Dark Sun returns

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Titanium Dragon
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Post by Titanium Dragon »

You complete moron! That has been the claim made since Frank brought it up. [Edit: lets rephrase that to "you dishonest little shit", because you changed the word to exaggerate rather than to legitimately state actual figures in court. Again you try desperately to redefine everything. Meanwhile YOU exaggerate figures in the most incredibly astoundingly shameless ways]
There's a difference between "Now you are claiming that they will want to exaggerate as much as possible" and "Now, you are claiming they will want to exaggerate as much as possible". The comma makes a very large difference and changes the meaning of "Now". In one case, you are saying they are doing something at the moment, whereas in the other case, you're changing what you're addressing.
Guys, try not to analyze TD's arguments too much. You don't need to analyze in detail how wrong the basic argument is. It's better for your overall mental health.
One could argue that someone like yourself might commit suicide if shown to be wrong, but let's face it: the world would only be a better place for it.
Last edited by Titanium Dragon on Thu Aug 27, 2009 2:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
Rathe
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Post by Rathe »

Looks like they've only sold hundreds of thousands of books for this edition, which considering how well 3rd sold for its supplements, shows poorly in terms of pure revenue and interest (and therefore staying power of the edition).

My one query would be the influence of the D&D Insider on people bothering to purchase the books. I know for a fact that a number of my friends have purchased a D&D Insider subscription for one month at each new books release, in order to download the new books rules (& artwork seperately). Many people, I would assume, maintain a subscription thereby generating continuous revenue for WoTC.

Does anyone have any information on the D&D Insider revenue stream and whether it is offsetting the poor sales of 4e in any fashion?

Rathe
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Post by Zinegata »

Titanium Dragon wrote:One could argue that someone like yourself might commit suicide if shown to be wrong, but let's face it: the world would only be a better place for it.
I've admitted plenty of times when I'm wrong. Ask Caelic. He's not an ass of a debater like you even if we fundamentally disagreed on a lot of issues.

The only reason you make this comment is because you don't like the fact that I've figured out your modus operandi, have no qualms about telling other people about it, and you'd prefer I not exist so you can continue living in a deluded fantasy land where you're never wrong.

Also, this is another off-topic tangent. And it's a sad off-topic tangent because you've clearly run out of ideas on how to defend your inane position and are now instead trying to say "Some people here should die", with the hidden subtext being "When those people are dead, my own deluded fantasy world will be better!".

By the way, where's that IM log where people are "supporting" you again? Oh I see. You got caught red-handed trying to turn "sells" and "have sold" into synonyms and are now trying to cover up the fact by changing the context again.

You lose. Again.
Last edited by Zinegata on Thu Aug 27, 2009 3:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Zinegata »

Rathe wrote:Looks like they've only sold hundreds of thousands of books for this edition, which considering how well 3rd sold for its supplements, shows poorly in terms of pure revenue and interest (and therefore staying power of the edition).

My one query would be the influence of the D&D Insider on people bothering to purchase the books. I know for a fact that a number of my friends have purchased a D&D Insider subscription for one month at each new books release, in order to download the new books rules (& artwork seperately). Many people, I would assume, maintain a subscription thereby generating continuous revenue for WoTC.

Does anyone have any information on the D&D Insider revenue stream and whether it is offsetting the poor sales of 4e in any fashion?

Rathe
The Insider definitely generates incremental revenue for WoTC over and above what the books made.

I once tried to argue that the profit per book of 4E may be ridiculously low because of the massive discounts being given by places like Amazon, but some of the saner WoTC posters showed me an official statement that WoTC hadn't changed their discounting scheme since 3E. I was wrong there. World goes on.

However, that being said I don't think the incremental revenues of the Insider is all that significant. Like you said most people just subscribe for a month, download everything needed, and then let the subscription lapse. Certainly, that would make them some money. But not as much money as selling an actual book.
Titanium Dragon
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Post by Titanium Dragon »

YOU are retreating from your claims. You have so far argued that...

1) 100s of thousands was used because it looks bigger than millions.

2) That it doesn't look bigger than millions but looks bigger than nothing than millions does.

3) That it actually literally means millions because it actually gets multiplied by the total number of products the total sales was given in relation to (for no reason).
1) Hundreds of thousands is more relatable to than millions, which is why it "sounds bigger" - people will have a better impression of what the number means, and because it is a lot relative to them, they will act as though it is larger.

2) When you put the two side by side, millions looks bigger, but in a vaccuum, they will have a better understanding of the magnitude of "hundreds of thousands".

3) Firstly, hundreds of thousands doesn't exclude numbers over a million. Secondly (separate argument which you have somehow conflated) if you read the original source rather than some retard's post, you see that the phrasing is different from what the retard claimed.

4) On a per-book basis they cannot claim millions of sales. If they conflate all their sales, they can, but most of the individual lines only claim sales in the hundreds of thousands, not millions. Therefore, if you claim you've sold millions of rulebooks, but have to amend that to hundreds of thousands in court on a per-line basis, you look like you're being shady and your argument looks weaker because you are coming in below the expectation of millions. Conversely, if you claim hundreds of thousands (a factual claim for all lines) and then some are millions (but not all of them), then you can claim that some are as high as a million, thus making your case look stronger by beating the expectation of hundreds of thousands per.

This isn't a difficult concept. If something is oversold, even if it is good, it won't seem AS GOOD as it would otherwise. Conversely, if something is slightly undersold, it will seem BETTER than it would otherwise. Now, while you don't do this with products, you do this in a court case because there's not really a choice of whether or not to "purchase", so to speak - you are going to have the actual argument laid out at some point. If you raise the expectation above the argument, then you are going to miss the bar, but if you put the expectation below the argument, then you can clear it with space to spare, so to speak, and thus make the argument look better.

Basically, its like how if you put a 6'2" tall person next to a 5'8" person, the 6'2" person will look tall, but if you put them next to a 6'8" tall person, they look short. The person is still 6'2", but the impression changes.

Oh, and: Some are speculating that underperformance of 4E vs. expectations has Wizards of the Coast looking for reasons, and that led to attacking pirates and banning PDFs. Since you don’t report specific line sales, we don’t know whether either perception (performance of 4E or connection to PDF policy) is correct. Can you address these perceptions?
We have done three reprints of the 4th Edition Player’s Handbook, and Player’s Handbook 2 has just gone back to press for a second printing. PH2 debuted at #4 on the Wall Street Journal’s best-sellers list, and #28 on USA Today’s list. By any measure, 4th Edition has been a great success and will continue to attract new players.
Last edited by Titanium Dragon on Thu Aug 27, 2009 3:11 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Zinegata »

Titanium Dragon wrote:
YOU are retreating from your claims. You have so far argued that...

1) 100s of thousands was used because it looks bigger than millions.

2) That it doesn't look bigger than millions but looks bigger than nothing than millions does.

3) That it actually literally means millions because it actually gets multiplied by the total number of products the total sales was given in relation to (for no reason).
1) Hundreds of thousands is more relatable to than millions, which is why it "sounds bigger" - people will have a better impression of what the number means, and because it is a lot relative to them, they will act as though it is larger.

2) When you put the two side by side, millions looks bigger, but in a vaccuum, they will have a better understanding of the magnitude of "hundreds of thousands".

3) Firstly, hundreds of thousands doesn't exclude numbers over a million. Secondly (separate argument which you have somehow conflated) if you read the original source rather than some retard's post, you see that the phrasing is different from what the retard claimed.

4) On a per-book basis they cannot claim millions of sales. If they conflate all their sales, they can, but most of the individual lines only claim sales in the hundreds of thousands, not millions. Therefore, if you claim you've sold millions of rulebooks, but have to amend that to hundreds of thousands in court on a per-line basis, you look like you're being shady and your argument looks weaker because you are coming in below the expectation of millions. Conversely, if you claim hundreds of thousands (a factual claim for all lines) and then some are millions (but not all of them), then you can claim that some are as high as a million, thus making your case look stronger by beating the expectation of hundreds of thousands per.

This isn't a difficult concept. If something is oversold, even if it is good, it won't seem AS GOOD as it would otherwise. Conversely, if something is slightly undersold, it will seem BETTER than it would otherwise. Now, while you don't do this with products, you do this in a court case because there's not really a choice of whether or not to "purchase", so to speak - you are going to have the actual argument laid out at some point. If you raise the expectation above the argument, then you are going to miss the bar, but if you put the expectation below the argument, then you can clear it with space to spare, so to speak, and thus make the argument look better.

Basically, its like how if you put a 6'2" tall person next to a 5'8" person, the 6'2" person will look tall, but if you put them next to a 6'8" tall person, they look short. The person is still 6'2", but the impression changes.
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Post by Zinegata »

True story:

[Gamer Zero, 6 months into Gleemax's release]:

"Gleemax has been a great success! Our own employees are using it!"

[Zinegata, stating the facts]

"You call a shoddy blog software that only your OWN employees are forced to use a great success?!

The word "success" is a subjective word. Hiding under it is to simply abdicate that your position has any logical basis.

Also, another fact: The whole Gleemax team was laid off a couple of months after the above statement. For such "success", WoTC seemed to want no further part in it.
Last edited by Zinegata on Thu Aug 27, 2009 3:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Username17 »

TD, for the last fucking time: going through a second or twentieth printing doesn't mean you are doing well, it just means that you were bad at selecting print run sizes. That particular piece of market speak is totally laughable. And now, so are you.

-Username17
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Post by Zinegata »

FrankTrollman wrote:TD, for the last fucking time: going through a second or twentieth printing doesn't mean you are doing well, it just means that you were bad at selecting print run sizes. That particular piece of market speak is totally laughable. And now, so are you.

-Username17
Hell, merely using the term "print run" instead of "sales" should already set off alarm bells. Why go through such linguistic gymnastics when you could just say 4E is a great success based on huge sales?
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Post by PhoneLobster »

Titanium Dragon wrote:Basically, its like how if you put a 6'2" tall person next to a 5'8" person, the 6'2" person will look tall, but if you put them next to a 6'8" tall person, they look short. The person is still 6'2", but the impression changes.
That is just hilariously irrelevant ultra-mega-moronism right there. In it's own right but especially in context.

But even better, before that you quote three of my summaries of your changing arguments in innumeracy and address point by point all four of them. Yes that's one extra than you quoted. Yes there is a rather hilarious message in that.

Nothing however compared to the fact you then make a dishonest and stupid attempt at all four of those arguments in one go!

TD. You are not a liar. You are not a moron. You are BOTH a liar and a moron. You are arguing out of sheer ignorance and slimy dishonest bravado. Repeat it often enough, throw enough weaselly smoke bombs and bam! You will be right. Right?

Well, maybe if you did it competently. But instead of a ninja your smoke bomb and chanting act looks more like a clown show.

Edit: Actually it just occured to me. You might be so dumb you don't even understand why defending all 4 points in one post makes you look stupid. Let me summarize.

1) Is a stupid argument.
2) Contradicts itself by first declaring, yeah, 1 is in fact false. But then concluding by effectively just restating 1.
3) Contradicts 1 and 2 by ignoring the basic premise of how large the number is trying to look.
4) Contradicts 1 and 2 by relying on the assumption that 100s of thousands actually looks smaller. Then it contradicts 3 by making an argument against obfuscating the figures, which 3 relies on them deliberately doing.

When you pile crazy on top of crazy the result is greater than the sum of it's parts.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Thu Aug 27, 2009 3:57 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Psychic Robot »

TD, for your own sake, you should probably stop trying to dig yourself out of that pit.
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Post by Korwin »

TD you said you are a playtester for D&D 4ed?
Do you present your findings on wrong/bad/whatever rules to WotC like your argument here?

*hmm*
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Post by virgil »

Reminds me of a friend that took the definition of 'several' to mean 'more than three' to its illogical conclusion. There were 'several' units in my zerg rush in Starcraft, that 20th level dwarven barbarian had 'several' hit points, and it was all done non-sarcastically. We smacked him upside the head for that for quite awhile.
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Post by Red_Rob »

Titanium Dragon wrote:4) On a per-book basis they cannot claim millions of sales. If they conflate all their sales, they can, but most of the individual lines only claim sales in the hundreds of thousands, not millions. Therefore, if you claim you've sold millions of rulebooks, but have to amend that to hundreds of thousands in court on a per-line basis, you look like you're being shady and your argument looks weaker because you are coming in below the expectation of millions. Conversely, if you claim hundreds of thousands (a factual claim for all lines) and then some are millions (but not all of them), then you can claim that some are as high as a million, thus making your case look stronger by beating the expectation of hundreds of thousands.
I don't know a single person that would, when presented with a list of sales figures in the 300,000 range and a total at the bottom showing, say, 1,200,000, would then say you had lied by saying you had a sold over a million.
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Post by Kobajagrande »

So to sum up:

WOTC wanted to impress some people by large amount of their sales by using a smaller number that sounds higher in order to make the number of sales sound lower.

I see nothing irrational in such argument.

Regards,
Ray Charles
Last edited by Kobajagrande on Thu Aug 27, 2009 12:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Doom »

I was going to say "pure gibberish", but I think Koba said it better.
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Post by tzor »

So are we ever going to get back to talking about Dark Sun?
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Post by Kaelik »

You guys just don't understand!

I just spent 10 pages telling you guys that 4e is better because it appeals to the real D&D audience that you were never a part of. If I now admit that in fact 4e sucks balls and that's why a majority do not like it and it is selling crappily precisely because it is a bad game then it will be even more painfully obvious what a giant tool I am.

I can't let you guys realize that I'm too stupid to see a bad game so I have to tell you that you guys just don't understand quality, and that everyone is with me. If I admit that not everyone is with me, then we have to argue about actual quality!

I can't do that! I don't even know what quality is!
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Post by Username17 »

tzor wrote:So are we ever going to get back to talking about Dark Sun?
Possibly. I mean, fun as it is to wtfpwn Titanium Dragon when he comes in with crazy, this thread did have a nominal purpose.

That purpose was to basically make a 2nd edition Tome setting. That is to say that things in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition got horrendously crazy at high level, and the question was raised many times how civilization or even life itself could go on with that kind of power being thrown around. And Dark Sun's answer was that it couldn't. Athas had high level people in it and they fought stuff with multiple meteor strikes and strangling cities with droughts and such and in the end there was basically nothing standing except a few monuments to the powerful filled with extradimensional spaces and succubus harems.

That's an incredibly bad fit for fourth edition rules, because nothing like that happens in 4th edition D&D. You can't starve a cty out with a drought because your weather control only extends for a 20 minute walk in any direction and it is so expensive and lasts such a short time that you will seriously run out of money before the crops die. There's no reason for the world to be a blighted hellscape. A 29th level demigod can only tear up a 55 foot diameter blast with a greater ice storm, but even then that's not actually enough damage to kill a basic human bandit or knock over a house. So the world is in no danger from the antics of high level 4e characters.

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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

I know I've mentioned the athas.org content for Dark Sun in 3.x before ( http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=104668 ), but I'm not sure whether anyone else has reviewed it. I know that there are large swathes of mechanics I don't like, but I like a number of the ideas in their various pdfs.

If anyone else has gone through the athas.org content and thought about what looked salvageable, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
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Post by Doom »

Yes, high level DnD4.0 rules don't make any sense in a Dark Sun-type world. So, no end game.

There's no beginning game, either. Low level DnD4.0 rules don't make any sense on Athas. Scarce resources? By level 2, a cleric obviates the need for food and water. Granted, that's only clerics, but in a world as harsh as Athas, I would imagine clerics would become a very common profession, relatively eliminating the scarcity.

A design paradigm of DnD4.0 is players can buy pretty much any mundane thing, right at level 1, as it is. For purposes of balance, it wouldn't be fair for the wizards to have a better AC than the clerics right off the bat, which would happen if suddenly you can't get even chainmail.

Even if prices or rules are changed, the 'enchant magic item' ritual means you can make magic steel plate at a fairly low level, anyway, causing any thinking person to wonder why there's a scarcity. You could reduce the availability of residuum/components, but then you've got to re-map character development to sort of handle the lack of magic items.

The whole 'defiler' thing doesn't work in DnD4.0, either, since you can't exactly take out an entire power source (arcane), or screw it over heavily, and not violate the balance paradigm.

On almost every level, either DnD4.0 or Dark Sun would need to be 're imagined' for there to be even a semblance of compatibility, and just as DnD4.0 doesn't resemble Dungeons and Dragons, I bet Dark Sun DnD4.0 won't resemble the Dark Sun of prior years.
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Post by RandomCasualty2 »

FrankTrollman wrote: That purpose was to basically make a 2nd edition Tome setting. That is to say that things in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition got horrendously crazy at high level, and the question was raised many times how civilization or even life itself could go on with that kind of power being thrown around. And Dark Sun's answer was that it couldn't. Athas had high level people in it and they fought stuff with multiple meteor strikes and strangling cities with droughts and such and in the end there was basically nothing standing except a few monuments to the powerful filled with extradimensional spaces and succubus harems.

That's an incredibly bad fit for fourth edition rules, because nothing like that happens in 4th edition D&D. You can't starve a cty out with a drought because your weather control only extends for a 20 minute walk in any direction and it is so expensive and lasts such a short time that you will seriously run out of money before the crops die. There's no reason for the world to be a blighted hellscape. A 29th level demigod can only tear up a 55 foot diameter blast with a greater ice storm, but even then that's not actually enough damage to kill a basic human bandit or knock over a house. So the world is in no danger from the antics of high level 4e characters.
Actually the whole concept of DS was some plot device artifact turning the sun nova, and that melts away the world into a wasteland. Nobody can really fix it, even the super powered guys, and life is just hell for everyone.

In fact, that sort of dystopia is harder to maintain with 2E or 3E, because the powerful magic could seriously basically fix that shit. It wasn't so much that the sorcerer kings couldn't create infinite water or make enough crops to feed everyone. It's just that they were total dicks and didn't feel like it. But there's nothing stopping a high level PC couldn't just fix it whenever he wanted. And for a setting that's supposed to be hopeless and dark, I don't think that's a good thing.

Having paragon and epic characters who can't really affect the setting much is sorta what darksun is supposed to be about. Yeah, you can sorta survive and help individual villages, but you're not going to erase the water shortage or somehow turn Athas back into a paradise.

Now, the rules they've written so far, like the shit for dehydration are fucking stupid and totally are against the concept of the setting, but I don't feel like the base concept is necessarily undoable in 4E.
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Post by tzor »

I find my self agreeing with Frank on this point but I think it went beyond simply an exploration of high power. I think that the setting really went towards a mood of magic angst, sort of the fantasy equivalent of the dark side of advanced technologies. Magic, especially high level magic wasn’t good; it was real bad and in the end the whole world is screwed forever. One might even imagine stealing some ideas from Dune or even flipping that other flop of a dessert campaign, Al-Qadim, on its magical and moral head.

So right off the bat, this idea is incompatible with the “points of light” model of 4E.

Then there was the other “feature” of Dark Sun. D&D according to Gygax was based on the 3d6 attribute mode, with a minor concession for “exceptional strength” in AD&D, and minor concessions for +1 and +2 to push things into the 19’s and 20’s. Dark Sun took the 18 / 19 divide and broke it in pieces allowing most characters to have exceptionally high attributes. This character overkill (including not starting off characters at 1st level) is a natural result of the power creep that was happening in 2nd edition and was the biggest indicator of the end of 2nd edition in the years to come.

Ironically, that might be in the spirit of 4E, but that’s really hard to argue.

I still remember my first thoughts from Dark Sun as though it were yesterday. “How the hell did they manage to steal a character race from the Arduin Grimore?” (Phraints were like the Thri-Keen in many ways.) Followed by “Well at least it’s not a Kender.” (No really cannibalistic barbarian hobbits had to be better than kender; heck anything is better than kender!) (Mr. Gates; STOP AUTOCORRECTING KENDER!)
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Post by spasheridan »

Cannibal Halflings - those were the days.

My memories of DS:

Overpowered characters.
Everyone had psionics.
High magic but low gear - this led to fighters not working well until you changed them.

After that - it was just like 2nd ed with higher numbers. I think it will work for 4th ed, just put the kibash on the repair ritual & any water creating spells.

Whatever it is, though, will be very different than the 2nd ed rendition, it is just not really possible to recast the classes in 4th ed like you could in previous editions.
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Post by souran »

Doom314 wrote:Yes, high level DnD4.0 rules don't make any sense in a Dark Sun-type world. So, no end game.
How so. The high end dark sun campaign would be about stopping or doing the very things that the various sorceror kings actually did. Wipe out entire races, become try and become a diety, these sound like epic destines to me. The idea that just because you cannot turn an entire castle to mud or because you cannot flood whole cities without a real cost to yourself sleep for 8 hours and then do it again that the game has no way of being epic is entirely in the minds of the members of this board and not in the rules of the game. D&D does not need hero charts and villiany tables. It does not need the spells to subsitute for story.
There's no beginning game, either. Low level DnD4.0 rules don't make any sense on Athas. Scarce resources? By level 2, a cleric obviates the need for food and water. Granted, that's only clerics, but in a world as harsh as Athas, I would imagine clerics would become a very common profession, relatively eliminating the scarcity.
First thing: the cure wounds spell is a daily power. You can do it once. This means that it works on only a single person. Game assumes a party of 5. That means 5 walk into the deseart and 1 walks out. That sounds like Athas to me. Also, I this this isn't pure raw but the way it discusses how you cannot regain healing surges I would argue implies that you cannot take the extended rest action. Which means that you can magically stave off starvation only a single time. Final thing on clerics. Athas as a 2e dnd world assumes that most people are not pcs and don't have any levels. (Well, actually it assumes they are pretty hard ass people who are the fittest of their race and not easy to take down even for pcs. However, LIKE other dnd settings it assumes most people don't have access to magic. Though many had access to psyonics.) Even priests are usually not able to actually draw spells (This is the important part and the part that was like what the 2e dmg said about classes). Whats more, considering that the priests do not worship dieties I wonder if the elments worshiping priests won't be the new class in the Athas suppliment. It wouldn't make much sence to have priests who deal radiant damage in athas.

Secondly: The gear itself has a large impact on 4th edition than previous editions messing with the value of equipment could have a considerable effect on player power. If wooden weapons do less damage or have different hit bonuses it will be noticeable. Probably more so than even 2e.
A design paradigm of DnD4.0 is players can buy pretty much any mundane thing, right at level 1, as it is. For purposes of balance, it wouldn't be fair for the wizards to have a better AC than the clerics right off the bat, which would happen if suddenly you can't get even chainmail.
Why does this have to be the case with this setting? 2e and 3e characters in most settings were able to buy whatever mundane thing they wanted as well. Athas had different rules, why wouldn't it have differnt rules in 4e? Secondly, the equipment rules in 4e are designed to basically equip all starting characters with their "iconic" equipment. You can buy the weapons and armor that are most appropriate to you. In athas that will be different than in other settings.
Even if prices or rules are changed, the 'enchant magic item' ritual means you can make magic steel plate at a fairly low level, anyway, causing any thinking person to wonder why there's a scarcity. You could reduce the availability of residuum/components, but then you've got to re-map character development to sort of handle the lack of magic items.
In order to enchant something you must have it. You cannot enchant steel plate if you don't a set in the first place. For a small cost 4e characters can basically redesgn the magic items the dm gives them. However it still requires that they have those mundane items in the first place.

Really, this argument that player enchanting somehow makes athas untenable means that athas can only exist as a 2e setting. In 2e the rules for crafting magic items were so convoluted as to be unworkable. Why would 3e have magic item scarcity? The people of athas are hadier than other places which is in part a factor of their life experience and experience makes magic items.

Whats more there is no particular reason athas can't be hard mode 4e. It was hard mode 2e dnd. You don't have to revamp anything.
The whole 'defiler' thing doesn't work in DnD4.0, either, since you can't exactly take out an entire power source (arcane), or screw it over heavily, and not violate the balance paradigm.
Actually, you can very easily have a 4e party with no arcane characters in it. So no there is not really a reason you couldn't just make arcane off limits.

I don't think they will do this. Personally, I think we will see 2 new types of wizard and the impiment wizards will go away. The defiling wizard will be able to recharge each of his encounter powers on a 5 or a 6 each turn but only able to reacharge any individual power once an encounter. The preserver will be able to recharge their encounter powers only on a 6 but will be able to do it as often as they the rolling allows each encounter. Maybe they don't even start with their encounter powers available in exchange for this ability. Maybe it applies to all arcane characters.

I would bet that we will also see the first attempt by WOTC to show us how a rituals system that eats healing surges instead of money will be a part of the book.
On almost every level, either DnD4.0 or Dark Sun would need to be 're imagined' for there to be even a semblance of compatibility, and just as DnD4.0 doesn't resemble Dungeons and Dragons, I bet Dark Sun DnD4.0 won't resemble the Dark Sun of prior years.
No not really at all. No more so than it did when playing 2nd ed dnd. Athas was a wierd place then. In 2e it had its own character creation rules, magic system, equipment, and more extensive rules than the basic game for traveling the wasteland.

The only campaign setting that had as many setting specific rules as dark sun in 2e was dragonlance (which basically took AD&D 2e and undid all the parts that made it 2nd edition and restored lots of basic dnd junk. (ugh name level)).

Its these sort of arguments that have nothing to do with the way 4e actually works or plays but instead just say "I don't like 4e so it can't be used to simulate a game world I actually like" that make the rest of the arguments about 4e seem weak and like they come from people who don't play just criticize.

Dark Sun is just a campaign world. I can adapt its concepts to any edition of D&D. Heck you could even use the shadowrun or nwod or grups and run dark sun too. For a setting the rules just need to capture the feel of the world in the mechanics you have.
Last edited by souran on Thu Aug 27, 2009 10:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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