Ah! Hello there. Grak! Be a good boy, and inform the Overcouncil that
we have visitors. Quickly now, you can finish your sweetmeats when you get
back.
You'll have to forgive him, he's a bit slow. Good help has been
impossible to find since Tithian freed all of our slaves. Now then, what is
it I can do for you?
Dark Sun is a campaign setting for the
Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game.
Set on the desert world of Athas, Dark Sun
is about the struggle for survival.
Nine city-states cling to life in the Tablelands. Until recently, they
were ruled by powerful Sorcerer-Kings, both tyrants and protectors. Now,
only five remain; the other cities are cast into chaos and violent strife.
Soon, the desert may swallow them, as it has so many times before. The
wastes are riddled with the ruins of cities long dead.
It is a world where magic drains the very essence of life. Ancient wars
have left vast swaths of the planet sterile; even now, druids fight a losing
battle to preserve the environment. To practice magic is to tempt death at
the hands of the mob, yet the cities themselves are ruled by the most
powerful of defilers.
Originally released in 1991 by TSR for the 2nd edition of AD&D,
Athas.org has been the steward of the Dark Sun campaign setting since the
release of D&D 3rd edition in 2000. In that time, we have released
updated core rules, two
monster
manuals,
numerous setting supplements, such as
City State of Draj and
Wisdom of the Drylanders,
and the epic adventure
Dregoth Ascending.
You can see a list of all of our products
here
Announcements
Just in case you missed it we've added Blood Sand Arena to the products catalog along with a link to download it from Wizards of the Coast
The fires of the crimson sun burn hot as your group of vagabonds band together to face intrigue, betrayal, and the beasts of Bloodsand Arena. Can your group survive and earn glory in the world of Dark Sun?
This Dungeons & Dragons adventure folio, created for Free RPG Day 2010, previews the Dark Sun setting, available in August 2010. Bloodsand Arena is designed for 1st-level characters and contains two short adventures, a double-sided poster map of key encounter areas, and a pack of six pre-generated D&D characters.
Wizards of the Coast has
allowed Baldman Games to distribute their Ashes of Athas convention games to the non-convention crowd. You'll be able to sign up to receive the chapters over at Baldman's site.
Some important information from their announcements page:
- No one (not even us) can host the adventure files anywhere.
- Only the admins and Baldman Games can provide adventures.
- When you e-mail us (or send us a message via these forums), we will send you adventures, one chapter at a time.
- When contacting us, please include your e-mail so we can send you the files and the chapter(s) you need.
- You can run those adventures, or if you are a convention organizer, you can provide them to your DMs for use at the convention.
- You cannot otherwise redistribute or share or post the files anywhere. If you do, this will likely result in Ashes of Athas distribution being closed down!
- Adventures you received from us can be run anywhere you please (home play, stores, conventions, desert caravans...). You can run them multiple times - whenever you please.
- When you request adventures we will provide a link to pregens, maps, and campaign rules.
I suspect that, by having everyone request directly from the source, Wizards is looking to easily gauge the interest in the game; this is a good thing.
Besides D&D & Pathfinder, Dungeon World seems to have gained some traction as a rules set for Dark Sun. You can find Travis Stout's excellent writeup of Dark Sun Classes for Dungeon World, there's also some equipment and useful tags such as Fragile for weapons.
Geneome talks about using Dark Sun with Dungeon World in : Dungeon World Defiling
Ritorix talks about his Green Age of Athas setting design for his PBP Dark Sun Dungeon World game.
On a non Dungeon World, but still Dark Sun note, G+ User Svebor Midzic found a cool article about ancient shark tooth swords that have a definite Dark Sun feel in the Dark Sun G+ Community.
Here's a conversion of the A Little Knowledge intro adventure included in the original 2e Dark Sun boxed set, converted to 3e.
A Little Knowledge 3e Adventure(offsite)
Today on the Going Last podcast, blogger and Ashes of Athas OP author/admin, Teos announced that the complete Ashes of Athas campaign will be available for home play.
Listen to episode 94 of Going Last at about the 52 minute mark for details.
As mentioned in the podcast you can also watch Teos talk to Mike Shea of Sly Floursh in their Looking Back on Dark Sun Organized Play Campaign video on Mike's youtube page.
