4E Dark Sun had no alternative energy sources. It was one of the things that the 4E team wisely dropped. In regards to how 2E alternative magical sources should work in 3E/3.5e, its important to remember that these are different game systems and implementation is thus going to be different. That said, the Athas dot org implementation is reasonably accurate to the 2E presentation of the alternative energy sources. The problem is that the alternative energy sources completely overturns the premise of the setting. I am confident that had TSR not gone broke, the alternative energy sources would have either been retconned out, or severely nerfed. As it is, we had to wait for 4E for the alternative energy sources to get the axe.
I think we can accommodate the alternative energy sources, but not as they stand as present. Right now these alternative energy sources warp the setting. I give a narrative example here.
Okay. I’ve heard the arguments, and the surprisingly strong opinions about Graycasting.
I for one liked the Defilers and Preservers supplement. It has flaws, but then again so did the Will and the Way, and we still use that. I’m not interested in forgetting the book as there are some things in there which make Dark Sun much more playable, and are relevant to the Dead Lands (indeed, I believe the Dead Lands would not have been made the way it was if there wasn’t the Defilers and Preservers “defiling while studying the spells” rules).
Obviously, play the game how you want, but if we were going to be totally first boxed set purist here, we wouldn’t even be making a Dead Lands supplement at all.
For a setting which depends on power sources for magic, it makes sense each of those power sources having drawbacks and restrictions. That is not being contested. However, what those restrictions should be are.
I’ve seen the results of the poll and it looks like we have a lean towards Con damage, negative reactions from natural beings, and possibly using defiler points for Greycasting. As mentioned before, we simply cannot make the Dead Lands work if only Necromancy is powered by greycasting, as defiling simply isn’t possible in a massive completely barren land. So restrictions aren’t a bad thing, but we have to limit how many restrictions for balance reasons.
The other problem here is the prestige classes book containing Necromants has already been published, so we need to be careful as to what we change. I don’t want to directly contradict existing canon if I can avoid it. We can get around the “Greycasting does not affect the environment” by clarifying that it does not affect the physical corporeal environment. You get the idea.
We’ll discuss it in the development group and see what we can do.
Thank you again for all your feedback and comments. If you have more on other parts of the setting, we’d love to hear them!
I completely agree with you regarding the impact of the alternative energy sources on the setting. And as I said before, I don’t use them on my campaings or use them in a very modified way (eg: only undeads can greycast, or only on “dead areas”).
However, what I do on my campaigns is not the point. The point is, at least for me, if what Athas.org is making is an update of the rules from 2e to 3.5e as faithful as possible, assuming the controversial 2e decisions as their own. Or not, and therefore proposing new solutions for those decisions.
Both ways are ok, but when someone asks about our opinion over a topic related to this update, I would offer different opinions on each case.
EDIT: Apologies @neujack , I didn’t see your latest message before sending mine.
SotDL is not going to retcon anything, but we (or at least I) will be trying to nudge everything to still be canon and potentially accommodate other viewpoints. Good writing (IMO), among other things, brings concepts together and allows them to live alongside each other harmoniously, rather than picking one and running with it and discarding the rest.
As much as i didn’t care for parts of 4e DS, they did neatly side-step a lot of these issues by rolling back the setting meta-plot.
I know some folks have issues with alternative power sources (cough, @redking, cough) and that’s fine, but you’ll notice 4e didn’t outlaw them, they just didn’t mention it. YOU can still do it in your game, they’ll just not address it.
That’d be my personal aim, to bring up the levels of logic and consistency and maybe allude to something with Graycasting, but only so those who want a change can see where we were thinking of going with it; and those who don’t want a change barely even notice. That’d be my personal objective with it.
TL:DR The Dead Lands are not larger than the Kreen Empire.
There have been multiple maps for the southern continent floating around recently, depicting the Dead Lands as covering roughly half the continent containing the Tablelands.
The team that is working on finishing the Dead Lands (Secrets of the Dead Lands, Faces, and the adventures-incl The Emissary) has decided to make some adjustments to the continental map in advance of their releases.
This is being done to accomplish at least these two goals:
-stop everyone from unnecessarily speculating about the size/whereabouts of the Dead Lands (according to the official project specs from athas.org) and provides the project team with stability / time to finish the project.
-provide everyone with a rough landscape beyond the official Dead Lands setting expansion (and Sundered Lands work) to fill up all you like.
With this we hope to accommodate the community with much needed clarity around the Dead Lands.
Right, as @johndoe heralded, I’m going to drop a Dead Lands teaser.
We’ve been working on the Dead Lands book for a while now, and all the locations are pretty much settled down at last. But that left the issue as to how this was going to interface with the rest of the world. The old map had the major disadvantage of being an isolated form without any thought to the surroundings, and the Athasian Cartographer’s Guild’s wonderful planetary creation had the problem of making the Dead Lands larger than the Kreen Empire!
To further fuel the fire, the old test map Jhonny and I came up with for the expanded Dead Lands has been making the rounds.
So, I’ve updated the entire southern continent map now for everyone’s benefit.
A few comments:
1.) I know it ain’t that pretty. Yet.
2.) The main purpose of this map is to constrain the Obsidian, so there is a defined limit to it in every single direction, and I’ve set some plausible scale. (The red square is exactly the same size as the 4e Tablelands map, using the same scale).
3.) The square in read is the area we’ll be detailing in Secrets of the Dead Lands releases.
4.) Yes, surrounding it are several selected features from the “Dead Lands of Athas” netbook. We’ll be coming back to that at a later date…
5.) I’ve intentionally left a lot of the areas surrounding the Dead Lands without any specific descriptions on purpose, so you guys have areas to play with.
Here you go, in zoomable vector .PDF form!
Have a look, let me know your feedback, and enjoy!
Posted the very, very wip in the world maps thread, I believe I used nuejack’s dead lands revised map from the link there as the basis for Ulyan. I had to add in a lot of locations from SoTDL manually as best guesses such as Sagramog, this new map is much better lol
Perhaps one of the most confusing things is how exactly Ulyan fits in with the Sunrise Sea to the east- presumably the sea was level with the tablelands, but the tablelands are ‘1000 ft’ above Ulyan, and Neowar’s Ladder apparently 'rises to the coastal cliffs" so eastern Ulyan rises 1000 feet in a series of cliffs, but the tops of those cliffs are…coastal? How does the sunrise sea not spill down into the basin? As neat as the concept of a high-elevation sea spilling down into Sagramog is, its pretty silly. Add a ‘coastal city’ like Biga Fy Te in and it gets even more confusing.
That old map that’s suddenly gained popularity was an alpha test for a map I was working on with Jhonny based on my own conversion of Dead Lands from the old 2e material and the DLoA netbook. The problem was, I’d done a lot of work on that without knowing that the Dead Lands book had already been mostly finished for 3e elsewhere. So when I finally gained access to the 3e conversion, I had to start again on the map.
The .pdf you see now above in this latest version is my effort to set things right with that confusion. This map is now correct to the Secrets of the Dead Lands manuscript we’re working with, and also the surrounding lands finally resolve the question as to how big this obsidian really is.
As for the depth measures— only where the main lands touch the dead lands does it have that deep cliff. on the eastern, western, and southwestern frontiers the heights vary. By the time you get to biga-fe-tye, the land slope has gone up so that the obsidian is only just above “sea/silt level”. Similarly, most of the Zagath homeland is close to silt level. This is the way a large but thin amount of blackglass spilled into the silt sea.
Now this latest map here is meant to stir discussion. If I’ve missed anything let’s talk about it now, so I can get a finalised version and then try to politely ask Jhonny to help me one more time…
I just ran a check on the current manuscript, the closest you get is page 7:
The larger mysteries of the region are seeds for a longer, protracted series of adventures. While this zone is a slowly expanding evil, seeking to encroach ever farther into the surrounding wastelands,
Thing is, this could be interpreted in many ways. I take it as influence, not the literal obsidian. Besides, there is a 1000’ shelf blocking it from the Endless Dunes, and the obsidian has been cold for nearly 2200 years (stable enough to build very big cities on it).
Bear in mind this is not the 2e document. A LOT has been added and tweaked since then, by two different teams before our current team ever got a hold of it. Plus, we’ve been making small adjustments to harmonise it with the Faces and Adventures books, and fix issues they never thought through with the geography.
That’s a shame, because it was in the opening paragraphs of the 2E text. It felt as if part of the mission statement.
The reality, however, is that the Dead Lands are genuine and growing, sluggishly but certainly, with all the patience of the immortals who inhabit them.
