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So I started a Dark Sun game last year and got like 4 or 5 sessions in before some RL poo poo crippled my ability/will to run the game. It's been on hiatus ever since but now that things have calmed down I'm in the process of getting it restarted. I'm a big fan of using background music as an aid to atmosphere and while I didn't get a chance to do so in my first few sessions I'd like to now that I'm planning a resumption, especially since now I have a tablet (with keyboard and portable speaker) to aid me in general DMery. What I'm looking for is suggestions for music that would fit well in Dark Sun. Stuff that's Middle Eastern-themed obviously works well, but equally as much I'm going for kind of an Old West vibe. I'm trying to draw from as many varied sources as possible so I don't end up in a rut of just playing back a game/movie/television soundtrack, plus I'd like to classify music for a couple of different scenarios, like battle, travelling, city, tense/exploration, etc. Some stuff I've set aside so far as definite possibilities include: Games - Diablo 2 (Act 2 stuff obviously, but more besides), Borderlands/Borderlands 2 (I love this track), World of Warcraft (esp. Zul'Drak, Zangarmarsh, and Ahn'Qiraj), maybe Fallout: New Vegas Movies - Black Hawk Down, Gladiator (may skip this, easily recognizable as it is), Ravenous, The 13th Warrior Television - Deadwood maybe, ??? Regular old music - ??? Any other suggestions?
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Mar 22, 2013 19:04
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Check out the soundtracks from Apocalypto, Conan the Barbarian, Dune, Game of Thrones (Essos and Quarth themes), John Carter, and Kingdom of Heaven (Jerusalem/Holy Land themes).
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Mar 22, 2013 19:11
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I always thought that Infected Mushroom - Heavyweight was an excellent fight song. It doesn't really have an eastern or western theme, but feels more techno-future to me. Really guitar heavy, and a long song, so you could probably get a good chunk of combat done while it is played in the background. It might not be what you're looking for though. Beck fits a lot of the weird western vibe you're poking at, specifically the song Farewell Ride. I always thought this would be the ultimate song to ride out to the last battle with. You know that somebody's going to boot hill, and it might not just be them. A good chunk of his catalog has the same weird western vibe, and a lot of the time the lyrics are half-gibberish, so you don't have an issue with the song taking a focal point.
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Mar 22, 2013 20:11
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I'm using a lot of reenactment or traditional music with my group, anything from ancient roman muzak to taiko drumming! If your group travels a lot, then giving each city state or region its own soundtrack can be very evoking. A few examples: One - Two - Three - Four.
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Mar 22, 2013 20:32
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Conan the Barbarian is a must. For a while, I was putting it on any time snow or rain made traffic grind to a halt.
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Mar 22, 2013 21:19
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Scribes of Kur by Melechesh would be good. Depending on how frantic you like your music to be, you might consider A Hawk and a Hacksaw too.
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Mar 22, 2013 22:30
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Karl Sanders (of Nile fame) did two solo albums, Saurian Exorcism and Saurian Meditation. Both fit Dark Sun exceedingly well, especially Awaiting the Vultures and Luring the Doom Serpent.
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Mar 23, 2013 02:23
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Awesome guys, thanks for all the recommendations!
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Mar 23, 2013 05:29
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Grab some Tuareg blues. You'll be glad you did, the genre's amazing. Bombino (real name Omara Moctar) does some extremely polished work and is actually coming out with an album in early April. Tinariwen has been around for loving decades and tends to make a by-the-campfire sort of sound. Unfortunately I'm not sure what to prioritize beyond their most recent album (Tassili), but you can probably make a guess based on the campaign's needs. Beyond those two, I don't know. I only happen to own Agadez (by Bombino) and Tassili, so I've got some exploring of my own to do. Poke around and see what you like, really!
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Mar 23, 2013 06:21
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Man with Harmonica from Once Upon a Time in the West by Ennio Morricone. Emphasizes lonelyness and would also be great background for a gladiator grudge match.
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Mar 23, 2013 14:07
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So... Advice about the adventure, "Dragon's Crown"?
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Jun 25, 2013 03:51
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dwarf74 posted:So... Advice about the adventure, "Dragon's Crown"? Come up with an item or reason for why any PC thri-kreen aren't driven mad by the Psionatrix. Plant it early so it isn't such an obvious fix to a terrible plot point. If you've run the party through the series leading up to it, consider working out a way for the party to save Korgunaard.
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Jun 25, 2013 04:25
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Is there any general primers/info sources on the Land Behind the Winds or the Eladrin for Dark Sun? There's like 0 information out there on them and I'm going to be playing one soon so am looking for something.
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Jun 25, 2013 05:59
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PeterWeller posted:Come up with an item or reason for why any PC thri-kreen aren't driven mad by the Psionatrix. Plant it early so it isn't such an obvious fix to a terrible plot point. If you've run the party through the series leading up to it, consider working out a way for the party to save Korgunaard. I don't have any Kreen in the party, which is just as well, but I'd have made sure not to gently caress them over. I had no qualms about their NPC allies, though. I do have a psion, but a rogue member of the Order psychoported a shard of the Psionatrix to him, being probably the most powerful psion in the region who's not currently part of the Order. Quick background ... the party actually managed to get Korgunard killed during a very-warped version of Arcane Shadows. Desverendi worked to warp him into a Spirit of the Land, and he's currently a big tree in the party's home base (which is the forest from a warped version of Forest Maker; they killed Abalach-Re, and kept her land). Over the course of the campaign, one of the major goals has been to "bring back the old gods" even though that's turning out to be a terrible idea. I'm twisting Pharistes's motivations; instead of the weird and haughty "nobody should use psionics except us," he's a fanatic and wants these gods to win. Screwing over the sorcerer-kings and all the psionic rituals binding the rest of the gods sounds like a good start. Naturally, this will probably end with the party confronting him in the Dragon's Crown mountains, but I've been seriously disappointed at how loving terrible and railroady most of the adventure is. So I guess it's more, "what are the good parts so I can make sure I pick those out and use them?" than anything else. Rosalind posted:Is there any general primers/info sources on the Land Behind the Winds or the Eladrin for Dark Sun? There's like 0 information out there on them and I'm going to be playing one soon so am looking for something. I used it in my game, and it was pretty fun; the whole "this is a more vibrant and awful Athas" was a good break from the normal desert trudgery. dwarf74 fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Jun 25, 2013 |
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Jun 25, 2013 06:20
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dwarf74 posted:Hmmm, got it. I'm kind of twisting and shaping it, and I'm not sure how much will be recognizable by the time I'm done. (Maps, probably.) It's part of an escalating "everything is going to poo poo right now" series of events, leading up to the endgame of the campaign. Ahh, okay. I'm hazy on a lot of the specifics. The only part that really stands out to me is discovering the story of the ghost and his island fortress while messing with the evil squad from Urik. Since Korgunard is already dead, you can cut the halfling part way down and focus on crossing a savannah filled with insane giant bugs as the travel portion of the last act. I would add some variety to the enemies in Dasaraches. IIRC, it's mostly high level psions.
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Jun 25, 2013 06:32
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So this is a thing now: http://www.dragonkingsproject.com Yes that's a dark sun-inspired rock album/game book. Brown, Brom and Baxa are aboard. Didn't see that coming.
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Jun 27, 2013 18:28
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Hey so, I know this thread is pretty much dead, but I was wondering if anyone can tell me how Freedom holds up as an adventure? Going to be running a Dark Sun campaign over the summer, and the opener seems to be really good for getting people in the Athasian mind-set. Yet, it feels railroady as all hell, and feels like the only thing the players are there to do is to watch people who aren't them do cool things. Any advise on that?
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Jul 7, 2013 07:07
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Is Freedom the one where you start out as slaves? Oh wait, they all start that way. Is Freedom the one where you start as slaves, escape and trek across the desert getting attacked by every piece of flora AND fauna in the world? Cuz that one taught my group to expect everything in Dark Sun to poo poo on us, made us cold-cold-hearted bastards without an ounce of compassion or hope for the future and spawned the term "Because Dark Sun". So yeah I guess that one's great for prepping players for the Athasian lifestyle. I recently played a campaign that consisted of nearly all the original pre-made adventures. The things were written over 20 years ago, so they're all very railroady, and very poorly edited. There's some pretty cool and imaginative stuff in there, but you gotta work around all the crap. I suggest using them as rough outlines and playing a bit more loose. Also some of the adventures have completely out of whack rewards, like the authors didn't understand the whole metal coins are rare thing. By the middle of the campaign all our players had thousands and thousands of gold, but no place to spend it.
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Jul 7, 2013 10:28
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Bucnasti posted:Also some of the adventures have completely out of whack rewards, like the authors didn't understand the whole metal coins are rare thing. By the middle of the campaign all our players had thousands and thousands of gold, but no place to spend it.
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Jul 7, 2013 11:55
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I know I'm late for the soundtrack recommendation game, but the soundtrack for the video game Bastion features some obviously middle-Eastern instrumentation and influences and is also cool as hell. However, it's also a bit modern and electronic, so it might be a bit dissonant for the feel you're going for.
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Jul 7, 2013 17:22
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blackknight1239 posted:Hey so, I know this thread is pretty much dead, but I was wondering if anyone can tell me how Freedom holds up as an adventure? Going to be running a Dark Sun campaign over the summer, and the opener seems to be really good for getting people in the Athasian mind-set. Yet, it feels railroady as all hell, and feels like the only thing the players are there to do is to watch people who aren't them do cool things. Any advise on that? I really like Freedom. I don't think it's particularly railroady, and aside from the actual assassination sequence, the players are at the center of the show. Even though they're not the people who kill Kalak, they are the people who save most of Tyr's population from having their life forces sucked out in the arena. Play up that aspect. Make sure your players know that while Rikus, Sadira, and Agis freed the city, they saved the city. As for whether it's a railroad or not, the adventure does require that the players become slaves, but that's just the hook. And unless you are playing with a really big party, there are more then enough scenarios to give them a fair shake and still get them in the pens. In fact, you want to get them playing through as many of the enslavement scenarios as possible so they make a bunch of contacts. The more contacts they make in the beginning, the more complex the middle section will be and the more interesting choices the PCs will have to make. Let the PCs dictate the pace of that middle section before the finale, and the adventure won't feel like a railroad at all. Bucnasti posted:Is Freedom the one where you start out as slaves? Freedom is the one where they start free and quickly become slaves. You're thinking of A Little Knowledge, which is the introductory adventure from the original boxed set. I actually like to run the two of them back-to-back. It really sells the players on how crazy Dark Sun is. After "escap[ing] from slavery and trek[king] across the desert getting attacked by every piece of flora AND fauna in the world," the PCs finally make it to civilization, where through corruption and misunderstanding, they are promptly enslaved once again.
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Jul 7, 2013 22:59
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Decided to steal your idea and go with "A Little Knowledge" leading into "Freedom". I love the idea that as soon as they get out of slavery, they get put right back in. Because, you know, Athas.
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Jul 8, 2013 07:44
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I think in my campaign we ran those two adventures back to back, we started as slaves, escaped and had every critter in the wilderness try to kill us and then somehow were convinced by the Veiled Alliance to become slaves again to spy on the Sorcerer King. We eventually told the Veiled Alliance to eat a big old bag of dicks. Every time they showed up they wanted us to do something awful in exchange for a pittance of a reward, and then bitched about us not doing it to their satisfaction.
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Jul 8, 2013 11:11
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Has anyone successfully converted Dark Sun to something non D&D-derived? I know there's a guy at THE BIG PURP who uses GURPS, but any other systems? I'm interested in seeing how people include, work around, alter, or abandon the D&D-isms made overt in the setting, like the magic/psionics distinction, or the way levelling and to an extent classes are essentially hard-coded into various metaphysical and social structures on Athas.
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Oct 3, 2013 13:19
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I think it could be a good fit for Savage Worlds. In fact there is a conversion for it... https://sites.google.com/site/darksunsw/
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Oct 3, 2013 13:53
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Well another few months and another character dead. I was thinking of playing a templar of Balic this time. I know Balican (Balicite?) templars are not as evil as other templars but I'm wondering how a templar can fit into a primarily neutral-to-good party. I mean they're no saints. They're survivalists first but they have engaged in some "save the village/city/world" stuff too. I'm hoping someone has some experience playing a templar in this context.
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Dec 10, 2013 23:22
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Amusingly enough, I just wrapped up playing a Templar from Balic. Remember evil isn't always mustache twirling villainy and Balic has elections, at least in the Brown Age. I played it as a mixture of Don Corleone from the Godfather (crime boss with a patronage network), Vic Mackey from the shield (cop who is willing to tolerate a law breaking so long as he gets ahead and his superiors stay off his back), and Bill Clinton (a charismatic politician with a lot of personal flaws). In the end, enslaving the rest of the party to fight in gladiatorial games to help with his election campaign ended up being the best way the party could help him get ahead so he's now an NPC villain, but before that he was perfectly happy to save the world so long as he was winning votes and/or collecting favors.
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Dec 11, 2013 21:42
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I definitely know I don't want her to be evil in any way. I want her to be lawful good but the laws she follows are Andropinis's so it's all relative to her society. So far, I'm thinking of her as a sort of idealist type. She's young and from a rich merchant family so this is her version of joining the Peace Corps or something (except with a bit more commitment). My DM decided that most templars who are actually outside of town are youthful since more senior, experienced templars would probably remain in Balic as politician-types. Since we're mid-paragon tier, we came up with a story about how she won Andropinis's favor and a place as a Praetor Legate in a total fluke of luck so she really doesn't have to worry about reelection campaigns (hers isn't for 5 years anyway), just pleasing him since a Sorcerer-King's attention is very much a double-edged sword. We also came up with a huge family tree for her. She's a very sympathetic character who means well. I just hope the party doesn't attack on sight, which is apparently what happened with the last templar that was in the party and the player just threw the templar away because he hated how everyone mistrusted him so much. I can deal with a bit of mistrust. Hilariously, my previous character who just died who everyone trusted was totally a spy on behalf of Tyr. Rosalind fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Dec 11, 2013 |
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Dec 11, 2013 22:00
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Personally, I'd have a really hard time playing a good Templar, given the setting and laws. I mean, it'd be really challenging to justify taking the direction of a genocidal despot who uses life energy to power the spells that keep him on the throne to raid outlying villages for slaves in order to give them over to another genocidal despot (who happened to go murderously insane for several decades in the process of transforming into a killing machine) so he could consume their life force in order to keep a genocidal maniac imprisoned as a good act. That strikes me as a pretty run of the mill, just-another-day-at-the-office sort of activity for a Templar PC. That's not to say it can't be done, just that I would have a hard time with it.
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Dec 12, 2013 00:00
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wins32767 posted:Personally, I'd have a really hard time playing a good Templar, given the setting and laws. I think she's lawful good in the sense that she's follows the laws of Balic and good in the sense that she generally doesn't gently caress over every person she meets. The Dragon article on Templars says that there are rare idealists sort of like her. Also she doesn't know about the whole slave sacrifice thing. In our DM's game it's a big secret. People know that slaves are being taken obviously but no one really knows where they go, even most templars don't in Balic at least. ...And this is why I think alignment is totally worthless.
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Dec 12, 2013 01:52
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I think a young, idealistic templar could work. None of the stuff wins is referring to would be common knowledge, even among the low-ranking templar. They probably wouldn't know about the dragon levy, and if they did, it could be a 'for the common good' thing. Corruption in politics and the elections would also be deniable. If the newbie templar spends most of her time outside the walls, defending the city from external threats, she might easily justify whatever else the government is doing.
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Dec 12, 2013 01:54
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ritorix posted:I think a young, idealistic templar could work. None of the stuff wins is referring to would be common knowledge, even among the low-ranking templar. They probably wouldn't know about the dragon levy, and if they did, it could be a 'for the common good' thing. Corruption in politics and the elections would also be deniable. If the newbie templar spends most of her time outside the walls, defending the city from external threats, she might easily justify whatever else the government is doing.
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Dec 13, 2013 06:06
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An easy and fun one would be an idealistic templar Gulg who knows that the Oba is pure evil but wholeheartedly believes in her supposed plan to restore Athas.
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Dec 13, 2013 07:07
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Any thoughts on how captives would be restrained without using metal chains/manacles? I'm imagining leather, tied in knots, but I don't know how secure that would be. Bone or Obsidian seem like they would be too fragile to make chains out of. Maybe wooden manacles in the style of those "stocks" that people used to get thrown in, but what would the locking mechanism be? I'm running with an idea I read earlier in this thread (thanks!) where the party starts the first session as being the only survivors in a raided caravan that was taking them to be sold as slaves, so I'd imagine they're all restrained somehow, and the first order of business will be to cut themselves free, second order of business will be to find food/water/shelter (and to a lesser extent weapons and armor), and third will be to figure out where they are and how to get somewhere safer.
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Dec 21, 2013 18:10
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Amperor posted:Any thoughts on how captives would be restrained without using metal chains/manacles? The fluff says that most restraints are made from giant hair rope, which is incredibly durable and a major trade good.
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Dec 21, 2013 19:53
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PeterWeller posted:The fluff says that most restraints are made from giant hair rope, which is incredibly durable and a major trade good. Holy poo poo for real? In my group we always use the whole wooden yoke kinda mobile stocks and all, but giant hair rope rules.
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Dec 21, 2013 20:00
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Holy poo poo for real? In my group we always use the whole wooden yoke kinda mobile stocks and all, but giant hair rope rules. Yeah, it's the setting's substitute for chains in all their uses.
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Dec 21, 2013 20:23
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Holy poo poo for real? In my group we always use the whole wooden yoke kinda mobile stocks and all, but giant hair rope rules. I thought that wood is relatively rare in Dark Sun. Not as rare as metal but uncommon enough that it's saved for special things. Like having a bow made of wood is uncommon. Or maybe that's just something my DM added.
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Jan 7, 2014 04:43
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dwarf74 posted:(I have alllll sorts of stats converted from Forest Maker and City Beneath the Silt Sea, including non-lovely versions of both S-Ks involved. I should really post those here.) Did you ever get around to compiling these? My players just finished heroic tier, and I'm digging for ideas and suggestions on what to do in paragon. I have two main plot points to start with: * Around 14 or 15, they're going to get the chance to discover New Kurn and Oronis, who's been keeping watch on them and has twice managed small interventions on their behalf; the wizard carries Oronis's old staff as a result of one of them, though he obviously doesn't know yet. The wizard's player likes both the idea of the avangion and the epic destiny, so I'm running with a retooled version of a plot I stole from this thread: there haven't been any yet. Oronis has come closest, but he's permanently stained by what he did before, and he can't complete the process. But the wizard can, and Oronis can show him how, if all goes well. * Unrest in Tyr will continue to increase, with the result that Hamanu is probably going to attempt to conquer Tyr around the time they're finishing paragon tier. They've also pulled some plot strings I dangled about the Veiled Alliance in Tyr (Matthias vs. Romila/Athrialix), and if they keep moving down that road I'll probably revamp Arcane Shadows to feed their interest. If it helps, the one big change I made and the big string they keep picking at but don't realize, and won't know until at least New Kurn if not much later, is that six gods survived, so to speak, the war with the primordials; they're mortal-appearing beings of varying sanity who don't know what they were before, or really who they are now. The PCs have met but obviously haven't recognized Corellon, the most befuddled, who's wandering around Athas looking for someone, but he can't quite remember whom (Moradin, who's in New Kurn, relatively sane and serving as an aide to Oronis), and Erathis, Avandra and Asmodeus, who are street prophets in Tyr. Torog's in the area of either Giustenal or Kalidnay (if the PCs ever find themselves at one of those, he'll be at the other); even if the other five regain their memories, they'll be in agreement that it's best if Torog isn't brought aboard. He can stay wherever the gently caress he is and good riddance to him. If anyone would like to share what their PCs did on Athas in paragon tier, I'd love to hear about it.
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Jan 7, 2014 07:08
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Rosalind posted:I thought that wood is relatively rare in Dark Sun. Not as rare as metal but uncommon enough that it's saved for special things. Like having a bow made of wood is uncommon. Wood is of course less common than on more verdant worlds, but it isn't particularly rare. Nibenay extensively logs the Crescent Forest and various trade houses will send logging crews to the Forest Ridge. Bone is the common substitute, and construction is largely in the form of fitted stone and glazed bricks.
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Jan 7, 2014 07:29
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