My encounters, over the years, with Dark Sun have been short and fleeting, but the setting has always managed to catch my interest by virtue of being sword and sorcery but unlike just about everything else that falls into the category.

With the release of the new edition of the setting, I thought that now would be as good a time as any to do something about that interest. One nice book with the core of what was needed. Not a fan produced PDF (no matter how good, a book is a more comfortable read), not something out of print and impossible to track down, but a single tome to set the ball in motion.

Wonderful. Setting sorted.

Then I went to look for the rules, and that is when everything started to fall apart.

Six months ago, I wouldn’t have had a problem. Reservations about 4e in general aside, I would have just picked up the cores (helped by the fact that I keep coming across cheap offers for the limited editions of them). Two things are stopping me.

Errata. I gather that there is a big ball of errata out there that has made some fairly major changes to the core.

It doesn’t help when I come across comments such as:

The one thing keeping players sane is the Character Builder. Because it’s constantly updated, we don’t have to worry too much about keeping up with all of the updates. Of course, it makes us look at our core rulebooks and wonder why we bother to carry them around.

Really? I do not play any single RPG often enough to justify a monthly subscription to the rules.

We also have:

WOTC never actually updated the original monsters with the updated math we find in the Monster Manual 3

So, not only is there a lot of errata, but it seems there should be a lot more.

So we reach the second thing which, while being a barrier to me buying the cores, might just provide an alternative. Essentials.

The problem with Essentials is that it just isn’t all that clear if it is going to be enough to run Dark Sun.

I’ve seen forum comments which suggest it is just about possible, but might need a PHB3 to assist.

I’ve noted the utter failure on the part of WotC to mention Essentials on their Upcoming Products page.

I’ve seen the front loading of the product name completely wreck the usefulness of search results on the WotC site (and am having difficulty believing I’m in danger of veering off into an SEO rant on this blog).

I short, I just can’t find any guidance from WotC on the question “Does Essentials have everything essential to make good use of the Dark Sun core?”, which isn’t a good sign for a product that is supposed to make it easier to get into D&D.

I think I might be sticking to my usual system based around a 20-sider. Would anyone like to try to convince me otherwise?

A few months ago I mentioned that I had started pulling together some figures for a game of Fantasy Craft (and excellent system that has just had its first batch of errata). As usual, other projects got in the way, but I have finally got a significant number fully painted — more then I originally planned, but I’ll come to that in a minute. Today I applied a coat of matt varnish and can call the first batch “finished”, so I’ve taken some pictures and will relate the story of how they came to be.

The original plan was to paint a few figures to represent House Deneith mercenaries in my ongoing, but infrequent, Eberron campaign. (I also plan to paint some Orcs, and should probably up the priority of that little project as we are getting close to the session when they come out to play with the merry band of heroes).

When I want to get miniatures, I usually make Foundry my first port of call. They are a little on the expensive side, but produce some very nice figures — and the frequency of their 20% off deals helps a lot! The trouble with getting nice figures is that it leads the fanatical Warhammer players that you call “friend” to make comments such as “They would make a great core to a really characterful Empire army!”. To which there is only one response — “Yes, yes they would.”

So it seemed I was doomed to getting back into Warhammer, and I stuck my head in the Empire army book and tried to figure out what I wanted from an army. The answer was simple, cannons and other things that go “Bang!”. The fluff suggested a Nuln army and, while the text shouted “Black! Black to hide the soot marks!”, the pictures showed a number of units which had gone for a red and black colour scheme.

I took another look at the House Deneith pictures in the Eberron source books. Black and red was a common theme. It seemed the world wasn’t going to give me an excuse to avoid it.

I dabbled with various figures and eventually got to the point where I was painting my first cannon (I have another two still waiting in their blister packs). How was I going to apply my colour scheme here? I looked up and saw, framed and hanging on my wall, the answer in a holiday photo I had taken a couple of years previously.

Too many coincidences?

Meanwhile, Warhammer 8 has been released and given me another reason to keep painting. At the current rate, I should shortly have enough fully painted models to be a reasonably sized army and will be able to take them to the tabletop with some degree of pride.

Happily I managed to escape having bought nothing more then the three things I went in to buy (two pots of paint and some plastic glue). The afternoon was spent working on some House Deneith figures for my Fantasy Craft game. I have a long way to go, but it should make for an entertaining next session.

Two sessions in (not counting The Day Of Character Generation, in which everyone fought over a single PDF and tried to build characters for a very different take of D20 fantasy) and everybody appears to be having a good time (myself included).

The system is a lot of fun to run, and the rules for standard characters (who get damage saves instead of wounds and vitality) and mooks (who just die when sneezed upon) make it a breeze to GM.

I have players who have written up nice, detailed backgrounds (which are already getting tied into the plot) and who can be bribed with in-game rewards to write up the adventure.

On that subject, I’m keeping the Campaign Log over at Obsidian Portal as an experiment. The site was pointed out after I made a previous blog post seeking information about online gaming.

It seems to be working well, and lets the players contribute content without me having to give them all access to this blog. It also structures the information in a format better suited to a campaign than I could achieve here.

On the subject of rewards, I’m offering bonus reputation. This is a part of Fantasy Craft that I like a lot, at least in theory, it is too early to see how it plays out in practice. Essentially, it is a representation of how much kudos you have earned and controls your Renown (how much sway you have with a given demographic, such as the military or the common people), Favours, Contacts, Base, Magical Shiny, and so on. There is something that just feels right about giving extra renown to players who shout about how great their characters are on the Internet!