I feel like I'm in the minority here, but if WotC is going to bring back Athas, I think it would be best for them to focus on new stories rather than reboot the old. Like fast-forward Athas a thousand years in the future and give us new sorcerer-kings or some city-states with sorcerers as elected officials for a change. I'm not convinced it should be a priority over new settings, though.
I think they're more likely to pull a Ravenloft - new stories in a reboot fashion, but the old stuff not re-used becomes non-cannon. That being said, it likely won't happen until after the core rules revision in 2024, but I would be very happy for that to happen.
Now that you've said this I think that this may be the best result. I'd like the setting to be stripped back to the original city states after the death of Kalak. I didn't find the thri-kreen empire that interesting and I like the idea of The Dragon being out there somewhere. On a side note, I hope they do away with the Avangions as one of the best things about Athas in the Prism Pentad is that there is no way of achieving ultimate power without doing some really heinous things. Having ultimate good guys out there ruins much of the, "bad guys have already won and here we are," theme of Dark Sun.
I think that Draj is a combination Egypt/Aztec influenced; Raam is often thought of as Indian (Indus valley?) influenced; Urik is almost certainly Babylonian; Gulg is Sub-Saharan African; Balic is almost a one to one Athens; Nibenay is somewhat nebulous in that it seems to be named after Ninevah (Assyrian) but it's descriptions seems to be more influenced by ancient Cambodian cultures (Khmer) especially with the all female templars reminiscent of the images seen on the Khmer temple walls (Aspara?).
I think that Draj is a combination Egypt/Aztec influenced; Raam is often thought of as Indian (Indus valley?) influenced; Urik is almost certainly Babylonian; Gulg is Sub-Saharan African; Balic is almost a one to one Athens; Nibenay is somewhat nebulous in that it seems to be named after Ninevah (Assyrian) but it's descriptions seems to be more influenced by ancient Cambodian cultures (Khmer) especially with the all female templars reminiscent of the images seen on the Khmer temple walls (Aspara?).
Wow. Cool. Thanks.
What about Tyr?
Good question - there is the historical Tyre which is Phoenician but I don't know enough about the Phoenicians to tell you if the city is Phoenician influenced. Tyr in the books is seemingly the most generic sword and sorcery style city used to introduce all of the other interesting parts of the setting like brutal takes on traditional races, psionics, preserver/defilers and the city state system of governance.
That is cool, but I though the whole deal with Athas was that it couldn’t be reached by spelljamming or any other kind of interplanar travel. It was totally cut off. Maybe people know it’s there, but also can’t go in?
That is cool, but I though the whole deal with Athas was that it couldn’t be reached by spelljamming or any other kind of interplanar travel. It was totally cut off. Maybe people know it’s there, but also can’t go in?
Or like a lot of things from older lore, it has been or will be changed.
People may not go there because there isn't any resources worth going there for.
From what little I've heard (and this could easily be homebrew, so who knows), you can get to Athas with a 'jammer just fine. You just can't get back out of Athas, since magic is ****y and weak there and there's not enough power to get a spelljamming ship out of Athas' Wildspace. Which would make Athas the Roach Motel of Spelljamming, which seems just ever so apt.
From what little I've heard (and this could easily be homebrew, so who knows), you can get to Athas with a 'jammer just fine. You just can't get back out of Athas, since magic is ****y and weak there and there's not enough power to get a spelljamming ship out of Athas' Wildspace. Which would make Athas the Roach Motel of Spelljamming, which seems just ever so apt.
I honestly think the only reason that it was originally set up that Spelljammers couldn't go there was because Dark Sun used slightly different stat rules so they just made up a way to avoid mixing the two.
I don't know if 5e as a system can handle that type of gritty game.
The system can handle gritty. The problem lies with individuals not separating their game from real life. When ROLEPLAYING your characters do not have to have your same values. Weather it’s a holier than thou classic LG Paladin or it’s a demon whose name means eater of the unborn. Tyr is an excellent starter city for freed slaves but Urik still has its slave trade. Even the Realms has its pockets of slavery. Even Waterdeep has indentured servants. So yes the system can handle it. Can your players handle it? That is the question to ask yourself.
I’ve found the under thirty crowd tends to be scared of broaching the subjects or it’s too taboo to have at the table. And that is because most those groups haven’t been together a significantly long time. But if you have a group that’s been together for a long time you’ve broached it numerous times. I’m lucky enough to have three groups that I can have as gritty as any of us feel like. Sure there is some fade to black scenes for a few things mainly as going too graphic adds nothing.
Here’s a scenario for you. You group is traveling through a country that slavery is the norm. You get to town and they are punishing aka whipping a captured runaway slave. Are you going to attack the lawful authorities of the land possibly ending in the same position yourselves. Are you going to start an abolitionist movement. Start an Underground Railroad. Go to the market to see if they have any good stock you might turnaround and sell in a larger market.
These are all things that should be worked out in Session 0. Don’t be scared of the gritty. Embrace the in-depth ness of the world. Free a slave, buy a slave, **** and pillage, defend the weak, become a force for good, become a tyrannical evil overlord.
That is cool, but I though the whole deal with Athas was that it couldn’t be reached by spelljamming or any other kind of interplanar travel. It was totally cut off. Maybe people know it’s there, but also can’t go in?
Correct it was a fully closed sphere. Unlike the Astromundi Clusterspace that was a partially closed Roach motel style but with a specific way out. Now there was a 2E spell from Nethril that had a spell jamming helm as a component that is consumed in the casting. It was a 10th or 11th level spell. The spell could open or close a sphere.
Y'know, I feel like that's honestly one of the biggest obstacles to seeing Dark Sun return. "Gritty" has a different meaning to some folks. For some, it simply means the world is crueler, less forgiving, and heroes tend to falter and fail as often (or more so) than they succeed. For others? Some folks fasten onto the idea that 'Evil Has Won' and use it to try and justify 'Evil Is Awesome'. Rather than slavery in Athas, as one convenient but hardly unique example, being treated as a deep injustice perpetrated by corrupt rulers that have abandoned care for their people? Some 'gritty' players want to celebrate slavery as a splendid component of a 'Gritty' society, worthy of support and admiration. They want to buy slaves, they want to grape-with-a-silent-g their slaves, they want to burn and pillage and let their inner untamed Id run wild. Playing characters that despise slavery and wish to strike blows against it or end it is seen as naive, or unrealistic, or "not being able to separate the game from real life."
Needless to say, some folks are simply not going to be about letting their players run a bunch of total f@#$ing sickos using a broken world as an excuse to run amok. If that's the kind of game everybody wants? All right. Have at it. But accusing anyone who doesn't wallow in that sort of self-defeating grossness of "not being able to handle it" and casting aspersions on them isn't really okay. There's a difference between not "being able" to handle it and not wanting to handle it.
"Evil Has Won" settings can be a lot of fun to play in. Grim Hollow is one of the few third-party settings I've bought multiple products in, and I fondly hope to run me some Grim Hollow some day quite possibly bastardized with Curse of Strahd (running CoS with Barovia not being its own demiplanar pocket dimension, but instead a remote provice of Ostoya under the cruel Baron von Zarovich against the backdrop of Etharis as a campaign world? Yes please). But "Evil Has Won" does not mean that evil is no longer evil. It means the players are tasked not with saving the world, but either surviving it or redeeming it, dependent on how lucky and ballsy they wish to become.
Dark Sun/Athas could be an excellent core 'Evil Has Won' option for Wizards of the Coast, but they have to thread quite the fine needle with it and ensure that people who read the books understand that evil is still evil. Or at least, understand that Wizards does not condone these things simply because they put them in a setting book Just like Wizards does not condone a continent-spanning war so violent it blew an entire country literally off the map or creating an entire race of artificial people with questionable personhood and yet still printed Eberron, Athas would have to be "we present this broken world as fuel for your imaginations and inspiration for post-apocalyptic games, not because we wish we were Sorcerer-Kings getting away with literally everything." Which, to most people's credit, should be obvious from the get-go.
Y'know, I feel like that's honestly one of the biggest obstacles to seeing Dark Sun return. "Gritty" has a different meaning to some folks. For some, it simply means the world is crueler, less forgiving, and heroes tend to falter and fail as often (or more so) than they succeed. For others? Some folks fasten onto the idea that 'Evil Has Won' and use it to try and justify 'Evil Is Awesome'. Rather than slavery in Athas, as one convenient but hardly unique example, being treated as a deep injustice perpetrated by corrupt rulers that have abandoned care for their people? Some 'gritty' players want to celebrate slavery as a splendid component of a 'Gritty' society, worthy of support and admiration. They want to buy slaves, they want to grape-with-a-silent-g their slaves, they want to burn and pillage and let their inner untamed Id run wild. Playing characters that despise slavery and wish to strike blows against it or end it is seen as naive, or unrealistic, or "not being able to separate the game from real life."
Needless to say, some folks are simply not going to be about letting their players run a bunch of total f@#$ing sickos using a broken world as an excuse to run amok. If that's the kind of game everybody wants? All right. Have at it. But accusing anyone who doesn't wallow in that sort of self-defeating grossness of "not being able to handle it" and casting aspersions on them isn't really okay. There's a difference between not "being able" to handle it and not wanting to handle it.
"Evil Has Won" settings can be a lot of fun to play in. Grim Hollow is one of the few third-party settings I've bought multiple products in, and I fondly hope to run me some Grim Hollow some day quite possibly bastardized with Curse of Strahd (running CoS with Barovia not being its own demiplanar pocket dimension, but instead a remote provice of Ostoya under the cruel Baron von Zarovich against the backdrop of Etharis as a campaign world? Yes please). But "Evil Has Won" does not mean that evil is no longer evil. It means the players are tasked not with saving the world, but either surviving it or redeeming it, dependent on how lucky and ballsy they wish to become.
Dark Sun/Athas could be an excellent core 'Evil Has Won' option for Wizards of the Coast, but they have to thread quite the fine needle with it and ensure that people who read the books understand that evil is still evil. Or at least, understand that Wizards does not condone these things simply because they put them in a setting book Just like Wizards does not condone a continent-spanning war so violent it blew an entire country literally off the map or creating an entire race of artificial people with questionable personhood and yet still printed Eberron, Athas would have to be "we present this broken world as fuel for your imaginations and inspiration for post-apocalyptic games, not because we wish we were Sorcerer-Kings getting away with literally everything." Which, to most people's credit, should be obvious from the get-go.
Until the PCs show up to the party, CoS is "evil has won".
Is Dark Sun really "evil has won"? I never got to play it.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Y'know, I feel like that's honestly one of the biggest obstacles to seeing Dark Sun return. "Gritty" has a different meaning to some folks. For some, it simply means the world is crueler, less forgiving, and heroes tend to falter and fail as often (or more so) than they succeed. For others? Some folks fasten onto the idea that 'Evil Has Won' and use it to try and justify 'Evil Is Awesome'. Rather than slavery in Athas, as one convenient but hardly unique example, being treated as a deep injustice perpetrated by corrupt rulers that have abandoned care for their people? Some 'gritty' players want to celebrate slavery as a splendid component of a 'Gritty' society, worthy of support and admiration. They want to buy slaves, they want to grape-with-a-silent-g their slaves, they want to burn and pillage and let their inner untamed Id run wild. Playing characters that despise slavery and wish to strike blows against it or end it is seen as naive, or unrealistic, or "not being able to separate the game from real life."
Needless to say, some folks are simply not going to be about letting their players run a bunch of total f@#$ing sickos using a broken world as an excuse to run amok. If that's the kind of game everybody wants? All right. Have at it. But accusing anyone who doesn't wallow in that sort of self-defeating grossness of "not being able to handle it" and casting aspersions on them isn't really okay. There's a difference between not "being able" to handle it and not wanting to handle it.
"Evil Has Won" settings can be a lot of fun to play in. Grim Hollow is one of the few third-party settings I've bought multiple products in, and I fondly hope to run me some Grim Hollow some day quite possibly bastardized with Curse of Strahd (running CoS with Barovia not being its own demiplanar pocket dimension, but instead a remote provice of Ostoya under the cruel Baron von Zarovich against the backdrop of Etharis as a campaign world? Yes please). But "Evil Has Won" does not mean that evil is no longer evil. It means the players are tasked not with saving the world, but either surviving it or redeeming it, dependent on how lucky and ballsy they wish to become.
Dark Sun/Athas could be an excellent core 'Evil Has Won' option for Wizards of the Coast, but they have to thread quite the fine needle with it and ensure that people who read the books understand that evil is still evil. Or at least, understand that Wizards does not condone these things simply because they put them in a setting book Just like Wizards does not condone a continent-spanning war so violent it blew an entire country literally off the map or creating an entire race of artificial people with questionable personhood and yet still printed Eberron, Athas would have to be "we present this broken world as fuel for your imaginations and inspiration for post-apocalyptic games, not because we wish we were Sorcerer-Kings getting away with literally everything." Which, to most people's credit, should be obvious from the get-go.
But...well.
I totally agree with you. When I ran Dark Sun in college my players were committed to ending the slave trade. I would never have tolerated players trafficking in slaves, let alone the worse things you suggested.
I haven't gotten to play it either, but from the various descriptions and depictions I've seen in other threads it honestly reminds me of "what if the nations of Khorvaire hadn't stopped after the Mourning?" The whole planet is turbo****ed, rampant magic use has more-or-less killed the world's soul a'la Final Fantasy VII and Mako reactors, the last few true arcane archmages are unconquerable and immortal Sorcerer-Kings that rule the planet with their bony iron fists. Natural resources are nigh-nonexistent, the whole planet is a Mad Max wasteland. Cannibalism happens because in many cases there is literally nothing else to eat. It is a rough place to live, and as I understand it there's not really any significant hope of fixing it. You can, perhaps, tilt things towards a less dire path, but it would take centuries for anything the PCs to do even begin having an effect.
I haven't gotten to play it either, but from the various descriptions and depictions I've seen in other threads it honestly reminds me of "what if the nations of Khorvaire hadn't stopped after the Mourning?" The whole planet is turbo****ed, rampant magic use has more-or-less killed the world's soul a'la Final Fantasy VII and Mako reactors, the last few true arcane archmages are unconquerable and immortal Sorcerer-Kings that rule the planet with their bony iron fists. Natural resources are nigh-nonexistent, the whole planet is a Mad Max wasteland. Cannibalism happens because in many cases there is literally nothing else to eat. It is a rough place to live, and as I understand it there's not really any significant hope of fixing it. You can, perhaps, tilt things towards a less dire path, but it would take centuries for anything the PCs to do even begin having an effect.
Not to mention the fact that in order to become a Sorcerer-King, you literally have to commit genocide. That's why Gnomes, Orcs, Goblinoids, Kobolds, and a bunch of other standard D&D races don't exist on Dark Sun anymore. They were all killed by one of the BBEGs of the setting in order to become a super powerful dragon sorcerer.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Y'know, I feel like that's honestly one of the biggest obstacles to seeing Dark Sun return. "Gritty" has a different meaning to some folks. For some, it simply means the world is crueler, less forgiving, and heroes tend to falter and fail as often (or more so) than they succeed. For others? Some folks fasten onto the idea that 'Evil Has Won' and use it to try and justify 'Evil Is Awesome'. Rather than slavery in Athas, as one convenient but hardly unique example, being treated as a deep injustice perpetrated by corrupt rulers that have abandoned care for their people? Some 'gritty' players want to celebrate slavery as a splendid component of a 'Gritty' society, worthy of support and admiration. They want to buy slaves, they want to grape-with-a-silent-g their slaves, they want to burn and pillage and let their inner untamed Id run wild. Playing characters that despise slavery and wish to strike blows against it or end it is seen as naive, or unrealistic, or "not being able to separate the game from real life."
Needless to say, some folks are simply not going to be about letting their players run a bunch of total f@#$ing sickos using a broken world as an excuse to run amok. If that's the kind of game everybody wants? All right. Have at it. But accusing anyone who doesn't wallow in that sort of self-defeating grossness of "not being able to handle it" and casting aspersions on them isn't really okay. There's a difference between not "being able" to handle it and not wanting to handle it.
"Evil Has Won" settings can be a lot of fun to play in. Grim Hollow is one of the few third-party settings I've bought multiple products in, and I fondly hope to run me some Grim Hollow some day quite possibly bastardized with Curse of Strahd (running CoS with Barovia not being its own demiplanar pocket dimension, but instead a remote provice of Ostoya under the cruel Baron von Zarovich against the backdrop of Etharis as a campaign world? Yes please). But "Evil Has Won" does not mean that evil is no longer evil. It means the players are tasked not with saving the world, but either surviving it or redeeming it, dependent on how lucky and ballsy they wish to become.
Dark Sun/Athas could be an excellent core 'Evil Has Won' option for Wizards of the Coast, but they have to thread quite the fine needle with it and ensure that people who read the books understand that evil is still evil. Or at least, understand that Wizards does not condone these things simply because they put them in a setting book Just like Wizards does not condone a continent-spanning war so violent it blew an entire country literally off the map or creating an entire race of artificial people with questionable personhood and yet still printed Eberron, Athas would have to be "we present this broken world as fuel for your imaginations and inspiration for post-apocalyptic games, not because we wish we were Sorcerer-Kings getting away with literally everything." Which, to most people's credit, should be obvious from the get-go.
Until the PCs show up to the party, CoS is "evil has won".
Is Dark Sun really "evil has won"? I never got to play it.
In short, yes, in Dark Sun, evil has won. Or if not won, it's all that's remains after good picked up left. pretty much a Mad Max vibe. There might be a few good people here and there, but in general, its ruled by a handful of evil tyrants. And the general populace is going to be looking for every chance to kill you to take your stuff, or at least leave you to die and take your stuff. The idea is the world is so harsh and brutal that while a good person might survive, only evil people can actually thrive.
Now, I could get into a whole discussion of just what is evil about it, but I don't want to risk starting another alignment-thread war about the nature of evil, and situational morality. But it is not a happy place.
Y'know, I feel like that's honestly one of the biggest obstacles to seeing Dark Sun return. "Gritty" has a different meaning to some folks. For some, it simply means the world is crueler, less forgiving, and heroes tend to falter and fail as often (or more so) than they succeed. For others? Some folks fasten onto the idea that 'Evil Has Won' and use it to try and justify 'Evil Is Awesome'. Rather than slavery in Athas, as one convenient but hardly unique example, being treated as a deep injustice perpetrated by corrupt rulers that have abandoned care for their people? Some 'gritty' players want to celebrate slavery as a splendid component of a 'Gritty' society, worthy of support and admiration. They want to buy slaves, they want to grape-with-a-silent-g their slaves, they want to burn and pillage and let their inner untamed Id run wild. Playing characters that despise slavery and wish to strike blows against it or end it is seen as naive, or unrealistic, or "not being able to separate the game from real life."
Needless to say, some folks are simply not going to be about letting their players run a bunch of total f@#$ing sickos using a broken world as an excuse to run amok. If that's the kind of game everybody wants? All right. Have at it. But accusing anyone who doesn't wallow in that sort of self-defeating grossness of "not being able to handle it" and casting aspersions on them isn't really okay. There's a difference between not "being able" to handle it and not wanting to handle it.
"Evil Has Won" settings can be a lot of fun to play in. Grim Hollow is one of the few third-party settings I've bought multiple products in, and I fondly hope to run me some Grim Hollow some day quite possibly bastardized with Curse of Strahd (running CoS with Barovia not being its own demiplanar pocket dimension, but instead a remote provice of Ostoya under the cruel Baron von Zarovich against the backdrop of Etharis as a campaign world? Yes please). But "Evil Has Won" does not mean that evil is no longer evil. It means the players are tasked not with saving the world, but either surviving it or redeeming it, dependent on how lucky and ballsy they wish to become.
Dark Sun/Athas could be an excellent core 'Evil Has Won' option for Wizards of the Coast, but they have to thread quite the fine needle with it and ensure that people who read the books understand that evil is still evil. Or at least, understand that Wizards does not condone these things simply because they put them in a setting book Just like Wizards does not condone a continent-spanning war so violent it blew an entire country literally off the map or creating an entire race of artificial people with questionable personhood and yet still printed Eberron, Athas would have to be "we present this broken world as fuel for your imaginations and inspiration for post-apocalyptic games, not because we wish we were Sorcerer-Kings getting away with literally everything." Which, to most people's credit, should be obvious from the get-go.
Until the PCs show up to the party, CoS is "evil has won".
Is Dark Sun really "evil has won"? I never got to play it.
In short, yes, in Dark Sun, evil has won. Or if not won, it's all that's remains after good picked up left. pretty much a Mad Max vibe. There might be a few good people here and there, but in general, its ruled by a handful of evil tyrants. And the general populace is going to be looking for every chance to kill you to take your stuff, or at least leave you to die and take your stuff. The idea is the world is so harsh and brutal that while a good person might survive, only evil people can actually thrive.
Now, I could get into a whole discussion of just what is evil about it, but I don't want to risk starting another alignment-thread war about the nature of evil, and situational morality. But it is not a happy place.
Dark Sun RAW is much too gritty for my tastes (although I might send my party there on a brief side quest, I would never turn it into a full campaign). When I ran my campaign back in college, I heavily homebrewed out the worst of the bad stuff, and even then it was much grittier than any of my other campaigns.
Y'know, I feel like that's honestly one of the biggest obstacles to seeing Dark Sun return. "Gritty" has a different meaning to some folks. For some, it simply means the world is crueler, less forgiving, and heroes tend to falter and fail as often (or more so) than they succeed. For others? Some folks fasten onto the idea that 'Evil Has Won' and use it to try and justify 'Evil Is Awesome'. Rather than slavery in Athas, as one convenient but hardly unique example, being treated as a deep injustice perpetrated by corrupt rulers that have abandoned care for their people? Some 'gritty' players want to celebrate slavery as a splendid component of a 'Gritty' society, worthy of support and admiration. They want to buy slaves, they want to grape-with-a-silent-g their slaves, they want to burn and pillage and let their inner untamed Id run wild. Playing characters that despise slavery and wish to strike blows against it or end it is seen as naive, or unrealistic, or "not being able to separate the game from real life."
Needless to say, some folks are simply not going to be about letting their players run a bunch of total f@#$ing sickos using a broken world as an excuse to run amok. If that's the kind of game everybody wants? All right. Have at it. But accusing anyone who doesn't wallow in that sort of self-defeating grossness of "not being able to handle it" and casting aspersions on them isn't really okay. There's a difference between not "being able" to handle it and not wanting to handle it.
"Evil Has Won" settings can be a lot of fun to play in. Grim Hollow is one of the few third-party settings I've bought multiple products in, and I fondly hope to run me some Grim Hollow some day quite possibly bastardized with Curse of Strahd (running CoS with Barovia not being its own demiplanar pocket dimension, but instead a remote provice of Ostoya under the cruel Baron von Zarovich against the backdrop of Etharis as a campaign world? Yes please). But "Evil Has Won" does not mean that evil is no longer evil. It means the players are tasked not with saving the world, but either surviving it or redeeming it, dependent on how lucky and ballsy they wish to become.
Dark Sun/Athas could be an excellent core 'Evil Has Won' option for Wizards of the Coast, but they have to thread quite the fine needle with it and ensure that people who read the books understand that evil is still evil. Or at least, understand that Wizards does not condone these things simply because they put them in a setting book Just like Wizards does not condone a continent-spanning war so violent it blew an entire country literally off the map or creating an entire race of artificial people with questionable personhood and yet still printed Eberron, Athas would have to be "we present this broken world as fuel for your imaginations and inspiration for post-apocalyptic games, not because we wish we were Sorcerer-Kings getting away with literally everything." Which, to most people's credit, should be obvious from the get-go.
But...well.
Prism Pentad books are actually pretty tame by modern standards and it is really clear that PCs ars supposed to oppose the sorceror kings as the intent of the setting. There are rules for becoming a dragon (sorceror king) in some of the older source material but it is definitely in opposition to the intent of Dark Sun to play a slaver character (Agis is a slave owner but he is a noble and the Lawful is winning over the Good until he realises the true significance of being a slave owner). I think that Dark Sun does not lend itself to stupid evil in the same way that really high fantasy does where players pursue a power fantasy but you are right that a certain kind of player may use the setting as an excuse for foul behavior. However, the suffering of the world is really at the forefront of all the depictions. The sorceror kings don't even seem that happy and certainly their top lietenants are terrified all the time. The world is a depiction of 'evil has won' but it's also more nuanced than that. I won't ruin the Troy Denning's books for anyone but the Champions of Rajaat/sorceror kings/dragons (all the same people) are horrible creatures but they defeated something worse/better (depending on your point of view) to bring the current world in to being.
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Now that you've said this I think that this may be the best result. I'd like the setting to be stripped back to the original city states after the death of Kalak. I didn't find the thri-kreen empire that interesting and I like the idea of The Dragon being out there somewhere. On a side note, I hope they do away with the Avangions as one of the best things about Athas in the Prism Pentad is that there is no way of achieving ultimate power without doing some really heinous things. Having ultimate good guys out there ruins much of the, "bad guys have already won and here we are," theme of Dark Sun.
Good question - there is the historical Tyre which is Phoenician but I don't know enough about the Phoenicians to tell you if the city is Phoenician influenced. Tyr in the books is seemingly the most generic sword and sorcery style city used to introduce all of the other interesting parts of the setting like brutal takes on traditional races, psionics, preserver/defilers and the city state system of governance.
Did anyone else notice "Athaspace" on the map in the latest Spelljammer article?
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
*No! But that’s really cool.*
That is cool, but I though the whole deal with Athas was that it couldn’t be reached by spelljamming or any other kind of interplanar travel. It was totally cut off. Maybe people know it’s there, but also can’t go in?
Or like a lot of things from older lore, it has been or will be changed.
People may not go there because there isn't any resources worth going there for.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
From what little I've heard (and this could easily be homebrew, so who knows), you can get to Athas with a 'jammer just fine. You just can't get back out of Athas, since magic is ****y and weak there and there's not enough power to get a spelljamming ship out of Athas' Wildspace. Which would make Athas the Roach Motel of Spelljamming, which seems just ever so apt.
Please do not contact or message me.
I think that’s homebrew but I’m not 100% sure.
I honestly think the only reason that it was originally set up that Spelljammers couldn't go there was because Dark Sun used slightly different stat rules so they just made up a way to avoid mixing the two.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
The system can handle gritty.
The problem lies with individuals not separating their game from real life.
When ROLEPLAYING your characters do not have to have your same values. Weather it’s a holier than thou classic LG Paladin or it’s a demon whose name means eater of the unborn.
Tyr is an excellent starter city for freed slaves but Urik still has its slave trade.
Even the Realms has its pockets of slavery. Even Waterdeep has indentured servants.
So yes the system can handle it. Can your players handle it? That is the question to ask yourself.
I’ve found the under thirty crowd tends to be scared of broaching the subjects or it’s too taboo to have at the table. And that is because most those groups haven’t been together a significantly long time.
But if you have a group that’s been together for a long time you’ve broached it numerous times. I’m lucky enough to have three groups that I can have as gritty as any of us feel like.
Sure there is some fade to black scenes for a few things mainly as going too graphic adds nothing.
Here’s a scenario for you.
You group is traveling through a country that slavery is the norm.
You get to town and they are punishing aka whipping a captured runaway slave. Are you going to attack the lawful authorities of the land possibly ending in the same position yourselves. Are you going to start an abolitionist movement. Start an Underground Railroad. Go to the market to see if they have any good stock you might turnaround and sell in a larger market.
These are all things that should be worked out in Session 0.
Don’t be scared of the gritty. Embrace the in-depth ness of the world. Free a slave, buy a slave, **** and pillage, defend the weak, become a force for good, become a tyrannical evil overlord.
Correct it was a fully closed sphere. Unlike the Astromundi Clusterspace that was a partially closed Roach motel style but with a specific way out.
Now there was a 2E spell from Nethril that had a spell jamming helm as a component that is consumed in the casting. It was a 10th or 11th level spell. The spell could open or close a sphere.
Y'know, I feel like that's honestly one of the biggest obstacles to seeing Dark Sun return. "Gritty" has a different meaning to some folks. For some, it simply means the world is crueler, less forgiving, and heroes tend to falter and fail as often (or more so) than they succeed. For others? Some folks fasten onto the idea that 'Evil Has Won' and use it to try and justify 'Evil Is Awesome'. Rather than slavery in Athas, as one convenient but hardly unique example, being treated as a deep injustice perpetrated by corrupt rulers that have abandoned care for their people? Some 'gritty' players want to celebrate slavery as a splendid component of a 'Gritty' society, worthy of support and admiration. They want to buy slaves, they want to grape-with-a-silent-g their slaves, they want to burn and pillage and let their inner untamed Id run wild. Playing characters that despise slavery and wish to strike blows against it or end it is seen as naive, or unrealistic, or "not being able to separate the game from real life."
Needless to say, some folks are simply not going to be about letting their players run a bunch of total f@#$ing sickos using a broken world as an excuse to run amok. If that's the kind of game everybody wants? All right. Have at it. But accusing anyone who doesn't wallow in that sort of self-defeating grossness of "not being able to handle it" and casting aspersions on them isn't really okay. There's a difference between not "being able" to handle it and not wanting to handle it.
"Evil Has Won" settings can be a lot of fun to play in. Grim Hollow is one of the few third-party settings I've bought multiple products in, and I fondly hope to run me some Grim Hollow some day quite possibly bastardized with Curse of Strahd (running CoS with Barovia not being its own demiplanar pocket dimension, but instead a remote provice of Ostoya under the cruel Baron von Zarovich against the backdrop of Etharis as a campaign world? Yes please). But "Evil Has Won" does not mean that evil is no longer evil. It means the players are tasked not with saving the world, but either surviving it or redeeming it, dependent on how lucky and ballsy they wish to become.
Dark Sun/Athas could be an excellent core 'Evil Has Won' option for Wizards of the Coast, but they have to thread quite the fine needle with it and ensure that people who read the books understand that evil is still evil. Or at least, understand that Wizards does not condone these things simply because they put them in a setting book Just like Wizards does not condone a continent-spanning war so violent it blew an entire country literally off the map or creating an entire race of artificial people with questionable personhood and yet still printed Eberron, Athas would have to be "we present this broken world as fuel for your imaginations and inspiration for post-apocalyptic games, not because we wish we were Sorcerer-Kings getting away with literally everything." Which, to most people's credit, should be obvious from the get-go.
But...well.
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Did anyone notice that Spelljammer article has been taken down?
Maybe the map gave away something it wasn't supposed to.
Until the PCs show up to the party, CoS is "evil has won".
Is Dark Sun really "evil has won"? I never got to play it.
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"real life is a super high CR."
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"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I totally agree with you. When I ran Dark Sun in college my players were committed to ending the slave trade. I would never have tolerated players trafficking in slaves, let alone the worse things you suggested.
I haven't gotten to play it either, but from the various descriptions and depictions I've seen in other threads it honestly reminds me of "what if the nations of Khorvaire hadn't stopped after the Mourning?" The whole planet is turbo****ed, rampant magic use has more-or-less killed the world's soul a'la Final Fantasy VII and Mako reactors, the last few true arcane archmages are unconquerable and immortal Sorcerer-Kings that rule the planet with their bony iron fists. Natural resources are nigh-nonexistent, the whole planet is a Mad Max wasteland. Cannibalism happens because in many cases there is literally nothing else to eat. It is a rough place to live, and as I understand it there's not really any significant hope of fixing it. You can, perhaps, tilt things towards a less dire path, but it would take centuries for anything the PCs to do even begin having an effect.
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Not to mention the fact that in order to become a Sorcerer-King, you literally have to commit genocide. That's why Gnomes, Orcs, Goblinoids, Kobolds, and a bunch of other standard D&D races don't exist on Dark Sun anymore. They were all killed by one of the BBEGs of the setting in order to become a super powerful dragon sorcerer.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
In short, yes, in Dark Sun, evil has won. Or if not won, it's all that's remains after good picked up left. pretty much a Mad Max vibe. There might be a few good people here and there, but in general, its ruled by a handful of evil tyrants. And the general populace is going to be looking for every chance to kill you to take your stuff, or at least leave you to die and take your stuff. The idea is the world is so harsh and brutal that while a good person might survive, only evil people can actually thrive.
Now, I could get into a whole discussion of just what is evil about it, but I don't want to risk starting another alignment-thread war about the nature of evil, and situational morality. But it is not a happy place.
Dark Sun RAW is much too gritty for my tastes (although I might send my party there on a brief side quest, I would never turn it into a full campaign). When I ran my campaign back in college, I heavily homebrewed out the worst of the bad stuff, and even then it was much grittier than any of my other campaigns.
Prism Pentad books are actually pretty tame by modern standards and it is really clear that PCs ars supposed to oppose the sorceror kings as the intent of the setting. There are rules for becoming a dragon (sorceror king) in some of the older source material but it is definitely in opposition to the intent of Dark Sun to play a slaver character (Agis is a slave owner but he is a noble and the Lawful is winning over the Good until he realises the true significance of being a slave owner). I think that Dark Sun does not lend itself to stupid evil in the same way that really high fantasy does where players pursue a power fantasy but you are right that a certain kind of player may use the setting as an excuse for foul behavior. However, the suffering of the world is really at the forefront of all the depictions. The sorceror kings don't even seem that happy and certainly their top lietenants are terrified all the time. The world is a depiction of 'evil has won' but it's also more nuanced than that. I won't ruin the Troy Denning's books for anyone but the Champions of Rajaat/sorceror kings/dragons (all the same people) are horrible creatures but they defeated something worse/better (depending on your point of view) to bring the current world in to being.