The Dials of Dark Sun

While I haven't heard its creators name specific works, it seems clear that the Dark Sun setting draws inspiration from Planetary Romance, Sword & Sorcery, and Post-Apocalyptic media. Paying attention to the features of these (sub)genres, one could "dial" up or down their presence in the game to tailor the setting to a specific experience, without needing to eliminate any one of components entirely.

In considering this, I realized that those three genres actually wind up having quite a bit in common. I've thought of some specific elements that 2 out of the 3 share. (I'll be ignoring similarities between Planetary Romance and S&S, because they are likely genetically related genres.) Before I present my lists, a comment about "post-apocalyptic" in regards to Dark Sun. I suspect DS is mostly inspired by Mad Max and related 80s post-apocalyptic films (The degree to which these films share some aesthetics with barbarian films in the same era in the wake of Milius's Conan, I'm also not going to get into.) I don't think DS draws much from say post-apocalyptic literature of earlier decades or even post-apocalyptic films of the 70s. The similarities I'm going to point out are with this particular Mad Max branch of the genre.

Anyway, here's what I thought of:

Planetary Romance and Post-Apoc

• Lots of wilderness, most often desert 
• Isolated, weird communities
• A mishmash of technology in use
• Lost technology

S&S and Post-Apoc

• Outsider, loner, (badass) heroes
• savagery vs. civilization
• violence
• grimness

There are major differences, of course, but it was surprising to me how well they mesh. I think it would be relatively easy to turn up the Planetary Romance by having the city-states of the Tablelands be more like the Red Martian cities of Barsoom, and the technology level of the pre-apocalypse world be higher, without really losing the post-apocalyptic struggle for survival. Alternatively, you could dial down the survival themes are play up the heroic stature of the protagonists without losing any of the other Dark Sun trappings.

There is a fourth dial and that's Dungeons & Dragons. It's probably the reason there is both magic and psionics and certainly the reason there are elves, dwarves, and halflings, different from standard as they are. The need to be marketed as a D&D campaign is probably the source of much of the dissonance in the setting, but on the other hand, a D&D setting is what it is. 

Wednesday Comics

My continued dive month by month into DC Comics of the early 80s will be delayed owing to the holiday. If you're new to the feature though, you might want to step back and take a look at the offerings with a cover date of January 1980.

Images Under A Dying Sun

 Thinking about doing something with this old post condensing my ideas about Dark Sun. Here are some images that get me in the right frame of mind. No actual Dark Sun art here, though of course a lot of that is pretty inspirational.

Wednesday Comics: DC, August 1980 (part 1)

I'm reading DC Comics' output from January 1980 (cover date) to Crisis! This week, I'm looking at the comics at newsstands on the week of May 8, 1980.

Batman #326: Wein and Novick have Batman facing a criminal he knows should be in Arkham. Gordon calls the head of the facility who assures him it's all okay, but the guy's all hidden in shadow so I'm suspicious, but Gordon just takes his word for it. It turns out it's Professor Milo with another nefarious scheme. Wein evidently likes Milo, as he brought him back in the 70s after an absence of over a decade, and brings him back again here.

DC Comics Presents #24: This is my favorite issue of this title since I've been doing this review. The basic plot is, admittedly, a little silly, but it's solidly Bronze Age. A scientist somehow hooked his heart device up to the Earth, hoping it would stabilize his arrhythmia, but instead it works the other way and causes earthquakes. Deadman is sent by Rama Krishna to get involved with this because he's being all mopey. No one in this issue sees or hears, him but he does some humorous cheerleading from Superman who is uncharacteristically hard-ass and no nonsense here. Garcia-Lopez is always great on Superman or Deadman.

Flash #288: Flash is still dealing with the returned Dr. Alchemy, who isn't who he expects. It turns out he's some sort of astrological twin, with a weird sort of relationship with the Desmond Flash has known so that they influence each other. Yeah, I don't get it either. Anyway, the original Desmond goes into action on the last panel--but for good or evil?

Ghosts #91: The thing that hurts this title compared to DC's other horror books is that the plots have a much more rigid formula: malefactor kills someone, then the murdered person's ghost somehow causes the malefactor's death. The Kashdan/Rubeny story tries a novel riff on the formula where the ghost makes it into a glassblower's glass. Haney/Landgraf have a ghost haunting a wealthy family over generations, with the twist being that the evil-doer doesn't know he's a member of the family, and the murder he committed wasn't the murder of the ghost. Nice effort, but they still feel straight-jacketed.

G.I. Combat #221: I've mentioned before that I'm not terribly fond of the Haunted Tank feature and none of the stories here change my mind, though Kanigher and Glanzman get points for sheer weirdness in "Wars Never Change" by having Stonewall Jackson's ghost mix it up with Attila the Hun's ghost--and suggesting these two are old enemies! In "Falling Star" they have a 4-F Hollywood star desperate to prove himself riding to the rescue of the Haunted Tank crew on horseback, and dying of a heart attack in a twist I didn't expect, I must admit. In other stories, a private saving his unit thanks to his adopting a stray cat, and POW gets into the ring with a sadistic German commandant.

Jonah Hex #39: Fleisher must have seen Red Sun, because we get Hex befriending a samurai looking for his kidnapped daughter (who has Chinese name rather than a Japanese one for some reason). It ends in characteristic downer Hex fashion with Hex forced to serve as second for the samurai's seppuku. The art here is by Hex co-creator Tony DeZuniga.

Justice League of America #181: Conway and Dillin  carry on the tradition of bowmen being pains in the ass in superhero teams. Green Arrow narrates this tale that starts with him complaining that the Justice League is out of touch with the "little guy" or something, then saving the day when Star Tsar returns. Notably Batman is absent, and it's sort of Batman-type "detective work" that allows Green Arrow to succeed.

Secrets of Haunted House #27: A lackluster issue with a story by Kelly with stiff Nicholas/Colletta art about a street gang terrorizing the New York subway being manipulated by a witch who wants to get back in Satan's good graces. The second story by Seeger and Redondo has a nice title ("Cold as Isis") but is a muddled tale of a mummies, reincarnation, an Egyptian god, and a swimsuit model.

Superman #350: In typical Superman fashion of this era, there is a lot going on here. Conway has Clark and Lana attending a college reunion where a number of their classmates just disappear during a boring speech by a professor. The professor's named Lemuel B. Tolkein, for no particular reason. When an office building disappears too, it turns out it all has to do with side-effects of the Prof's experiment that has turned the subconsciouses of the disappeared students into some sort of psychic monster. 

Weird War Tales #90: This one is pretty good. The first story by Haney and Cruz has a German U-boat transporting a set of coffins to South America after the fall of Berlin. The only problem is his crew keeps dying, and Hitler, occupying one of the coffins, seems very much alive! A nice riff on the Demeter parts of Dracula with some Haney twists. The second story by Kashdan and Carrillo has the French colonial army facing an army of ants in the Congo.

Wonder Woman #270: So Conway and Delbo have Hippolyte praying to Aphrodite to make Diana forget Steve Trevor and the tragedy of his death, which the goddess does. There's a fight with another elemental monster, then some Bermuda Triangle stuff, and a new Steve Trevor crashes a jet in the ocean for Diana to save. Conway's whole goal here appears to have been a reset of the Wonder Woman status quo before Trevor's death, and he's taken the long way around to do it.

World's Finest #264: I have questions about the lead Batman/Superman story by O'Neil and Buckler. Why is the Clayface of this story called "Clayface I" when he is Clayface II by Who's Who standards? Is it a mistake or is O'Neil counting him as the first Earth-1 Clayface? And since when can Clayface replicate Kryptonite? Anyway, not a bad story despite my questions. The Green Arrow story by Haney and von Eoden has Queen writing a utterly unsourced column accusing a new casino of being mobbed up (which he knew because of illegal surveillance). Then as Green Arrow, he takes down the transgender gangster running the joint. The Hawkman story by DeMatteis and Landgraf has a very Marvel vibe, to me, but B-grade Marvel, at best. Rozakis and Delbo have Dr. Light taking on Aquaman, with all the lack of thrills that implies. Bridwell and Newton bring the charm along with the Monster Society of Evil in the Marvel Family tale.

Army of the Dead and "The Job Gone Wrong" Adventure

I watched Army of the Dead on Netflix this weekend and thought it was pretty enjoyable. Briefly, it's the story of an eclectic group hired to get $200 million in cash out of a Vegas casino vault. The catch being Las Vegas is walled off after having been overrun by zombies, and the government plans to destroy the city with a tactical nuclear weapon in just a few days.

As a combination of a heist film and a zombie movie, it's heist aspect is probably most compelling. There is only mild inventiveness in its zombie aspects, consisting mostly of making that like the "vampires" in I Am Legend--and I don't mean "bad CGI" but instead fast, strong, and able to work in a group. As a heist film, it is less a caper film like Ocean's 11 or Kelly's Heroes, and more a "job goes wrong" film like Reservoir Dogs or Dead Presidents. In fact, I'm fairly certain it's not the first horror film or thriller with larcenous job and a group of competent professionals at its center.

Anyway, I think this sort of set up would make a good roleplaying game adventure, at least for a con game or one shot. A con game or one shot, because there's a very good chance that all the characters (or most) aren't going to make it out a live, so why plan for a future unlikely to happen?

In a con game, you could seed the pregens with hidden motivations that would goad them into derailing the mission, though I suppose you could let the player's make up the characters and just have a random secret motive table.

I think it could be a lot of fun with the right group.

The Monks of Gith

The city of Gith is dead and fallen, save for the walled monastery. The looming ziggurat at its center can be seen from some distance across the desert and surely accounts for most of the city's visitors. Some have come in wonder, having heard the tales that the ziggurat was built atop the grave of a vessel fallen from the void beyond. 

There are two people consumed by old hatreds and locked in an unending feud who claim the city and what is buried beneath as their birthright. Those left at Gith, built the monastery and devoted themselves to asceticism and contemplation. Those who went to dwell in the deep desert, became nomads and raiders.

The Gittite monks and nuns, who call themselves as a people yehirai, are ascetics and contemplative in their rites, it is true, but also seek to hone their bodies through martial arts.  They live off bland fare grown in underground gardens, perhaps within the buried vessel. They supplement their simple diets with a powder, invigorating to the mind and body, made from the ashes of their dead.

After the water has been reclaimed, the desiccated corpses of their folk are placed top the ziggurat and pipes are sounded to summon swarms of carrion insects for excarnation. The bones, save only the skulls which are stored in a subterranean ossuary, are then processed for the good of the community. 

Weird Revisited: In the Vicinity of the Unthran Wood

The tents of the traveling Carnival Mirabilis are set up on the outskirts of Worroth town. Its owner, Slytus Ompt (known to authorities in various jurisdictions as Feldsphur Zwand and Archim Greff) purveys the usual shabby wonders: ailing chimerical beasts in cramped cages and faded eidolons from damaged ieldra crystals—but he also boasts a free plasmoid duelist who will engage in a nonlethal prizefight with any takers. The plasmoid (its name is a gurgling something like Gwoothl Ploorl) is a thane of a subterranean freehold captured by Ompt and drugged with injections of thrall slime so that it is too weak-willed to escape, though it yearns to be free. It will promise to reveal the location of underground treasures undercovered by its coalescence for aid in making its escape.

by Wayne Barlowe

A roadside shrine draws more pilgrims than might be expected due to its living statue of the Trell mystic, Agakamunath who is said to have physical ascended to a higher plane from that very spot. The full-size statue depicts the giant at the time of Schizopurgation, wherein he split from the primal chaos burdening his soul. Nonbelievers are more fascinated by the artifice of the  Hohmmkhudhuk craftsmen--and the persistent legend that the motions of the statue's limbs in the performance of the mystery provide a clue as to the location of the sky castle Agakamunath also renounced and its treasures.

Half-ruined Maggot Tower, deep in the forest, is avoided by most folk, and not merely because its rugose and twisted spire appears unpleasantly like its namesake. The tower is a relic of the power of a rogue ieldri queen with an abiding hatred of humans. The tortures she inflicted on captives and the sacrifices to dark gods are said to have left her tower haunted. Some seekers after the magical secrets of the ieldra and willing to risk phantom horrors for power.

These locales are in the same world as these two posts.