The Burnt World of Athas

The official Dark Sun website

Articles

Fruitful Narratives: Using In-Game Lore vs. Real World Analogues

In the Dark Sun Facebook group there was a conversation in the comments of a post about using an orange as a fruit versus using a faro fruit. In world-building there should be a balance between utilizing unique in-game lore, like the faro fruit, and integrating real-world analogues, such as an orange.

[Repost] Dark Sun out of Development

In today’s design repost, Rodney Thompson announces that development on Dark Sun 4e has finished. He talks of his love of the original setting, gives us some idea of what we can expect: A return to the pre-Prism Pentad days.

[Repost] Dark Sun dragonborn

Another repost article from Richard Baker. This one talks about using Dragonborn in Dark Sun 4e, and the Athasian twist placed on the core race.

Like most of Rich’s articles, he talks about several different subjects in the original, and we’ve edited this down to just the DS content. You can find the original in the internet archives.

Dark Sun Sprint

A repost of the DS4 design posts. Rich teases a bit about how the core PHB material will remain more relevant than in earlier DS editions.

Rich has a pattern of addressing several topics in his blog postings. We’ve elided the non-DS specific content from this one. The original can be found in the internet archive.

Deserts of Athas

This is part of a series of reposted blog articles from designers of Dark Sun 4th edition. These articles have been scattered through various reorganizations on Wizards’ site, and are now hard to find, or have vanished completely. We are collecting them here with permission from the authors.

Today’s entry comes from Rich Baker, and was originally posted on a Wizards Community blog. It’s since been swallowed by the dunes, but the web archive can be seen here.

Fun in the Sun

This is the first of a series of reposted blog articles from designers of Dark Sun 4th edition. These articles have been scattered through various reorganizations on Wizards’ site, and are now hard to find, or have vanished completely. We are collecting them here with permission from the authors.

This article was originally posted by Rodney Thompson, September 14, 2009. You can find the original here.

Digital Dark Sun: History of Athas Online

The history of Athas is long and often lost to the sands of time. Similarly, the history of the Dark Sun setting’s online presence is sometimes obscured. From the birth of the setting in 1991Dark Sun has had a continuous story.

Heroes of the Elemental Chaos as a Dark Sun supplement

Rather than give a general review of the supplement (which can be found in numerous places online), let’s go over what the Dark Sun centric player and DM would be interested and show that “Heroes of the Elemental Chaos” is worthy of being called a Dark Sun supplement even if it’s not advertised as such.

Death Mark novel review

A review of Robert J. Schwalb’s first novel Death Mark