The TSR Dark Sun Campaign World

 TSR Dark Sun

 

Back in 1991 TSR released a new campaign setting.  It was totally unlike any they had released before.  The whole feel of the world leant heavily on the artist Brom who produced a lot of the early artwork for it.

The setting was called Dark Sun, and was a metal poor desert world that had had the life leeched out of it by over use of Magic.  It was nothing like the medieval fantasy settings we were used to and came with a new set of Races and Monsters.  There were also new Character Classes that reflected the world.

Dark Sun was a harsh place.  Keeping track of your water became important.  Almost all the flora and fauna was out to eat you and the world was full of ancient towers, ruins and complexes that had been abandoned to the harsh environment centuries ago.

There were several large city states ruled by Immortal Sorcerer Kings and run by their Templars who worshiped them as gods.  There was an uneasy truce between these Sorcerer Kings which allowed commerce to take place across the country.

However there was a Dragon.  The Dragon of Tyr was a large bipedal reptile that was extremely powerful and would occasionally appear and decimate an area.  More about him could be found in the set of Novels they released.

The World

Dark Sun was a Desert world.  It comprised mostly of scrubland and mountains.  There were trees and even some forests, but these were rare places and guarded and often fought over.  There were very few open bodies of water and what there were usually belonged to someone who had a small army to defend them.  Be prepared to pay for your visit.

Instead of oceans there is the Sea of Silt.  Dust so fine it behaved like water.  But it was also blown around by the wind. Boats would not float in it.  Creatures could not swim in it, they just sank to the bottom and choked to death.  The only ways to cross it were on waggons with great wheels, and these could not traverse the great deeps.  Or pay a friendly Giant to carry you across.  Friendly Giants were also few and far between.

The inhabitants

Races had changed and new ones had arisen.  Dwarves were bald and taciturn, Elves were tribal and good runners and could not usually be trusted.  Halflings were feral and cannibalistic. Humans were as in other settings the predominant race.  New races for players were Muls, Half Human and half Dwarf produced in forced breeding programs in the Slave Pits.  Magically created Half Giants, very strong but required a lot of water.  Thri-Kreen were large Mantis like insects who had grown in intellect and now interacted with civilization.  Many of the usual races had gone.  Orcs, Gnomes, Faries etc.

On the monster side of things there were also big changes.  Most of life on Athas, the world of Dark Sun, was insectoid or reptile.  Riding animals were reptiles like Crodlu or Inix or ant-like Kanks.

The big change was the lack of Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Ogres, Trolls and the usual D&D bad guys.  They were replaced by the Gith.  Gith were medium humanoids that lived in the land and bread like Orcs etc, but were a higher level.  Much was revealed about why the usual fantasy races were absent in the Novels produced, and the history of the Gith was revealed on one of the later adventures.

Huge armoured lizards called Mekilots hauled large armoured merchant caravans across the scrubland between the cities and outposts of the region.

Another important feature of the world was that it was cut off from the rest of the TSR Multiverse.  This meant that no Plane Shifting could get you there or you could not travel by Spelljammer to Athas.  Of course this would not stop individual DMs doing just that, but there were to be no official products cross pollenating with other TSR settings.  Of course TSR broke this rule in one of the later adventures.

The Classes

Warrior Classes

Fighters, Rangers and Gladiators.

Gladiators introduced another of the Dark Sun concepts, Slavery.  If you were a slave you had no freedom from your master unless you escaped, then you were always looking over your shoulder in case a City's Templars came for you.

Wizard Classes

Wizards and Illusionists came in two varieties.  Preservers and Defilers.  Preservers were much like normal Wizards but Defilers use of power blighted the land as they cast spells.  They would rise in levels faster as they did not care about the destruction they wrought whereas Preservers took pains not to suck the life essence from the area around them.  However being either was dangerous.  The populace did not trust Wizards and most often when one was discovered they would be put to death.

Priest Classes

Priests had no Gods to worship so they worshipped the elements which granted them a subset of the Priest Spells.  Druids worshipped the spirits of the land. However the new class of Templar worshipped one of the Sorcerer Kings, much like a 5th edition Warlocks pact, that granted them spells from the Sorcerer King.  Also, Templars were the instruments of the Sorcerer kings and enforced the Laws of the City State.

Rogue Classes

Thieves and Bards remained mostly unchanged.

Psionicists

Psionicists were mostly as in the 2nd Edition Psionics Handbook.

But in a unique twist, all intelligent life on Athas was in some way Psionic.  If you were not a Psionicist, then you rolled on the Wild Talent table.  This meant that everyone has a Psionic ability, even intelligent Monsters.

Money

Money in Dark Sun was based on the Ceramic Piece.  These were made of pottery and could be split into 10 Bits.  There was Gold and Silver in limited quantities and so there were Gold and Silver pieces.

Prices for equipment were converted from the Players Handbook into Ceramic Pieces at a rate of 1 Gold Piece = 1 Ceramic Piece for non metal items.  Metal items were converted at 1 Gold Piece = 1 Gold Piece.  So a metal longsword costing 15gp in the Forgotten Realms would cost 15gp in Dark Sun which was actually 1,500gp equivalence.

Normal Metal items were available in Wood, Bone or Stone/Obsidian at much lower prices but were less effective and could break when used.  This had the effect of reducing everyone's armour class but also reducing the damage caused by weapons.

Adventuring

Adventuring was a lot more daunting.  A water supply was always in their minds and nobody else was to be trusted.  The areas far from the City States were usually overrun by brigands and tribes of escaped slaves.  Merchants built huge wagons like mobile fortresses and used armoured lizards called Mekilots to pull them.  Wearing metal armour in the heat of the sun was almost suicidal, as was flaunting a metal weapon in the seedy City States Markets.

Players created their characters at 3rd level to give them a chance of survival.  They also created 4 characters in what was called a Character Tree.  They could use any one character in an adventure and when a character levelled up, one of the other characters in the Tree also levelled up.  This was done so that if a Player lost a Character they could swap in one of their others and continue playing.  Then they could create a new character later to add to their tree.

Support

The basic boxed set was followed up with Adventures, Expansions detailing more of the World and a set of novels, which in good old TSR fashion messed up the background supplied in the basic boxed set.  They also revealed the History of Genocide of many of the normal fantasy races.

The adventures tried out a format not seen since The Tomb of Horrors back in the early days of the TSR module adventures.  Each adventure was presented in a couple of Flip Books.  One for the DM and one for the Players.  In the Dungeon Masters book were the maps, narrative and stats and the Players Books had pictures of what the party could see.  The DM's book told the DM what pictures to show the players and when.

The first few adventures followed the events in the Novels but then diverged.  

A hardback supplement was produced that explained about Dragons and the Dragon of Tyr and their counterparts called Avangions.

One of the later adventures detailed the origin of the Gith race and brought in their originator races from other TSR worlds, which broke their "you can't get to Dark Sun from any existing TSR worlds" rule.

Ral Partha Released a range of figures to accompany the setting which were totally unlike any they had ever produced.

Revamp

In 1995 the setting was re-vamped when the second edition Boxed set came out.  The maps were extended to the North, South and West.  The East had already been revealed in the supplement The Valley of Dust and Fire which explained what had happened in the Novels.

Even the Logo and branding of the world was changed.

The new setting was based after the events in the Novels and some of the complexities of the original setting were toned down.  This led to people feeling that it had been softened and was no longer the harsh Dark Sun it had started out as.

3rd and 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons

When 3rd Edition D&D hit the streets Dark Sun conversion processes were printed in Dungeon and Dragon magazines.  This further watered down the setting and brought it more into line with desert adventures in the Forgotten Realms.

A Settings book was produced for 4th edition to allow it to be run under those rules.

5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons

Sadly, nothing was produced for 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons.  One of the many reasons for this was probably that Psionics had been removed from 5th Edition as a Spellcasting Sphere and as Dark Sun relied heavily on Psionics it would take a lot of work to recreate it.

Finally TSR announced that there would not be a 5th edition Dark Sun version due to the setting not meeting TSRs Ethical and Inclusion Standards.  

A lot of people took that to mean they could not portray Slavery in the way it was inherent to the Dark Sun world.  But there was also the Genocide mentioned in the history with many of the perpetrators being still alive in the setting.  Or even the forced breeding programs amongst the slave populations which borders on Eugenics.

Anyway, TSR could not figure out a way to produce Dark Sun that would not harm their brand.

Home Brew Versions

But the Dark Sun fanatics will not be silenced.  Search around on the internet and you will find several home-brew Dark Sun 5th Edition conversions.  Some are better than others.  Some re-create Psionics and others just add new spells and give the Psionicist no Verbal, Somatic or Material components.

If you want to play Dark Sun then Use the old 2nd Edition D&D Rules with the First Boxed set, or if 5th Edition is your bag, then look at what's on offer and create your own conversion from scratch or from bits you like from other conversions available.

Dark Sun was one of the most innovative and exciting settings to ever be published by TSR.  It took most of the usual fantasy tropes and threw them in the bin.  You could not know what to expect from a Dark Sun adventure or campaign.  It is a shame that it has fallen from the product line but it would take a lot of hard work to retcon the bad bits out without totally destroying the flavour of the setting.  And replacing Psionics as a game mechanic would also be hard.  Not Impossible, just hard.