[4E] New Dark Sun

[Finarvyn]

Anyone get this yet?



I want to, but I'm not sure about the whole 4E part. I guess there is a monster book, also.

[Finarvyn]

[Finarvyn]

And if no one is into 4E, what is your favorite edition of Dark Sun?

[capitalbill]

I flipped through the Campaign Setting and Creature Catalog hardbacks at my local game store. For me (someone who already has all of the 2e DS material and has no intention of playing 4e) there isn't anything of value in the two books. There is a decent amount of character background but nothing better than what I already have, and I'm personally not a big fan of what has been changed.

From the 2e materials I preferred the original boxed set over the revised, however I went with the psionics out of the revised boxed set (and out of Skills & Powers, the only use I got out of that book). I did get caught up in the buzz about WotC releasing a new version of Dark Sun and dug all of my stuff back out thinking about running it with C&C but never did get around to it.

[Deleted]

I bought the original Dark Sun boxed set back when I was a freshman in HS (92'-93'). Back in those days we all had 0 responsibility, so we would play all weekend - Friday to Sunday. Anyway, I ran a campaign that lasted maybe 2 months tops. To be honest, it was so long ago that I don't remember a whole lot, other than one of my close friends ran a halfling that insisted on eating the remains of his victims, & his brother played a bloodthirsty, psychotic gladiator - one of them "half-dwarves" (I don't reckon off hand the proper name of their race). I know we had a mage & a few straight-up fighters the other guys played to round out the party. The campaign revolved around the search for a rumored "lost oasis" deep in the mountains. I don't have any of my campaign notes from then, & I remember very little else about it.

The reason Dark Sun isn't so memorable for me is that we really couldn't get into it; the boxed set looked cool, the premise sounded really different, but it ended up being a little too "far-out" for our tastes (incidentally, this was the first "out of the box" campaign setting I ever bought). We had just started playing D&D proper the previous year (with the [in]famous "Black Box") - switching over to 2E almost immediately - so we were all pretty new to the hobby in general. Although we had fun with it, Dark Sun just wasn't for us. I sold it second hand, & picked up the newly released Tales of the Lance boxed set for Dragonlance shortly thereafter (already being a fan of the series long before I ever played tabletop). We all enjoyed this much more (& I still own it, too).

All in all, almost 20 years later, I might be willing to give Dark Sun another shot; I really like the whole idea of "Defilers" & "Dragon Kings". To be honest, I haven't tried 4E yet; the wifey has given me permission to pick up the new "Starter" Set in a few weeks to give it a fair evaluation. If nothing else, it will satiate our curiosity. We'll see how it goes.

[Finarvyn]

An interesting story I picked up on the WotC boards: Apparently not everyone has these books yet. They were released at GenCon and at roughly the same time hobby certain "special" game stores got them, and the rest of the gaming world had to wait a week or so. Actually, that wait of a week or so only applies to the Core rules set. Apparently the Creature Catalog won't be released to all game outlets until the end of August.

I just checked with Amazon and their release dates seem to confirm this -- the Core book is listed as "in stock" and the Creature book is a pre-order with end of August release date.

This is kind of annoying.

[capitalbill]

WotC apparently likes my local game store; along with preview copies of the Dark Sun stuff, they also had the 4e Starter Boxed Set that I flipped through.

[Deleted]

The game store near me has all of the 4E DARK SUN products as well. They looked decent but they're still 4E....

[blackbarn]

I liked the original Dark Sun, and think that it's actually a good fit for 4E. If I had the cash to spare and thought we might ever go back to 4E long enough to make a campaign viable, I would really like to get these and set it in Athas. It seems unlikely though.

[Finarvyn]

I broke the bank today and bought the 4E books. I guess this will give me additional incentive to figure out how to play 4E.

I nearly passed on them, since I have a bunch of the older edition DS materials, but I thought that this could be just the type of setting 4E was designed to run. We'll see.....