The Burnt World of Athas

The official Dark Sun website

Dark Sun 4e Monster Index

Daniel Bandera compiled this great monster index for all of the 4th edition D&D Dark Sun monsters and their sources. His sources include all of the released adventures including game day & free rpg day as well as Dungeon adventures & Ashes of Athas adventures.

Dark Sun 4e Monster Index

Tim Brown announces Dragon Kings

Dark Sun creator Tim Brown has teamed up with original Dark Sun artist, Brom, to create a new fantasy rpg universe called Dragon Kings. Brown calls the world of Khitus his spiritual successor to Dark Sun

The Dragon Kings game will include a progressive rock CD, an art-intensive ‘album’ or ‘concert’ style book that expands heavily on each song (with lyrics, more stories, maps, specific art, etc.), and a hardbound game book. No release date yet.

You can find out more about Dragon Kings at the website DragonKingsProject.com or on twitter at @thedragonkings.

Blood Sand Arena

Just in case you missed it we've added Blood Sand Arena to the products catalog along with a link to download it from Wizards of the Coast (dead link)

The fires of the crimson sun burn hot as your group of vagabonds band together to face intrigue, betrayal, and the beasts of Bloodsand Arena. Can your group survive and earn glory in the world of Dark Sun?

This Dungeons & Dragons adventure folio, created for Free RPG Day 2010, previews the Dark Sun setting, available in August 2010. Bloodsand Arena is designed for 1st-level characters and contains two short adventures, a double-sided poster map of key encounter areas, and a pack of six pre-generated D&D characters.

Ashes of Athas now available for home play

Wizards of the Coast has allowed Baldman Games to distribute their Ashes of Athas convention games to the non-convention crowd. You’ll be able to sign up to receive the chapters over at Baldman’s site.

[update: the forum page has gone offline; to request a copy of the adventure, send an email to thebaldman@baldmangames.com ]

Some important information from their announcements page:

  • No one (not even us) can host the adventure files anywhere.
  • Only the admins and Baldman Games can provide adventures.
  • When you e-mail us (or send us a message via these forums), we will send you adventures, one chapter at a time.
  • When contacting us, please include your e-mail so we can send you the files and the chapter(s) you need.
  • You can run those adventures, or if you are a convention organizer, you can provide them to your DMs for use at the convention.
  • You cannot otherwise redistribute or share or post the files anywhere. If you do, this will likely result in Ashes of Athas distribution being closed down!
  • Adventures you received from us can be run anywhere you please (home play, stores, conventions, desert caravans...). You can run them multiple times - whenever you please.
  • When you request adventures we will provide a link to pregens, maps, and campaign rules.

I suspect that, by having everyone request directly from the source, Wizards is looking to easily gauge the interest in the game; this is a good thing.

Dark Sun, Dungeon World style and G+

Besides D&D & Pathfinder, Dungeon World seems to have gained some traction as a rules set for Dark Sun. You can find Travis Stout's excellent writeup of Dark Sun Classes for Dungeon World, there's also some equipment and useful tags such as Fragile for weapons.

Geneome talks about using Dark Sun with Dungeon World in : Dungeon World Defiling

Ritorix talks about his Green Age of Athas setting design for his PBP Dark Sun Dungeon World game.

On a non Dungeon World, but still Dark Sun note, G+ User Svebor Midzic found a cool article about ancient shark tooth swords that have a definite Dark Sun feel in the Dark Sun G+ Community.

Ashes of Athas news from the Going Last podcast

Today on the Going Last podcast, blogger and Ashes of Athas OP author/admin, Teos announced that the complete Ashes of Athas campaign will be available for home play.

Listen to episode 94 of Going Last at about the 52 minute mark for details.

As mentioned in the podcast you can also watch Teos talk to Mike Shea of Sly Floursh in their Looking Back on Dark Sun Organized Play Campaign video on Mike's youtube page.

EDIT: More information can be found on the BaldmanGames website in the Ashes of Athas Forum

Elemental Fundamentals: Battle in the Salt Flats

Sheena and Kazaruth walked towards each other on the barren land of the Salt Flats. Each could see the other, but neither's face showed any recognition of the other. Both of them had been instructed by their Elemental Lords to travel through the Salt Flats. Neither of the inexperienced priests knew why, but did as they were instructed.


Elemental spells for your 2nd edition AD&D Dark Sun game.