So, Dark Sun: It's officially out. What do you think of it?

[Obryn]

Oh, Marauders of the Dune Sea is pretty stupid. It amazes me that WOTC, owners of Dungeons and Dragons, and having access to both a budget and the internet, is unable to find anybody who can actually right a coherent adventure. It's pathetic, really.

Seriously.

I guess I'll use the poster map at some point, and maybe that ruin would work if I'm starved for ideas some night, but this is one of the worst adventures WotC's put out to date. It's surprising, given that they've really been on an upswing, of late. (Vor Rukoth, for example, is one of the best sandbox adventures I've seen in a while.)

But no. Much like H3 and P3 it's another "Hey, guys, here's encounters in a line!" adventure. The Free RPG Day adventure is much, much better.

On the plus side, I dangled the campaign setting in front of my players tonight during our high-paragon game. My players were sold almost immediately - even the guy who had some bad experiences with Dark Sun in 2e. We're going to get to a good pausing point, play some Paranoia as a palate cleanser, and then dive into some character-driven, personally-scribed Dark Sun fun.

-O

 

[Aegeri]

Can someone describe Marauders to me? I haven't had time to read it as I've been digesting so many other things and writing for my other three games.

 

[Obryn]

Can someone describe Marauders to me? I haven't had time to read it as I've been digesting so many other things and writing for my other three games.

[sblock]Get a quest to find a magic macguffin which is one part of a three-part magic macguffin before the adventure begins. Get randomly beat down in an encounter unrelated to anything else that's going on as a setup for ... the adventure conclusions sidebar. Trek through the desert in a series of set encounters and a skill challenge or so. Go through a long and completely linear dungeon, which btw has running water and mostly kill hej-kin. Find the magic doodad. Face more encounters when you leave. The end. And everything is condensed way down, with hardly any narrative or exploration or anything, so they were pushing the page limit despite there being probably a half-dozen totally unnecessary encounters.

The only halfway clever part is that you meet another party of adventurers looking for the same mcguffin.
[/sblock]

It's generic and almost completely lacks Dark Sun flavor.

-O

 

[Aegeri]

I don't know about BEST...Eberron is pretty freaking great. It's just not the new hotness anymore.

It's not really about being new to me, but just how I can use the setting and the concept of "Can I make this feel really different to any other campaign I've run?". Eberron I feel has a distinct flavor and uniqueness to it. Dark Sun does as well. Something like FR I don't really get that same feeling from, which is why when I made the decision about running my third game I went with the default Point of Light setting over Forgotten Realms.

 

[Korgoth]

[sblock]Get a quest to find a magic macguffin which is one part of a three-part magic macguffin before the adventure begins. Get randomly beat down in an encounter unrelated to anything else that's going on as a setup for ... the adventure conclusions sidebar. Trek through the desert in a series of set encounters and a skill challenge or so. Go through a long and completely linear dungeon, which btw has running water and mostly kill hej-kin. Find the magic doodad. Face more encounters when you leave. The end. And everything is condensed way down, with hardly any narrative or exploration or anything, so they were pushing the page limit despite there being probably a half-dozen totally unnecessary encounters.

The only halfway clever part is that you meet another party of adventurers looking for the same mcguffin.
[/sblock]

It's generic and almost completely lacks Dark Sun flavor.

-O

I like how one of the main adventure hooks is a note calling on all adventurers or whatever... on Athas, where most people can't read.

 

[Thrael]

The Arena fighter one can get insane by late paragon, when you have a high-crit(axe) At-will on an OA(Heavy Blade) damage on a miss(hammer) toothpick or some such.

How so? By RAW you can just share +attack and +damage feats with your other arena weapon (which is kinda sad, it won't let you use your expanded crit range feat for the other so it is best to still use the same category for both). Unless you're house-ruling a single weapon to be an axe, blade and hammer in which case it didn't need an Arena Fighter to begin with. Improvised weapons don't belong to any group (PHB1).

Arena Battle Rhythm is probably the best feature. This build is for a perfect Str/Dex Two-Weapon Fighter.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I like how one of the main adventure hooks is a note calling on all adventurers or whatever... on Athas, where most people can't read.

Maybe that's a change demanded by 4e, if you use 4e then everyone now is literate. Sort of like how 4e requires half-giants to change skin color to have stripes.

 

[OchreJelly]

It's addressed in the CS that most of the uneducated populace of Athas is illiterate. The setting assumes that player characters are the exception to this rule and provide backstory examples as to why your character may be literate. They also stress that if you want your Mul, or half-giant half-wit to be illiterate, then more power to you!

 

[TikkchikFenTikktikk]

I've been coordinating and running a table for the D&D Encounters Dark Sun adventure.

The Encounters format and this adventure in particular leave a lot to be desired. But in my opinion the new mechanics, the races and classes (and themes), and the setting descriptions have done a great job.

The game feels like a blasted world where survival is a challenge even when you aren't being chased by a powerful primal shaman and his hirelings or captured by a tribe of evil hobbits that plan to eat you.

The Campaign Setting Book feels about 75% done:

• There are "page [xx]" typos. Simply inexcusable from a major publisher. Michele Carter, Greg Bilsland, M. Alexander Jurkat, Ray Vallese, and Kim Mohan (the credited editors) should be ashamed and embarrassed when even one of these gets through.
• A lot of the little incidental art scattered through later chapters is just plain bad. Also, no one knows how to illustrate thri-kreen.
• There are waaay too many small portraits of characters doing stuff throughout the rest of the book. There is not enough world building, setting defining medium-sized (like half-page or so) pieces. Which leads to:
• The book feels very light on art, especially in later chapters like "Atlas of Athas" which contributes to the next point:
• It feels short. The original Dark Sun had something like a dozen books and boxed sets released with three years of its release full of stuff to draw from. I expected more detail about everything: only four new rituals? the entirety of the forest ridge gets two pages? twenty pages of advice to DMs?

But a lot is really good:

• It has the polished layout we expect from 4E at this point.
• Though the art is a mixed bag, there is some really good stuff here. The splash page art at the beginning of chapters is mostly really good. The portraits in the Races and Themes chapters are mostly good. I love the city maps.
• I love the pictures on p139 and p183. I wish they were larger and there were more like them.
• I love the themes, muls and thri-kreen. They have "felt right" the ten sessions I've played with them. I don't have a problem with goliaths being plopped in for half-giants. In fact, I am likely to retcon goliaths in my games in other worlds as being descended from half-giants from Athas.
• The few pages for DMs are pretty well done. The adventure looks lame, though.
• The new mechanics unique to Dark Sun are just right. I like survival days, sun sickness, and weapon breakage.

So, I'd say WotC has succeeded in bringing Dark Sun to 4E.

It's a strong setting despite some failures in execution and presentation. Players will enjoy creating and running unique characters. DMs will enjoy new and unique ways to kill those players.

 

[TikkchikFenTikktikk]

$40 MSRP, though. Dang. Plus $20 for the Creature Guide. That is a lot of money, IMO.

Amazon has them discounted to about $40 combined, which helps my pocket book if not my FLGS. It amazes me that WotC lets anyone sell their brand new premier releases at a 33% discount the first week they are available for sale.


All three items should have been packaged together as a $30 boxed set. Maybe $40 if they came with a few of the Athas dungeon tiles. (They could leave out the "3d" tiles. Please.)

Though then Dark Sun might have felt slighted compared to Forgotten Realms and Eberron. Still, I think I would have preferred it.

And packing more goodies in means more sales for retailers and (I would think) more money for WotC than players just waiting for everything showing up in DDI for their $6/month.