(unofficial) Wisdom of the Stars
David Schwartz (aka Hill Giant) has updated his Wisdom of the Stars article on Athasian cosmology. It is available in the downloads section.
Another new templar in the Monster Bureau
Mike Ring has joined the Monster Bureau. Mike wrote some of the monsters for Terrors of Athas and he is a welcome addition to the monster team. Welcome to the Templarate, Mike.
New templar in the Monster Bureau
David Schwartz (aka Hill Giant) has joined the Monster Bureau. David has given us a lot of quality feedback on Terrors of Athas. Welcome to the Templarate, David.
Terrors of Athas playtest release
Terrors of Athas is now released. This is a playtesting release, so all feedback is appreciated.
Terrors of Athas is a full Monster Manual for DS3.5, converting many, many of our old favorite baddies. It contains:
- Over 200 different monsters
- Seven templates
- 26 playable monsters
- New summon monster and summon nature's ally spell lists
- An extensive list of monsters from other sources suitable for a Dark Sun campaign
- New druid animal companions
Dark Sun in Dragon
[Many of you know about this already … this announcement got stuck in the drafting stage over the holiday. Sorry about the delay.]
Dragon #315, subtitled Campaign Classics contains an article on
Defiling, written by Dave Noonan of WotC. Also mentioned is that Dragon
and Dungeon will be publishing a set of articles in May presenting a
full set of Rules for playing Dark Sun in the May issue, also written by
Dave Noonan. The articles will be published shortly after the release
of the 3.5 Psionics Handbook, which is due out in April.
We have been in contact with the folks at Pazio, who took over the publication of Dragon and Dungeon earlier this year. I can't reveal everything that was discussed, as we're still trying to sort out the relationship.
Pazio has a rule that they cannot publish anything that has been published elsewhere, which eliminates everything currently on the site. It also invalidates quite a bit of our non-module development materials, since we have been very open in our rule-development process over the years.
However, we're discussing with them how to better involve Athas.org in the process. Whatever results come of this will likely be applicable to all of the official sites.
No matter what ends up happing, however, there is a continued place for athas.org, and all of the official sites. Dragon is a D&D generalist magazine -- it's needs and goals don't mesh well with the continued support that a fleshed out setting requires. Products such as City State of Draj (even if it were much, much shorter) just aren't the sort of thing that Dragon is insterested in publishing, because it's not of much use to the majority of their audience.
It's out!
The long awaited moment is here: the final release of Dark Sun 3 is out!
Any updates to the document beyond this point will be documented and recorded as errata. A future update will include an illustrated version of the document, with plenty of interior art. For now, however, the text of the rules is set.
If you've got comments or errata to report, please send to ds3-errata@athas.org
Something to sink your teeth into
There’s a release of the DS3.5 updated document available. This is not a final release … more of a “request for comments” publication. There are no images included in the doc, and I figured out how to not make the background destroy the file size, so it’s a much more reasonable document this time around.
What we're looking for: Commentary on the document, with an eye towards 3.5 compatability. There are some notes on the release page that should give you a heads up about what we're already aware of.
Once again, this is not a final release. The final release will have all those pretty pictures, and a better introductory chapter. Really.
On a tangental note, the Monsters document is just waiting on a few more monsters (paraelemental beasts, IIRC) before it gets a simmilar treatment: Intensive internal review, a couple of preview comment releases, followed by a finalized publication. Gab's the one to pester about timelines for that document.
DS3.5 news update
No, it’s not done yet. But it is going through a final round of editing, and I hope to have something ready by … hrm, let’s call it the end of September.
This is a semi-major update to the published rules, bringing things fully in line with 3.5. The first release is going to be an imageless (thus small) version of the document, which we'll want feedback on. A later release will be fully laid out and chock-full of pretty pictures.
Major changes: Check out your 3.5 conversion guides for the standard changes. For things somewhat less directly related to that, we've cleaned up the equipment chapter, spells have undergone much review and updating, a couple races (notably the half-elf) have recieved tweaks, and the Gladiator class has been rewritten. There are also a handful of new feats, powers and spells to glance over.
DS3.5 update
Things are moving along on the 3.5 update for DS3. I’ve been playing with a different layout, and there have been several updates to a few races. Feats and skills are modified and nearly ready, and a revised Gladiator class will be put out.
Just about all that’s left to do on this front is to clean up the rest of the spells / powers chapter…
City State of Draj
City State of Draj and its companion adventure, Whispers of the Storm, are now available. Like City State of Tyr and Ivory Triangle, City State of Draj aims to give greater depth and life to one of the cities of the Tablelands.