I'm running my first Dark Sun game and I would really like some suggestions on how to make the Dark Sun world feel alive?
Feed all the players extremely salty snacks and then "forget" to pay your water bill.
LOL.
I did infact buy salty chips for the game erachima, people were up and down from the table for drinks.
Where do people get their Dark Sun Images from?
Where do people get their Dark Sun Images from?
BROM.
go google his art. it is the -pure essence- of dark sun.
I hope to resume the blogs next month. This month is all about Ashes of Athas (and a bit for DDI...)
Alphastream1, the blogs are great. I turned the first blog into a pdf and plan to drop it onto my memory stick so I have access to it on the laptop all the time.
Thanks for the kind words, Valien and Prom!
I hope to resume the blogs next month. This month is all about Ashes of Athas (and a bit for DDI...)
Well, you deserved them, your blog was pretty much what sold my on the setting, and thanks to it I've been DM'ing in Dark Sun for almost a year now.
I got mine from the DSCG and DSCC, the Dark Sun articles on Dragon and Dungeons mags (listed here), a good deal from here and here, and a lot from Google and DeviantArt.
I found the links you provided very useful. Thanks.
www.ddo.com/en/ddomedia/audio
Does anyone know of any free audio files with music that fits the dark sun setting?
I already plan to get a copy of 'Conan the Barbarian' on CD. If there is any other music that would work, but requires money?
Example from the last session, just copying out of the post-game journal.
The PCs have won a high-profile victory in the arena and been invited to a nobility party. The following was part of the party decoration in the courtyard where they arrive (after describing the servers with polished bone food trays and the music):
Looking around the courtyard, the party sees two elves, apparently slaves, who seem to be part of the courtyard décor for the occasion. To the right of the central water pool, a male elf crouches on a stone platform carved to look like a desert scene. He has his hand on a staff as if to use it as a weapon, but the staff, on closer inspection, is bolted to the platform floor. Likewise his ankles and wrists are short-chained to the platform and staff respectively, forcing him to crouch. The elf is wearing only a black loin cloth. He has short-cropped black hair, and a large, filled-in black circle surrounded by swirly lines tattooed on his back. His pose, forced by the placement of short chains, and carved rock platform suggest a portrait of a hunting desert elf in his native habitat—he seems to be a piece of living art.
To the left of the water pool is the golden-haired elf woman from the team the party fought against in the githball arena game [several sessions earlier]. She stands beside the pool stoically, also part of the guest entertainment. She still has the black flax plant tattooed across her face, a mark of her slavery to House Tzant. She’s dressed in golden leathers and wears yellow bone teeth around her neck and arm. She is chained with bone links to a golden stone statue that has been carved to look exactly like her. The party realizes this is also meant to be art, showing a wild elf of the desert linked directly to her likeness in a harmless carved statue. A juxtaposition of wild and tame elements?
I meant for this casual use of slaves as art to say a lot to the party about their hosts. Judging from their reactions, it worked pretty well. The elves were utterly non-essential to the story; but actually, these descriptions drew forth two party members to talk to the elves, and their conversations ended up playing strong roles in the story that followed.
Also. read a nature book about deserts like ones by Time-Life. I read it and it opened my mind to all sorts of new ideas about the desert biome(it also made me realize that monster-encounters in the desert are very unlikely).
Educate yourself; read a "A day in the life" books. If your game takes place in Uruk, read a book about ancient Mesopotamia. If it takes place in the arena of Tyr, read a Roman-Gladiator book.
Also. read a nature book about deserts like ones by Time-Life. I read it and it opened my mind to all sorts of new ideas about the desert biome(it also made me realize that monster-encounters in the desert are very unlikely).
I'll take a look some time.
Desert ecology can be really useful. I was taking an ecology class back when Dark Sun first came out and I found it really eye-opening. It led to my writing the Net Libram of Athasian Ecology (with a lot of help from the members of the Dark Sun listserver).
I haven't read that one yet, just got to find the time.
Has anyone tryed turning heaters on their players while running a Dark Sun game?
If your players are really into feeling the atmosphere, turning space heaters on them would actually be kind of cool. Most people wouldn't be interested in that, though.
www.silverblades-suitcase.com/darksun/in...
If you really want to mix things up, add water and vegetation to dark sun all of a sudden and make up stuff for how the npc's react to such a dramatic change. How the governments, citizens and economy reacts/changes.
:D LOL
Carl_the_half_ork, that means vacuuming up sand after the game..... Tomuch work for me, lol.
thanks!
