By the way, in no way did I recommend the Tribe of One books. The Prism Pentad was the better of the Dark Sun
material. But if you wanted something in that mileu, you wanted the Curse of the Azure Bonds.
I should spend a moment to address the elemental thing, and it derives from my conception of how the elemental planes work. I tend to imagine the
elemental planes as semi-mirror copies of the prime material plane. Multiple orders of symmetry should apply to the way that these realms are
constructed from a model of thaumaturgy architecture. This means that if you went to the elemental plane of fire, (or rather, *AN* elemental plane
of fire as the sages amongst the lotus eaters tend to view base alchemy),
and you went south of the lowlands you wouldn't come to a fire elemental equivalent of Paris. Paris doesn't exist per se in a recognizeable form in the elemental plane of fire. But what I mean to imply is that higher orders of symmetry rather than mere reflection maintain the trigonometry of planar interraction. So even though you don't get a Paris in
the elemental plane of fire, if you go to the spot of the elemental plane of fire where Paris would be you will find something else cool. Or maybe
not cool, but you will find something else.
Anyway because the elemental planes exist as analogs of the prime material plane, there is a similar diversity of life in each of the elemental
planes as on planet Earth. If anything, some elementals - the very top of some of their better species - are superior to humans in terms of
intellect by some 10% to 20%, perhaps the size of the gap that exists between humans and dolphins. I was tempted to say, "more evolved" but
I think that would be applying a sort of judgement to elementals that I don't want as a precedent in the game, that we resist any urge to
apply American value standards to the cultures inside of the game.
But certainly elementals cannot get to the prime material plane without magic any easier than a human can visit the elemental planes without
magic. This has the tendency to filter out stupid elementals. Only smarter elementals are able to master magic, and will have the self
discipline to do so. So on it's surface if you were taking a shortcut through a dark alley at night and you bumped into an elemental,
in one sense you should feel relief because these types of sentient beings didn't take the time to study and then travel all the way
to Athas in order to simply pick your pocket of money that they would be unable to spend back home.
Nor is it easy for most elementals (who are not themselves trapped by their own kind) to spend large amounts of time, as has been alluded
in the prime material plane so if you were to run into one they are probably here for some ad-hoc purpose. Ruining your life is probably
not the ad-hoc purpose.
The thing is though that in interacting with your PC, the elemental is mostly aware that it is a superior being talking to an inferior being.
So if you're playing an elemental cleric, you're playing a PC that worships a god that you as a player must surely realise is somewhat
of an intelligent yet irresponsible person. The type of elementals that are likely at all to want to interact with your PC are the sort
of intellect that would start a cult. But a lot of the more successful elementals aren't bad people, per se as has been established.
They know better than to wantonly abuse their own followers. They do however place a lower premium on human life than other humans do,
while rarely having cruelty as an intention.
I therefore see the elemental faiths as more religiously diverse than the two remaining pantheons, the Druids and the devotees of
the Rajaatine pantheon. Druids are less concerned by tradition with dogma than their neighbors. And the Sorcerer-Kings, hailed as
gods by the majority of the sentient populace, face the constraint of needing to guide religions that make practical the administration
and governance of large city states.
Elementals don't face that kind of pressure. If an elemental's goal is to build himself a private lab quietly in a little village somewhere,
he might be able to eke an existance with thirty or forty human followers. The elemental can afford to be creative or experimental about
building a religion.
Damn sorcerers are annoying as fuck to interact with.
There's a reason for that. That's because the sort of person whom you and I would want to kind of pop in and play a sorcerer in our game, someone creative like Agatha Christi, or Mary Shelley or Stephen King, isn't very likely to do so. What we're actually likely to get is Russel Brand or Marilyn Manson. Those are the types of people that want to pop into a game and play a mage. Not people who are a bit mysterious, people who wish they were a bit mysterious. Personality Archetypes.
I plan to use a multifaceted policy to draw the sort of people into various roles where they'll do well, and to use psychology to move less interesting people away from roles where they'll likely to screw up the game.
What do you do, if Marilyn Manson shows up at game night and says he wants to play a wizard? You talk him into playing a thief, because he'll do better there. Mobster is a great role for someone who wants to show off and act important and act scary, but has little knowledge of how to actually be enigmatic. I don't hate Mr. Manson, I just don't want him playing a sorc in my game.
Because I'm a huge softy and like way too many people, and I'm frequently intoxicated and don't always make the best decisions, we'll compensate for that by making a process so that people that we'll be happy with will end up in the mage role.
For starters, remember how I brought up apprenticeships? They touches on the whole slave thing (I see a sorcerer's apprentice as a type of slave, really) and I need to devote a whole post to that idea and this shall not be it. But anyways part of the background for that is that Dark Sun starts players at level 3. The idea is that 99% of humans living in Athas have killed a wild animal with a shovel or something, like a bear.
So player characters are the adventurers out of this population, they have three hit dice. The CoffeeMUD equivalent of level 3 might be level 6 or something. So it really should be like nothing for somebody to build up a character to MUD level 8 merely by spending build points on their new character. An ideal start for a raider or a mercenary, really.
But that is far from the best way to make a character. You will have a buffer character, on the balance by actually starting at level 1 and playing out those levels. So for a sorcerer I see you as starting out as somebody's apprentice. Let's say that you get tired of being an apprentice, and decide to "jump the boat" (as we say in Coney Island for surprise naval getaways) at level 7. Ok, so IMHO that equates to actually about two months of play time.
And let me be clear about what your duties as apprentice are. The sorcerer hired you to take risks that they're disinterested in taking, such as buying magic components from elves, climbing to the top of forbidden mountains to gather potion ingredients, digging up the rare and magic bones from a graveyard somewhere...
I mean your character will have other apprentices to interact with while he's on his way up. He'll have to set up some sort of double life for himself while he's in town running errands down for his master. So instead of having the...Black Tembo just appear randomly on Allanak's border one day, we'll have the far more interesting situation of a mage who has built maturty by studying under another mage, who has built maturity by running dangerous errands. It's going to be a more realisitc character.
Combine that with the fact that I don't see defilers, for example getting their very first spell until they're level 18 in the game. So you'll have to find some way of making yourself useful to society before you even immolate your very first elf!
Add to this that I plan to busy mages doing work that will benefit themself. Let's say a defiler wants a castle. He's going to have to play somewhat nice with the local barons, because barons employ a lot of thugs that know how to do things like smash castles. We'll give mages things that they can have taken away from them by other players if they're too much of a douchebag.
We'll build a puzzle for mages, and the acolytes that end up solving the puzzles will need to develop the puzzles that good mages have in the process of becoming a defiler.