By Rodney Thompson
Magic brought the world of Athas to ruin and transformed its gluttonous wielders in ways both great and terrible. The successful spellcasters among the power-mad gorged themselves on arcane lore and evolvedfirst into sorcerer-kings and then partly into dragons. Other dabblers in the arcane that succumbed to the temptation of easy power suffered more dire consequences. For these unenviable souls, defiling magic became a part of their being; far from raising them to new heights, it warped them physically and mentally into something debasedand ravenous.
It seems that Bill Slavicsek is leaving Wizards of the Coast.
Thank you, Bill, for the long years you’ve worked on this hobby we love, and particularly for your work on this blasted little world called Athas. We wish you luck in your future endeavors.
The living campaign Ashes of Athas is expanding it’s play base beyond the larger conventions. They have a signup page where you can request a copy of the adventures to run in registered play at your local gaming store, or even with your usual gaming group.
About two weeks ago, I spent some time talking with Tristan and Trampus (a.k.a. Dragonhelm) of the Dragonlance Nexus, talking about our favorite wasteland. The first of 4 (! Okay, so I spent a lot of time talking with them…) parts of the interview is up at the Dragonlance Canticle . My segment starts around 24 minutes in.
So, I finally managed to get around to getting the arena back online. It’s the same codebase that was there previously, though I’m going to be doing some work on modernizing it as time allows.
The link is back, but the DNS changes may take a day or so to propogate; if you cant’t get there yet, you will soon.
After a series of unfortunate server outages due to a compromised web server, we’re finally back up online, albeit in a somewhat diminished capacity. I’ve got most sections of the site back and recovered, but there are some older feedback type areas of the site – which were generally swamped by spam – that I’ve disabled during the course of cleaning out the system.
I’ve also yet to re-enable the arena, and I am, to be honest, uncertain as to wether or not I am going to do so. As I mentioned on the wizard’s forum I’m uncertain as to wether or not I’m going to go to the extent of reviving them. That forum thread is probably the best place to give feedback, although you can also email me if you feel strongly about it.
This is old news by now, as Dark Sun 4 has been out for about three weeks now, depending on whether or not you have access to a Friendly Local Gaming Store.
I’ve been rather mum on the topic of Dark Sun 4, in part because I was under an NDA, and didn’t want to risk breaking it; I received an early review copy in December.
We’re not dead, here at athas.org, but we are working out what our place in the new ecosystem is. I’ve been working away at some of the backend of the site, bringing the framework up to date with the latest release (and making the mistake of tracking the fast-changing beta) and tinkering with some more collaborative features, trying to balance between external input and spam.
If nothing else, we want to be the place where the community can share adventures, plot hooks, monster builds, new locations and such with a permanent home that’s not a forum post; keep your eyes open.
