We're working hard to finish up the design and development stages of the two Dark Sun books, and get them over to editing. It's a bit of a scramble, because we've got a lot of crunchy bits by a number of different contributors scattered across the books, including Rob Schwalb, Ari Marmell, Bruce Cordell, Chris Sims, Logan Bonner, and Travis Stout. As you might imagine, Dark Sun demands more crunchy bits than our previous two campaign settings: muls, thri-kreen, gladiators, templars, defiling, world-suitable paragon paths and epic destinies, weapons, items, and of course, buckets full of freakish desert monsters. At this point I can't say much about exactly how we addressed each of these elements, other than to say that yes, you're going to find all of these classic trappings of the Dark Sun world (and many more) in the new Campaign Guide. One of the things that used to bug me about the old Dark Sun set was that you basically threw out the 2e Player's Handbook and substituted the Dark Sun Rulebook for almost all of your character generation. This time around, a lot more of your Player's Handbook (and PH 2 and PH 3) are still going to be relevant, but just about any "core" character you build should still find plenty of Athasian trappings. Sure, you might be a dragonborn fighter, but we've got ways to make that guy feel like he's just as appropriate in the setting as your thri-kreen ranger or mul gladiator. I'll tell you more when I can!
On to a little War at Sea news: We've assembled our "specs and dimensions" document for the set following Condition Zebra. Basically, it's a bunch of line drawings and photographs our art director puts together so that the sculptors working in China know what to sculpt. These days they're producing their first "sculpts" as CAD drawings. If you thought that the Flank Speed pieces looked pretty good, that's because they were built with this same process. It turns out that things like ships and planes are ideal for this process, so we're getting very good sculpts right up front. A side note on something interesting I looked at the other day: Boy, the Spanish would be a good addition to the game someday. There are at least half a dozen good models there, and unlike the Swedes or the Finns, it's not just a coast-defense navy. In all the what-ifs of WW2, the possibility of Spanish belligerence is one that frequently is overlooked. Franco owed the Germans and Italians for their help in winning the civil war, and the Axis tried pretty hard to get the Spanish involved; it's really pretty surprising that they stayed out. It raises the interesting question of how to deal with powers that were neutral, but *might* have played a part had things gone differently. You could almost call Spain an Axis power because they certainly leaned that way... but I'd hate to just put the red borders on the stat cards when at the end of the day Spain remained neutral. Some kid might be learning his WW2 history by playing the game, after all, and I wouldn't want to trip him up. I guess the best thing to do is color them not-Axis not-Allied, and make sure we get some rules clarifications out there about not using neutrals in games observing historical restrictions. Anyway: No, the Spanish aren't in Condition Zebra, and aren't coming soon. But they're now on my list!
OK, on to a quick real-life thought: I discovered another Northwest volcano I'd never heard about just last weekend: Fife's Peak. It's much older than Rainier and the other big snowcapped gems, and it's been extinct for quite a while. Here's the story: Last Friday I took the family out to Yakima, Washington, to go hit the wine country for a little fall getaway. There are something like 60 vineyards out in south-central Washington, and it might be the #2 wine area in the country after Napa Valley. Anyway, the drive out to Yakima along Route 410 is just gorgeous, especially at this time of year. Sure, we have a lot of evergreens, but the mountainsides turn red and orange with lots of low brush, especially around Chinook Pass. Then you get fifty miles or so of driving out along the American River and Naches River valleys, with gorgeous streams and striking rock formations the whole way (including a lot of black columnar basalt, a sure sign of old lava flows). A few miles east of Chinook Pass, there's a small turnoff for something called the "Fife's Peak Overlook" that I'd never bothered to turn off on before. On an impulse, I whipped the car over and decided to have a look. It turns out that Fife's Peak is a 6,700-foot mountain that's the shell of an ancient volcano that blew itself apart. Huge spires of bare rock jut like the blade of a giant shovel sticking up out of the ground. I've driven that road twenty times in the last ten years, and I went by it every time without the faintest idea that this striking mountain view was just 50 yards off the road.
Now, the strange part of the story: We drove back west over Chinook Pass Saturday afternoon, and at 6 am Sunday morning a mammoth landslide buried a quarter-mile length of the highway under 40 feet or more of mountainside. (That was much farther east than Fife's Peak.) There was no warning-we haven't had any rain to speak of, certainly not on the eastern slopes of the Cascades. Fortunately no one was hurt, but a couple of evacuated or empty homes were destroyed. Chinook Pass is now closed for at least the next six months or so while the state highway department builds a new section of 410 around the landslide, 'cause it's highly doubtful that they'll be able to clear it. Well, Chinook Pass was going to be closed by snow within a few weeks anyway, so it's not a terrible inconvenience to anyone except a few hundred people who live between the landslide and the soon-to-be-closed-by-snow mountain pass. But I'm still shaking my head over the idea that I went by that spot 40 hours and then 15 hours before it slid, and didn't see a thing out of the ordinary. I grew up on the Jersey shore; this mountain stuff is still pretty impressive to me.
One final thing: If you're getting this text as light gray on white, I'm sorry. I can't figure out how to alter the font/color of my blog posts. When I do, I'll try something different.
