Monday, August 15, 2011

Dark is the Sun - August Ed.



It has been many a moon since my game group visited the desolate waste of Athas. We rolled our dice against the old Gods in June and took off the month of July. So a return to our Dark Sun game was in order this past weekend. Not having played in so long I sent a quick refresher to the group the week before and tried to give my best summary before we got started.

Back in May the group was seeking out the fragments of ancient artifact (Crown of Dust), but had the two pieces they had acquired so far stolen from them. The Templar that pick pocked the artifacts serves a powerful sorcerer king who means to get even more powerful once he controls the crown. Now it is up to the group to stop him. They sought allies in that fight in May and thought they were going to be on the hunt for more on Saturday.

They thought wrong. I added a sixth player (Wayne) to the table for Cthulhu in June with the intention of him staying at the table once I took the DM reigns back. Enter Alek, rogue, explorer and grave robber treasure hunter. I knew it would not be a natural fit to shoehorn him into the faction politics from the last game. So I sought a more natural introduction.

An article by Robert Schwalb that was a supplement to the world of Dark Sun seemed like a perfect fit. Elaadrich, a city referenced on the map of Athas, but never mentioned in the book. Schwalb did a fantastic job of describing a mad king who shuttered his city 800 years ago and only recently opened it's doors. I loved the concept, but for my re-purposing it didn't need to be alive. So I added a plague to the timeline that killed or mutated most of the citizens. Those that were left alive were either docile, but intelligent creatures or feral beast.

After reading various articles on 3D terrain at Roving Band of Misfits last month, I tried my hand at it for Saturday night. The first being a cliff side ambush encounter on the way to the lost city (see the pic above). The second was a confrontation with the mad sorcerer king. Who took the party to be his thieving templars, come back for more of his power. The terrain was a hit and the encounters that took place on them were pretty fun too.

Hits: Getting back to 4E, adding a 6th player, 3D terrain, peach crumble bars

Misses: Forgetting creature powers, encounters that were too safe

The rest is in the pictures...

2 comments:

Michael Shea said...

What are the little name tags for hanging from the GM screen?

Wreck said...

Initiative order, helps my players and me keep track of it and makes the rounds go a little bit faster.

Miles Logged

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