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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 7993084" data-attributes="member: 5948">It's funny, I've been rereading a bunch of old Dark Sun stuff recently and a lot of it doesn't hold up that well, to be honest.  Sorceror-kings are often written as cackling evil overlord stereotypes who nonetheless find reasons to send PCs on important quests, the geographic logic of the world is significantly lacking (there's all these grassy plains just west a bit over the mountains, why hasn't everyone moved there away from the horrible desert?), massive setting elements are never described in an official product (the Pristine Tower, for instance...) and the setting design of when it comes to things like planar travel etc is all over the place and frequently contradictory.  And the amount of pagecount that goes into things like the dragon/avangion/elemental ascension process is vastly overblown, especially given how few PCs must have taken this route given how onerous the 2e dual-classing rules were.I think that everyone who gets deeply into Dark Sun has a different mental image of what 'real Dark Sun' is, based on their home games and selective mental editing of the canon.  I know there's huge chunks of 2e DS canon I'd entirely disregard if I were running a game.  This is probably why everyone who wants DS back for 5e argues about it all the time - everyone played in a fundamentally different world. If you want the best lore sources <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the original Dark Sun boxed set (not the Revised one).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the Prism Pentad novels (I don't think they're very good as novels, and they were disastrous for the game line, but they are fundamentally important sources of lore)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Rise and Fall of a Dragon King, the novel by Lynn Abbey.  And Brazen Gambit and Darkness Before Dawn, by the same author, but less significant lore-wise.  Abbey was imho by far the best writer who worked on Dark Sun fiction, and she brings the way the world works for everyday people to life better than anyone, and her depiction of Hamanu, and the lore of the origins and interactions of the Sorcerer-Kings are defining in my mind.  The end of Rise And Fall can be discarded from a lore point of view, but the portrayals and history are awesome.</li> </ul>Beyond that depends what you want.  Defilers and Preservers, Earth Air Wind and Fire, and Dragon Kings are all very 2e-mechanics-heavy sourcebooks but do contain some good lore on magic, the way elemental clerics/wizards/etc fit into the world.  When it comes to regional books,Ivory Triangle is a decent location book set right where most games will take place.  Valley of Dust and Fire is another well-detailed sourcebook but it's written as such a hostile place that it's unlikely PCs will ever live to get there.  Thri-Kreen of Athas is well-written and contains some interesting stuff but I think it veers wildly from the core themes and logic of the setting, so I can't recommend it except as a source on roleplaying Kreen.There are others, but I haven't read them in years, so can't really comment!</blockquote>

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