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.