The Burnt World of Athas

The official Dark Sun website

Thank you, Bill Slavicsek

It seems that Bill Slavicsek is leaving Wizards of the Coast.

Thank you, Bill, for the long years you’ve worked on this hobby we love, and particularly for your work on this blasted little world called Athas. We wish you luck in your future endeavors.

Ashes of Athas available for local play

The living campaign Ashes of Athas is expanding it’s play base beyond the larger conventions. They have a signup page where you can request a copy of the adventures to run in registered play at your local gaming store, or even with your usual gaming group.

More info and a signup form here.

Interview on the Dragonlance Canticle

About two weeks ago, I spent some time talking with Tristan and Trampus (a.k.a. Dragonhelm) of the Dragonlance Nexus, talking about our favorite wasteland. The first of 4 (! Okay, so I spent a lot of time talking with them…) parts of the interview is up at the Dragonlance Canticle . My segment starts around 24 minutes in.

Ashes of Athas

Got the following broadcast from an old friend on the DS Mailing List, Teos. Figured I’d repost it here:

Fans of Dark Sun should check out the Ashes of Athas shared campaign that will be starting at the D&D XP convention January 27-30, 2011.

You can learn more here: http://www.baldmangames.com/aoamain (the page will be updated as we get closer to the convention).

All the best, and I hope to see many of you at D&D XP!

Arena revived

So, I finally managed to get around to getting the arena back online. It’s the same codebase that was there previously, though I’m going to be doing some work on modernizing it as time allows.

The link is back, but the DNS changes may take a day or so to propogate; if you cant’t get there yet, you will soon.

Back online

After a series of unfortunate server outages due to a compromised web server, we’re finally back up online, albeit in a somewhat diminished capacity. I’ve got most sections of the site back and recovered, but there are some older feedback type areas of the site – which were generally swamped by spam – that I’ve disabled during the course of cleaning out the system.

I’ve also yet to re-enable the arena, and I am, to be honest, uncertain as to wether or not I am going to do so. As I mentioned on the wizard’s forum I’m uncertain as to wether or not I’m going to go to the extent of reviving them. That forum thread is probably the best place to give feedback, although you can also email me if you feel strongly about it.

Dark Sun 4

This is old news by now, as Dark Sun 4 has been out for about three weeks now, depending on whether or not you have access to a Friendly Local Gaming Store.

I’ve been rather mum on the topic of Dark Sun 4, in part because I was under an NDA, and didn’t want to risk breaking it; I received an early review copy in December.

We’re not dead, here at athas.org, but we are working out what our place in the new ecosystem is. I’ve been working away at some of the backend of the site, bringing the framework up to date with the latest release (and making the mistake of tracking the fast-changing beta) and tinkering with some more collaborative features, trying to balance between external input and spam.

If nothing else, we want to be the place where the community can share adventures, plot hooks, monster builds, new locations and such with a permanent home that’s not a forum post; keep your eyes open.

Podcast Interview, part 2

Aaaaand, part 2 is up. here. Actually, it’s been up for over a month, and I just failed to notice, and thus announce…

Podcast Interview (part 1)

A few months ago, I was interviewed by our friends over at the Dragonlance Nexus about Dark Sun and 4th edition. The conversation went on a bit long; I recall being on the phone with them for well over an hour, so they’ve split the interview into two parts.

You can find the first part here. I’m told the second part will be posted in about a month.