What Dark Sun Means to a 4E Skeptic
So you’ve all heard it first from the #dnd and #gencon folks on twitter, and now on the official WoTC website. The classic 1990’s Dark Sun is the new 4E campaign setting to be released in 2010. So what does this mean to the future of 4E D&D?
As many of you know, I myself am a 4E skeptic, for reasons that I could go into at a later point if deemed necessary. I’m currently running an Iron Heroes campaign (I love me some Monte Cook and Mike Mearls), and thus was extremely excited to find that 4E is taking a step in the (hopefully) right direction: that of diversity. While Forgotten Realms and Eberron have more things in common than they have differences, Dark Sun’s Athas (as I’m sure many of you know) is a vastly alien world, and I’m curious to see how its development will help or hinder 4E as a whole. Here are my hopeful predictions:
- Special Materials: something that has never been fully explored by the enhancement obsessed D&D developers has always (3.5E included) been the material composition of weapons. Yes, there’s adamantine, mithril, and the likes, but ultimately they don’t matter that much, since the true power of a weapon came from its enhancements. The non-magical adamantine longsword stood no chance against the regular old steel longsword with the wounding and speed properties. Dark Sun focused considerably more on the construction of a weapon, since steel was a rarity, the only weapons commoners and low level characters could typically afford were ones made of bone, bronze, or wood. My hope is that the introduction of the 4E Dark Sun will bring into development the most robust system of special materials yet. And of course, this is something I’m currently obsessed with home-brewing since it is hyper-critical in the low-magic world of Iron Heroes.
- Non-Combat Mechanics: those of us who have played Dark Sun in the past recall the moment of insanity, where PCs knifed NPCs just to steal water from their dying lips. My hope is that this setting will force WoTC to shift away from their heavy reliance on combat, and toward roleplaying mechanics built to deal with issues like survival in a harsh environment, questing across wastelands, the hiding of (outlawed) magic use, and negotiation with races whose cultural differences are as wide as the Sea of Silt itself.
- Exotic PC Options: the 4E mechanics focus heavily on races that are extremely similar to humans. Biology, personality, temperament, and even culture between the core races are very slight. Even the female dragon-born have breasts (for what purpose these egg-laying reptiles would have with milk-sacs no one knows). Dark Sun should introduce some races that push that portion of the brain that is exercised more often by science fiction (and occasionally by really good fantasy fiction) settings: that of the truly abstract thought. If you can grok the direction I’m going with this, the reintroduction of very alien races: the vulture-like Aarakocra; the vermin Tari; and my favorite, the mantis-warriors Thri-kreen. Yes, I know I just named off a lot of “furry” races, but the existence of a four-armed race that only lives 25 years old on average, can access an ancestral memory, and is inherently a massive insect: it makes the difference between eladrin and elves a subtle as the difference between races of humans in our world. Skeptics (or at least this one) demand some new cultural identities to explore and roleplay!
- Monsters: one thing that 4E has admittedly done very well with is monster mechanics. I’m looking forward for the nasties of Dark Sun to be delicately re-invisioned in magnificent 4E technicolor. I will be the first to welcome a solo spinewyrm skirmisher battle to my list of “must run” encounters.
- Reinforcement of 4E Groundwork: The brutal world of Dark Sun fits better with 4E’s supposed “points of light” game theory than does Eberron and Forgotten Realms combined. The outside world is more than just dangerous. You cannot fight your way out of this, you must be intelligent, crafty, skilled, and powerful to survive.
- Departure from 4E Groundwork: a world of slavery, despots, cannibals, and the like will depart strongly from the comparatively politically correct world of 4E. Consider for a moment even the Mul. A race of sterile half-dwarf half-humans with spiny heads that almost always kill their mothers in child-birth. This should give less-experienced DMs and players the liberty to explore a more complex social world, where people are not just plain evil, they are tyrannically lawful evil, and malevolently chaotic evil.
- Psionics: unfortunately, one thing I am not excited about will be the massive dump of psionic mechanics that will come first with PHB3 and then with Dark Sun. I know my hatred of psionics is purely flavor based (they just don’t fit in a world alongside of magic in my opinion), but the fact that the 3.5E psionics books were basically banned in every campaign I have ever run or played in should say something. Hopefully they approach it this time around with more caution.
What does a 4E Dark Sun mean to you?
about 6 months ago
To be perfectly honest, I’m as much on tenterhooks as you despite having gone wholeheartedly for 4E since its release, because of Athas’ cherished status in my arsenal of campaign settings. I can only think of the amount of work yet to be done over at Wizards before some of the strongest points about Dark Sun are properly addressed.
In addition to the items you mention, I want to call attention to another aspect: the sheer variance of Dark Sun classes from their traditional counterparts. Athas’ clerics and druids are by no means the generic molds seen in the PHBs, and the wizard’s traditional class feature (the spellbook) is thrown completely into question. I am hoping that sufficient alternate class features can mitigate the gap, but things like Defiling and Preserving seem to be of a scope outside class features or feat trees.
Great article!
about 6 months ago
Definitely Steve. You brought up some great points. Though the druid, cleric, and wizard builds of the PHB and the supplements fit in Eberron, Forgotten Realms, and any generic Dragon-Lance style game, they will not work at all in Athas. And yeah, I’m really interested to see how they handle defiling and preserving magic. I’m hoping it doesn’t degrade to just a “re-fluffing” of the core mechanics, or some multi-class feats that tweak them slightly. They need to be re-envisioned! And now that monks are psionic…
about 6 months ago
4E Darksun?
I have been waiting for Darksun to reappear since 3E and truely hope that they stick with the uniquenessand flavor of the first Dark Sun Box Set.
I really want to see how they merge the elemental clerics of Darksun and all of their pacts and special powers with the current 4E cleric idea.
Also I want to see how the rules will be made for the environmental/survival challenges of the Dark Sun world.
I wonder if they will come out with a Darksun Monster Manual?
about 6 months ago
Yeah, definitely. They haven’t come out with a FR or Eberron monster manual, but I never got the impression from 3E or earlier material that there was a lot of monsters wholly unique to either setting. But Dark Sun has the possibility of not only some totally unique encounters, but also some very unique PC backgrounds. That’s what I’m looking forward to for 4E. But I’m curious to see how they handle it, since their 4E approach to introducing FR and Eberron have both been pretty “half-assed” so to speak. At least in my opinion.