).  The success of DRAGONLANCE and FORGOTTEN REALMS novels meant that future products had to tie in with novel sales - I'd be surprised if product design in the 1990s didn't factor in novel development.Along with that came the idea of "metaplot".  Novels will push forward the plotline of the setting, so the setting must be built to accomodate that.  and it wasn't just TSR that was doing this - FASA had a fun old time introducing metaplot elements and progressing the campaign setting heedless of PC interactions.  It's one of the reasons I avoid SHADOWRUN.When DARK SUN was released, they didn't have space for everything.  The intro to Dragon Kings mentions this - much of the info in there was cut from the boxed set due to space limitations.  And, I believe it was in the 30 years of D&D guide, but the author of the Prism Pentad (Troy Denning?) mentioned that he was writing the novels while writing the last bit of the boxed set.  In other words, he already knew Tyr was going to be "Free" when he was designing it.  And you can see that in the original boxed set.  We're in the "Tyr Region".  There's a map of Tyr.  The scant info on Tyr all points towards a revolution that will involve the slaves.  The first adventure, being written before the set was released, was about freedom in Tyr.  And every product released in the first year was either about slaves, or Tyr.Looking at the product run of the times, I think you can readily conclude that it was meant from the get-go that Tyr was to be free.  The Tyr situation was built for the novels, unfortunately, because that was where the money lies.  The point of all this is, Tyr was never designed to be ruled by Kalak.  It was made to be free - this is why Tyr has the iron mines and a large population... to give it a game reason why it could possibly have leverage to remain free.  It's also why the Tyr section doesn't detail templars (they wouldn't be a player option in most campaigns).  To say that WotC should release a product exactly like the original boxed set, with Tyr in pre-revolution phase, only works if WotC is going to have an extended product line.  And they won't.  So, if Tyr is pre-revolution in their book, it will remain pre-revolution.  And I think a vast majority of players are more familiar with post-revolution Tyr.  Post-revolution Tyr opens up more adventure possibilities.  It has more thematic variations.  And, almost as importantly, it means that old-school players can still use some of their 2e Dark Sun products with no conversion, since EVERY product (beyond Dragon Kings) released after the original set assumes a free Tyr.  There is no other change from the original boxed set that is more wide-reaching.</blockquote>

Verification