D&D General Dark Sun Nostalgia Thread [+]

[overgeeked]

Wasn't there a Dark Sun-inspired Kickstarter floating around last summer? I ended up getting sent away on a long deployment for work and I sort of fell out of the loop.

EDIT: I found the thread. It's...not good news.

D&D 5E - Dark Sun Spiritual Successor on Kickstarter: Red Dawn: Into the Dawnlands

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/burningstargames/red-dawn-into-the-dawnlands?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=Red%20Dawn%3A%20Into%20The%20Dawnlands Just interested if anyone has got any more information on this other than the Kickstarter page Has anyone backed this?

www.enworld.org

WebDM’s Weird Wastelands is clearly inspired by Dark Sun, though not as...directly as that Kickstarter.

 

[LordEntrails]

I know I never saw the ad. I just did not have the exposure to Dragon (or Dungeon) even though I was in college then. We played, but mostly older stuff we ad from the previous decade or what we homebrewed. I might have run across it in an FLGS, but being in college I didn't have the time or money to spend time in the stores.

But, after school, sometime in the 3E era I played in a DS game run on Rondak's Portal as a play by post game. That's when I read much of the lore (as pertained to our campaign and possible edited by the DM) and found the grittiness of it immensely appealing. The campaign died an early death, but the setting and the character I created still sticks with me.

I hope DS sees an official launch with 5E. It is such a different feel than the standard D&D settings and so rich that I would love to get back into it myself. As well, it would be great to see others exposed to it.

 

[CleverNickName]

Psionics were in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything Else. Thri-Kreen were in UA in October 2021. Psionics haven't been in UA since early 2019, though they first emerged into UA way back in like 2016.

Dark Sun is a-coming. Just you wait!

That would be awesome! But it's also just as likely that Wizards of the Coast is only working on a psionics-based splatbook like "Tithian's Guide to Psionics" or whatever. Or they could be creating a completely new campaign setting that involves psionics but has nothing to do with Athas. We just don't know.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Any chance he said when the original novel series was set? There’s not much in the way of dates mentioned in the novels.

I don’t recall that was something Brax and I asked. He did mention he did not expect that his novels would be canon for setting advancement. He was emphatic that he intended to show that heroes could make huge setting changes, just not that everyone needed to adopt his. The novels department and games department of TSR were kept disconnected.

 

[Fenris-77]

If they create a Psionic-based campaign setting that isn't Dark Sun there are going to be riots. Grognards will flood out of their mother's basements in their tens or perhaps even hundreds, hurling invective and empty Mountain Dew cans at anyone who dares stand against them.

 

[Marandahir]

That would be awesome! But it's also just as likely that Wizards of the Coast is only working on a psionics-based splatbook like "Tithian's Guide to Psionics" or whatever. Or they could be creating a completely new campaign setting that involves psionics but has nothing to do with Athas. We just don't know.

You're right, Thri-Kreen were also in the Expanded Psionic Handbook in 3.5e (as were Athasian-inspired Half-Giants, mind you).

I do think they'd likely try to avoid a Psionics book given that they just put 3 Psionics subclasses into a Core Rules Expansion book last year. If they do more Psionics, it will likely be for other classes (Way of the Psionic Fist? Divine Mind Domain? College of Ardour and/or Oath of Ardour?) or else a full Psionics class because people really want the Psion to the Aberrant Mind Sorcerer's Wilder.

But seeing as that could just as easily be included in a Dark Sun Campaign Setting book, I wouldn't rule it out!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Dark Sun was basically Brom for me. He made the setting, took it from pretty cool to OMG AMAZING.

Him and Psionics.

 

[Marandahir]

If they create a Psionic-based campaign setting that isn't Dark Sun there are going to be riots. Grognards will flood out of their mother's basements in their tens or perhaps even hundreds, hurling invective and empty Mountain Dew cans at anyone who dares stand against them.

Planescape heavily features the Psionic Gith.

That's the other extremely desired Setting people are still clamouring for. Psionics are also not alien to Spelljammer, too (another popular setting). Giff in UA suggest Spelljammer. Thri-Kreen suggests Dark Sun.

It's possible we'll get a gazetteer of various other D&D Worlds, or something, too. :/ But I think if they don't give us any of these settings soon, there will be riots. MtG settings will still come out likely 1 per year or 1 per 2-years, but if it's ONLY Critical Role and MtG settings then there WILL be riots.

 

[ersatzphil]

Dark Sun was basically Brom for me.

Hear, hear. Dark Sun with Brom and Planescape with DiTerlizzi were the two settings where a visual artist was more or less one of the developers, and both were infinitely stronger for it.

 

[CleverNickName]

Planescape heavily features the Psionic Gith.

That's the other extremely desired Setting people are still clamouring for. Psionics are also not alien to Spelljammer, too (another popular setting). Giff in UA suggest Spelljammer. Thri-Kreen suggests Dark Sun.

And these things together all suggest "splatbook" to me. That said, I'm not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast and I can't say for certain what they are working on. Whatever it is, they aren't talkin'.