Quote from: Thornhammer;849268After the apple orchard burns to the ground, you see the elderly Ms. Agathor walking towards your party.  She sees the smoldering embers of the once-proud orchard, and mutters "Well, maybe the rats in my cellar can just STAY..."

Yep...killed two problems with one meteor shower.

Quote from: tenbones;848860Definitely.

I'm with you 100% on this. One of the difficult things is, if you're not going to do the Sorcerer Kings and Dragon... how do you make Dark Sun, post-SK's be meaningful in a manner that is as intriguing and compelling as before?

It's one of the reasons most people like the first book of Dune... The planet itself was a character. Once it was "mastered" later... most readers had fallen off. But Herbert, imo, made the context of the God Emperor pretty fucking compelling - moreso than the first book.

But that's another thread.

Dark Sun could be about the "greening" of the planet and having the players be part/against it. But then it would involve creating a greater conflict than that represented by the SK's and the Dragon...  That's tough to top in terms of scale and style.

Oh that's easy.  To restore a conflict, take the base conflict and flip it on its head.  

In this case, Sorcerer-Kings destroy nature is base conflict.  So they're gone.  What happens?  Nature comes roaring back.  But not happy, pleasant fields, not rolling green.  Oh no.  The Sorcerer-Kings drained everything nice and forgiving from the world's magic, and all that's left is the mean, hostile things that could hide away and hoard their magic.  And now all that was holding them down is gone.

The people turn to the mages, the sorcerers, out of desperation.  Some enslave the mages, trying to force them to use their magic to hold back the tide.  Some of them rise up, become the Sorcerer-Kings of old, but with their magic the only thing that protects the people from the Green, tames the power enough that crops can flourish without rogue elementals or dryads tearing them apart.  

This new dystopia has its desert, but it's being reclaimed by a dark and evil jungle, filled with newer and more terrible monsters. Travel is harder than ever before, and only those places that can establish magical portals (at dreadful cost) can boast any regular contact with other civilizations.

See?  There's always conflict to be had.

Quote from: GreyICE;849526Oh that's easy.  To restore a conflict, take the base conflict and flip it on its head.  

In this case, Sorcerer-Kings destroy nature is base conflict.  So they're gone.  What happens?  Nature comes roaring back.  But not happy, pleasant fields, not rolling green.  Oh no.  The Sorcerer-Kings drained everything nice and forgiving from the world's magic, and all that's left is the mean, hostile things that could hide away and hoard their magic.  And now all that was holding them down is gone.

The people turn to the mages, the sorcerers, out of desperation.  Some enslave the mages, trying to force them to use their magic to hold back the tide.  Some of them rise up, become the Sorcerer-Kings of old, but with their magic the only thing that protects the people from the Green, tames the power enough that crops can flourish without rogue elementals or dryads tearing them apart.  

This new dystopia has its desert, but it's being reclaimed by a dark and evil jungle, filled with newer and more terrible monsters. Travel is harder than ever before, and only those places that can establish magical portals (at dreadful cost) can boast any regular contact with other civilizations.

See?  There's always conflict to be had.

I think this is a good and solid concept.

The only logistical issue I see is playing through the transition. Ostensibly it should take a long time to go from Desert-DS to Jungle-DS and let's face it, the PC's would be fucked, being specialized desert-dwellers having to deal with jungle conditions, but to me, that's just more fun conflict.

Okay I'm sold. Write that bitch up!

It depends on what narrative themes you're interested in exploring. Don't put your eggs in one basket. That's why I like Pathfinder's Golarion - there are several problems that require solving, and new issues crop up as others are resolved, like any reasonable world or setting. This is what makes for a viable, interesting adventure gaming setting, with multiple nations and cultures that resembles Earth history. Settings should be places with different things going on, not one big problem to solve.

One interesting plot twist ...

There was a book called Villains By Necessity, written by the daughter of Robert Forward.  (It was poorly written, which is why I dumped my copy at the used bookstore, which I'm gritting my teeth about now because it seems that the long-out-of-print book is going for big bucks on Amazon.  Anyway ...)

The premise is that the final triumph of Good vs Evil has happened -- the mighty questers sealed the evil Darkgate for good, and nothing new that is evil can be.  The good guy New World Order is industriously mopping up remaining solitary evildoers, but instead of mere extermination, they're using magical attitude adjustment to turn them into Good Guys.

But with the Balance turning to the Light permanently, it's getting brighter and brighter.  Night time is becoming shorter and shorter.  Predators are starving because they don't feel like prediting.  Etcetera.

So a handful of evil types (joined, incognito, by one of the good guy questers responsible for it all), fueled by a prophecy or three, go questing for the dingus that will open up the Darkgate once more and restore evil to the world.

As I said, it was an interesting premise marred by lame and predictable writing, but it'd work well in one of the "end of history" settings.

"solvable" worlds (or their flipside, "unsolveable" worlds; which is to say worlds where one thing is the problem and the PCs are expressly forbidden from ever being able to fix it) tend to be tremendously shallow and largely uninteresting.

Quote from: RPGPundit;850796"solvable" worlds (or their flipside, "unsolveable" worlds; which is to say worlds where one thing is the problem and the PCs are expressly forbidden from ever being able to fix it) tend to be tremendously shallow and largely uninteresting.

Lord of The Rings is shallow?  Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is shallow?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;850823Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is shallow?

The pool is really big and it has an awful lot of water in it, I'll grant you, but it doesn't really have a deep end.

But as to your main point, yeah Pundit is full of shit on that one.

Quote from: Bren;850831The pool is really big and it has an awful lot of water in it, I'll grant you, but it doesn't really have a deep end.

Epic Fantasy often has a detailed world with established kingdoms and an all powerful wizard archetype.

Quote from: Bren;850831But as to your main point, yeah Pundit is full of shit on that one.

Yeah.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;850823Lord of The Rings is shallow?  Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is shallow?

Last I checked, Lord of the Rings and the Wheel of Time series were novels.  They're not game settings.

Quote from: Ravenswing;850882Last I checked, Lord of the Rings and the Wheel of Time series were novels.  They're not game settings.

They both had gaming companies use them as settings.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;850985They both had gaming companies use them as settings.

To middling success at best.

I always felt Shadowrun 4e had this problem - all the uber-cool metaplots of 1e, 2e and 3e got "solved", and the new metaplots just didn't fill the vacuum. I mean, Shadowrun used to have Bug Spirit conspiracies, Bug City, the Arcology/rogue AI stuff, Earthdawn connections, Horrors and the Aztlan stuff related to them, Saito taking over California and so on. All so cool. Now all are solved, so a lot of the coolness is gone...

Quote from: Christopher Brady;850823Lord of The Rings is shallow?  Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series is shallow?

Books are not RPGs. Many books tend to have a resolution of the core problem by the final chapter (or 3rd volume). And then thats it.

RPGs are (usually) very open ended. Even if you beat Vecna and Iuz once and for all. There is always something else in the world that needs saving or putting down.

The heroes might even retire and leave it to the next generation to handle. Or they might settle and work on running a kingdom. And you thought Vecna was a terror? Wait till you have to manage the crops during a droubt and someone is inciting the villagers to riot.

etc.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;849005" You just took out the overlord that would destroy the world, what are you going to do?'

Become the overlord yourself.

After all, someone is going to try and fill the power vacuum and you would be better than someone else who would be as bad as the previous overlord.