So the big news from Wizards of the Coast at GenCon was that the next setting they will be producing will be Dark Sun. Timetabled for the tail end of 2010 the first book to come out will of course be the Campaign Guide.

I’m torn on this one. On one hand I’m not a fan of fourth edition D&D but on the other hand I was a huge fan of the original version of Dark Sun for second edition. So much so it was all we played for several years until I joined a new group that only ran Forgotten Realms.

From the information that WotC gave out at the con it seems like we might actually get a faithful attempt at bringing Dark Sun into the current system. I was joking about on Twitter this morning about how they could mess it up but after looking again at the press release and the blogs of those that were there I’m quietly hopeful. So hopeful in fact that I might actually give up my card carrying hatred of the system and give it another go when it gets released.

So what is it that’s making think this is a good idea? Well aside from originally wanting Dragonlance to be the next setting I can completely understand their reasoning behind it all. They have a system that currently has a couple of settings on the bookshelves of stores but everything they have out there is very similar. They are being compared to computer games like World of Warcraft with the style as well as the game play. So they now want to push the boat out and show us just what the system can do with you give it something like Dark Sun to play with.

They have a couple of the original writing team on board who really want to get this project going and seem to want to keep it’s history and style rooted in the original books. I’m slightly worried about the comment they made about making sure that the re-release of the Prism Pentad novels fit in with the back story in a way that allows it to ‘one possible way things turn out’. But that aside going on their interview in Dragon 378. I’m quietly optamistic.

I also think that 4e’s reliance on mini’s and battlemaps may be able to improve on the one thing about Dark Sun that I really didn’t like. Structured one on one fights in a normal roleplay you can get away with but when it comes to gladiators and the games I think the 4e combat system will work fantastically well. I’m still not a fan of it for most settings but I think arena combat will really benefit from it.

Considering the changes brought in for the revised edition that made it’s way onto the shelves not long after the original setting was published I’m really curious to see where they are going to take this. It’s not a setting where you can just shove everything 100 years into the future as everything will be almost the same. Unless there were major uprisings the bad guys will still be there and if they are beaten then it changes both the feel of the game but also the earth itself will change as the amount of defilers on the planet drop dramatically with the Templars out of the equation.

Suffice it to say I’m looking forward to it and August next year can’t come soon enough!

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Since we started dividing up the map for the RPGBN Campaign setting I’ve been trying to come up with a way of mapping my islands at the standard I wish I could attain every time I start a new campaign setting. There’s usually no surprises when at the beginning of the first session of a new campaign that I whip out a map from an old boxed set just to start us off.

Don’t get me wrong. When it comes to smaller scale maps I’ll be the first to reach for a scratch pad and pencil but I always like the main map to look good. It’s been about 10 years since I last draw a map free hand for my main map and been happy with it.

So for this setting I decided I should learn a few new tricks for Photoshop and see what I can come up with. I tried a few of the other cartography software packages out there but they were either not up to the standard I was looking for or their learning curve was a little too high for my liking.

With the bar set by MadBrew with his version of the world map I started looking looking at all the tutorials over at the Cartographers Guild for some help and inspiration. The first thing that struck me though was that almost all their tutorials generated a random map and left you to use any artistic abilities to push and pull that into the shape you wanted/needed it to be. I may as well do it freehand going from those tutorials.

So how did I go about getting to where I am now?

Well we started off with MadBrew’s map.

From that I cropped out my islands and blew them up so that they fitted onto a canvass 2000×2000 at 300dpi. You never know I might want to print them out on a decent sized bit of paper at a later date. I’ve only worked on the main island for now so I’ll leave out the rest until that’s finished.

It was turning this map into something usable where I had the problem. What I ended up having to do was follow the random map tutorials through until they had they’re land masses created and then copy and paste the coast lines around the island in such a way that they follow the general outline of the blown up islands from the original map. It takes absolutely ages though on a laptop using a touchpad. I think I added it up to about 4 or 5 hours spread over 3 days just for this one island. It would go by in a fraction of the time if I had a mouse though.

You can click through for a larger version. I’m only at the stage of working on the outlines of the islands but even at that I’m impressed so far. What do you guys think?

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With all this talk of Old School and New School going on these days I’ve got to wondering. In fact it was a comment on Game Of States latest post that gave me a good kick. I don’t judge a game by how it plays instead I judge a GM by how he preps and runs that game.  Ideally I shouldn’t be able to tell what system is being used apart from the very basic game/combat mechanics. That’s how I like my games run.

greekadman on Flickr

If I were to ask you to prepare a gaming session for a bunch of random new players using your favoured system how would you go about it? There are a few examples that jump straight to mind.

• Sandbox it. Throw the players into the random town and make up everything as you go.
• Grab a book that you know inside out and have the players run through a few of the chapters.
• Take a film and stretch it out a little. This takes away having to create locations from scratch as you can beg/borrow/steal almost everything from scenes.
• Go for that Lvl 1-4 adventure you picked up years ago and never had the chance to run before.
• Throw them in to your current campaign setting and roll with whatever happens.

They are all valid methods but if I’m completely honest if you didn’t go for options one or five I’d be less likely to play in your game. It’s completely hypocritical of me as I regularly use two and three for my campaigns but I want the GM/DM/ST/whatever you want to call yourself to be able to think on thier feet and accept anything the players manage to achieve or mess up.

So if you did only have 10 minutes to create this n00bfest I mentioned how would you go about getting it ready and running it?

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