Dark Sun: Shattered Lands is still one of my all-time favourite RPGs, but I found Wake of the Ravager to be a great letdown. The animations look incredibly stiff and unnatural, even worse than the sprite animations used in Shattered Lands. The game was also a lot more buggy, although to be fair, I never ran into any of the MAJOR game-breaking bugs in Shattered Lands, so I'm likely being a lot more lenient on it. I absolutely DESPISED the way WotR handled items with on-hit effects too; what they wound up doing was giving such items a very high number of charges (probably 65536), but inevitably the charges would expire if you were fighting a lot of battles and so about halfway or 3/4 into your game, some of your favourite magical weapons would just self-destruct mid-battle and you'd have no idea what happened. It also felt like there was a general dearth of magic item variety too; there were a decent number of magical weapons, but magical armor, shields and wondrous items like cloaks etc. were in EXTREMELY short supply.
The gog version doesn't install to program files, so that wouldn't seem to be the issue, plus I've tried it on linux, too, which doesn't even have a program files directory. Pretty sure I even tried giving my user full permissions on the folder. It never worked in either OS for me. I got a refund on the GOG version a long time ago. Nobody on their forums knew how to fix it either.
Gladiator was such a powerful class for 2nd ed. Proficiency with every single damned weapon, free specialization in brawling and multiple weapon specializations, yes please. Muls were stupidly badass in Dark Sun, too. You could go for days doing heavy labor or running without resting. I had a figher/psionicist Mul that ran for a couple days with a massive barrel of water strapped to his back along with his Thri-Kreen buddy who didn't require sleep. Elves were weird, too, in that they were like 7 feet tall and could run at high speed for days, too. They had shorter life spans on Athas than humans, as well. Such a unique and fun setting.
I'm half tempted to start up a game once my Vampire Sabbat game wraps up if my group decides they want to play it over my other game concepts. The idea's been kicking around in my head for awhile now, I just haven't wanted to convert all the 2nd ed crap over, but this makes it easier. I've never even played pathfinder in tabletop before, but my experience with Kingmaker and the NWN games makes me think I could pull it off. The last edition of D&D I played in tabletop was 2nd Ed, so it's been a long time.
The thing about Athas is that much of the world is unknown to the vast majority of people. Only perhaps the Sorcerer-Kings are well-traveled and old enough to have a good idea about what their world really looks like in total. Nobody could say what happened to most of the worlds water. The water could have seeped underground, into the Underdark. It could also be simply gone, vanished from the face of Athas by too much defiler magic. I do like the idea of vast, seemingly endless underwater caverns, holding remnants of the Blue Age within them, sealed off from the surface for thousands of years.
There still exist natural sources of water on the planet, but those that do are almost always guarded by powerful druids, and only produce drinkable water naturally during one time of the year. The Vanishing Lake of the Tyr region is a good example of the typical remaining water sources on Athas.
Was there even an Underdark in the setting? I don't remember anything about it and the wiki has nothing. There were some underground areas, but I don't recall anything mentioned as that expansive. It could make sense for there to be under ground deposits of water around. If it were filled with water, it'd be a much different place than the underdark in the realms.
Was there even an Underdark in the setting? I don't remember anything about it and the wiki has nothing. There were some underground areas, but I don't recall anything mentioned as that expansive. It could make sense for there to be under ground deposits of water around. If it were filled with water, it'd be a much different place than the underdark in the realms.
An Underdark similar to the one on Toril is never mentioned, just a few subterranean creatures. Much of the world of Athas is ill-defined by design, except for those places that still host civilized life.
Was there even an Underdark in the setting? I don't remember anything about it and the wiki has nothing. There were some underground areas, but I don't recall anything mentioned as that expansive. It could make sense for there to be under ground deposits of water around. If it were filled with water, it'd be a much different place than the underdark in the realms.
On Dark Sun : Wake of The Ravager, you enter in the underdark and is a pretty hard place...
I never know how to feel about computer game lore, but most of it is pretty good and consistent, so i'm inclined to usually consider it canon in any game worlds I host.
An interesting implication of computer game lore is that Hordes of the Underdark introduced a character capable of ending the reign of Asmodeus as well as The Nine Hells as we know them.
Was there even an Underdark in the setting? I don't remember anything about it and the wiki has nothing. There were some underground areas, but I don't recall anything mentioned as that expansive. It could make sense for there to be under ground deposits of water around. If it were filled with water, it'd be a much different place than the underdark in the realms.
On Dark Sun : Wake of The Ravager, you enter in the underdark and is a pretty hard place...
Interesting, I never got to play it so I missed out on it.
Only one person in my gaming group was into the Dark Sun idea, so it'll probably be one of my other white wolf stories we wind up playing when our current game wraps up. A shame, since I've had the idea kicking around in my head forever, but the 3 other story ideas seem more fun anyways.
I think the question of what happened to the water on Athas was deliberately left vague so DMs could fill in the blanks themselves. Given what we know of modern weather patterns though, it's unlikely that the water is still floating around in the atmosphere somewhere. (That would make Athas a lot more humid and muggy, which is unlike what's described in the novels and adventures.) So, personally I think the two most likely scenarios are a) most of the planet's water drained into the Athasian equivalent of the Underdark (a scenario that's sorta supported by Wake of the Ravager, as you run into illithids there and illithids need to keep their skin quite moist, something that would be impossible in a dry Underdark), or b) the water simply vanished, slowly destroyed either over eons as part of defiler magic or perhaps due to some great epic defiler spell that utterly warped the world as Athasians knew it.
As a DM, I personally favour the second explanation, but I think there's promise in hinting to players that there still exists vast reservoirs of water deep underground, enough that, were they to come up with some way of bringing it back to the surface, it could at least make life a lot more comfortable for the people of Athas, if perhaps not restore the world back to what it once was. (Although the presence of the Cerulean Storm in the Sea of Silt might, over thousands of years, do just that.)
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Gladiator was such a powerful class for 2nd ed. Proficiency with every single damned weapon, free specialization in brawling and multiple weapon specializations, yes please. Muls were stupidly badass in Dark Sun, too. You could go for days doing heavy labor or running without resting. I had a figher/psionicist Mul that ran for a couple days with a massive barrel of water strapped to his back along with his Thri-Kreen buddy who didn't require sleep. Elves were weird, too, in that they were like 7 feet tall and could run at high speed for days, too. They had shorter life spans on Athas than humans, as well. Such a unique and fun setting.
https://paizo.com/campaigns/DarkSunPathfinderEdition
I'm half tempted to start up a game once my Vampire Sabbat game wraps up if my group decides they want to play it over my other game concepts. The idea's been kicking around in my head for awhile now, I just haven't wanted to convert all the 2nd ed crap over, but this makes it easier. I've never even played pathfinder in tabletop before, but my experience with Kingmaker and the NWN games makes me think I could pull it off. The last edition of D&D I played in tabletop was 2nd Ed, so it's been a long time.
There still exist natural sources of water on the planet, but those that do are almost always guarded by powerful druids, and only produce drinkable water naturally during one time of the year. The Vanishing Lake of the Tyr region is a good example of the typical remaining water sources on Athas.
https://darksun.fandom.com/wiki/Vanishing_Lake
An Underdark similar to the one on Toril is never mentioned, just a few subterranean creatures. Much of the world of Athas is ill-defined by design, except for those places that still host civilized life.
On Dark Sun : Wake of The Ravager, you enter in the underdark and is a pretty hard place...
An interesting implication of computer game lore is that Hordes of the Underdark introduced a character capable of ending the reign of Asmodeus as well as The Nine Hells as we know them.
Interesting, I never got to play it so I missed out on it.
Only one person in my gaming group was into the Dark Sun idea, so it'll probably be one of my other white wolf stories we wind up playing when our current game wraps up. A shame, since I've had the idea kicking around in my head forever, but the 3 other story ideas seem more fun anyways.
As a DM, I personally favour the second explanation, but I think there's promise in hinting to players that there still exists vast reservoirs of water deep underground, enough that, were they to come up with some way of bringing it back to the surface, it could at least make life a lot more comfortable for the people of Athas, if perhaps not restore the world back to what it once was. (Although the presence of the Cerulean Storm in the Sea of Silt might, over thousands of years, do just that.)