Designing an adventure that takes the Forgotten Realms and turns it into Dark Sun.

[Nurseninja]

So. I'm killing the forgotten Realms. :belkar: The campaign will hopefully take the players through the 'end' of the world as it turns into a pro-Dark Sun setting. The kernel of the story started with a nightmare I had that one day, that as the sun approached midday it just stopped moving. There was just daytime and after a few 'days' it got hotter and plants began to wilt in the constant sunlight.

My current synopsis is this. A party of super high level adventurers accidentally sever the connection between AO and the forgotten realms, possibly killing him in the process but importantly severing him from the realms (the players wont know this for a long time) and with AO some of the core 'Rules' of reality fail. The sun and moon stop moving. The stars begin to drift in their constellations. From the players point of view they start session 1, adventure 1, the sun stops moving shortly before midday... and it starts to get warmer. the townsfolk panic, the players (starting level 5) go to find some diviners of wise folk who might know what the hell is going on. It begins to get a bit apocalyptic then post apocalyptic a bit 'The Stand' Presumably the players success in the campaign prevents the true end of the world but saves it partially, the Dark Sun outcome. Thats about as far as Ive got so far. I was hoping for ideas or insight! :smallsmile:

1. Sun stops. Check with hermit mage and wise druid to find out what has happened , they will get a name or some clue that sends them to the nearest city.
2. The players get to waterdeep just as the moon (very small moon) crashes into the ocean approx 1000 miles from the city. earthquake, fire, tsunami, save as many people as possible.
3. Acid rain, sky turns black with dust. The sword coast is devestated by a tsunami, waterdeep, baldurs gate, all the costal cities are in ruins. The players are with refugees and have some clues about whats happening.


I kinda have this impulse to have elminster die / drink himself to death in the first session as like a mission statment? probably a bit to silly.

[Jama7301]

One of the things I always liked about the Forgotten Realms is the Spellplague. The way it completely reworked the landscape and messed with magic is fascinating to me, and I think it seems within it's power to basically scorch the land and taint magic. Feels like it might play into the Arcane Defiling of Dark Sun as well.

Could be those adventurers were tinkering with some of the other planes, and re-triggered another wave of calamity and things just got messed up by more tainted magic.

[Millstone85]

One of the things I always liked about the Forgotten Realms is the Spellplague. The way it completely reworked the landscape and messed with magic is fascinating to me, and I think it seems within it's power to basically scorch the land and taint magic.I think the Spellplague diminished the setting, and I understand the hate for it and 4e FR in general, but I do love the concept of infectious wild magic.

I play a warlock whose pact with a GOO was meant to keep her spellscarred and never become plaguechanged. After the Sundering, she is left with just the GOO's influence... or is she?


Feels like it might play into the Arcane Defiling of Dark Sun as well.Very much this.

[Nurseninja]

One of the things I always liked about the Forgotten Realms is the Spellplague. The way it completely reworked the landscape and messed with magic is fascinating to me, and I think it seems within it's power to basically scorch the land and taint magic. Feels like it might play into the Arcane Defiling of Dark Sun as well.

Could be those adventurers were tinkering with some of the other planes, and re-triggered another wave of calamity and things just got messed up by more tainted magic.

Its certainly possible! My vague plan was that the (presumably) 5 NPC's in the party that broke the world would constitute late game villains (assuming the players take well to the campaign) Or perhaps one of them was Elminster who might be found dead in the first session as a murder mystery plot who was killed by another member of the villainous party? Presumably in a world with so much divination flying around there must have been some entitiy going the world-breaking party mystical cover perhaps a god who wants the world to end? perhaps a Good god who wants the world to end because then theres no more evil? I like the idea of the vilian being not evil per se just philosophically opposed.

I worry that I need more readily apparent villains for the first few sessions. perhaps the forces of good and evil or chaos and law use the opportunity to fight. perhaps sigil smashes into the world. Im reluctant to have gods walking the earth because thats a little derivative of stuff I've already done.

I also need to make sure that theres some travel component because travel = time, which allows me to more realistically change the climate. I would like to have the seas retreating withing a few in game months.


I think the Spellplague diminished the setting, and I understand the hate for it and 4e FR in general, but I do love the concept of infectious wild magic.

I play a warlock whose pact with a GOO was meant to keep her spellscarred and never become plaguechanged. After the Sundering, she is left with just the GOO's influence... or is she?

Very much this.

Yes... spellscaring of some kind would play into defilment as would a war in the hevens killing a lot of divine power.

[Millstone85]

Another aspect of Dark Sun, I think, is that the gods are gone but at least we still have elemental forces.

Now, one of the things the Spellplague did was switch landmasses between the godly world of Toril and its more elemental-y inclined twin Abeir.

So, for your story, I wouldn't rule out the Primordials, particularly the Princes of Elemental Evil, having instigated the catastrophy.

[Unoriginal]

So. I'm killing the forgotten Realms.

The 4th edition was years ago, Nurseninja.

[SiCK_Boy]

I think one big challenge you will face with this setup is the fact that your "threat" (the sun stopping) affects the whole world at once. As such, this kind of threat would provoke a reaction from the whole world at once (every cleric would be using divination magic to figure out what happened, for example). This makes it difficult to justify the role you intend your PCs to play in the story.

I would suggest trying to start with either a smaller impact (harder to notice), or having it in a limited area (maybe the sun remains fixed only in a single remote area where the players happen to be key players, and then things expand further and further, and by the time the "rest of the world" is ready to get involved, your players are the only ones that can act, or are the only ones with a lot of the information and thus they get brought into the wolrd's mighty councils), or maybe having different types of effects in different areas.

Also, I'm not sure why you would insist on severing Ao from the world. Again, if that was to happen, a lot of the gods would react / put plots into motion. Why not just decide that Ao is not intervening in whatever happens (and since he's Ao, he doesn't have to justify it in any way)? Then you can have your plot driven by whatever villain you want (some religious cult, a god, a demon-lord, a Great Old One, whatever). It could even be a "natural" phenomena (maybe there's an expiration date on the sun, and the world has reached it). What is for sure is that such a large-scale event would probably provoke mass religious movements across the Realms, so I think you should decide how some key churches will react (are some of them aware of the disaster coming up, which ones want to use the opportunity to improve their standing, etc.).

Regarding the moon crashing, keep in mind that the moon is also a goddess in FR, so I would also either destroy the entire Selune cult, or maybe offer an opportunity to save the moon as part of the adventure (if your characters are follower). The sun is less identified to a specific god, so the dynamic should be different.

One scenario you could try is to start your game in a world after one of the existing module's storyline, assuming failure. For example, you could use Tyranny of Dragon and start your game in a world where Tiamat was summoned and has wreaked havoc for a few years, or use a world where the Elemental Cults from Princes of the Apocalypse have managed to summon all 4 princes in Faerun. This is not necessarily in line with the scenario your outlined, but it could give you that Dark Sun feel and allow you to kill pretty much any major NPC you want (maybe Elminster tried to face Tiamat and just got crushed!). In such a world, your PC could start small and progress, and even eliminating the big bad would still leave the world in a dark sun-like state.

Regarding your idea of killing Elminster at the start of the campaign, I would not bother with it unless your players have specific attachment to that specific NPC. He's one of many major NPC; why bother about this one rather than some others? In fact, if your campaign is to focus on the sword coast, I think you have many more "major" targets you could pick (such as Laeral Silverhand) than Elminster.

And as a last point, maybe give some thought to how the whole thing would impact the Underdark, which doesn't really care about the state of the sun in the world.

[Scots Dragon]

I'm not one for killing campaign settings, and wouldn't even do it to the settings I dislike — admittedly actually a really small list — but if you're going through the route of turning the Forgotten Realms into Dark Sun there are a few really good ways to do it. One of the best ways I believe is the Phaerimm. They're a species of windsock-looking flying creatures that are in fact some of the most incredibly powerful natural spellcasters to ever exist, and one of the most famous spell-uses is that they have the tendency to absorb life-force from the surrounding areas and turn them into blasted deserts. Basically they're the reason why Anauroch is a desert to begin with and not the verdant paradise that it was during the height of Netheril, and it's really, really easy to interpret them as being defilers in the Dark Sun sense.

Having them make a return and start to spread beyond Anauroch to threaten the rest of the Forgotten Realms would be an obvious hook from recent storylines, given that the main thing keeping them at bay were the Shadovar and the Bedine. Given that the Shadovar have fallen, having the Phaerimm start to spread would be an obvious next step, and you could make a really cool campaign out of that as the heroes are forced to battle the growing influence of these powerful magic-users.

Admittedly I don't think the Phaerimm have been statted up for D&D 5E, but that's the side-effect of a new edition which seems to move at a glacial pace. There are stats for them in AD&D 2E and D&D 3E that you could use as a starting point, since you're obviously going to have to work in some of the Dark Sun aspects through homebrew to begin with. The result probably isn't going to be a literal and actual Dark Sun, but if you want to have that you should probably just play in Dark Sun and skip destruction of the Forgotten Realms.