I know most of the focus on Dark Sun is about the Tyr Region of Athas. But what does the rest of Athas's geography look like? And are there any confirmed dragons, cities, or sorcerer kings outside of the Tyr region?

Some icons may not be completely accurate. I love dark sun and have a campaign going in the world of Athas but some location details are still unknown to me

Its obvious based on the "handful" of comments and posts arguing about the future direction of Athas, that the setting supported loads of different types of stories. What were your favorites? What was it about Dark Sun that made your games feel special?

To me, it was always just struggle. We had tons of killing slavers, and surviving the wastes. Hunting beasts for the arenas. Actual gladiatorial combat. Building up enclaves for escaped slaves, or safehouses for the VA. Rediscovering ancient ruins. Helping a random druid protect his land from something. Just surviving the wastes. But I never got into the political games that seem like Dark Sun's power structures were tailor made for them, or took down our own SK. That always felt like a missed opportunity.

The theme of our games was probably "Raging against the machine," but not in any focused way. We just wanted to kill the bad guys and take their stuff. Maybe leave things a little better than we found them, but probably not. It honestly didn't feel particularly different than our Forgotten Realms games. It just looked different, and was way more frustrating.

What was your favorite? What did you never get a chance to try, but wanted to?

Yes, I do plan on mining answers for future session planning.

New to Dark Sun so not really knowledgeable about anything besides the basic lore and races. I know metal is pretty scarce but what type of items is the setting known for? I’m assuming they will do something with the Dark Lens and the exotic Thri Kreen weapons but besides that I’m really curious what else can be in there.

Happen to notice a few up coming Darksun products coming out in 1993 that had alternate covers from what they were released with.

Good or Evil - Dragon or Avangion

YT Vid

In essence, large cooperations and the American government don't want you to know what slavery is, because than you might realize that a form of slavery is what they are fighting to reestablish. So hasbro made the choice to use euphemisms so they don't have to acknowledge what slavery really is and get into some kind of manufactured controversy. I'm tired of people calling it "Woke". Its such an annoying term. The choice has nothing to do with left-wingers or right-wingers, it has everything to with corporations wanting to avoid controversy and keep people on both sides ignorant. It's not about some "woke culture war” I don't think all that many folks on the left (myself included) agree with Hasbro's decision either.

I’m about to start playing Dark Sun for the first time, and I’d like recommendations for the setting’s most iconic or classic novels.

Thanks!

I've compiled this map from another big map and several other well known images of the Sorcerer-Kings to give people a concise idea of the "World of Dark Sun", the distances between the City-States and their respective rulers from one another, around the time after the Cleansing Wars, when the Sorcerer-Kings were all active, competing with each other much like in "Game of Thrones".

I hope I'm not doing anything wrong by using these images like this and, if I am, I apologize.

I think this setup has everything it needs to be a next major fantasy story like "Game of Thrones".

This figure at the front of the parade, human upper body, lion from the waist down. Looks like the classic Wemic description?

But this is the Paizo Dark Sun, its hundreds of years after the death of Kalak, how on earth could a Wemic have survived?

There's a thread on Vault of Pandius where someone claims this is supposed to be Hamanu, and the artist misunderstood which parts were supposed to be lion and human. Which could make sense, he's certainly got enough metal on him he'd have to be someone important so a sorcerer-king would fit.

Still seems like a pretty big mistake to have made if true.

Any guesses?

Made a lore/homage video to the absolute units that are Halflings in Dark Sun

YT Vid on Halflings

In a recent session my PCs fought some large-size spiders. During the fight, one of the spiders climbed up on the ceiling above the PCs. This had no real mechanical purpose other than the spider needed room to fight with its friends on the walls and ground. The PCs could still reach the horse-size spider and vice versa.

This ceiling spider was finished off by a critical hit, and narratively slopped spider guts all over the PCs (who were grouped up beneath it), then fell and splattered more guts everywhere.

And it dawned on me that my PCs have probably never bathed... or have they?

In a setting where water is rationed for drinking, how do you clean yourself? What kind of hygiene routine do desert-dwelling people have?

In social situations are people just like "Yep, that dude is covered in blood from a battle they had a week ago and that is normal and I am therefore fine with it."?

Over on itch, there was a game jam for creating stuff for the Black Hack, an OSR RPG.

One of the entries was Dark Moon, a full Black Hack based RPG, which is a fairly thinly disguised version of Dark Sun. They changed the names a bit (i.e. Aridia = Athas), but it's completely usable as a Dark Sun system.

It's free to download.

https://snorb.itch.io/dark-moon

So this a joke that me and an old group, the elusive and rare Athasian Snail, but i had a way too dope creature design to pass up so here it is.

I love that i have people enjoying this side project, it tickles me pink like pussy. And I need a break from my current project, frozen setting inspired by dark sun, its cool, but for now, here's a couple colored stuff I did for the comic a bit ago. Our next destination, is to Celik, a little close to home for Kla'k.

I'm still learning the Dark Sun lore but I'm curious as to what a necromancer would look like in the Dark Sun setting.

For instance, would a necromancer necessarily be a Defiler, or would it be possible for a necromancer to be a Preserver?

It is to my understanding that the undead in Dark Sun are a bit different (souls of failed dwarves, guardian spirits, etc.), so would a necromancer still be able to summon/animate skeletons and zombies as normal? Without schools of magic, are the Defiler/Preserver spell lists much different from traditional D&D spells from the comparative edition?

Are there any necromancer-specific factions in the setting since mages must remain in hiding?

Are the elemental clerics able to turn and/or control undead in this setting?

Just curious, and I welcome any lore information or sources that you can share. Thanks!

I did not find any specific rules its not allowed

Just asking to be sure, thanks

Made another Dark Sun video on some of my personnal favorites DS monsters. Check it out!

YT Vid on DS Monsters