The 3rd edition Dark Sun converstion that was featured in Dungeon & Dragon magazines a few years back was very good. If you're not interested in changing editions and you already own all the fluff material, I'd suggest you give that a try.
I do have those issues, but the only articles/content that I really enjoyed from them was the monster manual, and the timeline/fluff. The rest of it went against canon too much to be of use to me.
The 3rd edition Dark Sun converstion that was featured in Dungeon & Dragon magazines a few years back was very good. If you're not interested in changing editions and you already own all the fluff material, I'd suggest you give that a try.
Blasphemy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That was so bad it remains the only paizo mags I wish i had never saw much less bought.
It is the shoehorned type of thing I think we will see however. Stuff that do not fit the cannon of the setting.
The time line stuff was usable every thing else save the monster maybe was useless.
- Lack of metal and water.
- The core races. I wanna see half-giants, thri-kreen, muls, etc. I don't wanna see Dragonborn, Tieflings, or Eladrin! Halflings are feral, elves are devious, half-elves are outcasts, dwarves are hairless, gnomes are all dead :)
- Tonnes of psionics.
- Arcane magic is illegal, and harmful to the environment. Defilers!
- Divine magic is elemental in nature, no gods or deities need apply.
- Sorcerer-kings. I want more info on them beyond what has been published so far.
- Advanced beings. Spirits of the land, dragon kings, avangions, elemental lords.
Actually these ideas fit well in 4e in my opinion with little change. and heres why:
- Lack of metal and water. (This is more fluf than crunch so its easily done.)- The core races. Half-giants, thri-kreen, muls, etc. Halflings are feral, elves are devious, half-elves are outcasts, dwarves are hairless, gnomes are all dead. (These concepts work as 4e is all about playing monsters and monstrous characters and with the removal of level adjustment these races work, also the rest of the changes are fluff and Gnomes got kicked from the base book anyway due to lack of WOTC gnome love :P)
- Tonnes of psionics. (Easy with the way class balance works if the psionics are in the PHB of the year or in the setting. Hardest part really)
- Arcane magic is illegal, and harmful to the environment. Defilers! (Again fluff change, and could just be added to all powers with the arcane power source)
- Divine magic is elemental in nature, no gods or deities need apply.(just needs some flavor changes and probably some small amounts of crunch but easy for game designers)
- Sorcerer-kings. I want more info on them beyond what has been published so far. (FLUFF, not too hard)
- Advanced beings. Spirits of the land, dragon kings, avangions, elemental lords. (This one is easy, Epic destinies come to mind, level 30 power is dragon form etc.)
So in and of itself the more I think about it Darksun is actaully the best looking prospect for a 4e setting, and I hope they make it good. But thats just my 2 coppers.
The 3rd edition Dark Sun converstion that was featured in Dungeon & Dragon magazines a few years back was very good. If you're not interested in changing editions and you already own all the fluff material, I'd suggest you give that a try.
I've never been satiffied with 3rd edition Dark Sun. The Cleric Domains don't do the elemental Clerics justice, nor do the other cleric spells. A fire elemental priest should be throwing fire spells around the place with wild abandon, summoning fire elementals etc but 3rd ed just doesn't have that option, it's just too restricted on the elemental spell side and not restrictive enough on the universal spells.
Likewise the whole Defiler and preserver thing never got resolved in 3rd ed. It might work better in Pathfinder domain powers but I still need to draw up a new Universal List for the setting that no-one has ever done to my or my players satisfaction.At least with 4th edition you can change the power specifics to bring individual damage type to the prayers.
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- The core races. Half-giants, thri-kreen, muls, etc. Halflings are feral, elves are devious, half-elves are outcasts, dwarves are hairless, gnomes are all dead. (These concepts work as 4e is all about playing monsters and monstrous characters and with the removal of level adjustment these races work, also the rest of the changes are fluff and Gnomes got kicked from the base book anyway due to lack of WOTC gnome love :P)
come on, you don't honmestly think that Woc will produce a Setting where only half of the PHB I races fit in?
Nope!If there will be a Dark Sun 4th setting we will see Dragonborn and Tieflings and Eladrin!
Likewise the whole Defiler and preserver thing never got resolved in 3rd ed.
It never got resolved in 2nd edition, either. Defilers were always "better" than Preservers.
Wow, I didn't realize people had such issues with the 3rd edition conversion of Dark Sun. I thought it did a very good job capturing the flavor of the setting in the short number of pages that were available.
- The core races. Half-giants, thri-kreen, muls, etc. Halflings are feral, elves are devious, half-elves are outcasts, dwarves are hairless, gnomes are all dead. (These concepts work as 4e is all about playing monsters and monstrous characters and with the removal of level adjustment these races work, also the rest of the changes are fluff and Gnomes got kicked from the base book anyway due to lack of WOTC gnome love :P)
come on, you don't honmestly think that Woc will produce a Setting where only half of the PHB I races fit in?
Nope!
If there will be a Dark Sun 4th setting we will see Dragonborn and Tieflings and Eladrin!
I thought that was the point. A new setting that also let them introduce a new PHB [new Races, new classes, a new power source (i.e. psionics)] and a new MM (athas monsters).
But I also thought that they were not trying to divide the player base between different setting (no more; 'I only buy the Realms or 'I only buy Eberron'). So maybe you are right and they are going to shoe horn everything around the new 'standard races'
Likewise the whole Defiler and preserver thing never got resolved in 3rd ed.It never got resolved in 2nd edition, either. Defilers were always "better" than Preservers.
Wow, I didn't realize people had such issues with the 3rd edition conversion of Dark Sun. I thought it did a very good job capturing the flavor of the setting in the short number of pages that were available.
The Difference with Defilers and Preservers in 2nd Ed was that a defiler cast spells with the standard casting time but destroyed the area around them whilst preserver took longer to cast spells but didn't defile.
The Defiler was better able to cast spells than a preserver because he didn't have to wait so long to finish his spell but everybody knew that a spell had been cast in the area but the preserver was better able to hide his spellcasting because sentient people in the area didn't feel the pain of him casting.
The 3rd ed solution as I remember was a broken Concentration check or Knowledge Arcane check with a DC of 15 plus spell level.
But in truth it was the Elemental Clerics that were the biggest failure and lost the depth developed in the 2nd edition version.
The Difference with Defilers and Preservers in 2nd Ed was that a defiler cast spells with the standard casting time but destroyed the area around them whilst preserver took longer to cast spells but didn't defile.
Yeah, that's what I said, "better."
Also, if I'm remembering correctly, defilers levelled up twice as fast as preservers in the low levels.
I'd really like to see them explain the Dragonborn race in a world with no dragons. If they make up some silly story about them being children of a sorcerer-king, I will lose it!
Same goes for the Tiefling and Eladrin races in a world that is cutoff from the outer planes.
The 4E rules for dehydration are actually one of my compaints about that system. In Dark Sun, if you're in the desert with no water, you're dead in a few days from Con loss. In 4E, you can stroll around for weeks without water and food before you even begin to lose hit points.
So they would definately need to address some of these concerns in order for me to buy in to their version of Dark Sun.
Although I would love to see a 4e treatment of Dark Sun, I don't know that the releasing of the original novels means anything more than market research/cheap cash generation.
Also note that WotC has started re-releasing the old Ravenloft novels.
To my mind, WotC is testing the waters early to see how the novels from these old lines sell. If the Ravenloft novels sell well, then they may think about re-doing Ravenloft as a 4e setting. Same goes for Dark Sun.
I do think that tying the release of a Psionic power source to Dark Sun would make a certain amount of sense, but they could just put Psionics into the PHB2 because Eberron is coming out this summer (for the record I don't know if PHB2 has psionics or not).
So, WotC might not have a need to release Dark Sun at all if Psionics are already in the system, and they could simply do a brand new setting in 2010 that would highlight the more complete game system that will have three PHBs, DMGs, and MMs by then.
for the record I don't know if PHB2 has psionics or not
It doesn't. They've already announced that PHB2 deals with the divine, arcane and primal power sources. I heard an interview with Rob Heinsoo (maybe?) where he said that the psionic power source was going to be handled in a future product. It seems like the PHB line is the place where they will be introducing new power sources, so I expect we'll be waiting until PHB3.
My hope was that they'd have psionics out before Eberron, so that we could have fully realized rules for the Kalashtar and Inspired, but I don't think it's going to happen.
They might just be re-releasing the old novels because they own the rights and just want to put them back out there again to make some money. It's been quite a while since Dark Sun was in print, and there might be some people out there who haven't read them.
And they're not even hardcovers. I'll keep my originals thanks.
But I also thought that they were not trying to divide the player base between different setting (no more; 'I only buy the Realms or 'I only buy Eberron').
Their current theory is to do just three books for each campaign setting. A DMs book a players book and a module. After that they don't support the setting at all.
Presumably they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. Historically the boxed campaign setting sold like hot cakes and made loads of money but the follow on support stuff for all the settings basically did terribly because of how divided up the market became. WotC wants the big bucks from the initial release of each setting but does not want to divide up their market so they've said up front that after the initial release thats it for that setting, they move on to the next one and to generic releases that apply to many settings.
Presumably there will be some love for all the released settings in Dungeon and Dragon since making the DDI the only place one can get new content for setting X presumably drives up subscriptions and anyone who is subscribed can't be just an Eberron fan or just a Oriental Adventures fan because you can't pick and choose your purchases with the DDI, its all or nothing. Hence subscriptions go up but you don't divide up your market.
They're also re-releasing the Cleric Quintet... I think they're just trying to make some extra $$$, but if you read in between the lines in some of the Manual of the Planes previews, it lists Athas as one of the various material planes, along with Eberron, Krynn, Oerth, and Abeir-Toril. How the fact that planar travel to Athas is restricted will be addressed, I have no idea... But, in any case, I do believe that they will eventually make a 4E Dark Sun, but probably in a much different form that what has come before.
EDIT: You can be assured that they probably don't care what old fans of Dark Sun think (cf. everything else about 4E). Dark Sun will probably include (or at least make room for) everything else that 4E has come up with so players of the setting are encouraged to buy more books from WotC, thus avoiding one of the pitfalls that drove TSR into the toilet.
They're also re-releasing the Cleric Quintet...Cool! Think they'll release a Forgotten Realms Campaign setting for 4e?
Be nice if they did.
This is turning into the equivalent of "My hat of d02 know no limit".
But I also thought that they were not trying to divide the player base between different setting (no more; 'I only buy the Realms or 'I only buy Eberron').Their current theory is to do just three books for each campaign setting. A DMs book a players book and a module. After that they don't support the setting at all.
Presumably they are trying to have their cake and eat it too. Historically the boxed campaign setting sold like hot cakes and made loads of money but the follow on support stuff for all the settings basically did terribly because of how divided up the market became. WotC wants the big bucks from the initial release of each setting but does not want to divide up their market so they've said up front that after the initial release thats it for that setting, they move on to the next one and to generic releases that apply to many settings.
Presumably there will be some love for all the released settings in Dungeon and Dragon since making the DDI the only place one can get new content for setting X presumably drives up subscriptions and anyone who is subscribed can't be just an Eberron fan or just a Oriental Adventures fan because you can't pick and choose your purchases with the DDI, its all or nothing. Hence subscriptions go up but you don't divide up your market.
This.
Intelligent marketing decisions that avoid the mistakes of the past are what are going to keep this hobby moving forward. I have to say, I've never been so excited about D&D.
I bought a subscription to D&DI this month. The character builder is incredible. It looks and feels like a professional product and it really does make my life as a player and a DM easier. Given the usefulness it will provide at my gaming table, the character builder alone is worth the cost of the subscription. Add to that the new miniatures lines that will make it easy to increase my stock of player or monster miniatures without ending up with three huge Yuan-Ti Anathemas that I'll never use. Then you have the Compendium, a searchable, comprehensive database of every published supplement with complete rules text - if I need an undead elite between levels 5 and 10 to throw at my party, I can pop them all up and easily compare to pick the one best suited to the encounter. Finally, Dungeon & Dragon have produced some excellent material so far (Dragon especially). I've been really impressed by the map work on the most recent Scales of War adventure, and I'm hoping that Wizards will decide to start making those map files available in high-resolution so that they can be printed to a 1-inch square scale without appearing fuzzy. Oh, and the direction that the RPGA has been taking is awesome, too. I'm planning on starting a weekly play group for RPGA adventures at the beginning of the year.
Sorry, a little off-topic but I felt the need to describe how enthused I am.
I also am more enthused about D&D than I have been in a long time, subscribing to DDI, DMing in real-life and playing and DMing PBP with renewed enthusiasm.
It's a great time to be alive! ;D