Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Josha Jul 31, 2010 21:30:28	I want to DM a Dark Sun game (scince it seems so popular) but I know next to nothing about it. Can you tell me about the world of Athas and give me tips on how to run it?
#2 salla Jul 31, 2010 22:55:58	I want to DM a Dark Sun game (scince it seems so popular) but I know next to nothing about it. Can you tell me about the world of Athas and give me tips on how to run it? Let's see ... 1. The environment has been destroyed.  The world is one gigantic desert. 2. Related to 1, magic drains the life out of the environment unless you are VERY careful with it.  Thus, everybody hates arcanists. 3. There are no gods; the closest thing you have are the uniformly evil sorceror-kings of the various city-states, who are pretty much iron-fisted tyrant jerkwads. 4. There's slavery, and fight-to-the-death gladiatorial pits. 5. There's virtually no metal; most armor and weapons are made of junk like bone, stone, obsidian, or animal shells. Basically, it's a gigantic craphole.
#3 joja Jul 31, 2010 23:03:42	Salla sums it up nicely. I see you're a DnD Insider subscriber (at least I think that's what the red dragon icon by your name means) They have been previewing Dark Sun stuff for the last couple months in Dragon Magazine. I'd read through the last two issues, it will give you a good feel for what's going on. Also, if you have a local game store running the Dungeons and Dragons Encounters program, they are doing a Dark Sun themed series right now. You could check out a game in person to get a better feel for it. And if you like to laugh as you learn, the Penny Arcade kids are playing through a Dark Sun campaign (the first time for them too) and there is a podcast series available where you can listen in as they play the game. The DM is doing a good job explaining the world as they go. Podcast is here: www.wizards.com/dnd/podcasts.aspx You're going to have a lot more luck through these means, I think, than asking forum posters to fill you in, as it would literally take pages of text to do it justice. (I mean, aside from Salla's review, which as I said is pretty spot on.)
#4 gwydion9 Aug 01, 2010 0:04:38	If you just wait three weeks, the sourcebook for 4E Dark Sun will be released, then you can buy it and learn everything there is to know about running Dark Sun in 4E.
#5 gwydion9 Aug 01, 2010 0:05:59	Basically, it's a gigantic craphole. In other words, it's a Crapsack World: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Crap...
#6 salla Aug 01, 2010 0:08:41	Basically, it's a gigantic craphole. In other words, it's a Crapsack World: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Crap... Yeah, but I didn't want to get blamed for sucking someone into TV Tropes for six hours again. That's Fireclave's job.
#7 ascottbay Aug 01, 2010 2:18:22	The links in my signature lead to all of the preview articles, with the second one specifically being the crunchy bits for "trying it out." There are other useful threads in the Dark Sun forum, too. If you've got an FLGS, see if anyone there picked up Bloodsand Arena. It has an excellent example of "the kind of  that goes down on Athas."
#8 Fireclave Aug 01, 2010 3:22:55	Basically, it's a gigantic craphole. In other words, it's a Crapsack World: tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Crap... Yeah, but I didn't want to get blamed for sucking someone into TV Tropes for six hours again. That's Fireclave's job. Hi.
#9 oxybe Aug 01, 2010 10:28:08	DarkSun on Tvtropes.