u/Lixuni98

Hello people, thank you all for the amazing response to the first post, describing the True Sith. This time I’d like to propose the heroes of the story, along with how the scaffold of the adventure we shall follow.

This is, mind you, not that related to the narrative, because in Adventure Design, what you are expected to do during the fame usually is justified by the story, but said background can be malleable and works regardless of narrative, to a degree.

A good example is the McGuffin Quest, what If I tell you that Kotor 1 and Final Fantasy 1 are the exact same game structure-wise? You might think I am insane, but not, they do, you got an initial quest (Save Princess Sara, Find Bastila and Escape Taris) which introduces to the gameplay loop, and after doing so, the “story” reveals details about the world (The king mentioning the four crystals, Revan is Force Sensitive plus Dantooine Segment) that sends the heroes to travel the world to collect four objects (The four elemental crystals in the caves, the Star Maps located in the four planets of Kashyyk, Manaan, Korriban and Tatooine), which then reveals a path towards a final segment to face the final boss (Temple of Chaos and Time Travel, Rakata Prime and the Star Forge).

As you can see, narrative is what elevates a game from basic to complex, but the skeleton, the adventure structure is what makes the adventure pace feel strained or overextended, like a journey or a chore. And these structure of travel to specific locations with their vignettes to work for a larger goal is present in both KotOR games, just swap Star Maps with lost Jedi and you can see the developers used this time proven structure to elevate the game through their narrative.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, the narrative is something we can tackle next time. This time, we have to start with the central question of “Who are you?”, “What are you doing?” and “Why are you going it?”

According to Chris Avellone, the initial idea was to play again as the Exile, as your goal is to find Revan and defeat the True Sith before they attack. That idea, although one I think would be fitting in the context of the rest of the trilogy, I am not sure I’d agree with, explained through the following points:

For starters, and thanks to the previous comment of fellow user u/shastasilverchair92, each entry in the series has revolved around a core question that sets the tone of the journey our protagonist go through, quoting his comment, because he brilliantly states them:

KOTOR 1

• ⁠Setting: The Republic, the Sith, the Star Forge, ancient Rakatan worlds.
• ⁠Core dramatic question: Can a person transcend their past and freely choose who they become?

KOTOR 2

• ⁠Setting: A dying galaxy after the Jedi Civil War.
• ⁠Core dramatic question: What if the very Force that gives life also strips people of agency?

Both the Revan and the Exile answered that question already, in their specific entry, so concluding their journey with the third part, although satisfactory, I don’t think it will be enough to carry the narrative the entire way, because they are supposed to have solved their own internal struggles already, and creating a new struggle for them can be very hit or miss. Additional to that, both Revan and the Exile already reached their peak potential powerwise last game, and although a writer could come up with a reason of them losing them, it’s VERY easy that it would feel cheap and an obvious plot device. For that, and please share if you agree or disagree, I’d like to have the protagonist of Kotor 3 to be an outsider, one that had no relation to the story, but whose past serves as a set up to answer the main question of the narrative:

KOTOR 3
- Setting: The dark depths of the True Sith Empire
- Core dramatic question: What happens to a person once they refuse to accept their reality, to the point they are willing to sacrifice everything and everyone to reject it?

This is related to the True Sith as a villain, and I quote one of my comments last thread for it:

“The True Sith is an evil being, almost THE evil as a concept, but such atrocity is born through fear, fear of death, fear of unknown, fear of life itself. This demiurge, despite all their powers is a creature of a small and fragile ego, like all Sith ultimately, and in the end, it when finally confronted, shall prove to be more pathetic and weak than anyone could imagine, as all evil beings are, and you can see this pattern in all Sith.”

So, in contrast to our protagonist, the True Sith Demiurge is a being who rejected reality and through the Dark Side amassed such a power that it became a demi-god to define it themselves, yet as a mere attempt to deny their own. Therefore, the fitting one for heroic journey will be a protagonist who is going through a hard spot in life, seemingly inescapable, but whose involvement in this conflict will determine if he will face his reality, like Revan and the Exile, or escape it, like the Demiurge. And for that I’d like to base myself from other media and how the adventure is set up, to make out pitch.

The first inspiration for our protagonist is that of the protagonist of Midsommar. If you haven’t seen it, Midsommar is started by a young woman who is traumatized with the reality she lives day by day, and how she moves in to a pagan commune to refresh her mind, to horrific results. I won’t spoil the movie, but such a conflict is one I’d like to introduce to our protagonist.

The second inspiration is that of Fear and Hunger, where our protagonist is chosen from a roster of different individuals with different backgrounds and motives, all with their own reasons for delving in the game’s main dungeon.

So, for our pitch, the game will start 4 years after the end of Kotor 2, in a asteroid mining base known as AS-971b. This is a base established by Czerka Corporation to mine specific mineral ores for their blasting charges, at a star system orbiting a white dwarf. What makes it special, is that this asteroid settlement is a the edge of known space, no further hyperspace routes that are known go beyond this point, republic space or beyond. Close to it, there lies a stellar formation known as the Dark Lens, a nebula that is strong in the Dark Side, and it’s the gate towards the first of the world of the True Sith. Our protagonist will be an outsider, let’s call it the Conflicted (I am not good with titles), who is going ti be if three backgrounds, chosen from character creation:

- A mercenary, former Mandalorian who was expelled by his clan after committing the greatest sin, fleeing from an already lost battle, where all their fellow clan members perished. They was not accepted within the ranks of Clan Ordo due to this, and they are rejected throughout the galaxy due to his origins. He is currently stationed in AS-971b working for an indepentent freighter captain, dishonored and without future

- A smuggler, former republic trader, wanted by republic’s justice for the crime of killing their own family. Unable to remember whether it was his intention or not, he turned to smuggling life to survive, but he currently holds no place to call home, and is under constant pressure from crime lords to perform more despicable runs in the outer rim, without a seeming future.

- A Czerka Employee, shunned by a past altercation within the company’s questionable hierarchy, heavily indebted to multiple creditors, he is serving in a dead end job making ends meet, his family disowned him and his former friends left him, now rotting in this lost and barely profitable venture, without a future.

So you can see the commonalities here, each protagonist background is that of a dead end really rough spot, the kind that will make you reaaally desperate for a change, but no seeming way out. Such backgrounds will be referred to later during the story, and will influence the future choices.

From that point, AS-971b will serve as a starting segment. Unlike other games that start with combat (Endar Spire) and a Dungeon (Peragus), these settlement will begin with a fully living station to speak to npcs, meet people and get acquainted with the game. The station is basically a more quiet Mos Eisley, it’s appearance should be old and decrepit, and it should have an eerie depressing aura to it, similar to moving to a mining town in Siberia. But this state of things is broken by an incident related to the Dark Lens Nebula, that causes the asteroid to be diverted into it, eventually being caught in a cosmic storm that will teleport our protagonist to a maddening world of the True Sith. From there, and I’ll dive more into it later, they will find the Eban Hawk, not destroyed but abandoned, and they will find a new force bond created by mistake, with the Demiurge themselves, this bond, which seems to be a common thing in the series, like Revan and Bastila and Exile with Kreia, will define hiw the rest of the adventure follows.

I’ll leave it here for now, I’d love to continue with the graph and how the adventure proceeds, but I am noticing I touched a lot of things and this post is getting too long, so I’ll leave it here for you guys to ponder and add your thoughts, I read all of you and take all of them into account, so this becomes that game we could have, one way or another.

I have over 11 years of stuff written for Dark Sun, from which I can certainly put in modules, with the new releases, what would be the rules for publishers?

So after playing my weekly Dark Sun Campaign, I decided to start playthrough of Knights if the Old Republic (100% recommended), and while I was playing the intro sequence in the Endar Spire, my mind just shifted into how the Intro of A Little Knowledge would be the perfect intro to a Dark Sun CRPG.

I tend to use A Little Knowledge as the perfect starter for a Dark Sun Campaign, the adventure itself is pretty so-so, but the intro is perfect, because it gives the perfect set up for starting a campaign on Athas.

So Imagine this after creating your character:

You are currently slaves in a caravan, low-lives bound to be sold to someone else, but suddenly a tribe of bandit elves attack and chaos ensues, giving you the chance to start your escape. During the chaos, you get the chance of getting the game mechanics for exploration and combat introduced to you as you salvage any weapons and armor you can get, until you can finally escape outside. You are now free, but things are not that promising, however, you are now stranded in the middle of the desert, without only a couple scraps, no food and no water. On the other hand, You are crafty and skilled, so with small bit of luck and cunning, you might survive enough to thrive in your current situation. But what comes next? Will you go back into the cities and start a new life? Will you attempt to seek revenge against those who put you shackles? Will you attempt to make things right for the world, or will you try to make the entire world submit to you and your power, at any cost? Only one way to find out…

There has to be someone willing to do this, I onow it would be a hassle, but Dark Sun truly deserves a modern game.

What pieces of Dark Sun lost media do you know?

In the last thirty-something years since the setting has existed, lots of content, both official and specially fan made has been put out there, but considering that the internet has changed radically since then, lots of content has been sadly lost forever.

Great examples I have seen are:

- Three d100 encounter tables, for day, night and city. These tables serve to make encounters along with plot hooks, and you can easily sandbox with them. I (thankfully) saved them on my drive, but the original forum post was lost.

- The original thread from the Athasian Cartographer, Raven Daegmorgan, made in the official WotC forums, this thread discussed the maps for remote areas of Athas, from the far east of the Silt Sea and Anattan Coast, to the North Pole of Athas. This post was lost when 4E came out, but it was archived, but now the archive was also lost.

In my time diving this setting for the last 10 or so years ( and I am not the oldest ), I have seen many other websites, fan hosted with campaign journals, character options, short stories, adventures, and more, and many have also been lost to time, and who knows? Perhaps this very same thread will one day be lost, what other examples do you have?