DS1. I don’t like the direction the setting took with the Defilers and Preservers the Wizards of Athas supplement and the Revised boxed set.
For one there were now wizards with sources of power that were inexhaustible and have no impact on the ecology of Athas. So awesome were these new sources of magical power that it meant the the path of the preserver is completely unjustifiable. Any risk of putting plants and soil at risk is too much risk. So with these new power sources preservers are just hypocritical defiler-lite.
The Revised boxed set introduced lore and continuity issues that resulted in a mini cleansing war on the wizards forums. Probably quite a few of us participated in that.
Hello All, I thought it was best to introduce myself here, as the welcome thread seems to have no replies?
My main forum home is the Mystara forum at The Piazza (http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewforum.php?f=3) but I’ve had an interest in Dark Sun since I bought the boxed set.
I bought DS1 maaaany years ago. I own a lot of 2ed modules and I bought the 4ed products too, but I’ve never had the chance to play in the setting so far…
I’ve read the Prism Pentad and own the other novels too, but I haven’t read them yet.
A DM friend of mine wanted to run it as a changeup from our regular Ravenloft campaign. None of the players at the table (including myself) knew even the slightest bit about this setting, so the first couple sessions was entirely based on familiarizing ourselves with the world, the history, and character creation.
I found the setting to be so original and interesting that I soon branched off into reading the novels to increase my knowledge of Athas.
My first experience started with the PC Gold box set of games which included Wake of the Ravager, Blood and Magic, and Stronghold. I was instantly in love with the Dark Sun world in Ravager. I’ve been hoping for another PC game ever since… About eight years ago, a group of us tried remaking the PC games with Dark Sun: Age of Heroes, but it fell apart midway into development. It would have been amazing…
I was in high school, around 15 years old. I was at my small brick & mortar store browsing the psionic handbook to buy it. I turn my head and see a box with a bad ass looking guy in the desert that cought my eyes. Reading the back, I was so inspire that I put it on reserve for a week to pile my money for it. That was my first setting as a DM, we play all summer long in it. 20 years now and DMing it in 5E with my original players (they have 4 characters each) and we switch character/cities in the campaign each 6 months. One of their character is their original.
My first introduction to Dark Sun was actually from Athas.org. I was curious to see what campaign settings there were, so I searched around and found DS3. I have been fascinated with the setting ever since.
i started playing Dark Sun in 1991 with the 1.Edition as a Player.We played 3 Years and then my Group broke down.Last Year i have reactivated a new Group and i hope they will playing with me a while.
Now i have select the Time short before the Brown Age started.At Campaign starts when the Champions claimed the Cities.I dont know if it will funktion because i must make the World and the Timeline self.There are no Information for this Period.But the Time will see.
I began Dark Sun with the AD&D 2e Original Box Set (version 1). I became an absolute fan after reading through The Rules Book, The Wanderer’s Journal, the flip-book adventure, and the huge color map. As TSR released new Dark Sun products, I purchased them and digested everything over and over again. I had to buy one of those 3" 3-ring binders to keep all my notes in, and kept all the published material in an old plastic milk crate (pre-internet days).
There was a time during college that I had neither the time, nor a group, to play Dark Sun with, but afterwards (when the internet was finally invented!!) I began searching for like-minded people who also had an appreciation for the Dark Sun setting. I joined athas.org, and the (old) arena, as soon as I found it, and felt fortunate to have been a part of that community for so long. Unfortunately, I only visited the forums every once in awhile due to life moving on, getting a real job, raising a family, etc… I was surprised when one day I logged in and found all that material people had posted for years was gone!
I kept creating my own material, however, and re-reading all the novels, just because I could never get enough of Dark Sun.
Throughout the years, I never really gained interest in the progression of D&D from 3.0 to 3.5 to 4, but for some reason I kept a close eye on the development of D&D Next, and 5th Edition. I like that WOTC has tried to get back to “the basics” of D&D role-playing, and are reviving some of the old settings (especially Dark Sun). I am curious to see what they release. I am also very excited to find that athas.org has revived the Arena, and hope to spend more regular time here. To the administrators, THANK YOU!!
My first introduction to Dark Sun was through the Penny Arcade podcast.
I avoided D&D for the longest time because I disliked Fantasy settings that were too close to Tolkien. 4e was technically my second introduction to D&D as my friends tried to start a 3.5e game, but it fell through when the DM didn’t like our shenanigans.
I played the last 5 chapters of the Fury of the Wastewalker. And grew attached to the pregen Thri-kreen Battlemind that my DM gave me.
Since then I’ve run one successful Dark Sun campaign in college and have been looking to try to get one going with 5e as soon as the setting is re-released.
I’ve almost bought the 2e Campaign box twice. But own the City State of Tyr and Dragon King for fluff reasons. I also grabbed the Ashes of Athas adventure(4e) once it was completed. Its my hope that another Living Campaign will start again in 5e.
I think it was 1993 or 1994. I had the AD&D 2e player’s handbook and there were advertisements in the rear of it for Dark Sun. I lived in AZ as well and the desert environ spoke viscerally to me. It was so well-composed and unique I couldn’t stop pursuing it. It was a healthy addiction. In 1996, I got involved in a healthy play group that’s really just pushed one another to grow. We are still running that DSun campaign with the same PCs and advanced beings galore. It’s tough to make time nowadays, but we still do, somehow.
A young one here. When dark Sun came up I didn’t know how to walk or speak… So many many years later I started playing pathfinder then moved to 5ed. In the way I become close friend with a guy who used to play 2nd ed “back in the day”. This guy wanted to start playing against after “I don’t know how many years”. I put the place and some friends for the party and he started DMings a super fun Dragonlance campaign. We played 2ed Dragonlance because he knows everything about it (I still have waiting for the next adventure, that wizard is the only “survivor” from that game). Anyway… we keep playing and the guy started to play for the first time 5ed in one of my games and then he decided to update his game to 5ed. Months later half of the party had exams but we decided to meet up anyway as good friend. My friend said “ok since half of you are not here let’s do an one shot”. I already knew a few things about dark sun, like it was desert and sun, nothing more. He told us, I may not know Athas the way I know Krynn, but my elf have run many many kilometers in the tablelands so trust me. That was it, brutal and merciless Athas received me. I created Gro’thok the mul that killed a thri-kreen with his fists while both were working at kalak’s zigurat. It blew my mind in a way that I started to investigate and reading about it.
Many months later I scheduled a pathfinder one shot because I found a great convertion and was awesome. The struggle to survive was huge.
Time keep passing, and when we finished an official forgotten realms campaign I was dming I knew it was my time. Gentlemans, we are moving to Athas.
We use some fan adaptations and been running the most awesome campaign for a year now.
The first year it ever came out and we played the very first boxset AD&D 2nd Edition Dark Sun. We did get all the 2e Dark Sun books over time even the revised boxset. To be honest once we started playing Dark Sun it was all we played for years.
My intro was the first novel. The idea of a sterile half-dwarf gladiator slave being one of the main characters enticed me into buying everything DS i could find(at the time that was the box set, dragon kings, and some modules). Loved it ever since
Dark Sun (Sol Oscuro) was promoted in the Dragon Magazine #2 (Spanish Edition). I have always been interested in everything about the desert, so I was inmediately drawn to the setting. I remember the description of the new races and the new weapons along Brom’s superb drawings.
A couple of days later I saw the box in a Department Store. I looked at it for a loong time. The price was a bit steep for me, but I finally decided to buy it. Best decision ever. I quickly read all the material there and I bought Freedom (Libertad) as soon as it hit the stores.
Since then I have been in love with everything related to Athas and its inhabitants.
My introduction to Dark Sun was the Wake of the Ravager Crpg.
In retrospect, quite ironic, since that game has a lot of thing that truly don’t belong to Dark Sun (like mind flayers or umber hulks).
Then I found athas.org (when 3.0 itself was quite young), and got really into the setting.
I originally got into D&D when 3.5 came out and as I grew up I fell in love with AD&D 2e. After a few campaigns in Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk using 2e I decided to take a look at other material from that time and stumbled across mentions of the Dark Sun campaign setting. All I remember hearing about it in the past was that it was a sort of post apocalyptic fantasy setting with an emphasis on gladiators, the slave trade, and a more primitive and savage world than the usual high middle ages/early renaissance style default D&D takes.
I first got my hands on the revised campaign setting, and seeing that it updated a lot of existing material and moved a lot of existing story lines forward I hunted down the original boxed set online. Working with both versions I cobbled together a working setting of my own and introduced the PCs to it all. Ever since they’ve been working towards a means of assassinating Kalak of Tyr while navigating a complex conspiracy between the sorcerer kings and I haven’t looked back since.
The very first time I played Dark Sun was back with the original boxed set. Our DM was the only one who had ever seen it before and our introduction was A little Knowledge from the set. He set it up so we intentionally wouldn’t know anything about it. Each of us played ourselves, found passed out and naked in the desert by a slave caravan. 3 fighters, a ranger, and a thief trying to figure out where we were, how we got there, and none of us could even speak the language. It made for a memorable introduction and I’ve loved the whole setting since.
I’ve collected everything I can ever since, and while I’ve stopped basically at 3.5, I’ve pulled information from the newer books and tried to integrate everything no matter how far fetched it was. Some things needed tweaking to make it all work, but I love the setting. I’ve even used that same type of beginning to introduce others to the setting and during the early 2000s was running 6 different groups through adventures every week. I’ve lost touch with basically all of them, but maybe one day…
A friend bought the first boxed set when we were still kids and didn’t really have a clue how to play. We both would up buying Expanded and Revised (and I got his set when he stopped playing, so I actually have 2 of the cloth maps now, hooray!), but still were too young as a group to get the setting. The Shattered Lands game was the first real taste that clued me in, and remains my favorite video game to this day, and Dark Sun is easily my favorite setting.