Dark Sun General
Why is everyone wearing fetish gear? Edition
Fetish gear is why Dark Sun is set in a desert. It was originally going to be an arctic planet.
So why would a thri kreen use anything non-magical but their claws and bite?
>>47253816
Because its fantasy Mad Max
>>47253907
Of course its austrialia
>>47253816
Because it's an arid desert, so obviously no one would use long flowing robes and scarves to protect themselves from the heat.
>>47254843
You need to be proficient for that
>>47253816
because it looks sexy for people who are into that stuff and it looks rad and "barbaric" for people who aren't into that stuff
>>47253816
it's arguably among the top 3 best official DnD settings. dunno why people here don't talk much about it
>>47254913
That is the cutest dog ever
>>47254960
People only talk about what they hate
>>47254843
Actually long flowing robes and scarves are pretty much what is traditionally worn on deserts. It's not like on tropical heat where you want to wear relatively little so more heat will radiate off you, you want to keep your sweat IN and close to your skin because otherwise it'd evaporate too fast to be any good. That's where stereotypical middle eastern clothes come from.
>>47256069
He's being sarcastic.
Anyways, I've got a 2e Dark Sun game going, playing a Half Giant fighter.
I'm 7th level now, and NG(ignoring the stupid Half Giant alignment junk).
What should I do with my army once I get it? How should I make the world a better place?
>tfw the people behind Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment will never make a phenomenal Dark Sun game running off the Infinity Engine with an incredible plot that theives off of moral grey
I'm gonna kill myself.
I am thinking of running it a convention. So people have an alternative to Adventurer's League
>>47256336
Sad thing is, there already was a really good Dark Sun game they can ape from. Just flesh things out, add some actual characters, and moral ambiguity in the dilemmas, and you're basically there.
>>47257355
Which one?
>>47256336
I would kill for a rpg with meaningful interactions and non-binary moral choices.
I went through Alpha Protocol despite the bugs, but it has been six years already.
>>47253816
CONAN dudeee
>>47257417
Not him, but it was this weird ass dos game. Good for its time, which means I found it literally unpalatable.
>>47254913
my dogteru
>>47258693
No wonder, floppy disks are mostly plastic and metal.
So I'm running a D&D game now where a party of PC's from a Dark Sun game I ran last year are the villains. The current game is in a fairly generic fantasy setting.
How do I make it distinctive that the villains are 'foreign'? So far they have only met one of the 6 villains, and I just paraphrased Legate Lanius quotes for his dialog.
>>47253865
Range.
Things that harm anyone on physical contact.
>>47256322
Don't even try. You'll just get killed.
>>47253816
BROM in the house, BITChES!!1!
>>47261992
Dress funny, weird accents, bizzare mannerisms/cultural practices. Daek sun guys would probably be uncomfortable in cool weather and have strange contempt for arcane magic. There's also the commonality of psionics and the elemental worship
>>47256336
What would be cool moral dilemmas for a dark sun video game ?
>>47256322
Just become a mob boss ruling a city/region.
Idealism will get you killed, and this way you still improve the life conditions of people under your rule by offering stability, security, and commercial opportunities.
>>47261992
Aren't Dark Sun commoners supposed to be vastly superior to the adventurers of the other settings due to thousands of years of natural selection in the harshest place in the planes ?
Fetish gear, foreign apparence, no knowledge of the social conventions of this world, making for ankward moments when gestures are misinterpreted/not responded to ; like how the massai spit ou your face to show their love, since water is very precious (and water coming from your own body doubly so), but it has led to a few misunderstandings.
>>47254843
Clothes imply culture, anon. Once you got clothes, some wise guy is going to come up with stuff like irrigation, writing and architecture, and before you know it's not Dark Sun anymore.
>>47253835
Man, being a russian I would dig the snow desert aesthetic way more than the whole sand desert thing...
2nd Edition Kreen player reporting in. Long abdomens are best abdomens.
The design for Dark Sun was done retroactively. Brom would send in art, and they'd create stuff in the setting based on it.
>>47264773
That's the only type of Thri-kreen. The 3rd edition+ ones look so stupid its best to forget they exist.
>Why is everyone wearing fetish gear?
Fans of Oh! Great?
Everyone on Athas is tougher than nails and don't need protection from the elements. That is pretty much the whole IC explanation.
>>47264247
Not only that Dark Sun is meant to be apocalyptic with 'civilization' is just a handful of city-states ruled by tyrant kings and powered by the back-breaking labor of slaves.
Ideas on how to adjust the 4e version to a cold desert Dark Sun?
>>47264247
You seem confused. Dark Sun has culture and civilisation. The reason it's such a post-apocalyptic shithole is that most land has been made magically infertile and nothing will grow there, and the seas and oceans have been magically replaced with sand and dust.
>>47258693
>Good for its time
The same is true for Baldur's Gate anon.
The game in question is Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. Not bad at all with a bunch of good ideas and plenty of unusual D&D monsters.
It got a sequel too, Wake of the Ravager, but it was so buggy I'd stay away from it. Unless you are an hardcore fan.
>>47256336
I've been passively trying to make this work for years.
There's an open source Infinity Engine called GemRB, but it doesn't have a user friendly toolkit and you'd have to create all the graphics and animations because there's no isometric dark sun library.
As for story and dialogue scripting, it wouldn't be hard at all to polish and build on the two TSR Dark Sun games.
Let's do a Kickstarter
>>47265851
Wake of the Ravager just got released on GOG. It's less buggy, just save frequently.
Dark Sun is very interesting to me but I never played an edition when it was an officially supported setting. What's a good source for getting Dark Sun's feel? What are some sample campaign hooks for it that you have had fun with?
It's just confusing because in the real world, desert settings mean you put clothes on. Jungles are where you go half naked due to humidity. At the very least Athasians should wear shoes since there's jagged rocks and scorching sand everywhere.
>>47265959
>Let's do a Kickstarter
>>47266963
Maybe Athasians have much tougher skin.
>>47266986
Isn't that a bit hand-wavey?
>>47266963
D vitamin is the source of psyonics powers.
>>47267075
>>47266963
I think it's ok to just go with aesthetics regarding the general tone and level of realism in D&D games.
>>47256069
>the joke
>the iss
>the average flight height of a commercial airliner
>the eiffel tower
>a mature white oak tree
>the average scandinavian male
>your head
>>47267167
It definitely is. Dark Sun is crazy pulp postapocalypse, people running around in thongs is perfectly in tone for the setting
So a am planning on running a veiled alliance campaign set in Nibaney with a heavy emphasis on intrigue and espionage with the PC's fighting the cities Templars, any tips?
>>47267144
>>47267167
Put some shoes on though, seriously.
I wonder if there's a clothes check when you enter athas? Like "sorry sir/madam, you're gonna have to lose those pants to adventure here"
>>47263356
>>47264198
I'm looking for more specific details to include. Phrases, etc. They aren't really sit-down-and-talk political villains, their last encounter opened up with the Half-Giant monk threatening to break all of their fingers before he killed them unless they surrenderedhe caused a TPK.
>>47266963
>>47266986
This reminds me of a line a that the planescape book said about Athasian inhabitant in that they are amazingly adaptable and flexible that they can do things with leather and wood that the rest of the multiverse requires metal for.
With metal they are virtually unstoppable.
Puts a smirk on my face when my friends start talking about other settings.
>>47265851
>Baldur's Gate
No, that was crap even compared to the other games on the same engine.
>>47268071
No-one enters, no-one leaves. Athas is cut off from the rest of the multiverse, ravenloft style, although it doesn't go around kidnapping people from other places.
>>47269921
Isn't it able to be enter in 4e but its just stupid hard to get in/out
>>47253816
>Remember kids, if someone, somewhere might find it sexy, it's fetish bait, magical realm and we don't want it in our game about playing strong knights and barbarians going on adventures and getting all sweaty, thrusting weapons into... Oh dear.
>>47254913
That is no longer a dog. Stop doing this to awesome animals, you're just making them useless.
>>47270624
I don't know what it's like in 4e sadly.
>>47270928
They're pets, they're supposed to be useless. They exist for no purpose other than to sit around and eat food.
Leather bikinis and banana hammocks for everyone. What, are you some kind of wimp?
>>47253816
To distinguish it from Al-Qadim.
>>47269365
Hmm, i's been a lnog time since I've read about the setting, so I don't remember any Athas colloquialism, but you can always use insults like milkskin, waterbag, clothes hamper, and so on.
Call any short human a mul, halflings flesh eaters, elves foot draggers, wizards defilers...
>>47265959
>>47270820
Look at the old Brom paintings, then look at these. Disgusting. Fuck "dynamic action." Fuck digital art.
>>47272145
It really is a shame nobody does traditional artworks anymore. Although I don't want to demonize digital art. It's simply less quality for a cheaper price and less time. Nevertheless I hate some trends. Why is it that every archer has to do the slide pose or be jumping and at melee range while shooting?
>>47272145
>>47272328
I'll be honest, I really can't see a difference.
![1374256433-arkadi-01-sorenopyh-krystal-53[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/voD7qid.jpg "1374256433-arkadi-01-sorenopyh-krystal-53[1].jpg")
>>47272328
It can look good if you've already got a thick style with traditional methods. Like Bilal or Gimenez.
While I'm at it, Caza's works have a pretty strong Dark Sun vibe. Nocturnes and Arkani in particular.
>>47272132
Dark Sun Dwarves are 6' tall on average, so that 'mul' insult doesn't work.
>>47272837
Bullshit mate. The tallest a dwarf can be is 4.8 ft
>>47265959
You know, I understand that having proper half-giants in 4e isn't really possible, but replacing them with goliaths is such a fucking cop-out.
>>47272837
No, mul, dwarf-human halfbreeds are 6ft. Sorta like how ligers are larger than lions and tigers
Dwarves are still short.
>>47266963
Yes, and in real life Conan the barbarian would wear armour. Fiction and pictorial depictions of fictional things are often not realistic. This shouldn't be confusing.
Any oldschool Dark Sun fans here?
>>47272145
Brom IS Dark Sun art, and some of the new stuff is "ok", but will never match the feeling.
Dumping inspirational weapons and armour: No metal edition
>>47272992
>>47273023
Huh. didnt mean to hit spoiler
>>47273034
>>47273045
>>47273082
>>47273103
I loved playing Dark Sun back in 2E.
Killing people to drink their blood. Jesus. The things you do to get to fourth level.
>>47273118
>>47273137
That what you get for leaving the pockets of civilization
>>47273180
>>47264773
it's all about dat abdomen
>>47273203
>>47273286
I wasn't planning on jacking off to thri-kreen today, but here we are.
>>47272145
>>47272328
The difference has nothing to do with being digital. And plenty still do traditional works.
The thing is, those paintings by Brom are covers. You didn't get interior artwork like that. All the interior art of the original Dark Sun books are black and white drawings. That's what you should be comparing that artwork to.
Digital painting and better printing tech means we now get full colour paintings instead of black and white drawings. And if those digital paintings don't look as good as Brom covers, well of course they don't. Brom's art costs more. And it should. But let's be realistic here, doing interior illustrations for rpgs is not a profitable line of work. WOTC gets the art that it pays for. If modern D&D art isn't up to your high standards, it's got nothing to do with it being digital, it has everything to do with WOTC not being willing to pay enough to allow the artists to do better without starving to death.
>>47273324
it is good and proper to jerk off to thri-kreens
I wish WotC would make official Fate hacks for their settings because all D&D's rukesets are bad.
>>47276775
There's a FAE splat called Aether Sea that is very, very obviously meant to be Spelljammer, and could be made identical (besides Vancian casting) with minimal effortCurrently in the process of doing just that, actually. For Dark Sun, just Google it. It doesn't look like anyone's made an actual PDF for it, but there's a bunch of guides people have written.
Neither of those are official obviously, but on the other hand they're real.
>>47254960
Spelljammer, Dark Sun and Ravenloft are the top 3 in my opinion.
I'm not too familiar with Savage Worlds but I was wondering whether that would be great for Dark Sun. Both the setting and system tries to have that pulpy action feel.
Your current PC is stuck on Athas.
What does he/she turn into?
>>47277432
It's face reminds me of Nigel Thorneberry
>>47279670
"Your reign of terror comes to an end today, Dray."
"SMASHING!"
>>47273429
All the interiors of the older ones were done by Thomas Baxa, who is a pretty good artist. They aren't top tier, because there's so many of them, but they are definitely in a unique and interesting style.
I don't know who did the interior artwork for the newer stuff, but it is very good, too.
>>47265851
Shattered Lands is still good, I replayed it a year or two ago. Wake of the Ravager is not, though.
I'm a big fan of the UI. Mouse only and very user friendly. The graphics and music are pretty cool, too.
>>47282143
At least some were by Brom, too. Such as this postapocalyptic Flash.
Thri-kreen for 5e when?
>>47273034
That's the weirdest buttplug I've ever seen
>>47272920
Dark Sun's whole shtick in regards to races is remaining them. Dark Sun elves, halfings, and other races are totally different from core versions, but they didn't invent new races for them.
Back in 2e, there was no core "giant folk" race. Now in 4e, there is.
>>47265388
No, no, that's how RIFTS(tm) get its books written.
>that feel when Brom has grown up kids
>and they probably wear fetish gear
>>47285221
I imagine Vicente Segrelles could do fantastic art for Dark Sun. The Mercenary books are ace.
>>47253816
Where could one get started with the Dark Sun setting? Anyone have the sourcebook?
>>47287888
I'd recommend a pick and choose approach. Read the original setting, then read the revised setting. The revised setting fleshes things out and adds some cool thing, but it also makes canon the TSR guys' DMPCs and their shitting on the setting. So take what you want and drop the rest.
>>47272145
>Dynamic action is bad
Frank Frazzetta wants you to sit in the corner
Are there any good resources for playing dark sun in 5e? Also are there any Dark Sun adventures that are iconic or especially well written?
>>47288009
When Frazetta depicted action, his subjects weren't really "bodies in motion," but rather in "action poses," something more modern artists don't seem to care for. He understood image composition, and that a painting should aim to be evocative rather than just a snapshot of something happening. Compare pic to >>47265959
>>47288154
rumor has it that WotC is making an official 5E Dark Sun soonish
>>47282818
Everything on Athas is more brutal, anon. Even buttstuff.especially buttstuff
>>47253816
Why is this thread still alive?
>Roll for anal circumference.
Question from a newfag: is there anything more to Dark Sun other than Mad Max with wizards and psions?
Rolled 3, 4, 3 = 10 (3d4)
>>47297573
>>47265959
Look at how much effort Tides of Numenera takes.
It was delayed many times already.
>>47298176
>is there anything more to Dark Sun other than Mad Max with wizards and psions?
Magic is syphoned from the lifeforce of surrounding plants/animals.
Also it has a pretty grim history which is mostly unknown by PCs.
So that can make for a good story
>>47298176
It isn't really like Mad Max. There are cities and laws, and civilizations.
>>47299752
Mad max has that to.
>>47299810
Not really. It has Warlords and small villages.
Dark Sun has largish cities (certainly compared to Mad Max; 50,000 vs. a handful) with bureaucracies, codes of law, organized trading, currency, etc.
>>47300170
Mad Max also doesn't have Sorcerer Kings, or a Dragon.Yet.
>>47300206
Mad Max and dragon now all I can think of is agay muscle boundwarlord with an attack helicopter.
The actual state of Dark Sun's apparent barbarism is two unrelated issues. There isn't much iron left because civilization on Athas is incredibly old (tens of thousands of years) and it was all mined, used, and rusted away. Whenever I played the setting, any metal the party did get a hold of was bronze.
The other issue is that its a desert wasteland because the first sorcerer king killed the sun to acquire his power. Its a dying red giant. No, that's not how suns work in real life, its magic, I don't got to explain shit.
Otherwise, it isn't less civilized or developed than any other sword and sorcery setting. Though the indented and obvious design is a sort of confederation of city states like in ancient times.
>>47300355
>The other issue is that its a desert wasteland because the first sorcerer king killed the sun to acquire his power.
Is there a book about this or is it only ever mentioned?
>>47300433
I don't believe any of the Dark Sun novels were set in the "past". Its just mentioned in the lore book.
>>47264198
>Idealism will get you killed, and this way you still improve the life conditions of people under your rule by offering stability, security, and commercial opportunities.
I'm sure it will, but I'm taking it as far as I can.
>>47264198
>What would be cool moral dilemmas for a dark sun video game ?
Read through some of the short stories from the splatbooks.
I remember one that was cool about two adventurers who find an underwater lake with a little ecosystem. One of them murders the other because he finds it so beautiful that he doesn't want it despoiled by the greedy.
>>47298176
It's more like Greek/Mesopotamian D&D post apocalypse. The city states are corrupt and the templars (servants of the sorcerer kings) are actively trying to fuck up your shit.
Psions are ok, magic of any kind is forbidden. Defilers are sanctioned by the sorcerer kings and preservers are outlaws.
It feels more like Judge Dredd than Mad Max to me. "Civilization" is a totalitarian shithole while the waste offers a chance at freedom but is filled with vile monsters and worse people. Slavers, cannibals and xenophobic elves.
The few people who would be merciful have so little to share (mainly water) or are so used to getting fucked by the sorcerer kings and templars they're not likely to be much in the way of allies.
If you stay in town you could try and make your way in the arena as a gladiator or an assassin, but then if your popularity or power becomes to great you make a target of yourself.
It's not about being a hero and doing the right thing in face of adversity, which I feel like what Mad Max is, it's just survival and being enough of a badass to carve out a slice of the waste to call your own.
>>47300249
>gay muscle bound warlord
It's that or hot lady warlord, and everyone hates thunderdome for some reason
Athas History lesion:
>Athas was originally a water world, think Bahamas but world wide. But on this plane, the primordials defeat the gods, which cuts it off from all the other planes and any source of arcane magic.
>The halfings-precursor race become master biomancers called life-shapers. They accidentally make an algae grey-goo situation, and make a tower thing to draw power from the sun to do powerful magic stuff to kill the algae. This works but half kills the sun and lowers the water level.
>>47305893
>Tower-magic also cause tons of mutations and the halfings become all the known fatasy races. Athas is your typical fantacy world now. One guy who is born ugly as sin is ostracized from society and in the woods finds that he can use the life around him to fuel arcan magic. He forms a school, but only tells a few of his students about defiling magic.
>One day ugly guy and cronies deside to take over the world for the human race. It's only after they BTFO everyone else that they learn that "uh oh", ugly guy actaly wants to make the halfings the overlords and his students turn against him but befor they can kill him he uses the tower to make himself The Dragon of Tyr. This saps the sun further making it the red giant of today.
>All the magic used in the wars killed most of the life on the planet, leaving it as the desert waestland we all know and love. The studens of ugly became the Sorcerer-Kings.
>>47253816
You dont give slaves clothes, they only get those notions of autonomy and freedom with more comfort.
