Is my assumption that this campaign srtting is set up basically as a political intrigue thing with no alignment quarrels? Thanks
donald_cannith
it actually kinda reminds me of an end of the world of different campaign settins ( most similar seems to be eberron)
but this seems much cooler.
cant wait to figure this all out so i can play.
also the site is abit unclear what comes in the boxed set?
Is my assumption that this campaign srtting is set up basically as a political intrigue thing with no alignment quarrels? Thanks
Its not Good versus Evil if that's what you mean. Its not Defiler versus Preserver either.
You could say its how far will you go, and what will you accept to do and let others do, to survive in the current world that Athas has become.
In the novels of the Prism Pentad series, the protagonists liberate Tyr from its millenial tyranny...only to find that their social reforms have plunged the city into disarry and mass poverty, and opened the door for foreign invasion. Later on in the series, they learn that their quest to rid the world of the hated sorcerer-kings and of the Dragon would lead to the freeing of a far greater and implacable evil. Can "heroes" choose the lesser of two evils, even if it means the prolonged misery of the masses at the hands of the sorcerer-kings, even if it is to ultimately save them from death?
Past generations made the gamble that they would destroy now and rebuild later, but later never came. No Golden Age followed the end of the Cleansing Wars, and that event was even marked by a hundred year rampage by the newly created Dragon, who made the central Tablelands and northern Trembling Plains what they are today - mostly desert.
Thus one of the main themes of Dark Sun is survival and its price.
PS : If you want readers to invest time in reading your posts, you might think about taking time of your own to write with appropriately-placed capitals, as well as commas and other punctuation marks, and make suave use of italic, bold, smilies and other enhancing tools at your disposal. Good luck in your further requests for information!
And I concur with Pennarin about making your posts, well, legible.
...hmm now to convince my players that FR is dumb and overplayed and DS is much more intriguing and would be a much needed change of pace.... the real challenge has begun
Ok thanks, that'll teach me to be in a hurry when i type stuff. But yeah the setting really does intrigue me quite a bit. I would like to attempt to play in it or possibly even run it when I finally master it.
...hmm now to convince my players that FR is dumb and overplayed and DS is much more intriguing and would be a much needed change of pace.... the real challenge has begun
I played DS earlier in the year. Currently playing FR now and returning to DS next year (having a break). What do you know of the burnt world? I can help you as I'm reasonably familiar with both systems.
But like i dont know the flavor of the setting very well. In FR its track down the BBEG and kill him with your ultra powerful magic-y stuff. As a DM its easy enough to run that with minimal creativity. So iguess basically, i need to figureo tu wat kidn fo a campaign a Dark Sun campaign would be. I am thinknig more intrigue and dark decisions that have mroe impact than you see and all is doomed unless you do the absolute right thing. Does this sound right or am i off completely......
I would suggest you go to half.com or some other used book place on-line and buy the Prism Pentad series of books - that will provide a lot of the flavor elements and also explain many of the events that happen in the game.
Oh - and if you want the best Dark Sun material ever made - just check mt signature! :D
I like to make my players cry - but that is because I am evil.
I would suggest you go to half.com or some other used book place on-line and buy the Prism Pentad series of books - that will provide a lot of the flavor elements and also explain many of the events that happen in the game.
Oh - and if you want the best Dark Sun material ever made - just check mt signature! :D
Hrm... so i suppose then the real trick is how do i convince my players to play in a campaign where the whole point is for me to try and kill them.
:evillaugh
mUAHAHAHAHAHAH
any suggestions?
Hrm... so i suppose then the real trick is how do i convince my players to play in a campaign where the whole point is for me to try and kill them.
:evillaugh
mUAHAHAHAHAHAH
any suggestions?
Set it in the revised boxed set timeline. It changed the flavour of Athas a bit kinda like the Time of Troubles in FR. PCs got to have hope and there were hints at restoring the planet.
Set it in the revised boxed set timeline. It changed the flavour of Athas a bit kinda like the Time of Troubles in FR. PCs got to have hope and there were hints at restoring the planet.
The revised setting is useful in that you can choose to run either the original gritty version, the revised shiny one, or a mix of the two. Personaly I prefer the latter.
Well you see thats just the thing. I dont know much about it. From what i have been able to gather its like an end of the world type thing where magic is destroying the planet and the sorcerer-kings control everything and oppress everyone as this end world was thier creation. Also there are bird people, insect people, cannibalistic halflings, genocidal elves and lots of psionics.
From what I've heard, DMs love to make their characters start at the bottom, as slaves. No posessions or money, and minimal class levels. Then they free themselves, rise up, and eventually take part of vast events controlled by the big wigs of the world - mighty psionic sects, the sorcerer-kings, or grand merchant dynasties making hostile takeovers of entire communities...or a bid for the throne of an entire city-state. The heroes themselves don't usually fill in positions such as Elminster's, but rather those of comparatively far less powerful people.
On my side, I prefer Athas as a world of contrasts, where extremes oppose each other along fierce lines often blurry. The good might do bad, and vice versa. That's one theme I already mentionned above, and which is found in the novels.
Hrm... so i suppose then the real trick is how do i convince my players to play in a campaign where the whole point is for me to try and kill them.
:evillaugh
mUAHAHAHAHAHAH
any suggestions?
My usual first thing I do, as a warm-up, is break out my Paranoia RPG books, and butcher my players ruthlessly, all in good humor. That way, they are used to the idea of potentially losing their characters when we step into a Dark Sun campaign. I've had a campaign where one player went through a dozen characters in the campaign.... half of them were just really, really bad dice rolls. The other half was really, really dumb decisions (but done in character!)
My usual first thing I do, as a warm-up, is break out my Paranoia RPG books, and butcher my players ruthlessly, all in good humor. That way, they are used to the idea of potentially losing their characters when we step into a Dark Sun campaign. I've had a campaign where one player went through a dozen characters in the campaign.... half of them were just really, really bad dice rolls. The other half was really, really dumb decisions (but done in character!)
Paranoia/Darksun Hmmn. Crossover potential- throw in surfing Druids, Elminster and Warforged Pirate Ninjas riding dinosaurs and we're onto something.
To the OP. Athas has no weave like FR for spellcasters to draw on. Clerics draw their power from the elemental planes (no gods either) while wizards power their spells via life energy drawn from plants. Preservers only draw enough to power their spell while defilers destroy the lands fertility to get greater effect out of their spells. Ancient wars ravaged the planet and most traditional D&D races are extinct (Orcs, Kobolds, Goblins) orare very different (Halflings, Dragons,). There are 7 cities in the Tyr region each ruled by a despotic Sorceror King who can grant divine spells to Templars. The Sorceror Kings are similar in some ways to a normal D&D worlds Demon/Devil lords- immortal beings with powers that challenge the mightiest of heroes.
Hrm... so i suppose then the real trick is how do i convince my players to play in a campaign where the whole point is for me to try and kill them.
:evillaugh
mUAHAHAHAHAHAH
any suggestions?
I always like hitting someone in the group with a maximized ray of enfeeblement. Though touch of idiocy is also a favorite of mine too.
Now that being said, I have actually only ever killed one player's character - and that was because he was making really bad decisions, they set off the wizard's alarm spell, the wizard go a surprise round on the PC and cast fireball at the whole knot of them and the player failed their reflex save, rolled very high for inititative, and then the defiler cast another spell - I think it was scorching ray - which killed the PC.
My game is hard - maybe very hard, and I will punish players for doing dumb things like following someone after they know they were spotted, failing 5 climb checks while trying to climb up the side of a building to look in someones (the defiler mentioned above) window when there was a wizard standing thee who had the spell spider climb but did not cast it
.I give some great treasure - like Stonecutter (see the archive) and items that grow in power with the characters - to balance out the lack of regular treasure and to make up for the difficulty of the encounters, but I expect my players to think and plan their actions as if their characters lifes depends upon it - because they do.
My usual first thing I do, as a warm-up, is break out my Paranoia RPG books, and butcher my players ruthlessly, all in good humor. That way, they are used to the idea of potentially losing their characters when we step into a Dark Sun campaign. I've had a campaign where one player went through a dozen characters in the campaign.... half of them were just really, really bad dice rolls. The other half was really, really dumb decisions (but done in character!)
I like to start out the campaign with a couple rounds of casualties too. I start with a high challenge level, and don't really increase it proportionately, so that if you survive to 5th level or so, your survival chances are much better so long as you & the other PCs don't do anything stupid, or agree to challenges that you know or should know are over your head.
At 5th level, someone seems to always get fireball or lightning bolt, and after that, literally half of the PC deaths are friendly fire.
Unfortunately the rules gurus have repeatedly rejected my suggestion for a "protection from friendly fire" spell. But one player's invisibilty combined with another player's area energy attack spells are a persistently dangerous combination in my game. :D