I'm planning to start a new DS campaign after just finishing a short Eberron campaign in which I was the only player (it was the first complete campaign ever for the DM and I.) Now it's my turn to DM, and I'd like to make Athas the venue. I've bought and read some PDFs (the original and revised box sets, Veiled Alliance, Slave Tribes, City-state of Tyr, and the Ivory Triangle) and I'm thinking about going with Tyr as the campaign base. Now, I read all the DS novels back in the day and I've already done some lurker research on this board, and of course I've got all the athas.org stuff (excellent job, by the way.) But I still have some nagging questions, and I'm also seeking general advice. So here goes:
Nagging Questions:
1. Is all slavery illegal in Tyr, or merely the trading of slaves? For instance, if a Nibenese merchant decided to move to Tyr for an extended length of time with his or her slaves, would they be freed by the city's laws or not?
2. Is "Rise and Fall of a Dragon King" canon or not? I'm not sure I like the idea of throwing nearly all the sorcerer-kings to the wolves (I mean getting rid of them), as they provide a major flavor element to the setting.
3. Would it be fair of me to take all "ressurection" style spells from the cleric spell list and add them to the druid's? I think the flavor would be much better, and it would scare my player. Athas should be scary.
4. Is there a way to justify scaling back the temperature a little bit and making the sky more emerald-ish and less olive? I know this sounds like a weird question, but these were always elements that bothered me the last time I tried DS, which was with the original box set. If role-playing is escapism, who would want to escape to Athas? I know it's a super-harsh world, but I still want to water it down a tiny bit. Maybe the magic or the Pristine Tower could somehow...do something...
The advice I need:
1. What kind of DS campaign would you run for a single player? I think he intends to play a psion, and my own idea is to have his character be from a fallen noble family in Tyr that was driven under by the slave revolt and subsequent events. In the Eberron campaign we just played, my character was in a party of five (all of whom the DM controlled.) I realized it was important to have group versatility but I also felt like my character was often out of the spotlight, which is suspicious when you're the only PC. So I want to avoid that if possible with this campaign.
2. How easy is it to translate non-DS adventures into DS? I'll probably end up doing it to some extent even if it's not easy, so some pointers would be great.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Hi, DS board members.
Hi, and welcome
Nagging Questions:
2. Is "Rise and Fall of a Dragon King" canon or not? I'm not sure I like the idea of throwing nearly all the sorcerer-kings to the wolves (I mean getting rid of them), as they provide a major flavor element to the setting.
Hamanu gets taken out of the picture at the end of the novel, so yes he dissapears, but is also replaced by another entity just as powerful and masquerading as Hamanu, so even if you incorporate the events of that novel Hamanu can still be kept around.
Instead of Rise and Fall of a Dragon King, did you meant the events of the Prism Pentad? Its in that series of novels that the sorcerer-kings get killed, not in Rise and Fall...
Some of the events in Rise and Fall of a Dragon King I'd say are not considered canon by the community and are avoided by athas.org, but the rest of the novel is a treasure trove of canon information: a great depiction of the motivations, personality, memories, etc, of a sorcerer-king, a description of a city-state and its people, a depiction of their day-to-day lives, etc...
4. Is there a way to justify scaling back the temperature a little bit and making the sky more emerald-ish and less olive? I know this sounds like a weird question, but these were always elements that bothered me the last time I tried DS, which was with the original box set. If role-playing is escapism, who would want to escape to Athas? I know it's a super-harsh world, but I still want to water it down a tiny bit. Maybe the magic or the Pristine Tower could somehow...do something...
Why would you get rid of the temperature extremes? Those can be found on Earth in certain deserts where people have lived, fought wars, built temples, all under a burning sun and freezing nights.
And about the olive color...unless I am myself terribly mistaken, I believe the sky develops about a dozen colors during the day, from olive to pink, to violet, to crimson, etc. Weren't the colored steps of Kalak's ziggurat painted so to mimic the colors of the Athasian day?
If you got difficulty making yourself or your players visualize what an Athasian sky looks like, show them the covers for the Dark Sun adventures and supplements, as those usually have a different sky each time.
As a last resort you can always visit this collection of exotic Athasian pics I amassed on my Multiply website.
1. Is all slavery illegal in Tyr, or merely the trading of slaves? For instance, if a Nibenese merchant decided to move to Tyr for an extended length of time with his or her slaves, would they be freed by the city's laws or not?
I recently started my own DS campaign, and thought about the same issue myself. I decided that the merchant houses keep their slaves in Tyr, but since slavery is outlawed, they have be discreet about it. In other words, their slaves aren't treated as proper slaves outside the merchant facilities, but are generally not allowed to roam free and so forth. The Tyrian government is fully aware of this, but because of their dependence on the merchant houses (like all city-states), they tolerate it as long as it's not done in the open. The houses for their part treat their slaves more like servants in public, so as to not aggravate the government. The players all thought this sounded logical, so it's probably an idea that works if you think it sounds ok ;)
1. Is all slavery illegal in Tyr, or merely the trading of slaves? For instance, if a Nibenese merchant decided to move to Tyr for an extended length of time with his or her slaves, would they be freed by the city's laws or not?
I have to agree with DarkSoulman on this one. Any foriegner including members of merchant houses could bring slaves to the city and as long as they didn't stay for too long there wouldn't be any issue with them keeping slaves from an official perspective. On the other hand it could be quite dangerous to ones health to flaunt slave ownership or treat ones slave badly, as there are a lot of freed slaves about....
2. Is "Rise and Fall of a Dragon King" canon or not? I'm not sure I like the idea of throwing nearly all the sorcerer-kings to the wolves (I mean getting rid of them), as they provide a major flavor element to the setting.
You can disregard anything you like from any book to be honest. But, no Rise and Fall of a Dragon King is generally not considered canon. The Prism Pentad is however, that still doesn't mean that you have to have the events of those books play out in your version of Athas.
3. Would it be fair of me to take all "ressurection" style spells from the cleric spell list and add them to the druid's? I think the flavor would be much better, and it would scare my player. Athas should be scary.
Yes! In fact I would recommend it. I you want clerics to still have some power over life and death let them bring only those people who have been claimed by their element back from the grave. So if a huge boulder fell on you an earth cleric could raise you from the dead, but if you were burned to death you'd need a fire cleric to do the job, and if you drowned a water cleric would be required, etc.
4. Is there a way to justify scaling back the temperature a little bit and making the sky more emerald-ish and less olive? I know this sounds like a weird question, but these were always elements that bothered me the last time I tried DS, which was with the original box set. If role-playing is escapism, who would want to escape to Athas? I know it's a super-harsh world, but I still want to water it down a tiny bit. Maybe the magic or the Pristine Tower could somehow...do something...
If you want to you can... I don't really see why you would though
I'll try to get to the advice part later.
Thanks for your help, any more suggestions/opinions would be more than welcome!
I wanted to start a campaign where I didn't even tell the players they were in dark sun.
Start them in the last sea city, (ignoring the mind lords boxed set adventure, it's too great an environment to just destroy) which is a fairly un-dark sun like situation, play up the 1984 like control over the citizenry, have them adventure in the immediate vicinity before eventually coming to an understanding of the dark side of the mind lord's rulership, have them get in some kind of conflict during their middle levels, and then finally adventure into the larger world.
My players have a fear of dark sun adventuring, because the setting is so unforgiving, I get giggly thinking of their faces once they realize that the world they've been adventuring in for 10 levels or so turned out to be Dark Sun.
Edit: I'm basitally stealing my main plot line from the book "The Sunset Warrior" by Eric Van Lustbader. In my campaign, the mind lords rule an "imposed utopia" where everything is perfect as long as you aren't big on independent thought. Almost no knowledge of the outside world exists, the people in power have a vested interest in keeping things that way, because it keeps the populace under their control.
The majority of the populace is fine with this, because they are under the belief that the outside world is uninhabitable (and therefore uninhabited by other civilized life), and for the most part their needs are met, and they think the people in charge are actually preserving their city from the forces that have destroyed the rest of the world. Crime is low, the psionicly driven technology level is high, arcane magic is virtually unknown and forbidden, even preserving.
The problem for my PC's will arise as they level up and gain the notice of the real power brokers, the mind lords themselves and assorted other power groups. Assuming they either want to become a power group themselves, or resent being forced to align themselves with an existing group, they will find themselves on the run from the city.
This is where the truth of where they are sets in, and they begin a true Dark Sun campaign. Either working against the mind lords (as they send assassins against the PC's as a means of preserving their own secret existence) or by carving their own niche in the harsher (but in some ways more free) city states of the world.
I wanted to start a campaign where I didn't even tell the players they were in dark sun.
Brilliant. I'll have to steal that idea for whever I finish up my current DS campaign. :D
Are you just gonna tell them that there is no magic in this campaign setting?
I hope none of them want to play a wizard....
Are you just gonna tell them that there is no magic in this campaign setting?
Unless one of them gets a wild hair, it won't come up. However, if one of them does, I'll steer them towards psion instead with the explanation that there are no magic users allowed.
Brilliant. I'll have to steal that idea for whever I finish up my current DS campaign. :D
I concur, sounds like a great campaign idea. Now why didn't I think of that...
