"Dragon?" Sadira uttered. Her companions echoed her astonishment. "We're talking about Kalak, not the--" Sadira stopped herself, the implication of Nok's question striking her with the force of a half-giant's club.
"Kalak is the Dragon?" she gasped. -PP, VP, 280
When I was first exposed to Dark Sun, it was through the words of my DM when the first 2nd edition box set had only recently come out. He spoke of the world of Athas which we all know and enjoy, and it was captivating to me. I was mesmerized by the mystery of the campaign setting, and as I had never read any of the first box material that my DM had, I gaped in wonder at what might be the ruins of who knew what here or there, and was almost scared to imagine the Hinterlands, from which only one man, the Wanderer, as far my DM knew, had ever come back, and then only barely. It was a stark, brutal, well-crafted world, with alien psionics, and destructive magic users, whose practitioners, even if they were preservers, were hunted down and killed by superstitious and fearful peoples. I was impressed, by the first few official adventures I encountered, how low level everyone was, especially the PCs, to the point that anyone with "high" levels was extremely impressive to me. From these early adventures, a 6th level templars could strike fear into full PC parties, and 9th level psionicists were true masters with considerable power that you were quite priviledged to see. When I learned of the Dragon, I asked why high level wizards did not kill it. It took a while, but my DM finally made it clear to me that such wizards simply do not exist, or if they did they were extremely rare, to the point of uniqueness. One hundred 20th level preservers could not just swarm the Dragon..., rather, my DM impressed upon me that you'd be lucky, extremely lucky even, to make 18th level as a preserver, and even if you managed that, he said, you'd be in constant danger, but a man of great experience, a secret hero of Athas who had a chance at hope for a new world.
I think my readers get the picture I am painting. Of course things changed with the early campaign. PCs became more powerful as is wont to happen, but with their power they became players in world affairs, as was the campaign's design (e.g. the Dragon Crown adventure, a good adventure where PCs of long experience finally learned only a few tantalizing clues to the past and influenced world affairs without turning to campy Rajaat, champion and life-shaping references). Things however have changed since the early days of Dark Sun and my original perceptions...
Latter Dark Sun published products and Athas.org and have largely run roughshod over the old mysteries and gritty earthiness of the campaign by focusing on extremely powerful PCs and NPCs, and now the world of Athas seems to run itself off of advanced beings, Rajaat and by exposing every other mystery of Athas. Furthermore, box 2 (and similar products) and D&D editions 3.0-3.5 have formed a peculiar team that has shaped an Athas where it seems nearly everyone is aware of who the champions are, that there was a Blue Age and "Life-Shapers," and that all those aware of these profound secrets are ultra powerful with all sorts of peculiar varieties of prestige classes, abilities and backgrounds, even if they are of low level (which they frequently are not, given 3rd edition predilections for high level characters).
In my view power and knowledge should be quite limited on Athas. A major reason why Faerun archmages do not change the world is that there are far too many of them. If everyone has so much power on Athas, one loses the profound sense of awe one should have for the sorcerer-kings, and being 18th level ceases to mean so much. Indeed, just making it to the threshold of advanced being status (20th/20th) should be in my mind a spectacular achievement that in all likelihood would have taken years of plays, if played correctly, where the character in game time has actually spent decades levelling up to such levels of power. The same is so for the secrets of Athas. Very few people should know about the dragons, avangions, Rajaat, the Green Age and all else, and if the DM is lucky enough to have DS newbies, he should strive to keep them in the dark about these matters for as long as possible, and not expose them to it in the first adventure like box set 2 would have the DM do. Doing this makes the discovery of such secrets all the more incredible and fascinating. And don't get me wrong. The core story by Troy Denning is quite awesome, and one of the best aspects of the campaign world, but in my mind Rajaat, Dregoth and others should not be influencing nearly every aspect of the game. These characters, in my mind, should be produced extremely sparingly by the DM, if at all. As gods in other campaigns, it is not useful to swamp Athas in dragons, avangions and all else.
I have presented all this chaotically and I might have ruffled the feathers of some of my readers. No insult is meant to anyone. I do hope this provokes a little discussion however, as I fear Dark Sun may become swamped in Dregeth, secrets, extremely powerful (N)PCs, life-shaped artifacts and, as many have mentioned, space halflings and hamsters, all of which in my mind do much, if used too frequently and incorrectly, to stifle the original purity and mystery of the setting in its early years. Indeed, I fear such backstory running roughshod over the campaign might even spoil the setting permanently, and thereby ruin any chances of Dark Sun being resurrected in any more concrete forms than what we have left.
Hopefully all you fans out there will add your comments to this. I shall try and address this matter more logically and in greater length in the future.
NOTE: the words "backstory running roughshod" I saw posted on a product review of the second Dark Sun box set by someone whose codename I do not recall.
I do not let any of the published material come between me and my game. If there is a contradiction, I use the one I like. If there is an event that happened that I do not like, it never happened. In my game, I use the material as the bones of my world, but I add to it the items that I want to be in thee to drive the story that I am telling.
We have recently had a very long and heated discussion like this one, found HERE. So it may be that this new thread will not drum up the discussion like you would hope.
Now personally, I run my game very hard and savage. Time and again I have stressed to my players that this is a world of harsh and savage beauty. Frequently they have faced death from creatures and have been in situations that go against the standard CR scale- and I have told them that in this game, just like in life, sometimes there are situations that come at you that the only thing you can do is run away. Now other DMs of Dark Sun may run there games differently, and that is fine because regardless of how many rules and books a setting has, one fact remains the same- it is 'your' game and no book can tell you how to run it. Period. The only factor that should be considered is this- are you and your players having fun. If you are, you are doing a great job, if not then you will not have a game for long.
Anyway...that was my rant.
BTW- thanks for joining us.
