Dark Sun is a setting I pretty much ignored not because I wasn't intrigued by it (I was) but because... life is too short and good things are, sadly, too many.

However I recently decided to put my nose in it. From what I understand, the setting was well received at the beginning, then something akin to FR 4E happened and 2nd Ed (the one, ironically, I own) caused ire and depression. Now I gather that the 4E setting is among the trace elements who have a good reputation amid the disaster.

My questions (consider that I know the very basics of DS)

- What happened between 1st and 2nd Ed? Where the changes really a disaster? If so, why?

- What makes 4E Ed "good"? Is it a "reboot", a further development of 2nd Ed which fixed its problem, or the setting is simply "good considered the dire standard of the rest"?

- I'm interested in "fluff": are the novels worth it? I understand that some of the demonized changes were bought via the novels.

Thanks!

Dark Sun was and still is one of my favorite settings.  I'll try to answer your questions in something resembling an order.

- 1st and 2nd Ed:  You mean Original and Revised?  Both were 2nd Edition products, they came out about five years apart, like the Black and Red Ravenloft boxes.  The main differences are 1) Original Edition's "Flip Books" aren't used in Revised. and 2) The Prism Pentad already happened in Revised.

- I felt that 4e's Dark Sun actually deserved that ruleset, and it brought me around the 4e in general.  It's because of the Dark Sun books that I even own all the 4e material I now possess.  It's not really a reboot - just a lot of material left out to strip it down to the bones.

- The Prism Pentad IS Dark Sun.  As far as D&D fantasy novels go, they are pretty good and I happen to be starting the Amber Enchantress again at this very moment.  Yet, the novels are demonized for 1 reason - they changed the setting from the outset of the original publication.  Kalak's dead, the Cerulean Storm begins...all that.

I have almost every Dark Sun product to date.  There are literally only a few modules I've yet to track down, but as soon as I set my sights on those I'll have them.  Some of them are in the shrink-wrap still, waiting for that glorious day when I run the entire Original module series...

Note: Not seen the 4th ed version so I can't comment on what it's like.

The way I see original vs. revised is like this:

The original boxed set gave you a nice campaign setting at a time period when the world was right on the precipice of undergoing a bunch of tumultuous changes, which of course gives plenty of scope for adventure and for player characters to either muck in with the revolts against the dragon-kings and really play a crucial role in driving and directing those changes - or, for that matter, to enrich themselves or fulfil their personal goals using the chaos of the era as a cover.

The second boxed set shows the campaign setting after the Prism Pentad - in other words, whilst the progress of the revolutionary changes sweeping the setting is already partway done - and didn't really offer anything to up the stakes. The fact that the events of the novels were hard-baked into the revised setting also bugged people.

The comparison I'd make is this: the original boxed set is like a big crate of fireworks, enough to give you the raw material for a really impressive display. The second box gives you a similar crate except some of the fireworks - including some of the really cool ones - have been used up. That doesn't mean you can't have fun with what's left, but you're still going to wish you weren't staring at all these used-up fireworks.

I mean, it's not that bad because you can just rewind the timeline from where it was in the revised box, but that takes a bit more research and work than just working from the materials in the original box.

(Incidentally, I think Dark Sun is a good illustration of how tie-in fiction can cause a real headache when it comes to managing a game setting. Do you keep the game setting materials locked at a particular year and just say that any tie-in novels detailing what happens after that year are just one possible course of events? Then the novels aren't really "canon" and you lose sales from canon junkies (the core audience of any tie-in fiction line). Do you exclusively set tie-in novels in the setting's past? That's certainly viable but even then DMs are going to gripe about you a) coming up with "canon" answers to the setting's mysteries and b) publishing the setting's mysteries in mass-market paperbacks. Do you regularly revise the setting based on the novels? Then the development of the setting is being driven by novels, not games, which kind of defeats the point of it being a game setting and justifiably makes gamers unhappy because it sort of implies that the novels present the "real" history of the setting and what happens at their tables doesn't really count.

It's a mess. The only game setting I've seen which has had a really solid solution for this is Warhammer 40,000 - that universe is so massive that you could take all the tie-in novels ever published for it and collectively they only describe the tiniest fraction of the worlds in that galaxy, so as long as you aren't actually running a game in a setting of one of the ongoing novel series like Gaunt's Ghosts the tie-in fiction will never actually trespass on your game.)

To add to what other people have said, in a sentence: Dark Sun caught a bad case of metaplot.  The setting as posited in the original boxed set was a fairly grim world where ancient sorcerer-kings ruled over a water and mineral-poor wasteland, heavily inspired by sword & planet and sword & sorcery works.  Much of the 1e books emphasized this kind of feel.  By the time the Revised boxed set came out, they were instead emphasizing the way that revolution has rocked the world and most of the Big Bads who drove the campaign setting were dead or thrown out of power.  Also, the setting got a bit more gonzo in the second edition.  If I had to run it today, I'd probably thread down the middle, with the more gonzo character options from Revised but set undisputably in a pre-Prism Pentad world, and then I'd throw out the events of the Prism Pentad and let players do it.

There was a brief writeup of DS in 3.x terms in Dungeon and Dragon; and a 3.x official fan site which did a decent job converting some things, but was somewhat controversial for certain decisions in navigating the original v. revised feel.  4e was, IIRC, fairly uncontroversial, and was a decent conversion given that it was 4e, although I never did run more than a game of it.  To answer your question, what people seemed to embrace was its attempt to return to the "feel" of the original boxed set.

WotC at one point put all of the pdfs online for a song, and I bought a complete set of original and revised material; I'd recommend starting with the original stuff, and especially the Dragon-Kings (?) sourcebook, which described high-level play and some of the bigger secrets of the setting, if you ever pick up those items.

Only one "Big Bad" was ever thrown out of power.

I think the whole reason for that was to give the setting a sort of "hope" for a better world, which you can see since Tyr is at the center of the world for most of the supplements.  The rest of the Tyr region is one sort of hell or another, ruled over by one sorcerer king or another.  Only areas far far away from Tyr see anything other than this sort of convention.

So, in the original edition you are under the yoke of Kalak, then overthrow him.

In the revised setting, it's a brave new world.  People come down hard on it for this seeming "schism", but in fact it was necessary to promote long term play in that setting.  Otherwise you get shut down by the sorcerer kings.  If you've read Dragon Kings or the Veiled Alliance, you know why they take a particular interest in anything above 10th level...

That said, if you have never experienced it, go with the Original set and the "Freedom" adventure path.  It's a fantastic story and an awesome roleplay experience.  If you'd like to add "metaplot" or even just get a taste of the setting flavor as canon fiction from TSR, read the books.

Then get the Revised setting and write new adventures for the post Kalak world.

I played the original Dark Sun boxed set a ton. Love the setting.
I just disregarded the novels and revised stuff, because it "Wasn't Dark Sun" They took all the great setup, and RUINED IT FOREVER. (Post may contain hyperbole)
The best thing 4th edition did for Dark Sun was to set it just after Kalak's death. This is IMO the most interesting time for the setting.
For my tastes, Dark Sun is a dying world. It's dying over the span of hundreds or thousands of years, but dying it is, and nothing the PCs can do will change that. The revised stuff made it so that the world could be saved, (IIRC) and that made it boring.
The challenge of the setting is, will the characters fall to the same greed and self-interest that devastated the world? Will they try to maintain their own little piece of Athas against the desperate powers of the world?  Can they stave off death for another day?

All IMO and all that jazz.

Quote from: Blackhand;619328So, in the original edition you are under the yoke of Kalak, then overthrow him.

In the revised setting, it's a brave new world.  People come down hard on it for this seeming "schism", but in fact it was necessary to promote long term play in that setting.  Otherwise you get shut down by the sorcerer kings.  If you've read Dragon Kings or the Veiled Alliance, you know why they take a particular interest in anything above 10th level...

I think the big problem was (IIRC) in-canon Kalak was torn down by the events of the Pentad, when really in your home campaign he ought to be taken down by the PCs.

If they instead put out an "Advanced Dark Sun" set which detailed how to handle roleplaying the heads of the revolutionary government of post-Kalak Tyr, specifically to support groups who had ousted Kalak themselves (and there'd have been a lot, wasting that motherfucker is one of the most obvious things you could want to do in the original set) that would have been ace.

So here's a question, has anyone here actually been witness to the defeat of a sorcerer-king? In what I've read so far it is heavily implied that you will not be prepared of the centuries of magical traps and contingencies set in place by any one monarch whose sole intent is the maintenance of their power. It makes me question how Kalak was ever defeated in the first place.

Only the king of Draj seems to make him-self vulnerable by parading through the streets in addition to being the weakest of the bunch, and even then he apparently has hordes of skilled bodyguards and obsidian constructs to defend him.

I've also been told that the Dragon's fortress in 2nd ed. makes the Tome of Horrors look like Candy-land.

Quote from: Warthur;619445I think the big problem was (IIRC) in-canon Kalak was torn down by the events of the Pentad, when really in your home campaign he ought to be taken down by the PCs.

If they instead put out an "Advanced Dark Sun" set which detailed how to handle roleplaying the heads of the revolutionary government of post-Kalak Tyr, specifically to support groups who had ousted Kalak themselves (and there'd have been a lot, wasting that motherfucker is one of the most obvious things you could want to do in the original set) that would have been ace.

In Freedom, the canon events actually function as a backdrop for the PC's to escape and revolt on their own.  The high level characters of the campaign setting doing something else allows the PC's to become heroes in their own right.

So, only campaigns that disregard a lot of the source material should have this problem.  Almost all the published adventures for the original Dark Sun have tie ins to the novels.  Yet the events in the novels happen separately from ALL of these - thus the books are canon, but only in the sense that it's background material.

So you'll have to forgive me.  I just don't understand some of the complaints...or rather I understand the complaints, just not why they exist.  It shouldn't have any effect on your adventures at all that they have named high level characters in the campaign performing high level actions.  Does Mordenkainen cause you a problem?  Elminster?  Fucking Drizzt?  

Then neither should Rikus, Sadira and Agis.  Killing Kalak is literally the EXPOSITION of the setting, not the goal of the campaign.

It's sort of the same problem you get when you cross canon with Star Wars - the first thing people think of is Darth Vader and Luke, and can't seem to wrap their heads around a game that doesn't involve those two characters at all.

Quote from: Blackhand;619582So you'll have to forgive me.  I just don't understand some of the complaints...or rather I understand the complaints, just not why they exist.  It shouldn't have any effect on your adventures at all that they have named high level characters in the campaign performing high level actions.  Does Mordenkainen cause you a problem?  Elminster?  Fucking Drizzt?

Yes, yes and yes. I don't mind high level characters in the setting performing high level actions but those actions shouldn't nullify perfectly good opportunities for the PCs to muck in.

QuoteThen neither should Rikus, Sadira and Agis.  Killing Kalak is literally the EXPOSITION of the setting, not the goal of the campaign.

Why can't it be the goal? It was viable for it to be a goal based on the core box.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;619302To add to what other people have said, in a sentence: Dark Sun caught a bad case of metaplot.

Damn right.  A particularly nasty case, since it added nothing, it didn't provide new challenges or the like, it just made a very intense and dangerous world less intense and dangerous. Even with all the problems that metaplot changes (and I generally dislike most of them) can create, at least the post-metaplot Greyhawk (From the Ashes), FR (post time of troubles), Mystara (post Wrath), etc. were all places that provided new and exciting possibilities for the PCs.  Dark Sun's changes didn't.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;619909Dark Sun's changes didn't.

RPGPundit

I really believe that's an erroneous statement brought on by self-imposed and entirely psychosomatic grognardism.

The Revised set is more about exploring the world.  You'd actually have to read it to know that.

Quote from: Blackhand;619917I really believe that's an erroneous statement brought on by self-imposed and entirely psychosomatic grognardism.

The Revised set is more about exploring the world.  You'd actually have to read it to know that.

Considering that you're talking about two game products that came out long after the end of 1e and years before the advent of 3e, I don't see how anything about this could be "grognardism".

RPGPundit

Quote from: Blackhand;619917I really believe that's an erroneous statement brought on by self-imposed and entirely psychosomatic grognardism.

The Revised set is more about exploring the world.  You'd actually have to read it to know that.

I find mere exploration of the world to be an inferior premise to stage a campaign world off of than, "Overthrow the Sorcerer King."  One thing that the best of the old AD&D campaign sets did which later whole-world campaigns didn't was have a very, very strong situation built in for players and DMs to latch onto -- Dark Sun, Planescape, Dragonlance and Ravenloft all had these kind of powerful situations at the outset which didn't leave you with the common complaint of, "Okay, neat setting, but what do I do?"  There's no question what you do in any of those at the outset, especially Dark Sun.

For me, the Revised edition -- and I have read it -- is weaker because it does not have that strong premise built in.  I liked a few of the rules additions, but at the end of the day, the original Dark Sun boxed set is a powerfully done campaign setting because there's no question what you do with it, right from go.

Quote from: Blackhand;619917The Revised set is more about exploring the world.  You'd actually have to read it to know that.

The problem with this is that the expanded map made it very obvious that they'd been making it up as they went along. Why would nearly all the sorcerer kings, having made tons of species extinct, settle down in one tiny part of the world that's actually one of the more physically hostile environments? Dragonlance at least made Krynn way smaller than earth intentionally. Athas never did reconcile that basic fuckup in scale or give us a remotely complete map of the world. They really needed to think of more different but still hostile terrains and combine them into a coherent geography.