D&D 5E WotC: Why Dark Sun Hasn't Been Revived

In an interview with YouTuber 'Bob the Worldbuilder', WotC's Kyle Brink explained why the classic Dark Sun setting has not yet seen light of day in the D&D 5E era.

I’ll be frank here, the Dark Sun setting is problematic in a lot of ways. And that’s the main reason we haven’t come back to it. We know it’s got a huge fan following and we have standards today that make it extraordinarily hard to be true to the source material and also meet our ethical and inclusion standards... We know there’s love out there for it and god we would love to make those people happy, and also we gotta be responsible.

You can listen to the clip here.

 

[James Gasik]

I played in a Dark Sun 4ed campaign over 10 years ago and we had to end it. It was due to slavery and human trafficking. We the PCs found ourselves involved in the slave trade and didn't have a reasonable in-game way of getting out of it. It was a trap the DM admitted to and the decision to end it was consensual by all.

Huh, the same thing happened when I played 4e Dark Sun. One of the other players actively debated us becoming slavers; I didn't show up for the next session.

 

[overgeeked]

Deadpool and Logan slapped higher-age restriction for their content and those movies did well.
The need to play safe and mainstream hampers creativity I feel.
We need to look at publishers other than WotC for something within the mature range, the problem is WotC is sitting with all the licenses.

Yeah. It's really weird. They make their money off games that involve the mass slaughter of intelligent creatures...yet they want to be seen as a Disney-like, unoffensive, and family-friendly company.

 

[overgeeked]

Once they are in high school I agree but not everyone wants thier 13 year olds playing those kinds of games.

That's the parents' job, not society's. If the parents want to keep those things away from their kids, it's on them to do so. It's not on the world at large to prevent such things from existing at all so that some over-protective parent can have a slightly easier job censoring the world for their kids.

And not all teens are grown up enough to deal with that stuff by 13 everyone develops at thier own pace.

Not all teens are as fragile as you seem to think.

 

[overgeeked]

Censor everything because a parent can't regulate there kids, isn't a good idea.

Exactly.

"I don't want my kid to see this, therefore your kid can't be allowed to see it."

If you want to police the content your kid sees, you have to do it yourself.

 

[Bedrockgames]

These are all fodder for PG-13 movies. The idea that we need to protect the children from content found in 1991's Dark Sun is ludicrous.

I believe I was a freshman in Highschool when Dark Sun came out and remember buying the boxed set right away. I wasn't 13 but must have been like 14 (possibly 15). Nothing in that was disurbing to me. It didn't disrupt my sense of ethics or morality. I grew up in a pretty strict household when it came to what we were allowed to watch and read, but by high school we were able to navigate that for ourselves (which I think is an important thing for young people to learn). But Dark Sun to me came across as very PG-13 like you say. It was certainly set in a cruel world and it definitely had a point of view, but we should be able to encounter those things in literature, movies, games, etc even at the age of 13. If I had found it upsetting for any reason, I would have just put it aside and not read it any further.

 

[Minigiant]

People want happy go lucky worlds with clear divides of good and evil. Something like "Magic is bad if use it" or "Halflings eat people" isn't something WotC wants to deal with. Not to mention "The world is dying". Thats not happy and telling people "magic is bad" is like telling someone "No" and thats thing WotC wants to avoid.

Lets not forget they got rid of Negative stat mods at character creation because it "took away" and "Players didn't like that". Which also goes hand in hand with "A Long Rest fixes 90% of issues".

Actually no.

This is what I'm talking about when I say people don't get the 5e audience.

The 5e audience wants high fantasy. Dark Sun can do that. Greyhswk can do that. The issue are their theme. The everpresent constants. The 5e audience doesn't care for them.

 

[Reynard]

Still not an issue that should be resolved by a corporation.

They aren't solving or attempting to solve a problem. They are making a choice to protect their bottom line. It isn't a moral stance,it is an economic one.

 

[shadowoflameth]

These are the people that made an apology for saying that the Hadozee had been slaves. The Hadozee are a fictional race in magical fantasy world that isn't real. They waste time and money on this kind of concern when it's easily resolved by them publishing the content that appeals to the most customers, and those that it doesn't appeal to, not buying it. The villains of Athas turned the world into a wasteland conquering it and enslaved everyone, so let's be heroes and stop them. If I ever meet a real Hadozee, I'll tell him I'm sorry.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They aren't solving or attempting to solve a problem. They are making a choice to protect their bottom line. It isn't a moral stance,it is an economic one.

They explicitly said they couldn't do it because they couldn't find a way to square the setting with their current content standards without compromising what fans liked about it. Sounds like both a moral  and an economic stance.

 

[Reynard]

Exactly.

"I don't want my kid to see this, therefore your kid can't be allowed to see it."

If you want to police the content your kid sees, you have to do it yourself.

That's not what people are saying here. They are saying "I want to see some X type of questionable content, and I demand you make it even though it will likely hurt your business!" It's like people complaining that modern Star Wars video games don't have rampant lightsaber dismemberment. Bloody limbs flying off storm troopers is something that would hurt sales so they don't do it.

If you don't like it, make your own Dark Sun, with black jack and hookers. And since it is D&D -- YOU CAN.