Dark Sun: Shattered Lands

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands is a turn-based computer role-playing game that takes place in the Dungeons and Dragons' campaign setting of Dark Sun. It was released for DOS in a somewhat unfinished state in 1994 by Strategic Simulations, Inc., and later patched to a more workable version.

The game takes place in the fictional land of Athas, a dying and hostile desert world. The locale is Draj, a city-state ruled by a powerful sorcerer-king. Nearby are several "free cities", surviving in the desert thanks to the hard work of their citizens, and Draj seemingly has nothing better to do than to destroy them all. The player controls a party of four gladiators, condemned to fight in Draj's arena until they die, so naturally the first order of business is escape. Upon escape, the party must unite the free cities to resist Draj's army.

The game is noted for its highly strategic combat thanks to its two-dimensional turn-based combat system. No two battles are alike, and many of the "boss battles" involve a large army rather than a few powerful mages or fighters. Proper formation and spell use is a must, particularly when attacked from several directions. Characters are also far more powerful in Dark Sun than in ordinary Dungeons & Dragons campaign settings: base stats are 4d4+4 rather than 3d6, and members of one race, half-giant, receive double to their hit die rolls.

The game had a sequel, Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager, in 1995. An online MMORPG, Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands, was released in 1996 and hosted on the T.E.N. Network. It was plagued by hacking problems. Not much can be found about what happened to either the game or the network, and neither are running today.