Re: [RPG]: Dark Sun, reviewed by The Illustrious Number 6 (4/4)
Glad to hear you enjoyed the review. Keeps me motivated to write some more.
Sadly, I have no experience with any conversions. But google gets quite a few results for GURPS, so that may be worth investigating. And of course there's the two conversions to 3E that I mentioned in my review. A friend of mine has been in a long campaign that used the athas.org conversion, and he's very enthusiastic about it.
Re: [RPG]: Dark Sun, reviewed by The Illustrious Number 6 (4/4)
Speaking as a Dark Sun fanatic, I thought this was a very good review. I disagree with certain elements (such as the lack of color, or the value of the character "tree"), but those are matters of personal taste we differ on. When it comes to the details, your review is spot on.
As for AD&D, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole nowadays, but I still love the Dark Sun setting. I'm currently running a Dark Sun campaign with GURPS and it's working out great.
__________________
Rev. Keith Johnson
keithalanjohnson AT gmail.com http://keithalanjohnson.blogspot.com/
GMing: Nightwatch (weekly nWoD crossover campaign)
GMing: Fading Ćon (alternating weekly Trinity/Fading Suns campaign)
Playing: Hong Kong by Night (alternating weekly Kindred of the East campaign)
GMing: The Promise of Fear (weekly Changeling: the Lost campaign)
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." -- Aristotle
Re: [RPG]: Dark Sun, reviewed by The Illustrious Number 6 (4/4)
Can you cite a reference to support the comment about the boxes no longer being produced because they are a cost loser? I'm not arguing with you but one need only look to Hasbro, which produces countless boxed games (which in some cases sell for less than the Dark Sun boxed set did) to see that there must be a way to sell boxed games and make money at it.
Re: [RPG]: Dark Sun, reviewed by The Illustrious Number 6 (4/4)
Reverend Keith> Thanks man.
Aeonite> No offense taken. I really should have sourced it in my review, anyway.
Assuming my memory isn't playing tricks on me, Ryan Dancey posted this information somewhere on the internet. Could be here on rpg.net, actually. He used to post here fairly often. Sadly, I can no longer find the quote. (Only a secondary reference.) I did find another report of his analysis of TSR's business, which you might also find interesting, but which doesn't mention the boxed sets. You can find it here.
I can only speculate about what caused the boxed sets to be unprofitable for TSR. As you said, Hasbro and others are still releasing plenty of boxed games, so perhaps it wasn't so much the box itself, but the large number of printed items they generally contained. For instance, in the case of the Dark Sun boxed set, the same content could probably have fitted in a single book of 224 pages. That would also have taken up less than a third of the shelf/warehouse space. Or perhaps the problem was specific to TSR. (Bad printer contracts maybe?) Or maybe they could have gotten away with it if they had just set the pricing a little higher. Like I said, I can only speculate.
ChopSockey> Absolutely! But be warned that it will probably take me a while.
I've never seen anyone bring up this before, but I see some influence of Tékumel on Dark Sun: the exotic setting, a very hot but metal poor world, insect people, etc. I've never played Dark Sun, but I've been intrigued by it for a long time. Dark Sun fans might be interested in the Tékumel setting as well.
Last edited by the_green_man; 12-21-2008 at 08:38 AM..
Reason: Changed to more descriptive title
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