This is going to be a long post, I’d like to give an overview of my take on the wonderful world of Athas, because I’d love some feedback and suggestions of ways to improve. And I have some specific questions I’d really appreciate some help with. My biggest issue as a DM in Dark Sun is how to make long journeys interesting. Random encounters are an important part of adventuring, and the harsh nature of Athas punishes the lack of abundant healing resources more than other settings. However rolling encounter chances for day after day of travel gets tedious. I’m looking for ways to liven up travel, without skipping over it entirely like it’s possible to do in a setting like the Realms. I want to make sure every day is accounted for, because it’s the best way to impress upon them the gritty intense nature of the world, but I struggle to find a way to make travel varied and engaging while still challenging. Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated.

Anyway, on to my game. I really don’t like the events of the prism pentad, so my world pretends those events never happened. I guess eventually I might try to do a modified version, but I just love having an abundance of high epic BBEG in the world.

I’ve made some adjustments to the timeline. I don’t have specific dates, but these are events that would replace or add to the core timeline.

Dregoth, presumed dead by the other sorcerer kings, travels the outer planes for 1900 years by way of his planar gate.

Kalid-Ma, supported in secret by Dregoth penetrates the barrier to the outer planes where he establishes contact with an unnamed Lord of the Nine, and trades the souls of his entire city for advancement to full dragonhood.

Hammanu, Kalak, and Boyrs destroy Kalid-Ma to prevent another dragon roaming the tablelands. Kalak stumbles across a portion of the research that led to the breaking of the planar barrier, but doesn’t realize what he’s found. Borys seals the laboratory with wards to alert him should anyone tamper with the left over relics and research.

Korgunard & Nerad, friends, gifted preservers, as well as students of the way, rise to prominence within the veiled alliance. In the course of their research, they stumble across documents once in the possession of Oronis, they eventually find their way to Kurn where they are accepted as students and progress through to the early stages of avangion metamorphosis. After many years, they return to the tyr region where they actively (although in great secrecy) work to thwart the designs of the SK’s

Barmoz, a powerful wizard from a different prime world, through a freak magical explosion, finds himself stranded on Athas. Through a stroke of good fortune, his attempts at magic (as well as outlandish attire and mannerisms) draw the attention of the veiled alliance before the templerate. Years pass, Barmoz becomes a student and then a master of the Way, learning the transformation magic from Korgunard and starting his own development along the avangion path. Eventually Barmoz is returned to his own world. He continues to maintain contact with his teacher, although it is a very difficult process allowing for only sporadic communication.

Barmoz through his network of associates as well as former students somehow finds evidence of Dregoth’s travels. Concerned about the potential ramifications of unchecked sorcerer kings roaming the planes, Barmoz sends his son Andrak to Athas to assist Korgunard in any way possible, as well with a secondary mission of finding out how Dregoth is achieving his planewalking activities.

Nerad, while exploring the ruins of Kaldinay in hopes of finding out what could have caused the destruction of an entire city-state, triggers Borys’ wards. Borys himself arrives and a tremendous magical battle ensues. Borys emerges the victor, presumes Nered destroyed and leaves. Nered, his mind shattered, but somehow alive, recovers enough to wander off to parts unknown.

Years pass, Korgunard becomes more and more concerned having heard nothing from his ally, however an unactivated clone entrusted to Korgunards protection indicates Nered’s continued existence.

This brings us to my actual campaign.

PC’s start in Celick, orphaned brothers that are slaves for a noble family with a child approximately the same age as the younger brother. The child is a royal terror, tormenting the two brothers, very spoiled, etc. As part of the education, the child is being taught magic as his father is a wizard (defiler). While showing off, the child defiles a public garden, a crime punishable by death. The child blames it on one of the two slave children, and as is no surprise, is believed by the authorities. The younger child, set to be executed first, reaches far beyond his capabilities to achieve a true mind switch right as the axe falls on his neck, trading bodies with the noble child. The elder brother, guilty of not preventing the defilement, is punished by having his right arm severed at the shoulder.

As the elder brother heals and recovers, the younger brother does his best to keep up the ruse of his identity, and a particularly severe sandstorm rages for a full two weeks, uncovering a set of previously undiscovered ruins from the blue age. An exploratory party is sent out, and the elder brother, given his handicap is considered expendable enough to be sent in first to search an abandoned structure, where he discovers the Arm of Radu (Yes, I know this was a horribly contrived way to add this item to the campaign)

Returning to the city, a random series of earthquakes is eventually blamed on the elder of the brothers as his arm is rumored to be the cursed cause. The younger brother, still masquerading as the noble youth, overhears a discussion pertaining to making his one armed brother “disappear”. The brothers, knowing that certain death lies to the south, decide to escape and head north to the tyr region to lose themselves in the domains of the sorcerer kings and forge new lives.

Staying off of the main routes to avoid pursuit (the assumption in the city is that the elder brother kidnapped or killed the noble boy in his escape), the brothers head north towards the ruins of Kalidnay where they encounter Andrak. In exchange for water, the brothers agree to assist him in clearing of rubble as he searches for traces of what happened to Nerad as well as Kalid-Ma’s laboratory.

In the course of their search, the brothers manage to find the laboratory, however they also disturb Borys’s wards in the process. In a rushed search, Andrak, with a greater knowledge of magical things, is able to locate the second portion of the ritual of summoning (the first portion having been taken by Kalak years before). Lucky for the party, Borys himself doesn’t arrive this time, sending instead his champion and agent Gart. A fierce battle ensues with Andrak holding him off as the two brothers escape north, with instructions to find the village of Altaruk make contact with Arisphistaneles with the intention of taking the recovered pages to Korgunard.

A difficult journey later, with several challenging battles, a drugging and robbery by a lone elf (I had to teach them the hard way that you can’t trust anyone), and an expedient retreat from a fire drake, they find their way to Tyr where Arisphistaneles had told them they would find Korgunard. Using the contacts given to them, they make contact with the Veiled Alliance and deliver the ritual pages to Korgunard himself. A brief glance is enough to convince Korgunard that the record of the ritual is incomplete, however through his magic, he is able to locate the other portion as being within Kalak’s palace. The PC’s concoct a plan to infiltrate and recover the missing pages, however they are not careful enough in covering their tracks.

Korgunard with the complete ritual in front of him realizes that a full understanding is beyond his capability. The only person on Athas with any hope of grasping the ritual would be Nerad, who had made more of a study of such matters than either Korgunard or even Oronis. Explaining the situation of the missing avangion to the PC’s, Korgunard reveals the unanimated clone, only for the PC’s to recognize the man as a barely functional, mentally damaged slave, who had wandered onto the family’s holdings in Celick years before.

Days later, templars with the PC’s description come searching, pushing them to leave the city, on a mission to return home, and try to bring Nerad back to Tyr where they can somehow help his damaged state.

This brings us to the current stage of play, the next steps I have in mind are:

Head to Celick, somehow bring Nerad out, and escort him back to Tyr

Find a telepath master powerful enough to effect a cure for Nerad. Come into contact with the Order, who say that while they have the power, they lack the knowledge of the ancient masters in correcting damage of the psyche. They possess early writings of a man known as Thessik from a fabled city known as Saragar, they speculate that perhaps the in that ruins of that city, more advanced research might be discovered, however unfortunately they have no idea where the city might be found.

Korgunard recalls a discussion with Oronis years ago about Saragar, but no specific details

PC’s embark on a journey to Kurn to learn the location of Saragar from Oronis. Enroute, they wind up captured by a scouting party from Daskinor. Brought before the insane SK himself, he accuses them of being part of the veiled alliance and plotting against him, seeing The Arm of Radu as evidence. Rescued from prison by the veiled alliance, because obviously if Daskinor suspects them they must be on the VA’s side. PC’s find out that the leader of the veiled alliance is.. Daskinor himself (think Fight Club). The insane SK leading both his own faction, and the opposition within his city.

PC’s eventually make it to Kurn where they find guidance in locating Saragar.

Making their way to the Last Sea, they find not the ruins they were expecting but a thriving remnant of the green age. After a series of adventures, the PC’s discover a living Thessik, and gain the knowledge they need to help the modern day Order restore Nerad to mental health. Passing through Kurn on their return to the tyr region, the PC’s inform Oronis of the surviving lizardman community. Overcome with shock, relief, and freedom from some of the guilt of genocide, Oronis offers some kind of reward.

Pharistes with the healing lore from Thessik is able to heal Nerad. A restored Nerad is able to study and understand the ritual used by Kalid-Ma revealing the infernal menace to be (no clue, haven’t decided yet) However, this understanding comes with a curse, and a follow-up mental scan on Nerad by Pharistes passes an unholy taint, setting up the (modified for my campaign) events of the Dragon Crown adventure boxed set. I like the Devilish influence as a source for the whole thing, it just fits better for me.

Future adventure plans include a modified version of the Black Spine adventures, with an alliance of Dregoth with the Githyanki being the big reveal at the end.

I’ve got some additional thoughts and notes that don’t really fit as specific events or changes to the timeline. They’re more just general notes involved in my campaign.

Unlike other settings, being an epic level spellcaster on Athas does not necessarily mean that someone is intimately knowledgeable of the workings of magic or overly concerned with magical research, especially given the cost of defilement. Due to the process by which Rajaat raised his champions, they gained great powers and strengths without having put in the same amount of work and experience. This explains Kalak’s lack of recognition of the significance of the materials recovered from Kald-Ma’s laboratory, as well as his relative indifference towards them thereafter. Anything not directly related to furthering the dragon metamorphosis is probably outside of the scope of study of most of the SK’s.

Due to the lack of existing deities, the world of Athas represents a potentially valuable resource for the powers of Hell (as well as other cosmic entities – however to date they remain ignorant of its existence) Uncontested souls, powerful potential allies (slaves) in the bloodwar in the sorcerer kings, not to mention the high power level of the average athasian. Key question, to whom did he trade the souls? The pages recovered in Kalidnay are missing this critical piece of information.

I have always had a love / hate relationship with the whole defiler – preserver system of magic use. I read a quote once that said something to the effect of “to steal a minute of a man’s life, and to steal his whole life, are but the same thing to a different degree”, and it bothered me that preserving could be “ok” but defiling caused such irrevocable damage.

My solution was to replace the magic system of traditional D&D with the freeform system from the Black Company campaign setting book from Green Ronin publishing. Rather than get into the specifics here, it’s a system where a caster takes non-lethal damage as part of spell casting. My solution to the defiler / preserver dilemma is to have preservers take that damage themselves, while defilers pass that damage on to the environment around them, and Dragons pass the damage on to living beings. It uses constitution as the base stat for magic use, so magic comes from a source of physical energy, either the caster or plants, with the contrast of psionics coming from a source of mental energy.

Just to focus on your first question, which was, how do I make long travels interesting. I have a notebook of random encounters that I’ve thought of and keep close at hand. Each encounter varies so it isn’t always getting jumped by random beasties. While this is still rolling for a random encounter, it makes them more interesting. This doesn’t have to only be encounters.
I’ve found that throwing a recently uncovered tomb can make an interesting diversion as well, and often time I’ve had groups return to sites to take a closer look.
Throw in things like timeframes, and some difficult decisions and you have yourself a world between points A and B.

Hi Fezzik, I’m sorry no one has replied to your thread earlier. I pondered this myself as my PC’s have about 2 weeks worth of desert/badlands travel ahead of them in the next session or three.

I typically have a more planned out, “railroad” session planned but I let the first desert-travel session be pretty open ended. It ended up being a great session. I let the players make the game, and that’s exactly what they did.
The Ranger was pretty out of place in the first two city-heavy sessions, so he was eager to show off his abilities in the wilderness. Unfortunately he rolled a 1 twice while making survival checks, so this was a great opportunity for him to get jumped by a Tembo or a pair of Darragons(sp?). I also winged it and decided they’d fine some poisons and drugs from the Athasian Emporium, and a cave who’s mouth was covered in silken fibers (Spider cave!). It ended up taking them the entire session while they meandered through the desert with their crodlu and trying to endure the treacherous wastes! The Bard stepped on a Sand Cactus and almost died, and they players got a real kick out of it.

So, to summarize, I had one planned encounter, and then I winged it with a list of “light” encounters with select monsters from the ToA book. I also had another planned encounter if things got boring. One would be a thri-kreen hunting party who would tell the players that their best warriors must duel to determine if the players would eat WITH the kreen tonight, or be eaten BY the kreen. Another I’m saving is a slightly insane wandering silt cleric, who may bless the players, or turn on them, -depending on what they say.

Once you get into a rythm of coming up with these ideas, it gets easier. Hope all this helps.

Thanks for the responses. I guess the best answer is to just preplan some interesting “random” encounters. I’ll be honest, that is not my strong point. I think I do a decent job of coming up with an overall storyline, but it’s the details like this that are my downfall. I know I’m not the world’s greatest DM, but I’m the only one in the group of friends that played that wanted to step up and create something in the Dark Sun setting.

I also struggle with DM’ing the combat, I was very much a 2e player and then basically retired for 10 years. I came back briefly as a player, but stuck to magic users and mostly at lower levels, so I know I’m not utilizing the monsters or NPC opponents to the best of their abilities in a 3.5 game. I’m getting better, but it’s a struggle when the players are more intimately familiar with the capabilities of their characters, I sometimes think I’m getting taken advantage of.

The idea of doing a community “book” of canned Random Encounters — sort of like Villages of the Wastes was for tribes — has been kicking around in my head for a long time.

And acutally, given 4e’s monster / encounter builder (DDI) it probably wouldn’t be too hard to do. It’s on my list of things to do, after I get the contribution file uploads up and kicking.

If we go ahead with that could we open it up for 3.5 as well? Some of us crabby old people don’t like the new system and are stuck in our old ways.

Well, my first question is how travel between Athas and the other planes is so common in your setting, maybe set up a reason involving the plot towards Dregoth as how the crystal sphere is weakening. As most, and barely any people at all should leave or come into Athas.
As for random encounters, if the PC’s fight a big predatory monster, they’re not likely to see another monster for a little while. At least a day or so. I hope that helps.