D&D 5E now that FR is the generic setting, is darksun also by extension?

[Andor]

Although as an aside, 5e Druids do have kind of an Athas vibe, in that the Circle of the land links to a specific terrain type, and gets bonuses for it. Which is how Darksun Druids work. Or at least, how they did back in 2e.

 

[transtemporal]

I was always under the impression that darksun essentially is what happened after some magical apocalypse in the forgotten realms... Also side note, I was told that planescape was not allowed to travel to the world of darksun does anyone know why? Lastly I hope there's 5e planescape books... Heard a rumor there would be...

The Dark Sun cosmology was/is completely cut off from every other cosmology (so Greyhawk, FR, Dragonlance etc). I think the elemental planes might have been mentioned, but the ethereal/astral/concordant opposition/lower/upper/astral planes weren't. In other words, Dark Sun didn't use that common planar lexicon. They wanted Dark Sun to be different.

Having said that in the 2e edition, one of the Sorcerer Kings (Dregoth) had explored the planes and communed with devils etc.

I like the idea that Dark Sun is a future FR though, thats pretty cool. You could easily retrofit FR with that Dark Sun vibe.

 

[Mirtek]

The Dark Sun cosmology was/is completely cut off from every other cosmology (so Greyhawk, FR, Dragonlance etc). I think the elemental planes might have been mentioned, but the ethereal/astral/concordant opposition/lower/upper/astral planes weren't. In other words, Dark Sun didn't use that common planar lexicon.

While early Dark Sun sources didn't really clarify one way of the others (they just did not mention it at all), later sources clarified that Athas was part of the normal cosmology. It was just an unique case due to being surrounded by "the grey" which made is all but impossible to reach the etheral/astral plane or to breach it's crystal sphere wiht a spell jamming vessel.

On rare occasions someone/-thing managed to get in/out.

 

[Dausuul]

I was always under the impression that darksun essentially is what happened after some magical apocalypse in the forgotten realms... Also side note, I was told that planescape was not allowed to travel to the world of darksun does anyone know why? Lastly I hope there's 5e planescape books... Heard a rumor there would be...

I always kind of liked the idea that Dark Sun was Krynn a couple thousand years down the road, in the timeline where Raistlin killed all the gods--and the Dragon, endlessly sucking the life from the world, was what Raistlin himself became.

Canonically, however, Dark Sun is its own world with its own rather weird history.

(I also think we're going to see a Dark Sun adventure path. The new D&D business model involves coordinating each year's releases around a central storyline/adventure. How better to introduce psionics?)

 

[Boarstorm]

Locally (back when 2E was going strong), there was a lot of speculation about DS being FR in the distant future.

As I recall, it was primarily based on a lot of shared similarities between the two maps. Deserts where lakes had been, mountain ranges that persisted from one map to the next, etc.

I was never quite convinced, but I do recall some of the evidence being at least somewhat compelling to my adolescent mind.

 

[Ritorix]

Dark Sun was originally 'War World', designed for 2e and not based on something earlier like all the other settings at the time. It was also designed to sell both Battlesystem and the Psionics Handbook.

 

[Werebat]

The Dark Sun cosmology was/is completely cut off from every other cosmology (so Greyhawk, FR, Dragonlance etc). I think the elemental planes might have been mentioned, but the ethereal/astral/concordant opposition/lower/upper/astral planes weren't. In other words, Dark Sun didn't use that common planar lexicon. They wanted Dark Sun to be different.

Having said that in the 2e edition, one of the Sorcerer Kings (Dregoth) had explored the planes and communed with devils etc.

One of the Baldur's Gate games had a bit where the party evidently went to Dark Sun, or at least encountered some Athasian halflings.

One of the dragon kings did something particularly bad and ended up getting their own land in Ravenloft. Or maybe it was one of his templars? I forget.

 

[reiella]

One of the Baldur's Gate games had a bit where the party evidently went to Dark Sun, or at least encountered some Athasian halflings.

One of the dragon kings did something particularly bad and ended up getting their own land in Ravenloft. Or maybe it was one of his templars? I forget.

Just to clarify on the first part.
That was in the Planar Sphere, and it wasn't traveling to Athas, but had cannibal halflings in one of the rooms. I don't recall specifically if they're specifically mentioned to be Athasian (they were lacking psionics, which may have just been a limitation).

Kalidnay is an interesting Island of Dread though.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I was always under the impression that darksun essentially is what happened after some magical apocalypse in the forgotten realms... (snip)

I notice some other replies have already corrected this but I would point out that this idea sometimes gets floated on the 'net but there is no official support for this as an idea. (Not that there is a gaming police who will take your books away if you decide to depart from canon!)

Every now and then I see a similar post to yours... but normally far more emphatic declaring that Dark Sun is the Forgotten Realms. Um, no. It never was.

 

[Johnny Angel]

My own campaign setting is a sort of elaborate joke on the fact that Faerun is more-or-less Europe, with Zakhara as Araby, Kara-tur as the far east and Maztica as south America. So I set my campaign on a newly discovered continent (North America) called Draconia, because it's where old map makers, not knowing what's over there, used to write "Here be Dragons". Furthermore, in this Toril-like and therefore Earth-like world there is a huge desolate continent full of the deadliest creatures on the planet that has been in a Mad Max-like state of apocalypse for so many generations that none of the mutated humanoid occupants realizes that they're just on a big island prison surrounded by a magical barrier whose builders have centuries since faded from life and from memory. That is Dark Sun in my campaign -- it's inhabitants think they're on a scorched rock of a world long since abandoned by the Gods, but they're actually just in Australia.