I was working on a Pathfinder conversion for Dark Sun today, due to some grumpy players who still hate 4e but will negotiate with me on my beloved burnt world of Athas if it's in a different edition (or different system entirely). I'm aware of athas.org, and am in fact cribbing quite a bit of my info from there, but my thoughts today have led me back to the gap for setting material between the 2nd and 4th editions of D&D, and I've daydreamed about how entirely awesome an 'official' Dark Sun 3.0-3.5. would have been.

Dragon of Tyr? Avangions? clerics becomming Elemental Lords? Those paths were made for the prestige-class set-up that 3e has, and the strange psionicist-wizard mutliclassing needed for the Dragon would have been so much simpler to execute in 3e rules.

4E D&D gave us the stats for the Sorcerer-Kings, finally, but how cool would it have been to have them written up for 3e...especially since a major theme of Dark Sun is to go out and topple the fuckers from their cities thrones?

Damn near every creature on Athas is a psionicist of some sort, so for thsoe of who like the tinkering work, and want to pimp out an enemy beyond giving it a simple higher BAB, 3e would have been perfect for making any threat in the Dark Sun 3e Monster Manual a high level mind lord itself.

A frequent complaint of Dark Sun fans is that while they love the post-apoc setting, it's still too 'tied to D&D', with the fantasy races re-dressed but never quite gelling with the whole John Carter of Mars feeling. Wizards could have taken the opportunity at this point to re-boot Dark Sun proper, further severing the ties with 'fantasy medieval' into something even odder. I believe that 3e would have been the perfect moment to try such an experiment, as 2nd ed. and 4E's versions of Dark Sun were about 'trying to cram the concept of Dark Sun into the system mechanics', which never quite fit. The d20 gaming license explosion proved that D&D's base ruleset didn't need elves to work on it's own, and we could have seen the most inventive version of Dark Sun ever*.

*- I have similar feelings of most versions of Gamma World for the same reason. To be fair, I have not read d20 Gamma World and cannot evaluate it.


For those reasons, I feel like the lack of an offical 3rd edition Dark Sun is a tremendous wasted opportunity.

I did try running a 3.5e Dark Sun game and it exploded and went planescape fairly quickly due to the PCs being overpowered - but that was probably due to us using the gestalt rules (and I should have known better).

Personally I would have liked to see a 3E darksun, but multiple settings is supposedly one of the things that killed TSR. I don't know if it would have been a smart marketing move.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;462590I did try running a 3.5e Dark Sun game and it exploded and went planescape fairly quickly due to the PCs being overpowered - but that was probably due to us using the gestalt rules (and I should have known better).

Personally I would have liked to see a 3E darksun, but multiple settings is supposedly one of the things that killed TSR. I don't know if it would have been a smart marketing move.

You know, I see multiple games today with different settings (and it can be argued that White Wolf had different settings for most of their lines), and not many of those are doing badly. I think the argument that 'different settings divide the player base' is largely bullshit. After reading up on the matter, I think TSR died because of Loraine Williams poor management skills, not the settings.

3.x Iron Kingdoms, Privateer Press came out with one of the early D20 mods (The Longest Night) with art and overall quality that was on par or better then WotC. Sadly they had rather long waits between books (might be due to having day jobs), otherwise they could have had (imho) one of the larger segments of the 3.x market.

Quote from: Yevla;462593I think the argument that 'different settings divide the player base' is largely bullshit. After reading up on the matter, I think TSR died because of Loraine Williams poor management skills, not the settings.

I'd go with 66-75% poor management, 25-33% setting split.

I think TSR's perpeptual failure to contend with Games Workshop for the miniatures battle game is a pretty big one.  Battlesystem 2e was a pretty decent ruleset but poorly supported.  Heck AD&D 1e is actually a pretty fair miniatures battle game itself with a little tweaking. Setting hit points to 3 points per hit die and use only single dice damage ratings pretty much does it there's already morale rules and a points system in the form of hiring and equipment costs.

What was lacking was the will and vision to do it well and support it properly.

WotC tried a little harder but really dropped the ball on the production end.  They really should have stuck with Ral Partha for casting, some of the Chainmail guys I have are really poorly cast.

I'd have to go with TLG's foot-dragging that led to the cancellation of further Castle Zagyg nee Greyhawk, which also (probably) led to the cancellation of anything else done for Gary by freelancers (myself included).

Going further back I would also say Kenzer & Co. and Gary not being able to come to terms on publishing Greyhawk stuff for Hackmaster (which, while I dislike the system, at least it could have been backported to AD&D easily enough).

The greatest missed opportunities lie in failing to support the needs of beginning players with good entry-level products. A lot of companies are guilty of this.

Quote from: Yevla;462593You know, I see multiple games today with different settings (and it can be argued that White Wolf had different settings for most of their lines), and not many of those are doing badly. I think the argument that 'different settings divide the player base' is largely bullshit. After reading up on the matter, I think TSR died because of Loraine Williams poor management skills, not the settings.

[sits on fence]
Dunno really. Possibly 3E generated more sales off rulebooks than campaign/adventure supplements.

There not being a Dark Sun book at all is weird, but if they'd done a DS book + a pile of supplements for it, each supplement would have quite a limited audience. To be able to use a dark sun adventure in 2E say you first needed the Dark Sun box, and to use the DS box you needed the Complete Psionics book as well. I wouldn't imagine it would be much different for 3E.

Harry Fucking Potter

Quote from: Melan;462616The greatest missed opportunities lie in failing to support the needs of beginning players with good entry-level products. A lot of companies are guilty of this.

Right now, this would be my vote for "the biggest missed opportunity in the RPG biz".

Though, I love me some Dark Sun, Ravenloft, and Dragonlance. None of them were done particularly well (IMO) for 3.X (Dragonlance could have been great, but by then, the novels had soured me to the setting).

But to be honest, I'm not sure if 3.X would replicate the 2ed "everyone has psionics" vibe for Dark Sun, without requiring cross-classing into one of the psychic classes. Maybe a free Feat that allows 3/day uses of a 1st level power, or 1/day of a 2nd level power?

I always thought that both the Lord of the Rings RPG and Star Wars d20 did not take full advantage of the movies that came out during there life times.

I was mostly a timing issue,

Quote from: jibbajibba;462620Harry Fucking Potter

Also, Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who.

Quote from: One Horse Town;462629Also, Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who.

Lord of the Rings had an rpg didn't it? Although it wasn't very popular.


The lack of a Harry Potter rpg IS a missed opportunity, though, I'm in complete agreement. I've found several interested players for a Mage: the Ascension game re-tooled to be 'a lot like Harry Potter', and theres no way an extremely specific game like that should draw that much interest.

Quote from: Yevla;462633Lord of the Rings had an rpg didn't it? Although it wasn't very popular.

The various LotR RPGs have been pretty dismal, IMO.

None of them capitalized on the approachability of the actual books or film(s); ICEs offering was Rolemaster in cheap LotR stage dress and consequently pretty damn impenetrable for someone wanting to pick it up and just start playing.  The Decipher game might as well have been titled "Lord of the Rings: You Can't Do That" since they were bound to only use material in the Jackson films (IIRC).

I have no particular hopes that a third one will break this track record.

Quote from: jibbajibba;462620Harry Fucking Potter

Actually that is a copyright holder issue, J.K. Rowling, not a lack of interest by the RPG Industry.