why are nearly half the tiles in the Deserts of Athas water tiles? Couldn't they have been used for something more fitting for the setting? I felt kinda misled because here I was buying a desert dungeon tile pack and half of them don't fit in a desert at all...
Most of the default game world is not paved, and yet a lot of the standard dungeon tiles are worked stone. I don't think they took percent coverage into consideration.
Yeah but when they produce a tileset called "CAVES OF DOOM" almost half of the tiles don't usually include clouds for fighting heavenly denizens either.
I thought it was a desert world? I hate to rain on WoTC's parade because up til now the dungeon tiles have been great but....
why are nearly half the tiles in the Deserts of Athas water tiles? Couldn't they have been used for something more fitting for the setting? I felt kinda misled because here I was buying a desert dungeon tile pack and half of them don't fit in a desert at all...
If you want desert tiles, you might as well get blank tiles. Are they fond of making tiles that have nothing of note about them? The water is probably because the only interesting places to fight are oases and what not.
I thought it was a desert world? I hate to rain on WoTC's parade because up til now the dungeon tiles have been great but....
why are nearly half the tiles in the Deserts of Athas water tiles? Couldn't they have been used for something more fitting for the setting? I felt kinda misled because here I was buying a desert dungeon tile pack and half of them don't fit in a desert at all...
If you want desert tiles, you might as well get blank tiles. Are they fond of making tiles that have nothing of note about them? The water is probably because the only interesting places to fight are oases and what not.
Makes sense to me. If there's nothing but desert as far as the eye can see, all you need is a blank grid and maybe something for rocks and cacti.
Yeah but when they produce a tileset called "CAVES OF DOOM" almost half of the tiles don't usually include clouds for fighting heavenly denizens either.
Oh hey, I want that! Cloud tiles would be silly, but awesome.
Which is probably the point of the water tiles in the Athas set (which I am hoping to pick up this afternoon): appeal to other players / be useful more often than "Desert!" (and encourage folks to buy 2+ sets, too).
Though honestly, I had the same complaint about... what was it, Sinister Woods? Half of the tiles are ruins of the wilds (aka, they would have fit the first wilderness set's name better), which I... wasn't happy about. But y'know, it worked out pretty okay.
Yeah but when they produce a tileset called "CAVES OF DOOM" almost half of the tiles don't usually include clouds for fighting heavenly denizens either.
It's not really the same, though, unless you're talking about an entire world covered in caves.
I think they expect adventure to happen in exotic locations. One exotic location in a world modeled mainly on medieval Europe might be an underground labyrinth of worked stone, deadly traps and ancient treasures. On a desert planet, locations don't get more exotic than a riverbed.
I thought it was a desert world? I hate to rain on WoTC's parade because up til now the dungeon tiles have been great but....
why are nearly half the tiles in the Deserts of Athas water tiles? Couldn't they have been used for something more fitting for the setting? I felt kinda misled because here I was buying a desert dungeon tile pack and half of them don't fit in a desert at all...
If you want desert tiles, you might as well get blank tiles. Are they fond of making tiles that have nothing of note about them? The water is probably because the only interesting places to fight are oases and what not.
As I've said before, there are different types of desert that could have been featured. There's the sandy dunes, rocky barrens, cracked wastelands, and blasted lavafields. One side could have been one type of desert with dunes and ridges and bones and interesting buts of terrain and the flip side could have been something else equally desert orientated.
Think of it this way, if they did an ocean/sea set, would you be happy if they included desert?
As I've said before, there are different types of desert that could have been featured. There's the sandy dunes, rocky barrens, cracked wastelands, and blasted lavafields. One side could have been one type of desert with dunes and ridges and bones and interesting buts of terrain and the flip side could have been something else equally desert orientated.
It really is a major missed opportunity. Especially since I don't expect to see more desert tiles for... well, ever, honestly.
Think of it this way, if they did an ocean/sea set, would you be happy if they included desert?
If it could pass as beaches / "desert island" terrain? Yeah, I'd be happy. But I'm nuts that way.
I thought it was a desert world? I hate to rain on WoTC's parade because up til now the dungeon tiles have been great but....
why are nearly half the tiles in the Deserts of Athas water tiles? Couldn't they have been used for something more fitting for the setting? I felt kinda misled because here I was buying a desert dungeon tile pack and half of them don't fit in a desert at all...
What border do the water tiles have? Could it represent an underground reservoir? I agree though, I was hoping for more useful tiles than water, like rocky badlands, barren wastes, sand dunes, muddy
terrain, silt and maybe some obsidian love.
What border do the water tiles have? Could it represent an underground reservoir? I agree though, I was hoping for more useful tiles than water, like rocky badlands, barren wastes, sand dunes, muddy terrain, silt and maybe some obsidian love.
Every water tile save for 2 of them (a 2x2 and a 2x4) have good solid desert terrain on the flip side, featuring caravan paths, palm trees, rocky outcroppings, and sand dunes clearly marked as difficult terrain. Only 6 of the 16 water tiles do not have a sandy beach border (and one of those is a 2x4 Outrigger Sailboat piece). One of the best tiles in the set is a 4x8 oasis w/ palm trees that just screams "Encounter Time".
The 2 pages of 3d tiles are excellent, featuring a market stall, low risers, bridges or docks, a weathered stucco building, stairs, and a wagon obviously designed with an adventuring party in mind.
The oddest tiles in the set, to me, are the 4 large-ish tiles depicting a border between desert and green grass. But the flipsides of those are either good deserts or shorelines (which is problematic if the map you're building features neither green nor blue.
Only 6 tiles in the set feature just sand with no features. To me, these and the green/sand borders are the most disappointing pieces of the set. I can use my dry-erase map to depict trackless, featureless desert all day (not that I would. Empty terrain is boring terrain).
As far as set usefulness goes, I'm planning to pick up another set just to get extras of the 3d parts (I've always DM'd a very 3-dimensional game with lots of jumps and climbs, so the recent tilesets are great for me). If you are dead-set against any H2O at all on your map you could still fill your play area with dunes, paths, and big rocky bits with just one set, and a second set would open up a lot more possible map combinations.
As a final note, Athas's post-apocalyptic fantasy wasteland setting would have even more water (in the form of lakes and streams) than a RL desert, since it wasn't always a sandy hellhole. I was surprised to find the water tiles at first, but when you actually have them in front of you their usefulness is obvious.
EDIT: Although I shouldn't have been surprised at all since the back cover of the set clearly pictures the outrigger boat tile full-size :P
Even with different desert types a whole barren set would have limited uses.
> would you be happy if they included desert?
I would be very unhappy if they didn't include at least one 3x3 desert island with a coconut tree in the center tile. You can't leave something that iconic out of an ocean set!
All of the water-land tiles have deserts as the land portion so it could clearly be used as an oasis, or a beach. The grass-desert tiles seem a bit off but im guessing they are also intended as oasis es. (oasi?)
of the pure desert tiles: the ones that are trackless desert still have SOMETHING interesting about them, dead trees, dunes creating difficult terrain, wagon tracks, etc. There are only a few that are really just SAND, and you need those to accent your interesting pieces. otherwise you get 'so why is it every square foot of this desert has either a tree or a rock?' I would have liked some bleached bones. There are plenty of tiles if you want your players to fight a monster 'in the middle of nowhere' but i think they wanted to give us options.
oasis es. (oasi?)
Oases
Maybe they are returning to the Blue Age of Athas!
They tried that back in the 2e novels. Things went badly. First they kill a mage-king, then the dragon of Athas, and finally the Athasian god of the sea. All because one was insane, the other was the guardian, and Athas was originally a water world.
Or something like that, its been a really long time...
I thought it was a desert world? I hate to rain on WoTC's parade because up til now the dungeon tiles have been great but....
why are nearly half the tiles in the Deserts of Athas water tiles? Couldn't they have been used for something more fitting for the setting? I felt kinda misled because here I was buying a desert dungeon tile pack and half of them don't fit in a desert at all...
If you want desert tiles, you might as well get blank tiles. Are they fond of making tiles that have nothing of note about them? The water is probably because the only interesting places to fight are oases and what not.
As I've said before, there are different types of desert that could have been featured. There's the sandy dunes, rocky barrens, cracked wastelands, and blasted lavafields. One side could have been one type of desert with dunes and ridges and bones and interesting buts of terrain and the flip side could have been something else equally desert orientated.
Think of it this way, if they did an ocean/sea set, would you be happy if they included desert?
Yeah, desert doesn't mean loose light/white sand only. It's the most popular image, but deserts come in all shapes and sizes.
And as someone else pointed out, if it's just sand, who needs tiles? Water is important, so fights near water are important. And having plants on some is good too, since you can cast magic that kills plant life. With it on the tiles the DM can say yeah, those are real plants.
Basically I see it like this. Where there is life and people living, there has to be water, otherwise no type of settlement is going to be possible. Where there is people there is going to be conflicts.
The impression I got about Athas was it was a little like Death Valley, California, where you could still find water enough to survive. But even the most inhospitable deserts on Earth can border an ocean, small inland sea or large lake system.
In fact, some deserts on earth exist because of the sea and its effect on the local weather. Still, Athas does not have any large bodies of water. In that regards it looks more like the Gobi desert then the one in Peru or Angola ;)
The impression I got about Athas was it was a little like Death Valley, California, where you could still find water enough to survive. But even the most inhospitable deserts on Earth can border an ocean, small inland sea or large lake system.
In fact, some deserts on earth exist because of the sea and its effect on the local weather. Still, Athas does not have any large bodies of water. In that regards it looks more like the Gobi desert then the one in Peru or Angola ;)
Actually I think it's closer to the version of hell we saw in Constantine with red skies, wind storms, an almost completely dehydrated Earth, urban decay every where, and water becoming more valuable than gold. It's not just a desert it's a waste land
And yes, it really could have been called a variety of other things ("Beach Resorts of Faurun", "Sunny Sands of Eberron", "No Seriously, It's a Beach"), and still been farily accurate.
That said:
- I'm happy to finally have Desert tiles (even if I feel that two sets is, essentially, mandatory to have a good variety of options).
- I'm happy to finally have water tiles (even if there are only a few solid water tiles, and a single outrigger).
- I'm happy to have [what can easily pass as] beach tiles.
- I'm glad there are transition tiles (grass-to-sand) - maybe not great for Athas, but they sure are great for beaches in every other setting.
- The 3d tiles are "meh - I'll take it" again, though I like the docks a lot (and the reverse-side, long-but-low stone platforms), and the "wagon", while kind of silly-looking, will see a lot of use.
I plan on picking up a second set. It's not going to be anywhere near as useful to me as the other two "wilderness" sets, but it'll surely be better than nothing. If I get to run/play some Dark Sun, it'll come in handy. If not, it's more likely to get pulled out as coastal / river terrain.
As a side note for those who mentioned the tiles could be salt-water, keep in mind that the human body can actually tolerate about 36 ounces of salt-water (straight from the ocean) per day, for a few days, without few ill effects. It'll kill you in the long-term, and it sure as hell won't be pleasant. But if you only need to survive a few days or so, it's an important thing to know.
According to the other wiki, drinking seawater is specifically counter-productive because you have to put out more water pissing away the salt than you gain from the seawater itself. Perhaps you could gain some benefit by recycling that output (drinking your pee), but it sounds as though you'd be better off just recycling the moisture you've already got in you.
Anyway, I didn't say seawater, I said salt water. The Dead Sea, for instance, has nearly nine times the salt content of the ocean. I doubt that kind of salination would do anything but harm if ingested.
Anyway, I didn't say seawater, I said salt water. The Dead Sea, for instance, has nearly nine times the salt content of the ocean. I doubt that kind of salination would do anything but harm if ingested.
I doubt a person could last a day under those conditions.
Granted, it could be there will be additional tile sets of Athas - provided the campaign setting proves as popular as they hope - but it seems like they either should have aimed for a larger (like double) set of tiles or released multiple sets simultaneously to provide greater variety at launch.
I'm glad to see some water, and you absolutely have to have an oasis, but there's so much left unexplored. Where are the caravan tiles with the tents of a desert campsite? Where are the tiles depicting half-buried skeletons of great beasts picked clean by scavengers and sandstorms? Where are the rust-red rocky crags of the deep desert? Where are tiles of broken, eroded structures half swallowed by the blistering sands? To say nothing of Athas town/city tiles which would be unlike anything we've already got.
I mean, if WotC really wants us to use tiles and minis to help bring our games to life, they need to stop half-assing it and give us the proper tools. Because, I gotta say, given that I'm pretty underwhelmed by the tiles and the limitations imposed by such a small variety, and the fact that I don't have much in the way of Athas-appropriate minis (how many Thri-Kreen minis were there? Two? And both of them rares?), I'm actually more inclined to wait a couple years before buying any of the books and running a Dark Sun campaign.
Now, I think a lot of people are complaining about the set's contents from an "I'm going to run Dark Sun" side of things, which seems fair, given the name
. But I think in the process, folks are seriously downplaying how useful a lot of the set will be to other, non-Dark Sun, groups.As a side note for those who mentioned the tiles could be salt-water, keep in mind that the human body can actually tolerate about 36 ounces of salt-water (straight from the ocean) per day, for a few days, without few ill effects. It'll kill you in the long-term, and it sure as hell won't be pleasant. But if you only need to survive a few days or so, it's an important thing to know.
According to the other wiki, drinking seawater is specifically counter-productive because you have to put out more water pissing away the salt than you gain from the seawater itself. Perhaps you could gain some benefit by recycling that output (drinking your pee), but it sounds as though you'd be better off just recycling the moisture you've already got in you.
Anyway, I didn't say seawater, I said salt water. The Dead Sea, for instance, has nearly nine times the salt content of the ocean. I doubt that kind of salination would do anything but harm if ingested.
So, do Athasians use magical stillsuits Fremen style?
...can you ride Worms?
Honestly? I think all of the extra stuff was on purpose. Did you REALLY expect to buy a $20 product of just flat squares of yellow? Because nearly any other mat will work far better for that.
Athas is more than just flat yellow squares.
Seriously though, not all desert looks a like, even on athas. Plus, athas isn't "all the same desert."
To chose from, they've got salt flats, rocky badlands, mud flats and stony barrens. That's just regular terrain for the tablelands. They could have also added in obsidian plains, shallow silt and deep silt. Muddy water, poisoned/defiled water, ashy water, boiling hot water.
For location/site based encounters, an underground reservoir, a desert oasis, a siltskimmer, a caravan raid, a ruined outpost (or alturak after a giant attack).
They had more than enough variety to choose from. But, 4e fans don't want that, they want a generic desert setting with accessories to match. So that's exactly what they'll get.
there is plenty of water already existing in other tile sets, what there isnt a lot of in other sets is desert sands.
the tiles that are dedicated to water could have been used for something more fitting to the setting.. maybe something to match the following Athasian locations:
The Crimson Savannah
The Dead Lands
The Silt Sea
The Ringing Mountains
the only location the water tiles can represent is "The Last Sea" which i could make using water tiles from another set. i really feel like they halfassed this set. i ordered 3 of the sets from my local shop so.. i have 3 wagons and an ocean to dump them in.
there is plenty of water already existing in other tile sets, what there isnt a lot of in other sets is desert sands.
I'm guessing you don't mean Dungeon Tiles, because... no, there is not plenty of water. We have, what? Ship tiles? Some stream tiles (for outdoors and/or caves)? Sewers?
We do need water. I'd rather have water in a different set (and more of it, with more interesting things... but "desert island" is... okay). But we don't have plenty of it.
Now if you're talking in 3rd party stuff, I know Paizo has some, but I'm unfamiliar outside of that.
There are just not too many options when it comes to water tiles. What type of water tiles are you looking for, greatfrito?
EDIT: Here are a few others I tracked down on RPGNow. Water tiles are just hard to come by.
www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products...
www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products...
www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products...
www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products...
www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products...
Here's a desert one: www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?manufact...
One small set of tiles was by no means meant to represent the whole of Athas! Just because theres water on some of these tiles doesn't mean Athas got flooded. It also doesn't mean you have to use the water tiles, or that you are expressly forbidden from using these tiles with other tiles to convey non-watery environments.
They did more than one outdoor/wilderness set, so I bet gp to hp that wotc will release a second (maybe even a third) tileset that will be desert/wasteland/whatever styled and there will be ample lack of water in those.
Not every one will play Dark Sun, but anyone could use these tiles for any encounter that might need a dry earthy appearance and/or water. You're only limited by your own lack of imagination. If you can't think of a single interesting use for tiles with water and/or sand, you're not trying hard enough.
I know 3d tiles are not everyone's thing, sure, but keep in mind that the print on the sides and tops are suggestions at best. Its not that hard to stack some other tile on top of the provided stone or woodboards and say "This is a earthy outcropping" or "This is a house half buried in a collasped sand dune!" or "This is a cave ledge overlooking a deep underground pool". I could make up more.
Recently, I used a combination of the Athas and the Halls 3d tiles to represent a multi-decked flying airship! My players piloted their ship around the "air" on my vinyl hex grid and had a great time fighting a flying monster. They loved it and demanded I bring the 3d "ship" back for the next game.