Anyway, unique situation came up and I'm pondering how to adapt things.
Premise behind my running this:
I'm not the normal DarkSun DM. That DM started off running us through the original DS story set at the time of Kalak's death. We left without actually knowing what happened to Kalak.
Now, to give him a break, I'm running a game. But due to lack of set up for my own game I'm running DS, and thought I'd convert WotR to this. By itself not a big deal. But wanted to ask input on a couple of things.
#1: The Storyline is altered slighty in that Kalak isn't really dead, one of the Players is actually in his service and the "death" was because he thought there was an enemy in his ranks (Going to be the Lord Warrior and Borys). Does anyone see anything major about the plot of the story itself that changes because of this (Everyone THINKS he's dead, the slaves are free, etc).
#2: Has anyone else thought of this and found anything in particular that hangs up a party in normal game that I should be aware of?
I've already thought about nixing the Mine Section (Not the Illithid and such, just the using fans to clear smoke) and other of the slightly more mundane and not-relevent puzzles, but other than that, not sure what else to alter.
Input is appreciated, though I'm not running this for a month.
Thinking Kalak is not dead doesn't make any real difference as long as he doesn't show up, and if he does there's hell going to be released. What would happen to the free Tyr? What would the canon champions do? What would the PCs do? How would the other Sks react? Would the other Sk-less cities see the return of a presumed dead Kalak as a sign that their own SKs will return as well? It'd be total chaos, I assure you. Not that it's necessarily bad, it can be quite fun!
As for your questions.
What would happen to the free Tyr?
Me and the main DS DM haven't quite hammered that part out yet, it might be that Kalak will be busy and so it'll stray free because he doesn't care about it as much or anymore.
What would the canon champions do? What would the PCs do?
Hamanu will continue the Tyr/Urik conflict such as it is, the others will do what they've done. The real issue here isn't so much what the other Champions will do so much as how will the world be changed if Rikus' adventures never happened (Alternate history here, the main DM ran the start quest, but Rikus died and we never saw what happened, but OOG we know Kalak didn't fall, just killed Tithian for treason and Rikus, Sadira and co for defying his rule)
As for the PCs, the ones for my game will become NPCs under the DM's control, one of them actually works for Kalak and always knew he was alive (cause he still is). And the regular group will probably be heartened a bit. One of them took the hook in the quest that gets him Nobility from Kalak's hand. He's a noble and suddenly Kalak's dead, he loses his backing such as it is. And another PC stumbled upon one of Kalid-Ma's orbs and is looking for the others to bring him back.
Would the other Sk-less cities see the return of a presumed dead Kalak as a sign that their own SKs will return as well?
There aren't any really, in this version of the game (The one we run) Kalak didn't die, and the Prism Pentad hasn't come about (if it'll happen at all now) So the other ones never fell either (Which is also going to make for interesting activities when Dregoth becomes active again).
Good questions though, since those answers were already there, but this'll lead me to flesh them out more.
#1: The Storyline is altered slighty in that Kalak isn't really dead, one of the Players is actually in his service and the "death" was because he thought there was an enemy in his ranks (Going to be the Lord Warrior and Borys). Does anyone see anything major about the plot of the story itself that changes because of this (Everyone THINKS he's dead, the slaves are free, etc).
The plot with Borys, Lord Warrior, Draxans and all is the CONSEQUENCE of Kalak's death. Before it, real or not, Borys has no reason for such activity.
But mainly it was going to be the Lord Warrior. It is very brave of him, but he knows what's in Tyr and thinks the Big T will be enough to ensure his power.
That's one angle. Another Angle is that the Lord Warrior isn't betraying Borys but Borys would prefer the Lord Warrior to Usurp power (and thinks Big T is enough to take Kalak, but harmless to him) and thus is encouraging such behavior in hopes of having a better foothold in Tyr for other purposes.
Adapting a PC game, and a non-cannon one at that, can be a difficult task. I personally haven't played the game (not compatible with me mac, damn), but I would suggest you leaving that alone....
Another mac user ...... Hooray
(mac users will take over the world :evillaugh )
Just out of interest...... if you manage to get hold of virtual PC, both shattered lands and wake of the ravager become playable on your mac.
Also ...... both of the games were produced in mac format (according to the adverts of the day) although I have yet to see a copy.
Also ...... both of the games were produced in mac format (according to the adverts of the day) although I have yet to see a copy.
Been there, tried that (also tried dosbox) and it's too slow and choppy to be playable. No luck finding the mac version either.
Been there, tried that (also tried dosbox) and it's too slow and choppy to be playable.
I have never tried them on Mac, but there is some NT5 experience that helps. Switch off the sound!
There is a timed quest in a volcano rescuing some lava(?) children.
My PC was too fast and never gave me enough time to complete the quest. I have spoken to several others who have experienced the same problem.
To finish the game you must slow down your processor. I was not willing to do that so I never finished the game.
I was also never able to hear the opening video seqence even after trying numerous sound card configs. Apparently, my sound card was not compatible for the videos. It functioned for the rest of the game. weird
It was a shame, really, because it could have been a really good game. Shattered Lands is a personal favorite PC game of mine, and WotR was just a huge disappointment.It would be nice to see a Dark Sun game again, but I gave up on that in, oh, about 1996
The volcano thing was never a big deal if you just forgoed getting the claws. The main bugs I kept running into (At later dates when I downloaded the game) was the underground, for some reason, whenever I got to that point, it got trapped in a loop. I couldn't leave the Sorrows to go to Under Tyr, and I couldn't leave the Mine Entrance to the rest of the mines, exiting just placed me at the initial entry of the place I left.
Kind of part of my inspiration for this storyline, I want to see it run again and I can't do it PC wise.
The sad thing is that neither of my comps will actually RUN Ravager now. This comp's an XP system, so no go. The other one claims it doesn't have enough memory to run it, which is just bizzare...
Kind of part of my inspiration for this storyline, I want to see it run again and I can't do it PC wise.
Yeah, the memory is most likely because it wants conventional DOS memory... that game was a notorious conventional memory hog... like 615 or 620k if i remember correctly
... I remember having to do a lot of special stuff just to get the game to run, and then once it actually DID run, there were so many bugs... try getting the DOSbox program (and a front end like d-fend or something if you dont want to do all the command-line stuff yourself) to run it on your XP computer... I know for a fact that Shattered Lands works with it because I played it last summer and it worked without a hitch. 
I was about 13 or 14 when I played the game last (ten years ago, I got all those games in a special CD box), so I don't remember a lot of it specifically... but it seemed to be really ambitious in terms of plotline. I do remember thinking: "the tarrasque? Wow." I just remember being really disappointed because it improved a lot of things over the first one, but it just reeked of laziness all around. Plus, not counting DS Online (which I never got to play), it's the most recent Dark Sun game... which makes me saddest of all.