LGS had it for $12 and I grabbed it.  Looks like everything is inside and in great shape- even has a cloth map which is pretty neat.   I used to have the original box years ago.  How different is it from the original box set?

The only real difference as far as thing goes is that it's set after the Prism Pentad.

Some rules are changed, but very little.  It's mostly a setting redux.

BTW - you got a steal.

It's worth picking up for that price, but IIRC, it suffers terribly from the fallout of DS1e's metaplot -- a lot of the best NPCs are dead, killed by other people, and a lot of the background is filled in making the setting less terrifyingly adversarial.  

OTOH, it's still a good buy at that price, and the cloth map is sweet.  But if I were going to run it, I'd use the setting circa 1e's original boxed set.

The Dark Sun is revised, accidentally, by copyist gnomes with bad eyesight; and the Expanded Box is set by a steam powered gnomish folding and gluing contrivance.

Oh, English Language, how I love thee and thy free migration of words amongst various parts of speech!

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;732135The Dark Sun is revised, accidentally, by copyist gnomes with bad eyesight;

This was also my impression. I like the goodies in DSr, but much prefer the 1e setting.

You got a great deal so if you don't like it, you can easily turn it around for $60 on eBay, perhaps more.

I greatly prefer the older version, allthough the 2nd version seems more balanced (eg., the changes to Strength) and also seems to have better psi rules. Crunch vise 2e might actually be superior; it's just all that horrible, horrible, goddamn horrible metaplot crap (yes I read the goddamn books. They make the Dragonlance Chronicles look like, I dunno, Dostojevski's novels by comparison...) that basically really weakens the setting's core concepts. As in, "lookee, our metaplot Mary Sues have killed the major villains!".

So...I might consider getting Revised for the crunch, but for no other reason whatsoever.

I'm okay with killing The Dragon, but only if it's PCs doing it in a fair and square, no holds barred, all-out nuke'em brawl!!! (eg., next to impossible to do! The Dragon's like Sauron and Godzilla's love child basically!)

A piece of crap.  The setting was ruined by the novels; it was the real peak of how the focus on novels and metaplot destroyed viable settings (Dragonlance might have been worse, but then it was a barely-viable setting to begin with).

RPGPundit

Neat box - I have it myself and as one who never owned og read Dark Sun 1ed og many or the setting novels, it works fine - I remember liking the piecemeal armor-rules a lot and the feel in general. And yes, a great map.

So I agree, at that price it's a steal.

Thanks for the info.  I'll  give it a read at some point and then decide what I want to do with it.  

The LGS has set prices for old D&D material- $5 for softcovers, 10 for hardcovers and $12 for box sets.  They had the Night Below box set- but it only had one book and one map so I passed on that.  Also picked up the picture book for Down in the Dungeon which is a real treat to look through.