If you are thinking about joining us on Athas, welcome! The team has spent years developing the various races, creatures, items and other sundries specific to the Dark Sun world and we can't wait to share it all with you. Please read this entire manual before you login the first time. It will explain all of the rules, systems, expectations, capabilities and limitations of the module.
in-character - this is everything that happens to your character from your character's perspective. Your character doesn't know everything you know. They don't see the floaty name bubbles on top of other characters. They don't know how the module's systems work. Everything you type into the chat bar on a non-DM or non-Tell channel that is not preceded by an ooc prefix is considered to be in-character.
out-of-character - this is everything outside of your character's knowledge ... tells to other players, conversations with DMs, telling everyone you're AFK. Generally, OOC messages will be prefixed with either a double slash // or ooc:.
player - that's you, the person reading these words.
character - that's your little toon running around on the screen, wreaking havoc on a perfectly good module.
dungeon master - just below the level of deity, they control everything. They can run events and experiences, dole out rewards, take character's live, etc. etc. There really is no limit. It's not easy being a DM in any module. You can expect that their decisions will be final. If you disagree with the position of a DM, you can privately converse with the module owners for redress, but expect it to be an uphill battle.
- In-character
- Griefing - nope. Everyone is here for fun. If you're here to give everyone else a hard time, go away. DMs will summarily execute any character caught griefing and will ban the associated account and CD key.
- PvP Combat - this should really be called character-vs-character combat. Although legal in many areas based on module settings, all PvP combat should be conducted in-character and should never be player vs player. If you don't have an in-character reason for attacking another character, don't do it. All character-on-character violence in this module, except for the arena, is logged and reviewed.
- Sexually explicit content - nope. Go somewhere else.
You are expected to follow our rules at all times. If you prove repeatedly that you cannot follow the rules, your account and CD key will be banned and all of your characters will be destroyed. You are expected to be in-character to the maximum extent possible.
Athas is the Dark Sun homeworld. Our module is designed such that most action and interaction occurs in the large cities. The cities are bustling with activity
Although primarily DM-centric, the DMFI provides some chat-based commands and capabilities to players also. The following commands are available to all non-DM players:
- [.] commands
- [*] emotes
- Voice commands
- Options and personal settings
If you have any questions about installing these tools, and you're sure you followed the instructions above correctly, you're best bet is to get onto the Dark Sun discord and ask a question about installing the tools. If you're not a member of our discord, you can join. If you tag me (@tinygiant) in your post, I'll likely answer pretty quickly. If you don't tag me, I may not see the question at all, but one of our many other team members might be able to help. I'm happy to answer discord DMs also if you don't want to join the discord.
I know this was a lot of information, but, again, it all boils down to just a few commands once you're used to it. The majority of this tutorial is aimed at our audience that is new to this process. If you've decided to use VS Code, which can accomplish a lot of these steps in a visual environment, please read the VS Code Tutorialcoming soon. This is not really necessary for most content developers, but if you're a scripter, I highly recommend your consider VS Code as your primary development environment for this module.