Dark Sun: Shattered Lands is fucking great

[Krivol]

If there is one developer that can do it..... it is BEAMDOG !

Go Trent Go, Dark Sun Enhanced EditioN!

 

[Fowyr]

I love Shattered Lands, finished it several times over many years. Post-sewers part of the game is great, even desert, I never was bothered by its size or emptiness. After all, what else do you expect from Athas? But emptiness of desert is often deceptive. It contains inside ruins, encounters with dangerous people and monsters, ancient mysteries and other sights to see.

Wake of the Ravager is a good game too, but I love Shattered Lands more.

 

[ghostdog]

I remember back when I had some shitty machine with win98 and the damn OS crushed and couldn't even boot. I took a look at my diskettes and saw that I had this older game, Dark Sun among them. So, I decided to install dos and play Dark Sun and was blown away with how awesome that game was and how much Fallout and Baldur's gate seemed to have taken from it. My previous experience with dos rpgs was mainly with first person dungeon crawlers and I never expected this level of interactivity, quest structure and style from a dos game. And what a fucking great setting.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to get it run as smoothly with dosbox. There's always some judder and some speed sync problems.

 

[Darkzone]

Also, it never ceases to amuse me what a munchkin game Darksun is -- higher stats, super-duper races with super-duper abilities; I swear that was part of what made it so immediately appealing as a kid.

It is about a dying world where only the strongest / best survive, and the weak races have already died off. Therefore if you start a DnD campaign with Dark Sun you do not make one character but you should make at least three characters and you got to be used to the fact that you will die very fast within a campaign. To me the appealing side of it is, that it is a world where Conan meets Madmax.

Shattered Lands belongs with Pool of Radiance in my opinion to the top 10 RPGs. Sadly i had always problems with "Wake of the Ravanger" and couldn't play it beyond the start therefore i cannot give it a ranking number.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to get it run as smoothly with dosbox. There's always some judder and some speed sync problems.

Have you tried with the GoG version? I have bought it as it appeared on GoG and even started a game, but because i had much on my head i didn't play it through.

 

[JarlFrank]

Your puppy love affair with the game might start to diminish once you escape out into the desert but I agree that this game deserves a special place in any serious RPG aficionado's heart.

Nah I've already visited two of the three major villages in the game by the point I wrote this post. The areas after you escape from the arena are just as good.

 

[JarlFrank]

This game is so damn great and I have no idea why it didn't spawn any imitators at its time.

I always thought you could draw a pretty straight line between Dark Sun and a lot of what makes Fallout or Baldur’s Gate so good, no? Have Tim Cain or the MDs said anything on the subject?

Yeah, but DS was made in 1993 and the Fallouts and Baldur's Gates only came out in 1997. That's 4 years before anyone released a similar RPG to Dark Sun, meanwhile there were tons of games attempting to clone Ultima and Gold Box right after they came out.

But maybe that's just an issue of Dark Sun style games being harder to develop than simple Ultima clones.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Do all characters compulsorily gain psionic disciplines? Don't want to have too many psykers on my team.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

All characters get a few psi abilities randomly, but only psionics can learn more or improve them.
Change everyone to telepathy at char creation, so that you get a couple of random telepathy skills, those are the best ones.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Change everyone to telepathy at char creation, so that you get a couple of random telepathy skills, those are the best ones.

Any way I can skip getting psionic skills?

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

no, in the dark sun setting everyone has at least some basic psionic powers

 

[ERYFKRAD]

no, in the dark sun setting everyone has at least some basic psionic powers

Seriously? That sounds messed up.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

no, in the dark sun setting everyone has at least some basic psionic powers

Seriously? That sounds messed up.

It's normal in Athas, even monsters have psi.

Psionics
Psionics is the third supernatural force, and it is a non-magical one. Instead, psionics draws upon the user’s own inner resources to produce extraordinary effects. Most Athasians have at least some psionic talent. Each race has it's own racial psionic ability, and characters can choose to take an extra psionic power point when they gain a level instead of a hit or skill point. Unlike wizardly magic, psionics are seen as a normal part of Athasian life.

Having no psionic powers would be possible in PnP I guess, though highly unusual. However, in the game you can't choose to not get those random psi spells.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=210

Arcane magic isn’t the only form of magic in Athas; far more common is the use of psionics. In their struggle for survival basically all creatures developed some psionic abilities, player races and monsters alike. Unlike arcane magic, psionics are an accepted part of everyday life and all characters regardless of class will get a few psionic abilities.

 

[JarlFrank]

Just don't use psionics if you don't like em.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Just don't use psionics if you don't like em.

Obviously, but I was curious if the option of not being one existed.

 

[JarlFrank]

Nah, you always get some but unless you're a psionicist, they're not very useful compared to the mage/cleric spells, or just using melee or ranged weapons, especially on higher levels.

 

[Immortal]

no, in the dark sun setting everyone has at least some basic psionic powers

Seriously? That sounds messed up.

Dark Sun is cool as a setting but the historical lore behind it - is stupid.

TL;DR A bunch of halfling shape changers went crazy or something and they shape changed into everything in the world today. Everyone is a shape changed halfling - It's dumb.

 

[abnaxus]

"I want to be a dragon" is Athas in a nutshell.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

no, in the dark sun setting everyone has at least some basic psionic powers

Seriously? That sounds messed up.

Dark Sun is cool as a setting but the historical lore behind it - is stupid.

TL;DR A bunch of halfling shape changers went crazy or something and they shape changed into everything in the world today. Everyone is a shape changed halfling - It's dumb.

Manlets ruin everything.

 

[Daemongar]

I really liked Shattered Lands. The setting was unique, the system, Lots of unique class items that made me immediately want to re-roll my party. There was a lot there and a lot more that made me want to play it a second time.

Some things that Shatter Lands did that really *should* have been copied are:
* The ability to play races and chars with > 18 stats, something that wasn't prevalent at the time. You can only do this once, I suppose, but Shattered Lands was probably the first game until PS:T that allowed you to revel in ability scores exceeding 18. Sure, BG had *some* but it felt good to really beat on someone with a high STR Half-Giant in Shattered Lands. It was worth sacrificing all other abilities.
* The magic system where you just drag the spells area of effect ... over the area you'd like to affect! Seems pretty logical, but very, very few games have taken this good mechanic. Also, spell range was an actual factor.
* The interaction system seemed like a cross between Leisure Suit Larry and Sam and Max Hit the Road, but it worked.
* The lack of a grid in combat (I thought) was a good decision. If they had clean squares, then tactics would be cut and dried, like PoR. But since the players and enemies aren't in neat squares, positioning spells isn't as easy as similar games.
* Unique classes and races mixed in with your cut and dried cleric/fighter. The thrikeen felt unique, so did the half-giant. The rest I don't remember.
* Some very large combat maps where your players movement range come into play. This was abandoned about the time of ... FO2, and FO2 didn't use very complex movement rules.

The game had a lot of good, original thoughts behind it. A shame they didn't build on this.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

ah Dark Sun Shattered Lands; the peak of cRPGs.

I still remember the first party I had half giant fighter/psionist; buggy ranger(air)/fighter; half elf druid (water) /preserver; elf cleric(earth)/preserver

good times...

 

[Azalin]

Some things that Shatter Lands did that really *should* have been copied are:
* The ability to play races and chars with > 18 stats, something that wasn't prevalent at the time. You can only do this once, I suppose, but Shattered Lands was probably the first game until PS:T that allowed you to revel in ability scores exceeding 18. Sure, BG had *some* but it felt good to really beat on someone with a high STR Half-Giant in Shattered Lands. It was worth sacrificing all other abilities.

That was just part of the Dark Sun pnp setting,it wasn't something that the developers decided.Most DnD settings like FR,Dragonlance etc allowed characters to go up to 18 or 19 in case of some demihumans,Dark Sun had humans going up to 20(5d4 or 3d6+2 if I remember correctly)and some demihumans like half giants go up to 24.

 

[MRY]

Zed Duke of Banville, Darkzone -- Yes, I'm aware of setting's stated rational for why it has munchkins. But it doesn't change how ridiculous it is, or how awesome it was when I first played it.

 

[Sacred82]

Your puppy love affair with the game might start to diminish once you escape out into the desert but I agree that this game deserves a special place in any serious RPG aficionado's heart.

getting out into the desert was the best thing. I've never really played the Goldbox games, but I guess that amount of free-roaming was a real innovation for SSI.

Almost every map had a little secret or some NPC in it, which was a really neat touch. Also gathering allies for the final battle is something more CRPG's should be doing.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I started Dark Sun: Shattered Lands back in early January, but kind of lost interest when I reached some sewers. Work got busy and I found it hard to remember where I was an what I was trying to do when I got back to the game a couple weeks back. Anyway, I really liked the escape from the arena, and found this game comparable to Knights of the Chalice.

Looking at my saved game, I have a 5th level Half Giant Fighter, 5th level Thri-Kreen Ranger, 4th level multi class Elven Fighter/Cleric, and 4th level multi class Elven Fighter/Preserver. Maybe I'm missing out by not going with two arcane spell casters, but I really wanted to play a Thri-Kreen. I'll try to get back into this when I finish Avernum 4.

 

[Sinatar]

I played through both of them again about 4 months ago and yea Shattered Lands is fantastic.

Wake of the Ravager has a good game hiding in there somewhere, but good lord is it buggy. Most annoying bug, all the weapons that do some kind of proc on hit (like the flame sword, or the life steal sword) were mistakenly given "charges" like a wand (that you can't see), and after you proc the effect a certain amount of times draining the charges the weapons just vanish. I ended up having to do the end game with some shitty ass +2 swords I bought from a merchant cause all my good shit went poof.