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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aaron L" data-source="post: 7858603" data-attributes="member: 926">I must say that is an understatement, Good Sir; the original Dark Sun boxed set was sublime. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />I was actually fortunate enough to find an original Dark Sun boxed set on eBay in truly excellent condition about 2 years ago for $60, unopened and with the shrink wrap still intact!  I got a genuine thrill when I popped the lid and saw the 1992 flyer to join the RPGA sitting on top of the other contents.  And the maps! Oh my, those beautiful, wonderfully textured maps!In fact, I hope to get the chance to use that beautiful box that is sitting on my shelf not 3 feet away from me to actually run a 2nd Edition AD&D Dark Sun campaign at some point in the near future, including even using the Battlesystem rules to have the PCs lead some forces in a skirmish to defend a village against a raid of Gith at some point.  I've just always wanted to set up a situation for players to really take advantage of the Dark Sun Fighter's command abilities.The revised Dark Sun boxed set is...  best not spoken of very much.  Using the fact that character ability scores go up to 25 as an attention-grabbing selling point of Dark Sun, but then deciding to revise and re-calibrate the ability score modifiers such that the high numbers merely equate to lower scores on the standard table... was not the brightest nor most honest idea I've ever encountered.  The whole idea was quite upsetting to everyone I ever gamed with, and it was simply ignored by all of us.Oh, how I long for the days of big, beautiful campaign setting boxed sets full of wonderful doo-dads, knick-knacks, trinkets, tchotchkes, and maps... oh, those wonderful lost maps!  I can understand that the economics of boxed sets no longer make them viable (although I would quite happily pay a bit extra for the inclusion of such feelies with campaign settings once again, to help establish the look and feel of the setting and provide the added emotional connection that can only be provided by tactile sensations, and all of it inside a nice box to hold all the books for a setting all together, even on my extremely limited fixed budget!) But I mostly wish to the Happy Hunting Grounds that WotC and other publishers would at least return to including full-sized printed maps with their campaign setting releases! And not just some small tear-out map embedded between the pages that leaves a ragged-edged scar in the middle of your new book when removed, but actual, separate, folded up full maps of the world of the campaign setting, perhaps shrink-wrapped and bound in a pocket inside the back cover. It's always so frustrating to try to envision the full look of a campaign setting with only maps the size of a standard page to go by, and usually broken up into even smaller sections spread across several pages. I am certain that every gamer out there would rejoice if only publishers would start including actual, real, unattached, folded up large maps in their biggest books and campaign settings once again!By the way, thank you so much for these articles; they really are a treat to read!  <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=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f44d.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt="(y)" title="Thumbs up    (y)"  data-smilie="22"data-shortname="(y)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f913.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":geek:" title="Geek    :geek:"  data-smilie="30"data-shortname=":geek:" /></blockquote>

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