Harken back now to the late 80's, when TSR pulled out all the stops and came up with so many different lines and titles, you needed a scorecard to keep track of them all.
Our group, having played AD&D faithfully for about a decade, were ready to try, well, a different permutation of the game.
As it happens, I was tapped to do a freelance assignment for the Dark Sun line. "Are you familiar with the campaign setting?", the acquisitions editor at TSR asked. And of course, I gave the answer that any hungry freelancer at the time would give, whether they knew the source material or not. "Of course!" I said. "Dark Sun! Love it!" Naturally, after the conversation, you go out and purchase the main sourcebook/boxed set, and then deduct the cost of the purchase as a business expense when you file taxes, because it IS indeed research that will aid you in earning money that will inevitably be taxed. Yay, American tax laws!
So I familiarized myself with the Dark Sun system, and found it to actually be pretty interesting. For those not in the know, it takes place on a world called Athas, a barren desert wasteland. It used to be lush and green, but wizards ruined the ecology. See, on Athas, magic is powered by life force, so every time some nimrod Wizard cast a Magic Missile, somewhere, some shrub died.
Athas is a world where wood and metal are scarce. Most weapons are made of stone or bone. Due to the shortages of water, potions are actually infusions in various pieces of fruit. Again, it all sounded very creative. Due to the harshness of the world, everyone started off as a THIRD level character, and stats could go all the way to 20!!! This was UNHEARD of in AD&D!!!! Wow! What a cool setting! And you could play a half-giant! Or a thri-kreen! Dig all those arms! Or hey, you could play a sterile half-human, half-dwarf! I mean, come on...wow! This was DIFFERENT! This was NEW! This was....DARK SUN!!!!!
And then, the piece de resistance; everyone had psionic powers to one degree or another. Wow! Psionics! (in retrospect, the psionics turned out to not always be as useful as expected; what good was Object Reading when you were sliding, screaming, down the gullet of a giant sand worm?)
Anyway, I introduced the concept of Dark Sun to my group, and they were just as impressed! Yes! Let us all now roll up DS characters, put our Forgotten Realms campaign on Hold, and immerse ourselves into the harsh desert environment of Dark Sun! Surely, this will prove a formidable challenge worthy of our powers!
The first two sessions went fairly well. Then came that fateful third session. The group was trekking from Point A to Point B, and ended up bedding down for the night, camping out in the wilderness. Naturally, they set up watches.
A wandering monster encounter sprang up, literally and figuratively, as a subterranean menace erupted from the sands and attacked the party. I want to say they were ankheg, but they might'ev been some kind of sand worms. But the thing which must be remembered in this instance was that the encounter WAS balanced; it was a fairly even match.
In any event, the balanced sides didn't matter. When the battle was over and the dust (sand?) settled, it became apparent that the entire party had been wiped out. Yup. Total Party Kill. And this coming from Yours Truly, who shies away from TPKs.
We all just kind of sat there, looking at each other in stunned, frustrated disbelief. The conversation that followed went something like this:
ME: Soooo. Um. Yeah. Well now. Do people...er...want to roll up a new batch of characters?
PLAYER 1: Can we go back to playing in the Forgotten Realms instead?
PLAYER 2: Yeah, I've had enough of Athas.
PLAYER 3: Yeah, on second thought, let's NOT go to Athas!
PLAYER 4: ...silly place...
Thus ended our foray into the world of Dark Sun.
Now, it needs to be mentioned that "Shortest Campaign Ever" is defined as a campaign where the gaming group actually did play several sessions, as opposed to those special turd-gems where your group plays just ONE session of a particular game system, then promptly discards it out of sheer disgust. THAT particular honor goes to, I believe it's called, SpaceLaw, from Iron Crown Enterprises, a system which had 43,393 different charts and modifiers for your character's attempt at picking his nose.
