Home
I'd like to say that I played the hell out of Dark Sun back when it came out when I was in HS, but really, it was "too weird" for most of my gaming group. I pored over the Brom art and fantasized about dark, corrupt Sorcerer-Kings, but most of my friends were more into traditional fantasy with a heavy-metal flair (and I was into that, too - my two longest-running games are still my D&D game that drew heavily on the music of Manowar and spent about a dozen sessions inside Castle Amber, where our kender managed to snag a blue fairy for his pockets on a natural 20; and, my RIFTS game based on some kabbalistic stories I'd read that, alas, ran two years but ended before our shifter could enter the Tower of Rome and destroy the universe). I ran some short games in HS and college, and briefly ran an internet game set in Nibenay using athas.org's fantastic 3E conversion that never really caught on.
But, anyway, super-psyched, and I'm hoping that the relative silence on the The Waste boards is just everyone else holding their breaths...
Here's what I liked about the setting originally, and what will (spoilers) be guiding me as a DM...
1. Evil won. Ever since the revelation of Empire Strikes Back, I've found the idea of a world in which evil has won fascinating, from a story point of view. In Dark Sun, it makes sense that the PCs might be the *only* heroes, more so than in, say, the Forgotten Realms. There are no Gods to help you or win the fight against evil for you. You're it. And heck, turning to evil might even end up looking attractive.
2. Evils is *consequential.* No one gets tied to the railroad tracks or has to be stopped b/c the game ends if they destroy the universe. The evil people do what they want b/c then they can and do reshape the world in a way that suits them better.
3. PCs can be consequential. One aspect of the original setting that is captured fairly well by 4E's epic destinies (and that was totally suck-ified by the Mary Sue characters in Denning's Prism Pentad books) was that not only are the PCs important, but as they gain power they can't help but become the focus of people's hopes and dreams. If you're a 20th level Fighter, people will show up wanting you to lead them, whether you want to or not. And PCs can become dragons, avangions, spirits of the land, whatever - if they have the power and ambition.
4. The world is gonzo. Mutants! Dual moons! Salt flats! Cannibal halflings! Everyone is psionic! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
5. Magic is powerful. The 10th level spells in the old Dragon Kings supplement were finally the sort of magic that would probably break the game but were the things that you imagined really bad-ass wizards could do - raise mountains, create whole armies of undead, raze crops, slaughter thousands. This has been left out of 4E (so far?) but I could see using the Ritual system to mimic Psionic Enchantments (and give PCs a reason to do the very Dark Sun thing of MCing arcane/psionic classes).
6. Brom art is cool. Oh well. I guess the rumors of him coming back for 4E were just that.
