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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6771176" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I've never played or GMed in DS. I own and have read bits of the 2nd ed Dark Sun set (a fellow RPGer was cleaning out his shelves) and I own and have read the 4e DS books. If I was going to run another 4e campaign I would certainly think about using DS as a setting (though I'm not sure it has enough in it to support a full 30 levels of play).</p><p></p><p>For me, what is "instantly recognisable" about DS is the geography/ecology (desert) and the basic socio-political set-up (city states ruled by sorcerer kings) which together combine to yield a certain sort of aesthetic (sword-and-sandals, gladiators, pit fighters, caravan guards, wise hermits of the desert, etc).</p><p></p><p>I can see thri-keens contribute to this - they reinforce the insectoid/reptilian-over-mammalian vibe of this particular desert setting. Half-giants, on the other hand, do nothing for me at all and while I'd be happy to have one played their absence from the setting would (for me) change nothing of importance about it. (Half-giants don't particularly speak to desert geography or ecology, nor to sword-and-sandals, nor even especially to secondary tropes like mutation. Personally they evoke Lennie from Of Mice and Men, but Lennie can just as easily be a large, strong, somewhat simple-minded human, as he was in the novel.)</p><p></p><p>For me, having PCs that "tell a Dark Sun story" or support Dark Sun play would be much more about backstory, motivation and readiness to jump into the setting-evoking situations that confront the players, rather than gnomes vs halflings vs half-giants.</p><p></p><p>(On the whole "sorcerer kings as deriving their powers from genocide" thing, this is not stated in the 4e setting materials although their are hints in sidebars. This <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Sun#Metaplot" target="_blank">Wikipedia entry</a> spells it all out, but references a revised, 2nd ed version. If the genocide stuff is in the original 2nd ed version I've missed it in my skim-reading, and personally it doesn't seem very crucial to getting the essential tropes of the setting into play.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6771176, member: 42582"] I've never played or GMed in DS. I own and have read bits of the 2nd ed Dark Sun set (a fellow RPGer was cleaning out his shelves) and I own and have read the 4e DS books. If I was going to run another 4e campaign I would certainly think about using DS as a setting (though I'm not sure it has enough in it to support a full 30 levels of play). For me, what is "instantly recognisable" about DS is the geography/ecology (desert) and the basic socio-political set-up (city states ruled by sorcerer kings) which together combine to yield a certain sort of aesthetic (sword-and-sandals, gladiators, pit fighters, caravan guards, wise hermits of the desert, etc). I can see thri-keens contribute to this - they reinforce the insectoid/reptilian-over-mammalian vibe of this particular desert setting. Half-giants, on the other hand, do nothing for me at all and while I'd be happy to have one played their absence from the setting would (for me) change nothing of importance about it. (Half-giants don't particularly speak to desert geography or ecology, nor to sword-and-sandals, nor even especially to secondary tropes like mutation. Personally they evoke Lennie from Of Mice and Men, but Lennie can just as easily be a large, strong, somewhat simple-minded human, as he was in the novel.) For me, having PCs that "tell a Dark Sun story" or support Dark Sun play would be much more about backstory, motivation and readiness to jump into the setting-evoking situations that confront the players, rather than gnomes vs halflings vs half-giants. (On the whole "sorcerer kings as deriving their powers from genocide" thing, this is not stated in the 4e setting materials although their are hints in sidebars. This [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Sun#Metaplot]Wikipedia entry[/url] spells it all out, but references a revised, 2nd ed version. If the genocide stuff is in the original 2nd ed version I've missed it in my skim-reading, and personally it doesn't seem very crucial to getting the essential tropes of the setting into play.) [/QUOTE]
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