And Now We Do the Dance of Joy!

This is for the D&D fans out there, and essentially no one else, so, sorry about that.  Apparently I'm behind the times as the 4th Edtion D&D team has announced their newest Campaign World back in August.  Are you ready for this?

That's right, Dark Sun is the newest world to be updated to 4th Edition rules.  I can tell you, back in the old days, when I was still a wee nerdling and the 1st level characters dropped dead at the hands of overly clever Kobolds, we liked our vicious and dangerous worlds.  First an aside.

For the record, this is a shot of a Kobold:

They travleled in packs, and while many people played them stupid, their stats suggested a certain feral cunning.  With a good DM, who wasn't expecting you to go out and slay dragons after a few levels, they could easily become feared creatures.  People who remember being viciously killed by these things were Dark Suns target audience.  We want our fantasy vicious and dangerous, more Beastmaster, more Krull, more Sword and Sorcerer.  The good guys may win, but the body count is going to start adding up if you're not clever.

But I digress, Dark Sun.

To those of you not familiar with the world, think Thundarr the Barbarian, or even perhaps John Carter: Warlord of Mars and Conan.  Magic is dangerous, and a good sword and reliable friends are about the only things keeping you out of the ground.

Basically the premise is a dying earth setting where abuse of magic has stripped the planet of it's very essence and the sun itself is burning out.  The world is a giant desert ruled by horrible sorcerer kings and regular cleansing of the "non-human scum" is a part of it's history.  Obviously much of this setting seems to have been derived from "Let's take the fantasy role playing genre, and base it in the Middle East instead of European history."

It's a vicious and horrible place, and not in the sense of the Ravenloft setting, which was abysmal dread caused by obviously supernatural sources (Vampire Lords).  This is a place where casual players who forget to buy trail rations and water will soon learn about why the game has encumbrance rules.  This is a place where being caught out in the open in a sandstorm will kill your character dead.  It's not for everyone, of course, the game I'm trying to run for my children would have no place even crossing paths with this setting.  But for the hardcore dying worlds fans out there, grit and grim heroes just trying to survive the world iteself, Dark Sun is one of the all time greats.

Here are the covers of the video game adaptations of the Dark Suns world:

Now, generally I think video game adaptations are about as accurate to role playing games as a movie of the week version of a Reader's Digest version of a classic horror story, these covers both show you something of what this world was about.

Time to break out the pewter and find a group of people who'll let me be a player again.