What's your favorite thing about Dark Sun?

[SHARK]

Here's my list of what I love about Dark Sun:
- Has slavery, moral grey areas, survival of the fittest, environmental disaster....all awesome stuff.
- It took 2nd edition AD&D and showed what you can do with the rules with designers of talent. ie. races, monsters, magic (I like Al-Qadim for the same reason)
- Evocative artwork...nuff said

Greetings!

You know, Thorn, I own many of the Al-Qadim supplements and modules. I think they are also fantastic! Great artwork, great layout, organization, and detail. I liked especially how the writers conveyed a different cultural feel to everything in the environment. The adventures and seeds included were often very detailed, interesting, and flavourful. I found them all to be consistently inspiring and entertaining. There were dozens of useful and interesting NPC's and awesome interludes of mythology and weird monsters and creatures seen differently, or not seen much at all from typical D&D adventures. Really great stuff!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

[DrSly]

My favorite thing, is that it quickly breaks up the fairy tale of typical D&D stories.  It has unique creative monsters, too.

It's still D&D, but more difficult.

You can't take necessities, for granted.

Yeah that was a rather different and brutal departure from other D&D settings. We really liked it back in the days. A few quirks / edgy things I remember though. Didnt' the characters start at level 2, because, well, "harsh cruel" world type of setting?

[DrSly]

My favorite thing about Dark Sun is that the world sucks. The PCs aren't fighting for the status quo, they are fighting to change the status quo. Or, at least, escape the status quo.
It seems like im every other setting, with the exception of Ravenloft, that the bad guys have to be stopped from changing things for the worse, but in Dark Sun, the bad guys are in charge.

Yep, probably one of the first "grimdark" settings in ttRPGs. A lot of precedents in Dark Sun. Not sure it was for everyone though. Slavery stuff for example.

[Rajaat99]

Yeah that was a rather different and brutal departure from other D&D settings. We really liked it back in the days. A few quirks / edgy things I remember though. Didnt' the characters start at level 2, because, well, "harsh cruel" world type of setting?

The PCs started at level 3. According to the creators, during playtesting, first and second level characters would just die too quickly.

[DrSly]

Yeah that was a rather different and brutal departure from other D&D settings. We really liked it back in the days. A few quirks / edgy things I remember though. Didnt' the characters start at level 2, because, well, "harsh cruel" world type of setting?

The PCs started at level 3. According to the creators, during playtesting, first and second level characters would just die too quickly.

Ha, false memory then! Thanks.