So exploring the Dark Sun world, which is filled with all kinds of crazy shit for players to find, is not a viable campaign goal and they should have just stuck with killing sorcerer kings?  That Athas wasn't much habitable and no one knew anything about it was part of the mystique.

Please.  You know how hard these same folks would be bitching about not letting players explore the campaign world if they stuck with the premise of killing the sorcerer kings?

Which, by the way...killing the sorcerer kings was never the premise of the game.  Those things are ridiculously powerful.  The idea was always to explore the campaign world through the eyes of those who had formerly been oppressed, and know next to nothing of the outside world.

Quote from: Blackhand;620411So exploring the Dark Sun world, which is filled with all kinds of crazy shit for players to find, is not a viable campaign goal and they should have just stuck with killing sorcerer kings?  That Athas wasn't much habitable and no one knew anything about it was part of the mystique.

Sure, but any GM worth their salt should have been able to come up with their own ideas for what's out there, and any PC group worth their salt would commence such explorations with half an eye to seeking out sources of massive power and using them to roll back and crush the dragon kings. I kind of like the idea of Athas as a campaign setting where the lands of the dragon-kings are the common starting points of campaigns (and end points of those campaigns where the players choose to come back and fuck shit up), but the rest of the world is unique to each DM's table.

There are few things more toxic to player freedom in a game than NPCs that you're not supposed to try and defeat. Is it a doomed quest? Maybe, maybe not. Can you do it without heading out there into the wider world to try and find some allies or power sources the dragon-kings haven't counted on? Seems unlikely. But you can't expect to dangle foes like the dragon-kings in front of the players and expect them to not want their PCs to go after them - especially if the PCs have very obvious motives for wanting to take the dragon-kings down (namely, having been enslaved by them).

Quote from: (un)reason;620356The 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.

To answer, the "nicer" areas of the world took a long time to develop after the time of Rajaat.  The Tyr area is where they created their new "society" based on trade between the city-states (sorcerer-kings).

There isn't a complete map.  You don't really need one.  As far as topography goes, it doesn't have to conform to any "known" geography types because Magic.

Quote from: Warthur;620432Sure, but any GM worth their salt should have been able to come up with their own ideas for what's out there, and any PC group worth their salt would commence such explorations with half an eye to seeking out sources of massive power and using them to roll back and crush the dragon kings.

And someone, quoted above, literally bemoans that the world isn't mapped out.

No one said it shouldn't be an objective, but most folks here hate high level play.

Sorcerer-Kings shouldn't be the target of any group less than Level 20.  Dragons?  Level 30.

Quote from: Blackhand;620411So exploring the Dark Sun world, which is filled with all kinds of crazy shit for players to find, is not a viable campaign goal and they should have just stuck with killing sorcerer kings?  

I don't think anyone's saying that. There was plenty to explore in the original set.  I think the problem is that second edition, for reason that had NOTHING to do with game suitability and EVERYTHING to do with incorporating stuff from bad fiction, ended up resolving shit that would be more fun if PCs resolved, and replacing them with lesser challenges and a less thematically-focused world.

The great deeds are done, and now PCs are left with lesser accomplishments; and some of the things that defined the setting (in terms of conflicts and sources of adventure) are gone and you're left with a less-defined world to explore.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;620768I don't think anyone's saying that. There was plenty to explore in the original set.  I think the problem is that second edition, for reason that had NOTHING to do with game suitability and EVERYTHING to do with incorporating stuff from bad fiction, ended up resolving shit that would be more fun if PCs resolved, and replacing them with lesser challenges and a less thematically-focused world.

The great deeds are done, and now PCs are left with lesser accomplishments; and some of the things that defined the setting (in terms of conflicts and sources of adventure) are gone and you're left with a less-defined world to explore.

RPGPundit

I agree. I'm not fond of the idea of killing off most of the Sorcerer-Kings and the Dragon, because I feel that ends the most exciting and interesting part of the setting. If someone else wants to explore that kind of Athas... well I'm not the game police.
But the revised setting resolved far too many things, and left a world with little to do except make up more stuff, which I can do as a DM just fine. I don't need the Dark Sun setting for that.

I think the 4e book is quite good. 2e changed way too much way too quickly. 1e was good, but the actual art/layout/etc. kind of sucked.

I have no experience with 4e, so I really couldn't say there.. did they somehow scale back or retcon the changes in the second box set? Or is that a dumb question because the setting is mostly irrelevant/absent?

RPGPundit

The 4e book basically presents the 1e ssetting material in a superior fashion. Sure there are a bunch of 4e mechanics, but they are easily passed over and the atlas section is top notch. The maps are great, the setting stuff is presented in a much more succient fashion than the bulshit 90's first person style of the original. Also the map is better.

The king of Tyr is dead, but all the others are still kicking and there are some hints of what lies beyond the main campaign area, but nothing more than that. If I ran settings designed by other folks, this is the one I would run.

The atlas runs just over 60 pages and is in my opnion worth the price of the book, especially now that 4e books are going cheap.

Quote from: Gib;621246The 4e book basically presents the 1e ssetting material in a superior fashion. Sure there are a bunch of 4e mechanics, but they are easily passed over and the atlas section is top notch. The maps are great, the setting stuff is presented in a much more succient fashion than the bulshit 90's first person style of the original. Also the map is better.

The king of Tyr is dead, but all the others are still kicking and there are some hints of what lies beyond the main campaign area, but nothing more than that. If I ran settings designed by other folks, this is the one I would run.

The atlas runs just over 60 pages and is in my opnion worth the price of the book, especially now that 4e books are going cheap.

Interesting; so it was in fact a retcon...

RPGPundit