That's where I got the idea - I love Dark Sun, but the 3rd edition material (Athas.org) just doesn't really capture the old 2e feeling for me. Plus for whatever reason, I really like desert settings. Once ran a campaign that opened thusly:
There are few things more frightening to the idea of man than a great desert, one that bounds and swallows their city and their civilization. Trapped here within a single city on an oasis, the minds of men have turned inwards, unable to penetrate the great sands that border their lands. There are those few who disappear out into the wastes each year, unable to live within the confines of a narrow and rigid society. It is assumed they are deceased, for nothing is known to live outside of the realm of the oasis, despite the howling winds in the night that bring a stench of things foul, yet living.
At each red moon, a new group is assembled to send out into the wilderness. Ostensibly it is to explore, but those who go know they go to die, to perish in the lands beyond the green waters of home, for home can only support a certain count of souls, and each soul beyond is a burden that shall be removed. Thus it is that you are selected, an unwilling 'volunteer' for Ymdaith chan 'r Farw. It is the Journey into Death, a trip out into the wastelands. With you goes some of the wealth of populace, a tomb gift that is meant to ease your passage into the afterlife. None leaves the city a pauper, and sometimes it is those who have the least who truly volunteer for this, for they have nothing else left in life.
You stand assembled at the gates of the city, a party of six men, clothed in robes for the desert beyond and laden with two weeks worth of food, plus whatever you have chosen to bring with you. Those few surviving family members have chosen to stay away, for this is a day that they do not wish to see, the long, slow, death of their loved ones. A priest speaks words of of benediction and prayer over the grouping, his cassock black, as befits a funeral. Those who preside over the ceremony lower their hands, and the great gates that hold out the desert swing wide, tracing their edges in the sand. With a solemn gesture, he beckons you to step beyond.
The sun lies low over the horizon as you stare out into the trackless wastes, and night will fall soon. What is it that lies out in these forbidding dunes and rocky hills? No one knows, and yet that is where you go, a journey into the unknown. Your tales begin here.
Spellcasting. Anything of mine that has a +1 whatever listed in the table is always spells known, caster level, slots, etc. It's just a kind of shorthand I use regularly.