I'm a little disheartened at this if indeed WOtC hasn't published anything else past "Beneath the Dust" WAAAAAY back in March for Dark Sun.
I spent a LOT of money on all those books and etcetera.
I'll be equally as embarassed if I am just not seeing them.
Any ideas?
Thank you!
wizards.com/dnd/WorldsArchive.aspx?categ...
I'm not an Insider so i can see what is actually there.
Not sure if the new Eye on Dark Sun stuff has any adventures in them, but you can try going through them:
wizards.com/dnd/WorldsArchive.aspx?categ...
I'm not an Insider so i can see what is actually there.
No. The Eye On Dark Sun stuff just consist of short articles that expand on some aspect of the campaign setting. The titles are a pretty straight forward description of what is found within. I do think OP is right about Beneath The Dust being the last published adventure.
I think I've run maybe three published adventures in twenty years so it's not a big loss for me, but it's not like I have the time I used to have either. I suppose there is always the option of retooling some of the old 2nd Ed. adventures (it really shouldn't be that hard) and there is a couple adventures available on Athas.org. I think the Athas.org stuff uses the prism pentad metaplot, so you might have to rewrite things if you are not running a post SK campaign.
D183 Revenge of the Marauders
D181 The Vault of Darom Madar
I highly recommend it.
Ashes of Athas is a fantastic campaign produced by Baldman Games. The mods are premiered at cons, and then made publicly available for a short time after.
I highly recommend it.
Thanks! And if you don't like them, blame Reg06 - he's not just a player, he's also a DM. He's not just a DM, he's also an author. He's not just an author... he's co-authored twice!
Was looking through the list of adventures and the last one published for Dark Sun that I could find was almost a year ago.
I'm a little disheartened at this if indeed WOtC hasn't published anything else past "Beneath the Dust" WAAAAAY back in March for Dark Sun.
The Dark Sun adventure support is arguably pretty solid:
Fury of the Wastewalker (D&D Encounters season) - Levels 1-3
Not distributed, but available when re-sold by DMs for sometimes reasonable prices on secondary market. Starts in Altaruk, goes through desert into Green Age underground temple, into Ringing Mountains, and ends at Tyr.
D&DXP 2010 PAX preview, PAX/Gen Con 2010 Dark Sun Arenas
These are con-only and not distributed, but did extend the 4E experience.
Sand Raiders (Dark Sun Campaign Setting)
Intro adventure found in the setting book, has to do with Wavir caravan.
The Vault of Darom Madar (DDI – Dungeon 181)
It is for 1st level PCs (end at 3rd). It starts after the Sand Raiders adventure as the PCs are asked to track down a vault belonging to an old House Madar. Enemy house Tsalaxa harries the PCs as they reclaim the treasure and take it to Tyr.
Bloodsand Arena (Free RPG Day) Download link here!
Level 1 PCs. PCs were leaving Tyr (seems to follow the D&D XP story) and reaching Altaruk and being tricked by elves to end up fighting combats in the Altaruk arena. They find some NPCs that seek to undo the VA's influence in Altaruk. This is available on the secondary market and has an absolutely not-to-be-missed map of an arena.
Marauders of the Dune Sea
The only published for-sale adventure and poorly-regarded by many fans (though it can certainly be used to create a fun adventure). For level 2 PCs. It starts in Tyr and sends PCs out to find an old dungeon holding a fragment from the Crown of Dust. The artifact is said to be part of the crown worn by Ul-Athra, a primordial killed by the Dragon.
Lost Cistern of Aravek (D&D Gameday adventure for Dark Sun release)
For level 4 PCs. It starts in Tyr and takes PCs towards the mountains to find a magical water collecting cistern for one of several groups. They face a Tembo, elven raiders, gith, and Urikite templar/soldiers.
Revenge of the Marauders (DDI – Dungeon 183)
For levels 5-7, sequel to Marauders of the Dune Sea. Provides second artifact piece as PCs take on moving fortress of Slither and the lich that was mentioned in Marauders.
Beneath the Dust (DDI – Dungeon 187)
Levels 7-9, very cool adventure with strong RP and choices. Deals with finding the seed to a tree of life, sought after by Thri-Kreen from beyond the tablelands and templar and troops from Urik (or another city-state).
Carried Away (Adventure included in special version of issue 1 of Ianto’s Tomb, the 4E Dark Sun comic series and in the hardcover Ianto’s Tomb). Hardcover is available for reasonable price (cheaper than the hard-to-find single issue with the adventure).
Three encounters for 12th-Level PCs are based on Issue 1, where characters are trying to survive the wilderness (Silt Sea). Encounter 1 is a sudden attack by slavers, then everyone finds they are on top of a cloud ray. Encounter 2 is skill challenge to get passage on silt skimmer (fighting is also possible). Encounter 3 is fight against silt shoal horror. Includes monsters scaled-down from higher level monsters in the DSCC.
In addition to that you have the Ashes of Athas campaign, which runs from level 3 to 9th (end at 10th) and may actually historically end up the most cohesive campaign option for Dark Sun across any edition (the AD&D stuff tends to jump around and does things like poorly reflect what happens in the Prism Pentad). We are always working on ways to distribute this, but at least for now the only way to get it is to play or DM the adventures at cons and to request it for free during our limited window (Chapter 3 will be out soon).
And, in addition to all of the above, there has been the announcement that there will be a Dark Sun themed issue in DDI soon. I can't share what I am writing for it, but I did aim to make it very useful to DMs. I also know there is likely a very cool adventure written by one of my favorite DDI authors. I'm engaged in some other Dark Sun DDI content that I think will be useful as well. The DDI Eye on Dark Sun series has been really strong, providing a lot of ideas and enablers for a campaign.
My personal feeling is that this is a really nice amount of content. The Dark Sun Campaign Setting has sold out on the Wizards side, which to me speaks to how well written it was and also to how well the model of having support through organized play and DDI has worked. Tons of people are playing, there is a lot of content if you look for it, and Athas is arguably as strong as it has ever been. When you add in that the value of most AD&D books (readily available on secondary market) was largely lore/ideas and therefore version-independent, plus the ease of encounter construction in 4E... I think Dark Sun is in pretty good shape!
How does everyone feel about all this? What are the holes in 4E Dark Sun that would make it more complete?
But most of that stuff isn't really available. I can't figure out how to get reliable copies of most of the adventures you mention: Lost Cistern, Fury of the Wastewalker, the Ashes of Athas stuff, etc. And it's kind of crappy to have to spend $25 for 3 encounters in the Ianto's book.
All of it can be found on E-Bay. If you are patient you can get the adventures for $25 or less, which isn't unreasonable for the quality and relative rarity. The Encounters season is more expensive, though it is roughly 3 adventures worth of fun. (Of course, opinions will differ on cost/benefit - Marauders sells for $13 in stores).
One possibility with Gameday and Encounters materials if you have a store in your area is to talk to the store and see if they have extra copies. Some stores are more scrupulous and rather than sell them they give them out as rewards for judges. You may also meet judges that have a copy and would trade or sell it.
It is a high price for Ianto's Tomb, if you don't want the comic. I found the comic enjoyable enough to merit the cost. I like the encounters, but they are cool ideas rather than a true adventure. Then again, I'm biased - I own just about everything for Dark Sun (that darn belt buckle can't be found anywhere...).
Ashes of Athas is free. Just pay attention to the Baldman Games site, Baldman or Ashes Twitter (or my own) or make a note on your calendar to check roughly 1-2 months after each convention. There will be an ordering window for you to request the adventures. You can also come out to the major conventions or area conventions so you can play. If you judge, you get a copy of the adventure.
For Ashes of Athas, we can't distribute the adventures, though we continue to explore options with Wizards of the Coast. They have truly been great (originally it was con-only). It is possible that if enough people asked through support for Wizards to provide Ashes of Athas that this might help the cause...
Incidentally, the Ashes of Athas stuff I DO have (the 2nd volume) seems to already be of much higher quality than Marauders--congratulations on that front. It really saddens me that so much of the public-created resources are unavailable generally and the wheel has to be reinvented over and over again by other DMs. For example, if I want to run a game of my own in Altaruk, I would have to basically detail the whole town, and make up stuff about the merchant houses--but I know it's detailed very nicely in the AoA stuff, and it helps promote a "unified" world when even non-AoA Dark Sun games are using the same resources (for example, House Rees was never given an emblem in any published material--but AoA did assign it one. It's nice if everyone can from now on use the same emblem for House Rees instead of everyone making their own up).
I'm fairly certain that if WotC were to come out with another hardcover with additional material i.e more themes, paragon paths & epic destinies, more details on Merchant houses, more locations of historical note about Athas past... It would sell just as well as the first one. The DS setting is probably the most unique of all D&D settings. I know DMs can come out with much of this on their own but I'm sure most DS DMs & players would welcome it.
I'm a huge fan of supplements like Elves of Athas, Veiled Alliance, and Ivory Triangle. I'm not sure we will see that sort of supplement in the near future. It is possible that D&D Next could bring that back, but we have to keep in mind these probably weren't profitable in the AD&D days and would likely still not be profitable today or under D&D next.
What is most likely is that as fans we can encourage things like distribution of Ashes of Athas to provide a cohesive 3rd-10th campaign, that we could encourage certain types of content in DDI (for example, articles about specific City-States that could be used to drive campaigns).
To play devil's advocate, there is the Golarion model from Pathfinder. Paizo has been successful with a subscription model where they highly detail a world. They tend to publish a somewhat small print run but with a lot of fluff. On the other hand, they focus on just one world. The corresponding match for Wizards would be to really detail the Realms (or arguably Greyhawk), not Athas.
I'm surprised to hear that supplements like Elves of Athas weren't profitable. That suggests a few questions: first, if they weren't, why the heck did they publish so many of them? There are 20-30 such supplements for 2E Dark Sun alone. Second...what exactly DID make money for TSR, if not the zillions of supplements? (let's not make snarky jokes about TSR going under...before that point, it must have made some money, somewhere)
(To be crystal clear, all the criticism is aimed at WotC, not you or Baldman Games, who are fantastic and super great.)
But, yes, on the other hand there is a time at which that exclusivity has run its course and I personally think that it could then be distributed. The exact timeframe isn't something I'm sure about, but I work in constant distribution and I'm pretty sure it isn't a short timeframe. I would like to see Wizards sell the materials, but this gets into things like print runs and inventory... you don't want to sell them during the Encounters season, so now you either need two print runs (expensive) or you need to store them (expensive). It likely ends up being in the "more trouble than it is worth" category.
This takes us to digital distribution. There are many sharper minds than me on this issue, but the summary is that there are issues both real and perceived regarding the distribution of content and what it means for copyrights and trademarks. Some would say that the perceived issues can also be real, which is probably why I never considered law school... Anyway, it also links back to issues of piracy, which seems to be a pretty big issue for Wizards. There has been analysis, I don't know the results, but it suggested the 4th edition approach.
At the same time, nearly everyone at Wizards I meet loves the idea of selling online, of doing things like distributing the PAX special preview adventure for Gardmore online, of having an iTunes model, etc.
This is likely tempered by an understanding that things like the OGL and GSL worked great during 3E but also paved the way for competing companies to use their own engine to create tons of revenue from which Wizards does not receive a single penny, and which ends up forcing their hand strategically. How much lost revenue did this end up causing? Well, if reports of Paizo sales being higher than Wizards in 2011 are true, then that's a serious loss!
This is all to say it isn't as simple as it seems. Releasing on DDI is a possibility, but anything that is clearly linked to profit is difficult. Given that, it can seem better to just hold it back and make it more desirable for players to go to stores.
What would I like to see? I would like to see a way that gamers that are not near a store could sign up to play at a public location, such as a school or coffee-shop. There would need to be a sponsor of some sort to reduce fake sign-ups and reselling, but it would do a lot to encourage D&D play as part of making these products more accessible.
And I would love to see Death in the Arena for DDI... it really is great work. But, again, I also know DMs that come out to these events specifically because they get rare one-shots like this. And we always need DMs at these events... there is a shortage and rewards/exclusives really help. Still, I do think it would be great to see these come out for DDI, especially when they can sell product. I suspect that the Gardmore preview and Death in the Arena event could have been effective ways to sell products if they had been offered on DDI (or even free) just before the release of their "parent" product.