But I wanted to celebrate the fact that Dark Sun is becoming the most successful setting, with a forum that is soon going to beat both Forgotten Realms and Eberron.
I'm not a long time (or even recent) Dark Sun fan, but I'm happy anyway, because Dark Sun represents fantasy in a way that no other mainstream settings do. That is in its broadest and most creative way: with no heritages of old traditional themes to respect or cultural aspects to honour, but still with a great deal of flavor of its own, that just grows by the minute inside the community.
The old grognards, as some have called us, are to blame for this
'Grognards' ....?
Web definition points to 'Grumpy french wargamer' ?
Back to OP, Dark Sun is without doubt my favourite DnD setting!
(to the point that I spent hours/days/weeks converting Earthdawn gaming mechanics (as my group was hooked on at the time) into the Dark Sun world)
You know, back when we were all students and had nothing better to do with our time (certainly not STUDY!)
It's interesting to note that from old Earthdawn gaming mechanics, 4e has some similar approaches that weren't used in earlier DnD editions:
- Attribute plus Training approach (new in 3e)
- Action Points and Karma points have some similarities
- As do skill powers and 'Talents'....
Just interesting to see some streamlined cross-pollination of gaming systems starting to wheedle their way into the DnD mechanics.....
But all that is irrelevant to how AWESOME Athas is!
Hoorah! When I first heard WoTC was releasing Dark Sun for 4th edition I immediatly began leaping up and down screaming "Sand and blood! sand and blood!"
I started playing in 3.5 so I wasnt familiar with Dark Sun of old, but I read and re-read the wikipedia article on Dark Sun more times than I care to mention. I even rushed to my local game store to pre-order a copy a week before its expected relase date only to discover that they already had it in stock!!
Forgotten Realms has always been a little too High Fantasy for my tastes, but Ebberon seemed like a cool setting though I never played. Dark Sun is the first published setting I've ever really invested in (besides Dragonlance, which is REALLY high fantasy and failed to inspire me at all)
Conan was the first fantasy literature I ever really fell in love with, so you can be that the PCs will find a few homage to some of Howard's more famous stories. Maybe one of their treasure parcels is a big urn that secretely contains a naga.....
Hoorah again! SAND AND BLOOD! SAND AND BLOOD!
Why don't we collectively create the monster for this thread? I found myself a bit out of ideas and visual inspiration.
The only cool image I found was this:
Care to expand on the concept?
I say defiled angel...