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| #1LillohApr 13, 2015 7:05:59 | Level 3 party, four PCs, becoming slaves/gladiators in Dark Sun. How do I play it, Im not very familiar with Dark Sun. Anyone did this already? I could use som pointers. Here is som backstory:
I DM a Planescape campaign and last session the PCs visited Dark Sun Athas in a simple quest to take som bones from an encountered ghosts dead body and lay it to rest. I had planned for them to encounter: the extreme heat, psionics, half-giants, muls, bald dwarves ,Thrii-Kreen, giant scorpions in three keyed encounters and then back to the main quest. But… that didn’t go as planned. They decided to go to a city, and after barely surviving the desert they arrived. I played it like it was a small city (Narulp 5.000 inhabitants. That is under the rule of Nibenay.) I played the city out clearly evil with slaves all over the place, pick pockets and executionplatforms around the temple square. In honour of King Nibenay gladiatorial games are to be held in the near future. The PCs know this, but decided that to be too dangerous.
Its noon with many witnesses. One PC decides to question/interrogate an elemental fire cleric (who I rule carries out executions and burns the victims to ashes) while he guards the entrance to the palace. Another PC tries to sneak past him. He rolls pourly and I decide to openly roll the spot and he clerly is aware. The first PC mocks the priest openly two times, and I decided that the priest would strike at him! I miss. the PCs continues to fight as more and more guards come running to the struggle until they are all caught. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
They should be executed, but instead I’ll let them be fodder for the upcoming games (They lose all items and gold). How do I play this? I would very much appreciate some help? I like them to get out, eventually, but it should not be easy, a lesson needs to be learned. Can a 3rd level party survive!? The elf fighter/mage, and the tiefling bard are melee and strong, but the week gnome rogue illusionist (without his spellbook) and the pacifist cloistered cleric might not.
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| #2cowleymenApr 19, 2015 0:40:11 | Dude I love that your making them face consequences. For one, magic of the arcane is hugely taboo. Most athasian mages are defiliers, who pull magic from the life of those around them. Even if you arent doing so, most people still fear and want you dead. As for the gladiator fight, if you cant fight, its possible they could be forced to work another job innthe colessium, like giving out food, running messages, working rhe kitchens. Perhaps the other two no fightys can catch wind of a slave escape. Now if their friends cannjust sruvive one more day of fights! |
| #3Torg_SmithApr 19, 2015 6:43:52 | First off, there is no rule that you must follow the campaign worlds as written, so I am only providing this as informative. Play as you want, that is what was intended.
The official game has no gods so the Planescape setting does not really have support for the games. You will need to decide if gods exist on Athas and if clerics follow them.
There is a bunch of resources for Dark Sun. There is an adventure called Freedom that can give you some ideas here ( http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17178/DS1-Freedom-2e ) as the players become slaves right off in the adventure.
Here is a complete listing of what they have rerelease from the older DnD version. It will give you some background information. There are a couple books missing from this list. They are as follows.
For some information on slave tribes.
There is one free city called Tyr. It is freed by the events that take place in the Freedom adventure I noted above.
Your campaign won’t need this book, but this book describes the clerics of Athas. Only get this if you are interested in knowing much about this aspect of Athas, otherwise skip it.
If you want to give a unique flavor to this planet, you can get some in-depth information on the Thri-Kreen of Athas.
A good book on Defilers and Preservers will let you see how magic is handled on Athas. You would need to decide if the magic users in your campaign will fall under either of these categories and that the reaction of the people of Athas is to your players. You can run the magic of your player as different than the magic on Athas, but you should decide on a reaction of the people to your players.
A book that talks about psionics on Athas is here. They have not done psionics in DnD 5e yet, so you might want to avoid it all together. Psionics play a huge part of the world in the official campaign.
I would highly recommend the Dark Sun boxed set as that is a great resource on the campaign world. |