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Loved Dark Sun! And I do miss it. As far as the Thi-Kreen - we had a player create one and he took languages to understand the party but they couldn't speak his language and so another player took Thi-Kreen as a language to talk back and forth or to others who didn't speak Common. By taking the language, everyone was asking how he 'spoke' the language so they explained it as a set of bones/chitin pieces that he would clank together to mimic the proper sounds for the language since it was an insect-like clicking noise. He literally couldn't speak Thi-Kreen unless both hands were empty and he had his 'kit' (but he could still understand and relay). And since the Thi-Kreen could understand common - conversation wasn't halted ... just had to be filtered through the 1 guy if the Thi-Kreen wanted to talk to the group.

For me, Dark Sun was D&D. First official setting I played, and it was insane. I played a silly vanilla homebrew before that, as a young kid, and it was goofy. Dark sun was hardcore. Create a character tree, and see how long you could survive. Tomb of horrors on a global scale. As the current joke goes, dark sun is the dark souls of d&d. The characters in dark sun sucked me in. Psionics blew me away. It was like a blend of ancient historic mythology, conan and a bit of mad max. The monsters were terrifying! The anakore ambushes, carnivorous cacti, dehydrated undead, the freaking so-ut, silt horror and the nightmare beast! The dragon kings were also insane. Life force leeching mages that left nothing but defiled ash. The power of these beings were impressive. The Avangion was an interesting concept that I couldn't truly appreciate until I was older, running my own game. Gladiator sports were a big part of my first experience and it was a blast. There is just too much to put in this comment. The sea of silt, the warbringer, the dragon of tyr, feral halflings hanging people on trees, slave tribes, raiding tribes, claustrophobic elves, elf eating mantis people, elemental clerics. The lore of athas is the best. I'm hoping I can find a skilled artist to create some 3d print files for me, of athasian creatures like kanks, etc. There has always been a serious lack of miniature support for dark sun. Unpainted miniatures helps a lot, as dark sun color schemes go a long way, but I'd love to have genuine athas miniatures. The dwarves are a real problem. Lol

@AAron-gr3jk

2 жыл бұрын

This guy get dark sun. So envious you got to experience this early on. I found the PC game at 12 and that cover art became the central point of my obsession for several months. Dark Sun was just an overload of cool for teenage me

@MasterGhostf

2 жыл бұрын

@@AAron-gr3jk I really want to play a dark sun campaign, its so intriguing and interesting.

Oh hell yeah, I forgot that halflings basically devolved into cannibal marauders. I'm appreciative of you guys keeping your old videos up for sure. Some of them I keep in various playlists for when I want to get inspired or reminded of something. For example, your Monstrous PC video helped me stop worrying about game balance and let my players do cool stuff. I agree with you Dave, Gnolls are probably the one I'd go for.

I loved the twist on magic in Dark Sun, it was IMO was the most game changing point even over the races.

@gears5665

7 жыл бұрын

that's right....some magic was easier but destroyed the land when cast, that was interesting

There were also the early Dragonborn PC race called the Dray introduced as minions of Dregoth the undead Sorcerer-King.

Fourth Edition actually introduced the Dray--who were kind of like Dragon-born, brought in races like the Eladrin and the Genasi, and they made a whole lot of optional Dark Sun original races, as well: darksun.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Race Personally, I also included the Gith as a playable race, too, and I broadened the Thri-Kreen, to include the bunch of "Tohr-Kreen" sub-species, that were also introduced into Dark Sun. Dark Sun is still my very favorite Dungeons & Dragons setting, and the diversity of it, and what can be done with it, is truly astounding. It should ABSOLUTELY be a featured part of 5th Edition!

Never played Dark Sun. Always wanted too. I thrive in gritty settings because I love the challenge. And Ted, I do believe it is "Mule". Note that they are used like Mules (beasts of burden) and are sterile cross breeds like Mules. It's likely just a case of "Yeah, but we spell it WITHOUT the silent E"

@syrrix

7 жыл бұрын

one of the core books states that mule pronunciation is considered derogatory and that most folks would use mul, like how ted said it.

The Ivory Triangle is a great box set. It's a shame you've never opened it.

I miss my Dark Sun half giant with his randomly rolled secondary psionics.

the pinnacle of TSR and AD&D, hands down! nothing came close to, and nothing again will ever come close! my fondest memories playing AD&D before the dark times before the coming of wizards and farming for feats

@williamlee7482

3 жыл бұрын

Feats made it feel far to much like you were playing an mmo instead of playing D&D and 4th edition d&d took it all the way to being a tabletop mmo with all its at will powers , encounter powers and daily powers . Now d&d holds the players hands making sure no matter what they do it's hard for them to die because of resting for 8 hours to gain all their hp's back and the 3 saves vs death when at zero hp's . We never had murder hobos when I played 2nd edition AD&D because no DM would let players get away with it without getting killed at some point

This is my favorite setting. I have never played in it as a player, but I have ran it with both 2nd and 3.5 rules. Got my first TPK with the adventure in the revised box set, lol. Great stuff.

I played a half-giant gladiator. He was cool sense he could displace himself. He had a strength of 21, in AD&D 2e. That was massively strong! I don't like what WotC did to the half-giant. They made it medium sized. If the half-ogre can be large than so should the half-giants, ogres are giants after all. It make no sense to turn the half-giants into medium sized creatures.

I played a halfling thief (Darksun was before they changed the class to Rogue) I also played a Mul Gladiator who was broken out of slavery, and became indebted to the party, thus he enslaved himself to them as well. I said he was not able to handle freedom, like a prisoner in jail who gets paroled and then commits a crime to get thrown back in where he understands the social structure. He's never known freedom, so he has no understanding of how it works. My halfling on the other hand was fed up with the scraps his guild would leave him, he wanted to build a better mousetrap, so I worked my way up to level 8 and then started to build a following of thieves and assassins and others who felt as I did, and we formed a gang. For a hideout we found a group of underground caverns that interlocked beneath the city streets. There we became the guild, we were known as 'The Sand Shadows', able to slip through your fingers if caught, and though you see us in the distance out in the sun, when you approach, there's no sign we were ever there. My DM allowed me to build the guild within the same city as his main storyline, I had the feeling thee was a spy inside my guild and that we were building to a guild war with the older and bigger guild, but the group fell apart before that ever occurred.

Loved playing Dark Sun! A world so dangerous you not only had to start at 3rd level but was highly recommended to make two characters because one will most likely die in the first session. We were given premade characters and joined into a midlevel game starting at 5th level. I played a human bard nwith that crazy deadly poison ability, and a half - giant gladiator that died killing a bunch of Tareks. But my bard was tasked to negotiate trade deals and let's say what I got and what the house got was not the same lol

@williamlee7482

3 жыл бұрын

It was a character tree of 4 characters that you had to make . I made a brother and sister , a friend of theirs and cousin who was a half elf . The brother was a human preserver , the sister was a human psionisist , the friend was a Halfling ranger and the half elf cousin was a druid of water . They were my first character tree , when the brother died to a klar he was replaced with the brothers childhood friend who was a half elf psionisist/preserver that was part of his secret order in Tyr . My 2nd character tree included a mul gladiator , a elf ranger/druid , a Thri-kreen cleric of earth and a human thief . I played the elf ranger/druid the most and the min gladiator the lest . When I Dm'ed I used to play hexcrawl a lot where the players wandered around on their way to some specific location and on the way they would find other things such as ruined castles , towers and caverns . One cavern the players found while escaping a scorching rainstorm lead to a ruined underground city of aincent dwarven make that had a large lake in the middle that was infested with mutant fish of all types such as weird squid/fish that were 10 feet long and electric flying carnivorous fish . The ruins were filled with undead dwarves of all types from zombies to mummies . The party almost died and had to flee back out into the wastelands to get away . They did come back with about 20 members of the bloodmoons slave tribe to try and clear out the city but only managed to clear 1/4th of it securing the area from the undead which allowed the slave tribe to set up inside and eventually get rid of the undead after awhile . It became the players base if operations and there were tunnels that lead deeper underground that they explored a little . They never did get to find out what was deeper underground due to 3 players having to move because their family being station around the country and over in Europe . Their fathers were Navy or Marines out of Norfolk Virginia

I'd always imagined the Arakrokra as more of the raven/crow type scavengers than buzzards or other birds of prey

Always saw them as more Grasshopper people since the +30 to jump.

I'm currently working on making a Darksun campaign setting: working on the Racial traits atm. After reading alot of source material, I found that Darksun doesn't work well for the Multitude of Class options that most Players are used too. After reading through all the Unearthed Arcana class options i had a restrictive list of about 13 (counting each Character tree separately) which might explain why WOTC is so reluctant to make a campaign setting

Dark sun is my favorite setting, Athasian elves are the best elves of any setting. we used to say dark sun is dungeons and Dragon. singular cuz there was only borys.

I never played a tabletop Dark Sun campaign, though my best friend and I discussed it in the late 90s. The idea of running a Thri-Kreen warrior, whirling blades of death, seemed cool as hell. The setting's spartan nature also seemed interesting, especially compared to the generally well-mapped areas of Toril. I've since gone back through and started a playthrough of the old AD&D Dark Sun game on PC. Those titles and others are available through GOG, which is pretty frickin' great...and you don't need the cheat sheet to open them anymore :)

DMing Dark Sun right now. In PF, sorry 5e, not enough psionics support.

I really dug the Dark Sun campaign setting. One of my favorite characters was a Thri-kreen fighter by the name of "Singe" (I named him after the dragon in the Dragon's Lair video game).

I did play and DM Dark Sun. Lore was good, psionics were good (disintegrate was overpowered), different takes on halflings were good, thri-kreen were interesting. I think there was a video game or two in Dark Sun. Only had/read 3 of the sets/books in front of you. The sorceror kings were most interesting to me. The gladiator class was also cool. As a DM, I felt the setting didn't give me enough hooks to start adventures with (compared to others). The world was too harsh for most players to live through 2 sessions without DM tweaks.

Mule's a great race choice for dark sun takes the good points from both races :D

I'm with Ted, I love the beautiful eagle Aarakocra, but the ugly buzzard ones from Dark Sun I would never play! they look disgusting lol.

@Daredhnu

4 жыл бұрын

pretty sure that's the point though, everything in Dark Sun is off putting, everything is dirty and ugly, it is an ugly dying world.

I look forward to seeing the Avangion in 5E ...

My current campaign character is from Dark Sun. His story has him interacting with the lone dragon of the land, him bestowing a magical set of twin obsidian daggers that can be indefinitely enchanted by ancient runes. I almost lost one last campaign. 0_o

Never got around playing it in P&P format. It was kinda before and after my time, sorta. It was the reason i bought 4th. Well that and the redone Tomb of Horrors campaign setting. I'd love seeing it for 5th, i absolutely consider transitioning 2nd and 4th material into 5th.

By far my fav 2nd ed setting, big fan of the MUL, only got to play a few games though.

Thri-Kreen stops chaffing.

Looking beast Dave! :D

i don't think i ever played a game in the Dark Sun Setting but i do remember playing a Dark Sun Elf in a Ravenloft game once, it was fun, i eventually died to a mutated brain fungus.i really want to play a campaign in Dark Sun though.

is there a link that you could ad to this im running a similar setting

Loved the Thri-Kreen, the rp alone with them was just great. Like how they didn't sleep and younger ones not use to the other races would actually find it highly annoying and a waste of time which would eventually evolve into a curiousity once they came to accept it. Nothing like waking up to a giant bug inches from your face because he was curious and studying you sleeping. Would love to see warforged added. Maybe created during the Purging as disposable soldiers and the ones found now are either ancient npc's or pc's could be ones that shut down till stumbled upon or were still in incubation like tanks never released/used found in some ruins thousands of years later and getting accidently reactivated, ect. Wouldn't be the first time things have been retconned and this wouldn't be a huge thing.

@williamlee7482

3 жыл бұрын

Athas being a metal poor planet and metal being worth it's weight in gold ( which was quite rare ) warforged just wouldn't fit in with the concept of what dark sun was about and any warforged found would become scrap metal confiscated by Templars for the sorcerer kings and queens personal use

I really hope they release a Dark Sun module for 5e :)

I am making a campaign on this based on this setting. Should I use all editions from dark sun for this as source material? I want to include many of the new races however the material varies for each edition. I am working on converting to 5th edition base rules. Really interested in some advice on how to achieve this in a balanced way.

I did play an halfling diplomate once in the dark sun it was kind of funny because I used cantrip a lot mainly to change food appearance and flavor I was really popular with those who like sentient meat. Even changing wine into blood and warming it for a vampire once

hmm, did you change the camera? Image looks good.

they actually made a Dark Sun Campaign Setting book for 4th Edition, looking at it now it would be alot easier to convert to 5th than using the old Dark Sun.

@AAron-gr3jk

2 жыл бұрын

4e will help you understand the important points of the setting really well. You won't regret those books even if you'd otherwise avoid 4e. Also note: the dark sun boxed set is available from print on demand for that original flavour.

A Mul is a slave in the same way that cats are our pets. Shelter, food, attention and preferred status over and beyond what is permissible to other pets. A cat may scratch its owner from time to time and it is tolerated. Same with Muls. A house cat is a ferocious but pampered predator species. Same with Muls. And like a cat, the Mul will never respect its owner, and constantly try to them them to open the door to go play outside.

I am with you on the pronunciation of Mul. I love Dark Sun. I have been DMing a Dark Sun game for the last 27 years. Thought you guys might be interested in a product I am working on for Dark Sun. Its called The Player's Guide to Balic. Check out this teaser video for more info. It will be free when I release it in August. kzread.info/dash/bejne/n52m2cRqct3Jo7Q.html

Mul! Mul! Mul! 💪

I hope that the races come back in unearthed arcana

the mule a short Goliath

Did you forget Elflings? They were introduced late based on the main character from the novels.

@Nerdarchy

7 жыл бұрын

Alex Bok One was introduced. Nerdarchist Dave

@knighthawk3749

7 жыл бұрын

In one of the later books they had stats for elfling as a PC.

@syrrix

7 жыл бұрын

the novel that introduced the one elfling, was considered non cannon. the only novels considered cannon were the troy denning's prism pentad. no 2nd edition supplement had elflings in it.

i read the desrciption...

Sigh, still waiting

thri kreen have a plus 30 to jump

Mule is the derogatory way of saying it in canon.

If I played an Aarakocra I would just go around screaming, "Bird Man....!"

Hey Guys thank you for Dark Sun video's. So what do you guys think... scratch the psionics and add more magic?

One thing I like about earlier editions of D&D versus the current version is the racial modifiers system with pluses and minuses. Only three races in, and I can already imagine the minuses stats.

If it is spelt "Mul" then it is a M-U-L not a m-yoo-l.

@tomharris5649

7 жыл бұрын

Chad-Solomon Dixon I usually pronounce it "mool."

@360BLK

7 жыл бұрын

Chad-Solomon Dixon I can definitely see why people would call it a mule after reading the description though. Specifically bred labour stock creature that is completely sterile. Sounds exactly like a real life Mule. But Mul sounds cooler.

@Nerdarchy

7 жыл бұрын

Chad-Solomon Dixon Source material lists several pronunciations mule being one of them. Though it's considered derogatory. Nerdarchist Dave

@chaddixon9764

7 жыл бұрын

1K1 that is actually a very good point.

Dark Sun deviated from the feudalistic backdrops of its Tolkienesque pseudo-medieval contemporaries... can anyone explain what this means to me.... i understand JRR like and lived through a history like our own but made up....

Beardless dorf? What travesty is this?!

@Chatedh

7 жыл бұрын

the same one that makes cannibal halfling and awesome elves