Dark Sun Worldwide Game Day Recap

While I might not be the strongest believ­er in fate, I hap­pi­ly rec­og­nize and accept serendip­i­ty when it occurs. I had signed up for the lastest Dun­geons & Drag­ons World­wide Game Day — to get play­ers famil­iar with the new Dark Sun Cam­paign Set­ting sup­ple­ment — with my local gam­ing group. As it turns out, I went to the wrong of the two venue address­es list­ed on the page. As luck would have it, there was anoth­er group there play­ing the same adven­ture (it is world­wide, after all) who had a seat for one more per­son. Not want­i­ng to let me sched­uled after­noon of gam­ing go by (thanks, Angela!), I jumped in.

It can be a mixed bag when going to a game table blind, but gen­er­al­ly it is a good expe­ri­ence. This was a great expe­ri­ence. The indi­vid­ual run­ning the table had loads of give­aways and free drinks arranged for play­ers. The group I was gam­ing were friend­ly and eager to play off one anoth­er dur­ing the four fiveAs it turns out, Dark Sun can have some addi­tion­al ran­dom encoun­ters due to the nature of the set­ting. We end­ed up run­ning an hour lat­er than sched­uled but it was no less fun and my ter­rif­ic wife enter­tained the kids with­out once call­ing me to ask where in the hell was I at. I’m not sure I’d have had that kind of patience in her shoes, and she’s awe­some for being so cool about it. And if you think I’m just try­ing to score some points; I can assure you she nev­er reads this site. hours of gam­ing. I missed the chance to play with some old gam­ing pals of mine but mak­ing new friends is always fun for me and these are guys I hope to roll some dice again with soon.

The ambush­es just kept com­ing in this adven­ture. Dark Sun is a place where elves and tem­plars are trou­ble, and we kept run­ning into them.

As for the adven­ture itself, it was a good one. Sure it was the typ­i­cal “You’re in a bar togeth­er in the vil­lage and are approached by some­one offer­ing gold to find some­thing … ” but it did cap­ture some of the ele­ments that make Dark Sun a unique set­ting and offered some nice oppor­tu­ni­ties for role play­ing. As a mat­ter of fact, I a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to ham it up when my char­ac­ter lept into the dark pit ahead of the group and them climbed back up to report what he’d seen. I’d have glad­ly done so with­out the promise of real-world reward, but I got vot­ed best role-play­er of the ses­sion and won a set of con­di­tion cards for it.

Thanks to the group for vot­ing me to get these cards; which I will be using in every game from now on in 4th Ed.

So, enjoyed play­ing Dark Sun enough that I’m going to (lit­er­al­ly, as soon as click the Pub­lish but­ton) go pick up a copy of the Dark Sun Cam­paign Set­ting book. It’s like Dune meets Mad Max, but with d20s and I can’t wait to play some more.

Update: No, I was­n’t using “lit­er­al­ly” in a fig­u­ra­tive sense.