We have released three more chapters and made updates to the two already published chapters of the Dark Sun 3 Core Rules revision 7. A big thanks goes to Bruno for his prolonged engagement to this project.

The new releases are Chapter 1 – Races, Chapter 3 – Heroic Characteristics, and 7 – Life on Athas. Among the important changes you will find that thri-kreen and half-giants no longer have racial hit dice, the number of feats has been greatly expanded along with additional regional information, and Chapter 7 contains much sought after information on the major cities of Athas – including Kurn, Eldaarich and Saragar.

I am thoroughly impressed by the material the team led by Bruno has been able to produce, and I hope you will enjoy the material as much as I have.

Great stuff! The material on regions of origin and the added society section of the races chapter is excellent. Cool to see a timeline finally made part of an official product as well. The “Life on Athas” chapter is a real gem – scads of flavor gathered from many years of DS releases gathered together in one place. Congratulations to the design team!
I have a question for the guys, though, about the removal of the racial hit dice for half-giants and kreen, and their replacement with a straight LA+2. This makes those races easier to slot into a standard party, for sure, but it also affects the relative strength of those races in a negative fashion. A half-giant, for example, will now have considerably less hit points than a human of the same ECL, even with their +4 Con. This doesn’t seem to gel with the feel of the race as big, hulking bruisers. It would be interesting to have some perspective on these changes, and how the team sees them affecting play :-)
But that small question aside – seriously impressed with the fullness and depth of the new material. It’s as good as many professional releases and has come a looong way since the early preview releases of yesteryear. Top banana.

In my experience any race with a LA higher than +2 is to weak (Drow, Kreen, Half Giant etc). Even ECL +1 races sem to suck apart from maybe the Goliath. The only ECL race +2 that looks mechanically good was the half vampire in Libris Mortis.
4th ed dumbed the more powerful races down and the 3.5 Players Guide to Faerun had weakened version of Drow for example which was ECL +0. Mechanically LA has never really worked thsat well espicially for spellcasters. It works betterer at higher level were the level loss isn’t as important. In general for every 10 levels or so a ECL 1 doesn’t doesn’t matter as much. The difference between a level 9 mul and a level 10 Human/Dwarf Elf/ fighter is about the same and a level 20 fighter level 18 halkf goant a similar type of comparison applies but 3.4 as other issues above level 11 or so not to mention epic levels (the game more or less doesn’t work and can’t even be playtestested).
Can you download all the additional chapters as one document or do you have to doenload them one at a time. Also how common would knowledge of the Last Sea and lost city states be? I’ve always kept that knowledge form my players and they’ve never seen the revised boxed set or at east the maps. In one campaign they reached Kurn but didn’t stay for long as they thought it wass small and Oronis was your typical Sorcerer King and they’re vaguely aware of Eldaarich. About the nly knowledge they have of the last Sea is that it exists as one of them saw a body of water on one of the DS maps .

Can you download all the additional chapters as one document or do you have to doenload them one at a time.

Also how common would knowledge of the Last Sea and lost city states be? I’ve always kept that knowledge form my players and they’ve never seen the revised boxed set or at east the maps. In one campaign they reached Kurn but didn’t stay for long as they thought it wass small and Oronis was your typical Sorcerer King and they’re vaguely aware of Eldaarich. About the nly knowledge they have of the last Sea is that it exists as one of them saw a body of water on one of the DS maps .

Agreed. I always edit that kind of stuff out of anything I give my players to keep their knowledge as close as possible to the original Wanderer’s Journal in scope. That said, it’s important to have all that information on hand for the DM and it’s very cool to see it brought together in one place.
As for the racial hit dice, how does the design team see the decision to remove those working out? Jon, do you have any light to shed in that regard?

I’m just not sure I like having knowledge like that in the “core” DS material so to speak. If someone had their heart set on playing a good Templar I have let them follow Oronis (had a PC who defected from Lalali-Puy)

Nicely done!

Zardnaar: Don’t forget that just because it is in the core material, doesn’t mean that your players can access it. There are other things in the core stuff that I wouldn’t let players access because their characters would never know.
For me, if there is no reason their characters would know something, then they cannot use it. So, even if they have read the novels, or the history, or all the products, if their characters are slaves from Balic who just escaped and spent their whole lives in the city pens… that is all they know. If they try to act differently, I disallow it.

chapter 1 – page 2 – table 1-1
mul: +4 st, +2 co, – charisma <—you forgot something ;)

I agree Chris but I prefer not to even let them read it. Some of them have read some of the novels for example and one of them asked me “Are all the Sorcerer Kings dragons” (he was reading Dragon Kings). I managed to say no due to Oronis.
Its another reason I ran a FY 1015 game. I progressed the timeline far enough they didn’t know exactly what was going on. River Agis running through Tyr??? Who are Razia, Azetek and LeanderSorcerer kings? Sadira Sorcerer Queen?????
Fun game though.

Still digesting it, but already picked up one error – Hammanu has more levels than Nibenay. Doesn’t stack up with the 2e material outlining the SK’s levels. Might need to bump Nibenay up 3-4 character levels.

Just been reading chapter 3. Awesome work but theres alot in there that PCs don’t need to know about like the timeline.
Are these chapters going in the latest rulebooks?

What about the DM? The DM needs and deserves to know about those things. I say that it’s a good thing we finally have all this setting material in one place – it’s the one thing that folks have asked for the most in athas.org releases over the years and at last we finally have it. Good stuff, if you ask me.

Its awesome stuff but odds are any DM already knows this stuff already. I printed out the old rules and got them bound but I don’t think I would want my PCs to have this in a book they can conveniently read.

Players can conveniently read any of the old 2e material as well. The pdfs are not expensive (they’re free, even, if you get them from filesharers, or that one russian site that has them all). They can find the timeline for free on the net at the WotC site and elsewhere. So having it in the latest athas.org release isn’t going to change its availability at all. And there are plenty of DMs who don’t know all this stuff already, or can’t remember it. The DS3e Core Rules is the place to put this information. It would be a foolish oversight to leave it out.

Kamelion, your views of the stat’s of the SK’s differing from the differences described in 2e material? Personally i don’t care about the ‘flavour’ i.e WHAT the levels are in per se, what does raise my eyebrow is that the most powerful SK other than Dregoth (Nibenay) in 2e has been given less levels than a certain Lion King. Penny for your thoughts…

Alright about all the information being in one place, don’t you guys have players that know the difference between Player Knowledge and Character Knowledge? My group is made up of mostly DM’s tired of running all the time (we’ve been taking turns for a few years now), the others have been the group record keepers and information gatherers for quite a while (times when the DM has been too busy to do his own research). My wife has become the default person to go to when any of the others need some BBEG or generic NPC’s, and she’s not even one of the ones running the game.

My players don’t care enough about Darksun to go and download PDFs and ‘m not sure if they even know they exist. If I printed out the core Atahs.org document they would read it. Its kinda like the information given out in the 1st boxed set is what you could easily find out about if you visted the cities in the Tyr region. the revised boxed set revealed that the SK’s were Dragons and had other information Pcs shouldn’t now about. I suppose I’m a bit strict about the Athasian feel of the world and like to keep my PCs in the drk as much as I can. They have been wondering where all these Kreen have been coming from and have heard stories about a rift to the west for example.

@Jaanos: Well, I see what you mean about the relative levels of the sorcerer-kings, but I have to admit that it’s not a serious issue for me, as they’re not likely to feature as adversaries in my games, so their actual levels and stats are pretty much an irrelevance. Narrative points like the adventures Freedom or Forest Maker aside (where plot devices allow the PCs to confront a sorcerer-king) any PC who goes up against such an opponent dies by DM hand-waving.
More important to me is that the 3e stats correctly represent what stage of dragon advancement the sorcerer-kings are at. 2e lists Hamanu, Nibenay and Lalali-Puy as 23rd, 24th and 23rd level respectively. The Life on Athas chapter has them as Stage III, Stage IV and Stage III dragons, which is an accurate match for the 2e advancement, so that gets a big thumb-up from me :)

@zardnaar: To be honest, it sounds to me like your issue is with your players and not with the material. Campaign settings contain DM-only information – simple as that. And so they should. If you print out the document and don’t want your players to read it… don’t give it to them. And if your players insist on using player knowledge as opposed to character knowledge in-game, you need to bring them into line. Fact is, without this setting information, the DS3e material would be incomplete. How you manage that information in your own game is your responsibility, not that of athas.org, imho.

No they don’t insist on using it and they don’t make a concerted effort to aquire knowledge. I do have a large collection of RPG material of various editons. Sometimes they read various books on my shelf such as Dragon Kings or whatever. Its kinda like WoTC releasing an adventure and putting the contents of the room in player handouts. My Pcs are generally trutworthy with player and character knowledge but I like the storytelling side of thiings. Having PCs read that story instead of me telling/showing them kinda ruins it for me. I get feedback from my players and one of the best games I ever ran was a political type campaign with various plolines unraveling a story. Its kinda like reading a novel and someone blurts out the ending.
Hard to explain but maybe have a DM section of the book?

Well, I’m not keen on splitting the information out over several sections – but it would be a good idea in the intro chapter to highlight which sections of the book contain setting spoilers or DM-only information. The Life on Athas chapter would definitely fall into that category.

Great stuff you released! Thanks for your great effort and the even greater outcome!
Concerning half giants I think as well that they lose much mood without the additional hit dices. Now they have at the early mid levels effectively lower hit points which I think doesn’t really match.
Concerning the timeline I’m totally with the authors. Good to include it. I love to have it there. It’s impossible to withhold any non character knowledge from the players. Therefore one needs a totally differnt way to solve the problem than withholding it.

The Life on Athas chapter is important to get a good grasp of the dynamics of the city states and the flavor of the world. Many DMs, particularly those who have discovered Dark Sun after Y2K have been asking us for this kind of material for years. If you don´t want your players to read those chapters, just tell them that. All campaign settings contain this kind of information.

Hey Jon (or if anyone else knows), any word on the ETA of chapter 2 (assuming that’s the Classes chapter)? We’re looking at starting up a new DS gaming group, and I know people are going to skin me if I change rules mid game.

Chapter 2 is a bit further down the pipeline, but I will see what can be done. There are at least two other chapters scheduled for release before it.

I have’nt read everything, but I am pretty impress as well by the work already done with the r7. Congratz! As for myself, I am still working on what was given to me (I’m half-done since I had to start back at the beginning… remember I rolled over my laptop with my car… nice.)
Btw, like I said in another thread, I am starting a new darksun game with my students and I’d like to playtest the new classes chapter!

Shouldnt there be a skill named CRAFT (poison making) or and something called KNOWLEDGE (Poison) in chapter 3?

Hello?

Hi Grummore!
All the poison-related material is in Athasian Emporium (if that answers your question).