Dark Sun 4.0

[Egiam]

You guys might have noticed or not noticed, but the WOTC website is advertising a new edition of Dark Sun for 4.0 coming out in August. If any of you veterans are willing, can anyone give me a summary of what the setting is like?

[Ormagoden]

A gritty magic scarred wasteland where at every turn lies death.
Water is precious enough to kill over and slavery is common practice.
Psionics is also quite common in Dark sun mostly because using magic draws upon the life force of everything around the caster. Magic users are utterly hated. Rampant use of magic is what desolated the planet.

Half dwarves and thri-kreen are also common.

Atleast that's what it WAS who knows what they intend to do with it now...

Anyone else want to chime in?

[Mordokai]

This might give you some insight. But I'm not sure what changes are planned for 4E update.

[The Glyphstone]

Tinfoil Hat Prediction:

Spoiler

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The Spellplague will prove to be multiversal - all the magic that Faerun lost ended funneled to Athas, restoring its bountiful glory to a jungle-filled wonderland of plenty.

[Satyr]

Dark Sun is a post-apocalyptic seting, except that "post" part. As Lostfang already mentioned, magic drains the life energy of the planet, and has lead to massive desertification. There are only a few cities, which are ruled by immortal sorcerer kings, called the dragon kings.
Magic Users are indeed treated as scum (even the few who willingly limit their powers to not kill the planet any further), and probably rightly so. Weak psionic gifts are absolutely common though, and full psionicists are as well, so it is not really a low magic setting, even though it has some of these tendencies (especially when compared to the lightning powered trains of Eberon... in Athas, the World of Dark Sun, steel is rare, and a metal full armor cost as much as renewing large parts of a city wall).
There are no gods. While a few of the dragon kings have formed a religion around themselves and maintain their own priesthood that worship them, the only other religion worships the elements themselves.

Dark Sun has a very grim and archaic feeling to it. It is not so much the typical medieval fantasy, but has more elements from very archaic times, and more Middle East or African Influences than European, with at least one city based on Aztecs as well. Cities and Walls are made out of clay, metal items are rare and a sign of wealth, and treated similar to low powered magical items in other settings.

Nature in Dark Sun is deadly. The heat, the dryness, the steady sand and rocks and pretty much any natural creature is going to hurt you. This includes such ingenious traits like absolutely deadly plant monsters, quicksand, or the fact, that everything which hasn't claws and teeth the size of your forearm is probably poisonous.

And, besides, people aren't friendly either. Halflings are barbarian cannibals. Yes, it can happen that yu are hunted and eaten by people who like friendly half-grown children. Elves are utterly untrustworthy, and are constantly moving and are expert marathon runners. Dwarves have no beards, and are mostly known as expert craftsmen. TheMuls, the afore mentioned half-dwarves are the products of enforced coupling in slave dens, because they are invaluable slaves, and it is worth to sacrifice the mother for one of them - they rarely survive pregnancy and birth. Thri-Kreen are weird, and eat people too, especially elves who taste like nectar and ambrosia to everybody's favorite mantis monster. Halfgiants hang around there, too, but their heritage is not nearly as obvious as it sounds and fortunately, not as painful. Orcs, Goblins, Gnomes and the like were all wiped out in a large cataclism.


To put in a nutshell, the best official setting ever published for D&D. It is dark, it is grim, it is rife with adventure. I am looking forward to a renewed publication of this, even though I am not convinced that 4th edition can handle this setting well.

[Marillion]

Dwarves have no beards

IF IT DOES NOT HAVE A BEARD IT IS NOT A DWARF.

It is a really short really wide guy who likes beer.

BUT IT IS NOT A DWARF.

[AtwasAwamps]

There's a podcast somewhere...I don't have the link, but I was listening to it yesterday...that talks a great deal about what they're doing with Dark Sun for 4e. Highlights involve making the Thri-Keen more reasonable (no quad wielding, weakened bite, etc.) to keep them in line with other 4e races. Some of the race changes remain, others don't. An interesting note was the designer talking about how 4e has made some of Dark Sun more fun for designers and DMs, and ways in which combat in 4e slightly removes the metagame while simultaneously adjusting to it. Mostly claptrap, but fun to listen to.

[Optimystik]

Tinfoil Hat Prediction:

Spoiler

Show

The Spellplague will prove to be multiversal - all the magic that Faerun lost ended funneled to Athas, restoring its bountiful glory to a jungle-filled wonderland of plenty.

Ooh, interesting twist

Here's hoping there's plenty of psionics there!

[Blackfang108]

Ooh, interesting twist

Here's hoping there's plenty of psionics there!

Why wouldn't there be?

PHB 3 with Psionics will be out well before then.

[hamlet]

Orcs, Goblins, Gnomes and the like were all wiped out in a large cataclism.

Correction: Orcs, Goblins, Gnomes and the like were all wiped out in protracted horrific wars of genocide.

[Matthew]

I am actually rather looking forward to this. For all the upheaval with the D20/4e Forgotten Realms changes, the actual Campaign Setting book was well designed and usable with multiple editions, so I am hoping for something similar with Dark Sun. Given that no significant changes are really made to the setting, this could be really quite good.

[SuperMuldoon]

Lets not forget the Squark.

[Blas_de_Lezo]

There is the defiling magic, a easier way of wielding arcane power that however absorbs life around you.

I don't know how they will finally translate this into rules, but back in 2nd edition, defilers had an XP Level progression between the thief and the wizard. It was so cool!!

[kjones]

To put in a nutshell, the best official setting ever published for D&D.

I was about to get up in your face for this and defend the honor of the Hollow Earth... but I didn't realize until searching for a link just now that it's merely a part of Mystara.

So... I think you win!

[Optimystik]

Why wouldn't there be?

PHB 3 with Psionics will be out well before then.

*cheers*

To put in a nutshell, the best official setting ever published for D&D.

I dunno... you have to really bring your A-game to outdo Eberron in my book.

[BlckDv]

Many have already hit on some of the major issues, as a former Dark Sun DM, some of the setting elements that have stayed with me long after closing the campaign (For those who know the setting; I never introduced the events of the Prism Pentad beyond the death of Tyr's king);

-Resource Scarcity. Dark Sun manages to really make you feel like the world has limited resources, from the lack of metal to the risk of heat stroke and sandstorms, players don't feel like shortages "happen to other people"

-Potent PCs vs. Hostile Setting. In 2nd Ed AD&D, you rolled Dark Sun Ability Scores as 5d4 when the default was still 3d6... but you made back up PCs as part of the default character creation, because not just monsters, but the WORLD ITSELF would be a threat to PC longevity.

-Truly alien PC races. From the sterile Mul (half-dwarf) to the roll-for-your-alignment each day Half-giants, to the insectiod Thri-kreen, the new Races of Dark Sun felt far more like alien races and less like humans with prosthetics than any world I had played in before. Even familiar races like Elf (migratory thieves and con men) and halflings (once civilized cannibal savages) took on new, more ominus tones.

-Extreme Variety in limited geography (pre-Prism Pentad). The default Tyr region had a handful of cities each of which presented radically different environs and culture to set stories in.

-Choices that seemed to matter, did your PC take the easy path of Defiling magic or the hard one of Preserver? Did your party have Templars of a Sorcerer King or Elemental Clerics? What you chose about your past and your sources of power had a real impact on how your story would unfold.

Those are just some of my memories of Dark Sun, I'm eager to see it as a 4E product (I run a "generic" 4e game now) but I am cautious as the 2nd Ed attitude of Dark Sun as unforgiving, deadly, and actively uncaring about your PC's fate seems at odds with the core 4e philosophy that the PCs are the destined heroes that avoid the hardships most people must face as they move towards the greatness they deserve.

[oxybe]

There is the defiling magic, a easier way of wielding arcane power that however absorbs life around you.

I don't know how they will finally translate this into rules, but back in 2nd edition, defilers had an XP Level progression between the thief and the wizard. It was so cool!!

on the WotC forums, someone mentioned they read a defiling entry from a small blurb, where it allows an arcanist to reroll one of their attacks, but at the cost of the standard "drain the world of life": in addition to killing plants and maybe some small animals, all allies within 20 squares (100 feet) take damage (that can't be reduced in any way) equal to half their surge value.

[holywhippet]

on the WotC forums, someone mentioned they read a defiling entry from a small blurb, where it allows an arcanist to reroll one of their attacks, but at the cost of the standard "drain the world of life": in addition to killing plants and maybe some small animals, all allies within 20 squares (100 feet) take damage (that can't be reduced in any way) equal to half their surge value.

I'm tempted to say that would be for enemies only - except most enemies don't have healing surges. If a fellow player used a power like that I'd expect them to be "accidently" stabbed in their sleep.

[The Glyphstone]

On a slightly more serious note, 4E does unfortunately seem like it'll be a challenge to keep to the spirit of Dark Sun, at least in a varied way. The only real resource that can be 'taken away' from players that the metagame supports is healing surges. There aren't any rules I'm aware of for damage to ability scores or long-term status effects that poison/dehydration/starvation might induce, and adding 'Save Ends' to crippling dehydration would be a travesty. Permanent equipment loss is a no-no in 4E because of the way the math is set up - this can be compensated for by taking away magic gear entirely and giving scaling inherent bonuses, but that removes the danger of loss entirely, taking away the logistics problems of equipment maintenance that might be important.

[Satyr]

You could probably link the healing sourges to water supplies, claiming that to use a surge you have to drink something... and if you run out of water, you run out of healing surges as well. This doesn't come close to real malnutrition, but in the "win-friendly" atmosphere of D&D4 (remember the rust monster?) this would make sense while at least try to keep something like a damocles sword in the game.

I am more worried about defiler magic, actually. You could probably use it as an NPC-only property, but then you just take something interesting from the players and constantly show them what they cannot have. You could allow it for players, but then again one of the absolute points of defiler magic is that it is stronger than preserver magic, and that doesn't cope well with the almost obsessive focus on balance. And the fact that spellcaster will usually try hard to avoid using any spells to avoid attention, which means that all that tasty wizard powers are rarely used after all.

I would probably rebuild most, if not all arcane classes for Dark Sun, but then again, I like the setting very much, and I am not fully convinced that shoehorning it into the 4e rules is such a good decision.

[RebelRogue]

On a slightly more serious note, 4E does unfortunately seem like it'll be a challenge to keep to the spirit of Dark Sun, at least in a varied way. The only real resource that can be 'taken away' from players that the metagame supports is healing surges. There aren't any rules I'm aware of for damage to ability scores or long-term status effects that poison/dehydration/starvation might induce, and adding 'Save Ends' to crippling dehydration would be a travesty.

My money is on something akin to the tracking of diseases. Detailed rules for thirst/starvation is definitely a must for this setting.

But I agree that it is a less than obvious choice for 4e (except of course for the fact that Psionics is the new power source of the year - in that respect the choice makes some sense). However, there's a great deal of respect and nods to old school gaming in other 4e products (IMO, I'm sure a lot will disagree on this), so hopefully they will come up with something fitting.

[kjones]

You could probably link the healing sourges to water supplies, claiming that to use a surge you have to drink something... and if you run out of water, you run out of healing surges as well. This doesn't come close to real malnutrition, but in the "win-friendly" atmosphere of D&D4 (remember the rust monster?) this would make sense while at least try to keep something like a damocles sword in the game.

Even without healing surges, don't you still heal fully after a full night's rest?

Can someone who knows the 4e rules better than I do fill me on on how 4e deals with environmental effects in general? I seem to remember the Endurance skill being used for this.

[oxybe]

it should be noted that 4th ed dark sun (note this information is from a vague memory about a dev blog) does not play by normal 4th ed rules. they have, supposedly, altered the core ruleset to fit in better with dark sun instead of just shoehorning the setting into the ruleset.

i do have some faith in the designers, they did good work transporting eberron into 4th ed, i don't know enough of FR to comment on it.

as for the defiling, the blurb was about PC defiling, so PCs do have the option to be defilers.

[Altima]

4e is indeed designed around being quick and easy.

So the Dark Sun setting will either be FR 2.0 in that it's a completely different setting with just a few coincidental names, or the rules will be heavily altered to reflect Dark Sun's rather aggressive environment.

Personally, I believe it will be the latter, simply because it will encourage people who have no interest in actually playing Dark Sun to pick up the campaign setting if only for the new, more complicated rules.

[Gralamin]

I'm tempted to say that would be for enemies only - except most enemies don't have healing surges. If a fellow player used a power like that I'd expect them to be "accidently" stabbed in their sleep.

All enemies have 1 HS / tier, unless stated otherwise. (MM 7).

Honestly, I want to see what they do with it, but like many others am skeptical. I haven't played Dark Sun before, but the more I hear of it, the more I like it.

Eberron was a much easier fit into 4e, and was done extremely well.

One thing I'm worried about is the cosmology changes: 4e changed Eberron's cosmology slightly, but to fit Dark Sun into the overall mold would be difficult from what I understand.

[bosssmiley]

You guys might have noticed or not noticed, but the WOTC website is advertising a new edition of Dark Sun for 4.0 coming out in August. If any of you veterans are willing, can anyone give me a summary of what the setting is like?

Grimdark Barsoom, with cannibal halflings, bugmen and riding ants.

Does anyone really think that 4E is up to modelling a world where people shank one another for the last waterskin?

Correction: Orcs, Goblins, Gnomes and the like were all wiped out in protracted horrific wars of genocide.

I think Rajaat is a pretty cool guy. eh kills orcs (...and goblins...and gnomes), and doesn't afraid of anything...

[Matthew]

Does anyone really think that 4E is up to modelling a world where people shank one another for the last waterskin?

It will certainly be interesting to see how the much vaunted flexibility of D20/4e handles Dark Sun. The campaign setting book probably will not contain much in the way of rules in any case, if the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting is anything to go on, but I guess we will have to wait and see.

[potatocubed]

Does anyone really think that 4E is up to modelling a world where people shank one another for the last waterskin?

Not me. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I hold out no hope whatsoever.

I suppose I'm fortunate in that my players will shank each other for the last waterskin, even if they're ankle-deep in a river at the time.

[oxybe]

Does anyone really think that 4E is up to modelling a world where people shank one another for the last waterskin?

i do. all you need is condition track akin to disease for dehydration and a DM who keeps track of the PC's water supply.

[kjones]

i do. all you need is condition track akin to disease for dehydration and a DM who keeps track of the PC's water supply.

This is what I'm hoping for. Condition tracks are a very clever mechanic, and one that I wish were implemented more often.