Personally, I think it really works best with 2e.
I suggest tryng out Dark Sun 2e (the boxed sets) or 3e (www.athas.org) before trying a 4e version. It's a very unique setting built for power gaming, but with some extraordinarily high quality fluff. Also it's got heavy-duty psionics.
Personally, I think it really works best with 2e.
My group only will play 4e... they are unlike me where I am still open to playing other systems... *sigh* thanks anywho
You wait until the Eberron Campaign book is officially released next month. Then comes the hard part, ready? you wait exactly one year to the day, a shiny new copy of Darksun 4E will in your hand as the new D&D campaign setting.
And of course now we Darksun forum dwellers will digg in and staunchely defend this utterly baseless statement of certainty against the invading horders of DragonLancers and their Kinder shock troops.
Seriously I jest, but you have voiced the hope of many. A DarkSun Campaign in 4e would be double-plus awesome
Dark Sun isn't like most settings as it's "closed in" (planar portals are very rare), harsh, brutal, nasty and more about survival, than moral heroics. Oh, playing a moral character and achieving good aims is fine, it's just MUCH harder...which is actually a good thing!
I'd highly recommend buying the FIRST boxed set for Dark Sun, off Ebay, and Dune Tader, and/or Earth Air Fire Water (about clerics), Slave Tribes, Veiled Alliance supplements if you want. Dune Trader is IMHO the best add-on for Dark Sun.
This is cover of 1st boxed set:
http://home.flash.net/~brenfrow/ds/ds-cs.htm
A lot of folk, like me, HATE the way the setting was pushed to fit a set of novels for it, and a crazy history forced on it that ruined the setting, so, avoid the second boxed set and the novels IMHO. (The novels have good colour/flavour though).
So I stick to the 1st boxed set, not the second and novels.
How I run 4th ed is this:
a) Only Dark Sun races allowed, so no dragonborn, tieflings etc as they are are explained in the books.
By this I mean I let folk be "mutations", within reason. They may look human or whatever, but have stats/powers of different races, or may indeed look like whatever it is they wish.
As noted in the boxed set, and even the novels etc, mutation is a common part of Athas, and I've recently decided ot let that also apply to PC races. Up to you though.
For example, I've let one player look like a human, but his stats/powers are that of a Goliath. The story goes he met some anicent undead who hate the defilers Sorceror Kings and templars, and "changed" him. He is an "avenger" class form the Player's Handbook II.
So that works well for me.
b) Psionics, at the moment we don't have official rules for psionics, though some psionic powers of older editions are noted in the Monster Manual for 4th ed, like Mind Thrust, iirc.
So what I've done is use a psion class that a fella posted on the EnWorld boards, for the moment.
I let all PCs have the "Wild Talent" feat, this works like the Diletante ability half elves get, allowing any at will power of another class to be used as an encounter power, but only those I feel are "Psionic" in feel, so things that do psychic damage are usually fine.
The 4th ed "Psion" class will be debuted in Dragon Magazine next month by the way!
c) Clerics should try and stick to powers, where possible, that are of an elemental feel, and they shoudl chose on element as their "area".
The Divine Power book for 4th ed sounds like it will have elemental domains, so that should help!
d) You can easily "re-skin" most 4th ed monsters ot fit as 4th ed ones, and the DDi monster generator lets you easily make some up, I posted 4th ed stats for a Tembo, on this forum while ago.
e) Let them see some of my Dark Sun art, it may get their juices flowing ;)
http://www.silverblades-suitcase.com/darksun/index.htm#dark_sun_oasis
f) Templars I've alway sseen as much bureacrats, officers or whatever more than priests, and 4th ed really helps with that.
Templrs can be run as warlords, clerics or divine classes (some templars really do believe their Sorceror Kings are gods, after all), the demagogue NPC feature really its well for some templars (it's in the DMG for 4th ed), and again, the DDi monster builder can help there.
To me, having the templar's bureacratic legal abilities tied to levels never made sense, and Athas.org also went with that in their 3.5 conversion. A templars "standing" in the heirarchy is not about "levels", it's personal magnetism, blackmailing, ability etc tec, rather than raw perosnalpower.
So I can make them up as NPCs with high skills in Diplomacy, Intimidate and so forth.
With most templars, it's not their combat abilities that's scary, their bodyguards are perfectly capable of squashing most folk, lol.
No, templars are usually master manipulators, good orators etc, or just so damned useuful to city life that they are important and even city dwellers would attack you for assaulting such a templar (such as running water supplies)...or out of fear of reprisals.
Though some templars really are damn good fighters or spell casters.
Warlord templars would command military squads, and master spellcasters get so powerful due to the libraries they guard.
g) Defilers I simply give a +1 hit/damage bonus with arcane powers, at the moment. Defilers ARE more powerful than normal casters, simple as that.
However, they should not be allowed as a PC choice.
Defiling is a feat.
Defiling destroys life, so after casting a few spells (as decided by me) they can no longer cast on an area they've wiped out. Farmland and forest obviously gives them huge reserves.
Powerful defilers though carry "reserves" of stolen energy with them (like the Dragon can)
h) the DMG has rules for heat exhaustion etc.
I have it that templars often use rituals or enchanted armour, so they are about the only folk who ever wear heavy armours much of the time.
I say that" psionic crafting" can "temper" lesser materials ot be as good, or better than iron, but it's expensive. Psionically tempered obsidian is a favourite of most well off combatants.
Athasians use chitin, scales of many creatures, drake hide etc to make armour.
A Heroic feat ("Heat Armour Adaptation"), or natural fire resistance, or a lv 1 ritual, can allow wearing heavy armour of Athasian design without heat exhaustion worries, under normal circumstances on Athas. Would take a Paragon feat or natural fire resistance to allow wearign metal armour though...if anyone was crazy enough to wear such ;)
i) I see Athasians as inventive, brilliant even, though ignorant outside their own areas of expertise. There's no public libraries, little sharing of information, very very little written matter ordinary folk ever see, which all makes learning difficult except by direct experiment and experience.
So I refuse to accept Athasians cannot have fantastically well made armour (for the wealthy), potions and other crafts. Our own real world Bronze Age people, much like Athas, had amazing advances and abilities, such as electroplating of metals, so I have no problem with psionic crafting, potion sellers, masterwork armour made from drake or braxat hides, etc.
That's part of the trade of the cities.
Slaves and freemen able to make such are the real valuables of such cities, towns and communities, and far too important for templars to allow to be killed etc.
Just as in real life, you can imagine small guilds, families, clans able to make a specific type of thing, but little else as everyone's jealous of their own secrets, the templars preventing them forming big guilds that would threaten the Sorceror King's power, but greedily milking them and protecting them.
j) Use the roll 4d6 drop lowest method, for stat rolls. Athasians are tough and smart or driven, otherwise, they'd be dead or pathetic slaves!
"Darwinism in action" is what I keep saying about Dark Sun, lol.
I do like high fantasy and good deeds etc, but Dark Sun is a different type of place, and fun in it's own way
I've heard allot about Dark Sun, and it sound awesome. But I want to run a campaign set on athas using 4e. My question is, what minimum amount of fluff should I read to get my bearings of the world, and is their anything in particular in the 4e rule set that does not fit athas.
This might have some rough edges or arguable assertions, but it's pretty good and imho certainly the most concise thing you could read:
The first pdf here is one of two unofficially official 3e "core rules" sets, but you can skim loads of fluff for each class and race:
For a geography lesson, etc., you can try the wiki:
For novels, I think you might try:
- The Prism Pentad
- Or focusing on your minimum, perhaps just the first book The Verdant Passage.