That is correct. It is one of the canon exceptions to the “Primes default to Earth standards” rule.
Which is partly what makes Murlynd such an interesting deity. After he visited the Boot Hill campaign setting, he took an extreme liking to cowboys, and modeled himself after that… even his divine symbol is a six pointed star with rounded tips. He wields strange hand held weapons that emit projectiles at high speed, otherwise unknown to Oerth. Only his priests are able to wield similar weapons. He is the god of technomagic.
Meanwhile, on Earth:
Gygax disallowed the use of Gunpowder in Greyhawk, but made a loophole for his friend Don Kaye who loved Westerns, by allowing his character to wield special wands that created a loud noise and shot high-speed missiles when fired. Over time, this character was promoted to a hero-god.
I like finding out rules like this. My old homebrew campaign connected every single setting D&D had, and I found it fun to deal with variations in rules between settings.
With Spelljammer’s Commune rules you could connect to your original plane’s clerical powers from any land except Krynn (per their heathen rules), Forgotten Realms absolutely had no native psions (as per Forgotten Realms adventures book), Dark Sun had its own rules for magic, etc.
They retconned that. The Duergar had Deep Duerra as a psionic demigoddess in late 2E, and then by 3E they fully retconned it on the surface with the civilisation of Jhaamdath (among others I think).
Here is a reply to let you know that I saw your question.
However, I do not feel like redoing the work to track down all those references again right now, so I’ll get back to you on your question sometime in the future, probably when I need those references again myself for something.
From what I can recall offhand, there are statements made to this effect in the DMG and/or Planar sources, in multiple editions… and you can throw in those cross-plane meeting articles from Dragon if you allow that as a source as well. Taken as a whole, the references add up to, “Earth is the standard default for Primes, except where stated otherwise.”
Okay, my Autism kicked in and I can’t help but look up at least ONE reference, because… just because. Lucky you. =P
From the 3.5 DMG page 147, “The Material Plane tends to be the most Earthlike of all planes and operates under the same set of natural laws that our own real world does.” There you go, physics triumphant.
However, I am going to force myself NOT to look up any more references, because I am at work. So there. (lol)
I feel like the 3.5e DMG as source deserves more respect than say, a Birthright supplement or the Guide to the Ethereal Plane (which I’d be pretty quick to dismiss as quality sources for this type of info).
I’ve been taking a look again at the different scales in the maps from the Original Box period, the Revised Period, then the 4E map and some material that has been floating around online (mainly the files ‘391_Athas_Travel_hi-res.pdf’ and Mark Hope’s Tablelands extra sites map using both the color map and the 5 mile hex size variant).
It would seem 2E used a smaller scale than the 4E system by a factor of 2.4 to 3 … and while we’ve had many discussions about realistic sizes et cetera, the reason I had been going through this again is because I am preparing a campaign in which overland movement plays a possibly larger role than say, a mostly city-based campaign or mainly stationary ones.
And here’s the insight or hypothesis I have regarding the upscaling of the maps from 2E to 4E: not because of realism, but because the 4E system works totally differently and inherently makes the world less dangerous. So you would need to increase distances as to be able to fit more stuff in there, or to make travel a bit more dangerous and risky again.
I let go. If the distance was so great between the various Cities, being attacked by raiding elves and tribes would have less chance to happen or these tribes would need to be way much bigger to be able to cover such distance and be a treat of some sort.
I always love how people bring different perspectives to these conversations. There’s cartography, meteorology, geology, astronomy, physics in here. All very cool. I am most interested in geopolitics and demography.
From this perspective, it makes the most sense if the Tablelands are the best and most desirable region of Athas. There’s a delicate political balance in the Tablelands – an intractable stalemate, defined by resource scarcity and population limits and the dynamic that Borys can crush any city-state, but he can’t crush all of them at once.
Other human population centers with ecological resources immediately upset this balance. If these regions are weak, then they are too tempting for colonization and exploitation and demographic advantage. Why would Borys, Dregoth, Oronis, etc. not aggressively seek to colonize or conquer such a region? (It’s already fairly implausible to me that Borys wouldn’t know about Saragar and wouldn’t be capable and motivated enough to conquer it.) Why wouldn’t they succeed?
Conversely, if other lands are strong, then why wouldn’t they actively seek to change the balance of power in the Tablelands to lead to better ecological protection of the planet?
I’m left with the logical conclusion that the rest of the world must be even-more-damaged, very sparsely populated with humans/demihumans, and far too resource-poor to be worth major efforts of invasion or conquest or exploitation or alliance. Herders, small villages, a small handful of evil and isolationist cities – as bad or worse than those of the Tablelands and fundamentally not that viable as a powerbase or demographic resource. Very devastated ecology, very little water, overrun with horrible monsters. And even then still subject to occasional raids from Ur Draxans.
I think you’ve highlighted some of the biggest problems with Athas itself as a game world.
It seems to me the whole Dark Sun campaign has always been too reliant on a relatively small cadre of main villains, and there is too much talk about them affecting the whole world with their power. Also, making the Tablelands the best the world has to offer could place a real barrier on the quality of possible world exploration if we’re not careful.
While I agree in principle that making the Tablelands the most desirable and safe place for players to start isn’t a bad idea, that doesn’t necessarily imply a need to make it the only habitable place in the world any more than making the Sorcerer Kings the only big villains the world has to offer.
There are many reasons why the Cleansing Wars could have not quite reached certain places. Monster-filled continents or places rendered totally inhospitable are good ways to do it, but lands could be rendered inaccessible or “not worth the effort” in other ways, like massive dead zones for magic, powerful entities claiming dominion, or a large expanse of terrible terrain in the way.
I agree that you can come up with answers sometimes, but they are very, very hard. (I was pleased to see the new Dead Lands book dealt with this directly, and came up with good answers. I hope future world expansions make a similar effort to explain these types of questions.)
I am not totally sure that it’s a design flaw though – the themes of environmental destruction, a dying world, and intractable stalemate and scarcity over what remains of the planet are vital to the setting – really in some ways the signature aspect of it – and they’re inherently global themes. The people responsible for global environmental destruction have to be of central interest to the entire planet. Similarly, in a desperately-resource deprived world, you are willing to make extraordinary efforts to obtain resources. Yes, it does impose some constraints on world building, but to me it’s actually the best part of the setting rather than a conceptual flaw.
I like your arguments and way of thinking @IAmGiff - I take such considerations into my own view on Athas as well.
But, as I said before, do not underestimate the psychology of the rulers. They are habituated to this, they are in a behavioural trap of their own making. They need to breed for the levy to keep something very very bad kept away, but to be able to sustain a population you also need to make sure the world doesn’t go further down the drain so you can’t keep stacking on dragon metamorphosis levels. It would seem in the materials there are both Hamanu and Nibenay seem to grasp this.
I’d argue Borys does as well which is why Ur-Draxa is the way it is, and also why oftentimes you see him just use his psionic powers or his physical combat prowess and not defilement.
As for big D (Dregoth), that’s another story, as he drank the Deific Cool-Aid by travelling the planes. He’d risk everything for worship and becoming a deity, knowing full well that if all else fails he can get onto a spaceship to Sigil. Come to think of it, Dregoth is Bezos, a disaster-capitalist megalomaniac ruler of epic proportions.
And I presume many people simply do not like the tipped scales or the upset stalemate that happens when the Dragon (and a couple of SK/SQ) is off the table. Then you get a new dynamic.
I think too much emphasis is given to the champions and the cleansing wars. Just within the known official parts of the known world there are plenty of better (environmentally) area where the cities could be placed or new ones established. The Levy, Dragon, Champion and all that extraneous information should fade deep into the backdrop, as none of it makes sense from mathematical or practical reasons. I recommend using it for the occasional fluff, but steer away if you can.
That the Tyr Region is the last vestige of civilization on Athas is the opinion of the Wanderer (who admits to some of his information being erroneous and misleading).
I assume the world is earth-sized - with this assumption if you used the 70/30 water to land ration, most of Athas is silt seas. We can assume it has poles - those poles will have ice (more likely on occasion and perhaps some of it is permanent. - think something like Mars poles) We can also assume that their is still a fairly large body(ies) of water somewhere that is producing the occasional rains and allows that moisture carried by Athas’ jet streams to sustain the Forest ridge as well as the forest to the east of the sea of silt (which we only see the tip).
Given the prevalence of teleportation magic and psionics possibilities it would not be far-fetched to think that there are extant areas throughout the world that have cities. Either settled by the members of the Tyr region or just plain survived the cataclysm that made Athas what it is today.
More than ever, if WOTC republishes Dark Sun I hope they use an entirely different land area (may be east of the silt sea) that just barely touches on the western parts of the original setting.
This here. This has been my stance since the setting was released. If Dark Sun had ever gotten as big as Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk… we would have seen larger scale development and a grander world scope.
I’ve been formulating an idea of where on the globe the Tyr region sits. It has to do with the Athasian idea of High Sun and Low Sun. I’m working on a post for my blog and will have it up in a few days.
Think of it this way, Tyr has to be located far enough away from the equator that the idea of high sun and low sun make sense and is not instead an idea of “north sun” and “south sun”. Which would happen if things were located at the equator.
I would place the events north of what is the equivalent of the Tropic of Cancer. (Though an argument could be made for south of the equivalent of the Tropic of Capricorn) But perhaps the PT is far enough south to be at least at the Tropic line so it gets direct sunlight overhead at high sun.
I like it as a world building explanation too. Of course if the Tablelands sit outside the tropics then imagine how brutal the Tropics and Equatorial region themselves might be? A good and coherent explanation for a relatively “empty” world.
If you wanted to assume that thousands of miles away, beyond your other tropic, there’s another relatively-hospitable region then you could imagine that the vast boiling Equator is itself the primary barrier between these different regions.
Does anyone with a climate or meteorological perspective have an idea of what equatorial and polar climates might be like if you assume the Tablelands (“100 degrees by midmorning, 110 at noon, 130-sometimes even 150-by late afternoon”) are located in a temperate or subtropical zone?
