I played Ad&D for about 2 years when Dark Sun was first released. We loved it and stopped playing anything BUT Darksun for the next few years until 3.0 was released, then we moved on to playing White Wolf games with a few Dark Sun games here and there and never looked back when Dark Sun was dropped.
When it was announced Dark Sun was to be released for 4th Ed my group decided we wanted to play again and I have just started buying 4th Ed books ( no minatures yet as Dark Sun minis would be great but few to choose from so far.).
Now: Since we have some books I am ready to run a game to get the group a little prepared for the new rules when the great release comes. My idea is to run my game in the dark sun world BEFORE the great cleansing of the races took place. Of course I am not going to tell them that unless they figure out what I am doing before the champions gather.
Question: From my understanding the "old" world was pretty much the same as the regular world until the cleansing began. I figured that I would start out with normal game play with no known major NPC's to keep anyone from guessing what I am doing.
Does anyone have any ideas how best to run this ?
I was thinking of standard adventures for a few levels and then start rumors of some High level humans gathering and starting large scale skirmishes far off but they are making their way to the PC's land. Gradually making things worse as the characters level and more rumors of these individuals calling themselves " Champions" are trying to cleanse the world of all races other than human.
Any other input would be appriciated
Well, before the cleansing, the world was sorta standard fantasy, except there wasn't proper arcane magic yet (Rajaat hadn't invented it yet). The planet had not turned into a desert yet.
Basically, use what's in the books, but drop the arcane and divine power sources (elemental priests are primal characters now). Primal power would also be a bit rare, since elementals aren't need to make deals with folks just yet (PCs are special, if they all happen to want to play primal characters, fine, but I'm just saying that NPCs would be rare). Halflings were withdrawing from the other races before the cleansing wars, so halflings would also be rare.
I'd consider not allowing the Deva and Dragonborn races, since they still don't have much contact with other planes, and the Dray haven't been created yet. On the other hand, those two races could have just been wiped out in the cleansing wars.
Psionics are pretty common, but the rules for that aren't out yet. Considering this, and that the limitation of power sources pretty much means Druid would be the only controller, you might consider allowing wizards and invokers as psions (with wizards being psions that have a bit of a scientific understanding of psionics, invokers as the priests of non-existant gods who actually have some sort of power). Unless, of course, someone in your group happens to have a DDI subscription and has access to Dragon magazine.
The Jihad can be presented as a far away conflict involving government forces versus dissidents, and be full of propaganda, or it can be a war at home, like Nazis rounding up Jews that were living next door to you only yesterday. Or both.
4e DS is a reinvention of the setting, so you can even drop the Jihad altogether and just keep the era of magic that preceded the Cleansing Wars.
Start on the other side of the world.
Nobody knows what's on that side, and we certainly don't know what it was like in the Green Age. Design your own classic fantasy setting with a small or large region for your players to be in. Maybe there's no cities, but rather nomadic tribes trying to survive in a world that for some inexplicable reason is dying. As your heroes try to discover the truth, they learn of Rajaat and his Champions. Or maybe just one Champion that is dead and non existent in the modern era of 4e DS. It would be at that time I would want my players to think, "Holy ****...this is Athas and we're in the middle of the Cleansing Wars."
They can do battle with one of the Champions to either success or failure but at that point I'd probably end the campaign. Fast forward to the current timeline and now the players are playing distant decendants of their original Green Age characters ready to take the battle to the remaining Champions again.
That's just my quick idea though, but I like where you're going with this. I've never run or played in a Green or Blue Age Athas, and it seems rather intriguing.
My advice would be to have two different parties that are somehow connected.
The first is in the current age and they are working to uncover the history of the world for someone, a noble, a merchant house, or a veiled alliance member. You have them working towards some goal in the current time line that takes them to ancient sites and different locales, all to do something important (doesn't matter what)
The second is in the past, and it allows the players to play through the events that happened, giving them an eye-witness account of the events in the past. The first party becomes aware of the second party and their activities through some sort of psychic connection. And who knows what the second party is up to? terrorist attacks against the Champions? Last defenses of cities like Bodach or Kurn? The fall of the last of the elven kings? The death of the Wind Mages?
Through the careful weaving of story and plot movement, you can play in both times and have the past mean something for the future, so that even if you have an all dwarf party in the past that was butchered by Egendo, the characters back then still mean something to the present, and it's ok that they don't survive.
It's a portal that leads to Earth during the Roman times.
It's about 100 miles West of the Nile River.
I was thinking of running a game in which a Dark Sun army invades Roman Egypt.
The only draw back is that Magic doesn't work. Only Pscionics, Elemental and Druid magic works.