Article: 4th Edition Dark Sun: Thoughts from a Playtester / Reviewer

[Farcaster]

You can view the page at http://www.penandpapergames.com/foru...ester-Reviewer

[MegatonSunder]

Thanks for the great review!

-MegatonSunder

[yukonhorror]

sounds pretty nifty.

Aside from a story point of view, do the mechanics of the world (psionics being so prevalent, magic being what it is in the world, etc...) fit in well with the 4e mold?

More specifically, are there enough mechanical differences to notice you are not playing in FR, but not so many that it overcomplicates things?

It seems a good DM could run a world like Athas in terms of grittiness, etc... on his own. But the mechanics that make it truly Athas are what would draw certain people to buying the book (mechanics that are clean and polished). Do the mechanical differences/additions/etc... have high quality, or are they just there to fill the requirements of the world?

I like fluff and story and richness of the game (which your review covers well and has swayed me a bit towards looking into Dark Sun), but game mechanics are super fascinating too and wanted to know your opinion of those.

But thanks FC.

[Farcaster]

Good question, Yukon. I'm still under a NDA, so I can't give away much in the way of specifics as to the mechanical elements of the new system, but yes, I do think they did a good job of representing a distinctly different world 'mechanically' speaking. The creature catalogue alone is filled with unique monsters that are going to make the world of Athas feel very different from any other setting. There are new races and a world where arcane casters have to draw on the world around them to fuel their spells -- by the way, the preserving and defiling mechanics are much more reasonable (and interesting) than they used to be. I also love the addition of themes, which allow you to customize your character even further, giving him or her a distinctly Athasian feel.

There is no way that this is going to feel like just another "realm" in Faerun.

[russdm]

I loved Dark Sun. I think this is awesome. I am going to buy Dark Sun when it comes out and as soon as I can afford it.

[Rochin]

Great preview/review, I loved the 2nd edition Dark Sun setting. I have high hopes for the 4E version, from your words it sounds like I should be happy with it, can not wait.

[yukonhorror]

Oh, I didn't realize the nondisclosure was still in effect. I apologize. But that is great to hear.

[Blydden]

Awesome. Dark Sun has pretty much been the only published setting I have actually been looking forward to.

Also, apparently the D&D website is featuring this review! Bring on the enormous flood of new users!

[Grummore]

Nice review!

Although, to all those that think Darksun was dead for more than a decade, you will be sorry to hear that I have been playing Darksun 3.5e through all those years. Thanks to the athas.org team. You should all be impress by what they created. It's almost near professional.

Since I'm all geared for 3.5e, I still need peoples to throw me in the 4th edition. I hope Darksun 4e will drag me in, once it appear in august. The fourth edition just dont appeal me right now by all the bad review I had about it.

[kris8384]

As much as I dislike 3rd Ed, 3.5, and detest 4th Ed, I will probably end up buying this book... for the source material if nothing else.

I have to agree with our erstwhile reviewer and state for the record that Athas has a different feel to it than most fantasy RPG settings. It is more visceral and more real...

[mr_joshua]

Those sly dogs at Wizards, they knew releasing Darksun for 4th ed would get those older gamers who didn't make the jump all excited. Well it worked, I'm gonna need to get myself a set of core books before Darksun hits the shelves.

[jim pinto]

Dark Sun is hands down the best product TSR has ever released. The new 4th Edition rules, however, are not to my liking. It's too bad they had to mix my favorite and least favorite things together. I would really love to see an INDIE game approach to Dark Sun, with story archs, character threads, and conflict resolution. This world really is as good as the review says... but it fails to address how the two play styles don't really have anything to do with one another.

[yukonhorror]

He addressed that in reply to my comment. He can't address the play styles because of his non-disclosure agreement. However, WOTC had a design & development article on the new Dark sun, and it seems as though the play style integrates REALLY well into the 4e mechanics.

From that, it seems as though if you liked the play style of Dark Sun from 2nd edition, adjusting to 4e mechanics won't be a painful jump. Of course, I am a 4e fan, so maybe I am talking out of my bum. But from the review, it seems there are a lot of nice fluffy components to the book, so it seems like you could take the ideas from the book, and adapt them to the system you like using. But that of course goes along with what I have been saying in my blogs since I got to this site regarding the shift to 4e.

The decision you have to make is, do you let your disdain for 4e prevent you from trying out a new polished version of your favorite setting?

[jim pinto]

Yukon. That's cool. I wasn't trolling or trying to snipe anyone. I really don't care for 4E (and I won't go into that), but I love Dark Sun. I think there's more to Dark Sun then just new names for swords and armor. The storytelling style of the game needs to shift when the tone shifts. If you do an adventure about looting a tomb, you're doing it for very different reasons than the Forgotten Realms (glory, boredom, etc). A character that has to choose between losing a piece of gold or letting go of a ledge has a much more difficult decision in front of him in Dark Sun. These kinds of critical ingredients have few places to hang their hat in a ruleset like 4E (or even 3E). Granted, the rules don't get in the way of it, but the rules don't encourage it either. Again. Sorry. Not trying to troll. Just want to iterate that I think Dark Sun is amazing in every respect and can easily divorce itself from something like 4E, which would make it a better game (in my opinion).

[Farcaster]

Jim,

I don't think it is about divorcing the setting from the system. You could (try to) purchase the old Dark Sun materials from 2e today and run a game in whatever edition you wanted or in a different system all together, such as GURPS. Certainly the setting details can be translated to whatever you want. However, there are a lot of mechanics to running a game in Dark Sun as well, including preserving/defiling, non metal weapons, psionics, a bunch of Dark Sun monsters, etc. Having this setting updated into 4th edition makes it immensely easier to run in that system, because they have done all that design ahead of time for you. Even better, they also expanded a lot on the setting itself over the original boxed set.