I'm still new to Darksun and I had looked at athas.org valuable info and this board. But is there any use in "PHB Darksun Dragon" and "DM's guide to Darksun" in Dungeon? Any help in this?
Where I should start the campaign? In the tablelands? Problem is that I can't find more background info of Darksun, so would you please answer to few questions: Is everyone in athas illiterate and does the class sorcerer exist? I know already, that wizards is the hated class in the realms of athas.
I apolize of my little crude language (I hope I didn't freaked off anyone). :D
http://store.yahoo.com/svgames-store/downloads-wotc-adnddksun.html
(Darksun Campign Setting Download) it's $5, a steal
Jus tneed a little work converting to 3rd Ed as need but all the relevant descriptions on events, settings etc work perfectly well with 3rd ED, just need to use 3rd ed creatures, spelsl etc.
Personally I'd start in Tyr.
EVERYONE is illiterate except for nobles, wizards and Templars..and a few slaves and others (note it's usually illegal in city-states for any non-noble or tmeplar to be able to read).
Sorceror class exists if you want it to, as DM, it's YOUR call.
Defilers are the hated spellcasters, problem is most folk don't know any difference between normal wizards and defilers, so they just kill arcane casters on sight.
Think of Dark Sun like a post apocalypse or Iron Age setting.
The cities are ruled by sorceror kings, vaslty powerful magic users and often deadly combatants who've ruled for uncounted centuries.
Slavery, cruelty, ignorance...harsh, deadly world filled with many mutate and psionic creatures.
There's very few "good" people or organizations. Most folk are struggling to survive, and if that means they have to EAT YOU! they will do it.
Water is precious and rare, so wells and oasis are guarded.
Iron is even more rare, and a steel sword is a FORTUNE that will get you backstabbed, enslaved, betrayed..if you can't use a steel weapon well enough to defend yourself, your dead meat for owning it if you aren't a noble or the like.
Originally posted by Silverblade The Enchanter
Well I would suggest you go HERE and buy the downloadable 1st box set, it's the best starting guide I think, even if it's 2nd ed
Too bad it wasn't hardcopy of DS2, with that lovable cloth map opf the tablelands.
I just bought myself a copy of DS1 box set.. only it is a mini box, got it from Ebay, waiting for it to arrive (had a buy it now price of 5 bucks, couldn't beat it). Supposed to have everything original box had, just at 1/4 scale or something. Got it more for nostalgia than for actual game use..
OH, found this on ebay, if yer interested - DS1 and a copy of the complete Psionics Handbook.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=2545&item=3191742398&rd=1
There are a lot of useful 2nd Edition materials around the net for you.
As for classes:
I would recommend to use the DS 3rd Edition of athas.org
Sorcerers don't fit the setting well, but could be incorporated (perhaps it's a twist from the pristine tower?)
Starting out:
If you like to keep to the current timeline, for heroic campaigns Tyr would be appropriate, for warlike campaigns Draj, for philosophical campaigning I recommend Raam.
Uric would best suit the old-fashioned grim slaves in it for survival setting. While slave and trade villages of your own design could also create a wilderness survival campaign.
After all, that's what dark sun is about, survival...
You might want to read the article "The Athasian GM" on athas.org. It contains some tips and advice for running Dark Sun campaigns.
I suggest you to start, as all other peoples as done here, simple. Start them in a small village, outpost or slave tribe. Something hard to start with is starting them as slaves. Very flavorful :D I started my last group of PCs in Fort Inix and they were sold to noble which bought them for some reason. They eventually escaped but dryed in the desert before being saved eventually, etc. etc.
Long time no see...
Originally posted by NytCrawlr
Yeah man, those horses of his get more attention than us!
Have you ever tried taking care of a barn full of horses?
... I thought not. :p
Not that I would reccomend this for anyone who doesnt have about two hundred bucks (thats canadian and includes shipping so maybe 150 US, 200 if you want the novels and psi and gladiator handbook which are almost completely useless for 3.5 anyways )
The novels are an essential DS resource. After the boxed set and Veiled Alliance, they have had more impact on my campaigns than maybe any other book. There is so much world information in the novels.
The non PP books are fine, but be warned that Rise and Fall of a Dragon king takes *alot* of liberties with the setting.
Originally posted by Porkchops
The Prism Pentad novels are fine, as long as you toss out the cheese of the last two books and don't base the entire setting around what happened in them.
The first three or so aren't that bad. The problem is that when taken as a whole, the PP is awful. Once it gets to "our heroes"
going around killing dragons, it becomes trash. Especially considering that the actual game tells you stuff like "the PCs cannot defeat the Dragon". Which is the truth, in 3e rules, he's like lvl 50.My main beef is that I have the revised setting, which has amazing depth and is great except that it claims that all the sorceror kings are dead.....um, no. The revised setting seemed to force the PP at me, and I didn't like that at all.
Kalak's death I could live with, as it involved mutliple artifacts, surprise, a betrayal of his templar, as well as striking him at the precise moment he would be vulnerable. Having ONE free city was okay, even a good thing, as it provides a lot of plot hooks. After book 3, though, it got a little silly, with SKs being wiped out left and right. As far as BOOKS, away from the actual campaign setting, they were okay... but using them as source material for a DS campaign was no good.
But to get an idea and a feel for the world, as well as get some campaign ideas, it's not too bad, as long as you don't treat it as the Dark Sun bible, IMO.
Especially considering that the actual game tells you stuff like "the PCs cannot defeat the Dragon". Which is the truth, in 3e rules, he's like lvl 50.
Agree completely with that. I always thought the Dragon's death was something that Troy came up with late at night while muttering, "Gotta shake it up, shake it up....um....what to do? What to do?"
Otherwise, why the hell would they write up Valley of Dust and Fire? Makes no sense. You make this massively detailed book just so it could completely useless a year or two later? Makes no sense, whatsoever. I let the players (and the major NPCs) overthrow Kalak (for a little while), and even march and army against the Lion King. Then they go after Borys and are munched in short order. Oops. Lesson learned.
Originally posted by Dawnstealer
Otherwise, why the hell would they write up Valley of Dust and Fire? Makes no sense.
Because TSR never talked to Troy. Or, for that matter, any of their authors. The Novel division and the Game Development groups were notiorious for this.
Originally posted by flip
Have you ever tried taking care of a barn full of horses?
... I thought not. :p
No, but almost worked on a ostrich ranch once, too bad we didn't end up doing that.
Originally posted by flip
Because TSR never talked to Troy. Or, for that matter, any of their authors. The Novel division and the Game Development groups were notiorious for this.
Good thing they didn't, either. I much prefer Valley of Dust and Fire to Troy's poorly written pulp. Not just his Darksun stuff, all of his work is rather painful to read. The best analogy I can come up with is that it is like reading fanfiction (yes, that bad)
Original boxed set, as I've said before was *perfect*, it should never have messed with it. The novels could as easily have dealt with the folks SLOWLY working up to just possibly kill, or attempt to kill, Kalak, and THAT would have been a fine, long tale by itself.
As it was, ugh...
DS is a wonderful place for different types of tales and adventures than the usual, to casually trample over that...bah!
Oh and the ancient history of the "genesplicing" halflings....*mutters darkly and face screws up like Kermit the Frog's*
;)
I'm planning on running my PCs thru the flipbook stuff, and meeting the SKs doesn't rub me the wrong way. By 'Asticlian Gambit' the PCs should be pretty high in level, so having the oba meet with them personally seems kind of cool. After three pretty long adventures (four if you play Knowledge) and the PCs have played a direct result in the world it doesn't seem odd that they should find themselves in front of the SKs. If they could play fifteen levels and never come face to face with an SK they'd be background setting information as opposed to immensely powerful NPCs the PCs need to take seriously.
Starting the campaign just before the Tyrian revolution is the best DS timeline and ignoring the silly back half of the Pentad is totally reccommended.
Because TSR never talked to Troy. Or, for that matter, any of their authors. The Novel division and the Game Development groups were notiorious for this.
Except for "Freedom" following the plot of "Verdant Passage" and "Road to Urik" fitting in with "Crimson Leigon". Clearly they were talking at some point but after the first two books they kind of went their own ways. Game Development went on to write cool stuff and Denning went on to write insipid silly nonsense.
Originally posted by tolliver
Except for "Freedom" following the plot of "Verdant Passage" and "Road to Urik" fitting in with "Crimson Leigon". Clearly they were talking at some point but after the first two books they kind of went their own ways. Game Development went on to write cool stuff and Denning went on to write insipid silly nonsense.
No, that doesn't mean they were communicating. That means that TSR was coordinating it as a middle-man. They stopped doing that after those two adventures, and the setting was crippled as a result. It's called Micromanagement that collapsed from the top down.
As far as this goes:
...they slip on a banana peel or whatever and oooops, they're dead. Laaaaaaame.
I completely agree. Kalak falling is fine. Even going so far as to challenge the Dragon is fine. Killing the Dragon is pretty stupid and, as I said, it makes no sense considering the release of Valley of Dust and Fire.
Maybe one way to look at it is to have the Prism Pentad be a spoken legend - something told from one slave to another? Of course, then you have that nasty problem of explaining the disappearance of all those Sorcerer Kings from Athas...
--Sysane, The Terror of Urik
-Sysane, The Terror of Urik
Also, don't forget that huge wall around Ur Draxa. Depending on when you're running your campaign, Ur Draxa could well be the world's largest bathtub.
Now add to this all that water hitting lava. Not sure if you know the chemical sides of things or not, so I apologize in advance if you know a lot, but lava can release some amazing toxic gases. If a lava bed as large as the valley's (many, many miles across) were to get hit with a heavy dose of water, the gases released would be something to behold. The last place you would want to be is up on an island.
No, I'm afraid Ur Draxa would be a very short campaign. Of course, as I've said in a lot of other posts, this is a fantasy setting and not a reality setting. If bolting your players off to drowned Ur Draxa sounds like fun, damn chemistry and take them there. It's a game, after all.
The important thing to remember in a role/fantasy campaign is to suspend your disbelief.
If you used logic all the time you'd have some pretty damn boring campaigns.
--Sysane, The Terror of Urik
Of course, as I've said in a lot of other posts, this is a fantasy setting and not a reality setting. If bolting your players off to drowned Ur Draxa sounds like fun, damn chemistry and take them there. It's a game, after all.
--Sysane, The Terror of Urik
I always play devil's advocate, however, so if you're pro-something and I think there's something you've missed, I'll let you know (that's a general "you," meaning everyone in the DS community).
For example, dwelves are a common and noble part of Athasian culture, but a small minority believes they shouldn't exist, so people are hung by their feet and told to draw while jhakars chew on them. You see, I'm rude, but I'm not that rude.
--Sysane, The Terror of Urik
So an alternate explanation for a population inside Ur Draxa: perhaps an entire slave tribe, tired of eeking it out in the wastelands, heard of a city lost in the Sea of Silt and, discounting the tales of woe and destruction, headed to it. Now they are there and it was too perilous a journey to make it back, so they make this place their home. they establish themselves on top of the lava-crust of the old city.
or any of a million other crazy explanations.
One of the aforementioned treasures and artifacts has created a small survivable area in the otherwise inhospitable desolation...
The GM has spent good money on the Vally of Dust And Fire supplement, dammit, so the PCs are going there, like it or not...