The players in my game are getting close to going underground, I will be converting the Goodman Games 5e version of Lost City to Dark Sun. Of course I need to switch out some of the mobs in the dungeon, which won’t be too hard, but I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions? I will be using Thri-Kreen in place of the ants, and there will be a few “lost” races still hanging on deep in the caverns, albeit changed to fit. With a possibility for the players to go really deep into Athas. Seems Fire Giants are a given in that situation, but possibly Duergar and Deep Gnomes as well.
The mind flayer will be in, with a Gith faction seeking to destroy him. The Efreet will be in as well, with a chance for him to grant passage to the City of Brass if the right conditions are met, but for the most part he will be adversarial. I might decide to replace Zargon with something else equally sinister, but more fitting to my campaign.
I like to think outside the box for my campaigns, so please don’t blast me with the canon lawyer crap, I don’t care about canon too much.
I worked with the 1e version, with an eye towards converting to 3.5e, but that shouldn’t matter much, i was pretty edition agnostic.
“Canon lawyer crap” aside, personally, i think you’re going a bit too off-book, but whatever. I don’t recall Dwarves or Gnomes in B4, which is part of why it seems so ripe for porting over to DS. There’s already giant Ants in DS.
Certainly making the Wererats Tari is not a stretch. I thought making the Ogres (i think - doing guard work for the Zargonites) into glossy-black-shelled Kreen and calling them Cricket-folk would be fun.
But, whatever, have fun.
PS: Oh, there’s an intro to B4 adventure in a 3.5e Dungeon Magazine, it might be nice to use too. I thought I’d be super easy to port (its in the spreadsheet too).
There are giant ants but it doesn’t fit the plot of my campaign, basically the kreen are at war with the lesser Draconic races, and 2 of my players are in the Draconic alliance faction, so having a hive stretch far underground from the original hive, which is several miles off from the place I have The Lost City take place, I can create more tension between the factions.
Also I had a bit of a flub at character creation and one of the new players made a gnome, so I have to create some place from where gnomes comes from, so he isn’t that last gnome on Athas or something, and the only conceivable place for gnomes to still be living on Athas is in the underdark. Duergar make sense if there is still one mind flayer down in the depths.
That wasn’t a very kind comment, I asked for suggestions for mobs, and you are hitting me with the Darksun lawyer crap I specifically asked people to not throw at me. You have no idea what I am going through right now, Ive been on chemo for rectal cancer for 8 months now… and this is my one artistic outlet that I can have, and my players seem to really enjoy playing what they are playing.
That was NOT me slamming you, but i guess i can imagine why you did.
That cancer thing’s awful, but not my deal, and you don’t need to unload on me - not like that.
You posted a nutz (fun nutz) combo of not-super-DS stuff you’ve going on in your campaign, and that’s fine.
Now i have a bead on where your game’s at, and can talk about it with you, instead of banging into “thats not how I’m running my game” with you ever other post.
If you posted about running Defilers in Geyhawk on Cannonfire or a similar website, I’m sure you’d have gotten a cold shoulder or something.
If you still want talk about your game, I’m in; if you think I’m an a$$, well, that’s your deal (and right).
And if you think I’M judging you, i have to assume you haven’t interacted much with the “Only the 1st boxed set is canon, everything else is BS” folks…
Oh, or he could be an ativistic Mongrelfolk - a genetic throwback to one of his ancestors.
There’s a Drider template in 3e. You could do “non”-Drider Driders. Like, Tarek/spider folk or something. I guess those are just sorta Dark Spiders though…
I’m sorry to hear you’re having a rough time, mate.
Here’s a suggestion that might help you: Read the “Black Spine” adventure, and the Sundered Regions - East of the Silt Sea. This will give you an idea of how Illithids have been implemented by others into Athas, and how Athas could get connected to bring in these other races. Several of the races you mentioned would make ideal transplants via dimensional or even Spelljammer means. That might give a fun dimension to your game…
Athas isn’t (necessarily) Naboo; the water table and the Underdark aren’t completely contiguous/continuous.
Water from one would/could make it to the other, but if the Athasian water was they way (it sounds to me like) you suggest, the wells in the City States would either need to sit directly atop a spring or be miles deep…
Its my (possible misinformed) understanding that the water table sits under a few dozen feet of gravel and clay, which is just under 1-10 ft of soil, and on top of one to several miles of bedrock. The underdark would be in this bedrock.
Granted, its all fantasy anyway, but if what you said were generally true, @nijineko, then in FR the oceans should have flooded the Underdark long ago.
I’m confused, you seem to be going in some random direction.
Athas water has been discussed in other threads here before, I was referencing those. The general consensus seems to be that the water was either blown off into space, or sunk into the crust, or both.
Other campaign settings have no relation to the discussion.
Fantasy planetary geology should generally be the same.
I’ve seen those other threads, and they don’t make a ton of sense, IMO.
Water trapped underground is trapped in either aquifers (pockets in the stone) or within the rock itself (generally trapped as magma).
Its everyone’s own, personal game, but the water on Athas shouldn’t have just drained down a Goblin tunnel, emptied the Shining Sea and flooding the entire Underdark.
What would cause that, and why didn’t it happen at literally any point before that?
Now, if your pitch is at the end of the Blue Age the water table drained from 100 ft above “sea level” to 5 ft below, and the Underdark was always flooded; and the Cleansing Wars caused the water table to drop another 50nft, and the Underdark was STILL largely flooded, then yeah OK. That pitch makes sense.
You know what guys? Maybe we should start a new thread to discuss/argue the toss over Athasian planetary geology.
In all seriousness, there’s an idea for what to do with the backside of the planet which I’ve been kicking around which would be directly affected by this, so I’d like to know myself.