Mind Lords of the Last Sea

Mind Lords of the Last Sea

Genre	Role-playing games
Publisher	TSR
Publication date	1996

Mind Lords of the Last Sea is an accessory for the 2nd edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, published in 1996.

Contents

Mind Lords of the Last Sea is part of the "Wanderer's Chronicles" line for the Dark Sun setting, intended to explore areas of Athas located far away from the city of Tyr. Mind Lords of the Last Sea includes an introductory adventure for the area, and consists of two books and also includes a fold-out color map.

The supplement details a society which has been kept isolated from the rest of the world for thousands of years by the will of three psionicists. These psionicists have become immortal and require everyone in the city of the Mind Lords to be happy and the restless face mental harmonization, which keeps everything quiet in the area around the Last Sea, a body of water larger than any other on Athas. The supplement presents new rules, equipment, and modes of behavior related to the area, including the beach druids that spend their time surfing. In the included adventure, the player characters must locate one of their brains that has gone missing.

Publication history

Mind Lords of the Last Sea was published by TSR in 1996.

Reception

Cliff Ramshaw reviewed Mind Lords of the Last Sea for Arcane magazine, rating it a 4 out of 10 overall. Ramshaw compared Mind Lords of the Last Sea to Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs, which he reviewed at the same time, saying that "Mind Lords, by comparison, fails to convince". He called the included adventure "poor" as the player's first experience of the Last Sea area, complaining that there is hardly anything to kill and that most of the characters' time is spent tracking down the missing brain: "It's one of those adventures where the very existence of the entire realm hangs in the balance, which is all very well for high-level characters, but it seems over-the-top for new arrivals on the scene. And, to top it all, the characters' actions don't affect the outcome. If they succeed (or rather fail, since there's a time-travel twist involved) then all's fine; if they fail, then a super-powerful Mind Lord comes along to set everything to rights anyway. Contrived and pointless."

In Issue 93 of the French games magazine Casus Belli, Tristan Lhomme wrote, "Mind Lords of the Last Sea lets you discover the last region untouched by the sorcerer-kings. As the title suggests, the Last Sea and its environs are ruled by terrifyingly powerful psionicists, whose motto is 'happiness is obligatory.' Certain passages will bring back fond memories for Paranoia players or The Prisoner fans." However, Lhomme found the included adventure scenario "a little too ambitious to be really interesting" and suggested "Mind Lords is better suited to veteran players eager to discover new challenges."