The Official Athas.org Open Projects Bounty Board!

Hello all!

As many of you already know, the development team and I have been chipping away at the deep backlog of unfinished Dark Sun netbooks and other projects left since the early days of the Burnt World of Athas website.

As we’ve been finally finishing and releasing some of these projects at last, a floodgate seems to have opened. We have been discovering lost copies of all sorts of wonderful things, many of which are unfinished.

This is where we are now running into a bit of a problem-- the queue for possible projects seems to be getting longer and longer.

I’ve made a full list at this google drive link of every outstanding project, as well as showing our substantial current production queue.

I’m sharing this with you all along with an open call to arms: if you have the time, desire, and ideas to make one of these projects happen, contact us and we can support you!

Simply contact me via PM to find out more.

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Pristine Tower group?

That’s what the group is calling ourselves (mostly just in the Discord).

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Following on from this: are any people taking any of these projects on their own?

I would like to know so I can put your name next to the item on the list, and also so if you do need resources (such as people to contact for outsourcing), we can assist.

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I have my drake tail peninsula stuff that I write, I guess that falls under the lost lands of athas gazzateer?
Its just fluff though, I am not good with crunch.

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If your crunch is 3e, I might be able to provide suggestions.


I’ve previously spoken up regarding my interest in Unseen Ways before. I decline to retract my declaration of interest in the Unseen Ways source material even if the Pristine Tower group is also tracking it.

Please note that anything I may produce for Athas.org will be 3.5 ruleset, OFS license compliant and not OGL or d20 license compliant, due to my personal preferences.
Others are welcome to join me or provide suggestions and feedback with those caveats understood.

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Nijineko, I’m not saying we’re taking over your project. I’m asking if you or anyone else wants support. And I wanted to know who’s working on what, so we don’t double up.

And I’m happy to add your name to Unseen Ways. I’ve added it now.

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IIRC, Unseen Ways was 3.0, and given the intensive overhaul of psionics in 3.5, it’s likely that nothing can be salvaged.

Well, you’re in luck.

I happen to be proficient in exactly that. :sunglasses:

My old group built many conversion tools for radically disparate game systems back in the day. :nerd_face:

And 3e to 3.5e psionics is hardly a radical change compared to 2e, 1e or 0e psionics, let alone something like converting between Palladium Fantasy, RIFTS, HU, TMNT, 2e D&D, Rolemaster, GURPS, MSHRPG, and Star Frontiers. :man_superhero:


(Incidentally, this history and background might explain my overly strong mechanical bias and rules oriented preferences, now that I think about it…:face_with_monocle::thinking:)

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Brilliant. So you’re in for 3.5 conversion of Unseen Ways.

Now, how much support would you like for what you’re doing? Layouts, editing, art, someone to bounce ideas off of?

At the moment, not much other than any ideas people want to toss my way for me to take note of, as I still have to finish my current learning project (republishing the SRD plus a bit extra)… and then I had mentioned the Powers of Athas project to Raddu previously.

I suppose I could also consider combining the two (Unseen Ways plus Powers of Athas) as they are both psionics focused, depending.


In any case, I am finishing my current project before embarking the next. I am estimating a month or two of work left. (Less if anyone here happened to wanted to beta read a republish of the SRD…)

You’re republishing the SRD? This: https://www.d20srd.org/index.htm System Reference Document?

I am republishing the original WotC SRD files, the same ones that d20srd.org modified to make their site. If you read the details on their site, they actually made a number of changes they felt improved the material, so it is technically not 100% original, more like 95-97%.

But yes, that D&D 3rd edition SRD.

I am aware that there are already a few copies of the SRD on DriveThruRPG, but I am republishing it to learn the editing and publishing processes with something that is not a pet project of mine, so that if I screw it up, it’s no big deal. And I am indifferent to making a profit, since my goal is learning.

My version will be around 98-99% original, which is actually not necessarily an improvement. More like an exercise of discipline on my part, lol.

Huh. Ok. I don’t understand why though.

Why make a repeat of something which people already have, especially when there is no demand for it to be changed?

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https://arena.athas.org/t/nijinekos-project/3097/2
Getting off topic so I posted my explanation over there. :grin:

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I see there’s a Reman continent project open – has anything substantial been done on this – or even basic ideas about what’s supposed to be there?

@darkinterloper has some thoughts on it, i believe.

Is there a reason only the ‘northwestern’ Remaan continent is specified – could the southern part be developed as well?

I think that was just jack referring to the continent as “northwestern” which is highly relative depending where on Athas you are lol
Rema(a)n (I’ve tended to add another A to as Reman tends to conjure star trek nemesis flashbacks XD) is specifically the continent in the northwestern corner of the Steve Bell/ACG globe maps. The southern one is not Remaan, it an entirely separate continent never or only sparsely inhabited by the Rebirth Races. Like the rest of the greater world, Remaan is entirely fanon- the earliest use of it I can find of it is from the netbook Last Frontier as “Remani.” Peter Nutall (Brax), who was one of the main people working on Secrets of the Dead Lands and Lost Cities of the Trembling Plains, greatly expanded the names from said netbook- Melai, Tanysh, and Reman, into the larger-scale human cultures of Green Age Athas, with Wisdom of Sorrow being the most prominent case. Brax laid some basic ideas for the continent’s current state in his old sitechttps://urbraxa.tripod.com/AthasianPhoto.htm, which I’ve used as a base for my own take on Remaan.

The basics are that “Remaan” was not just a human culture, but a “creed” based around inter-rebirth race unity and cooperation, with each race occupying an “ecological niche,” and encouraging peace through trade, kinship ties, ect. They resurrected the old Rhulisti “Lawgiver” system and developed the Athasian “Great Pantheon” which was a collection of ancestral folk heroes, spirits, gods, ect, all as aspects of the four major elemental cults (for example an orcish fertility goddess would be associated with earth and was probably based on an actual spirit of the land or elemental lord). Their systems migrated back to the tablelands with Remaan colonists who resettled places like Balic and Tyr, and became the de-facto global model for politics, culture, religion, and language.

Based on Wisdom of Sorrow, Remaan started as the only multiracial tribes to emerge out of the Rebirth and were actually descended from the angry crowds who seized the Pristine Tower and willfully mutated to be with their loved ones. “Remaan” is probably a linguistic artifact of a rhulisti term for “We stand together!” like a protest chant. They fled the Tablelands when the human-supremacist Tanysh flooded out of the north like a plague, and settled the distant continent both for safety and also to get as far away from the Pristine Tower and rotten legacy of the Nature-Masters as possible. They took a lot of Pyreen with them, as the Remaans were entrusted with care of the first baby Pyreen. Eventually the roles reversed with the Pyreen being the “guardians” of the Remaan peoples and showering them with favoritism. Remaan culture focused on long term stability out of a fear of a repeat of the Blue Age, and locked Green Age into its millennia long psionic stagnation with massive inequality, and left populations as kindling for Rajaat and the Age of Magic.Think of them as a sort of archaic, psionic form of global neoliberal hegemony :rofl: While nominally the “good guys” their was rife with hypocrisy- be it favoring the first five member races (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc, Pterran) to having extremely wierd bioessentialist views that each race was “ideally” suited for a certain role (Humans are herders, orcs are farmers, elves are sailors, ect) with the endgoal basically being hybridizing all of them out of existence into hybrid races like half-elves, who were free of the “sins of the rhulisti.”

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The whole thing could be developed, certainly!