This is way too much of a Dark Sun rip-off for my comfort. If you had simple written a 3rd party 5e Dark Sun update, I wouldn't be bothered. The gloss of "originality" that comes from renaming all the Dark Sun concepts, however, makes this look like plagiarism to me.
I've never denied that Dark Sun has been an incredibly strong influence throughout the dev process of
Deadworlds, and indeed,
Deadworlds started as simply a Dark Sun conversion. I give full credit to the Dark Sun TSR team at the beginning of
Deadworlds. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere where I ever claim to have invented and own half-dwarves, mantis-people, their lore, etc, etc. If you take a look at the Reddit thread where I first announced it, I'm
quick to clarify that Deadworlds is very much compatible with Dark Sun, but has enough original material and a wide enough application that it wouldn't be accurate to call it a direct conversion.
If you don’t like the idea of this product because it uses the Dark Sun lore as the basis for so much of the material, then that’s fine, and I can totally understand that. I would, however, like to simply suggest that the selling point of this material is not the ideas,
but the execution thereof. I’ve spent a year working on this, and believe me, most of that was
not on figuring out how to “rip off” aspects of Dark Sun lore. If I had come up with entirely original ideas rather than using the Dark Sun lore for inspiration for a good portion of the material, it would have added – at most – a month of development time. If there's anything my five years of learning game dev has taught me, it's that good ideas are not how you make a good product - time, effort, and competent execution are.
And even then, now we have to figure out the difference between original Dark Sun lore and Dark Sun adaptation of post-apocalyptic tropes. Fanatically loyal underlings who worship their leader as a god? Not just Dark Sun. Psychic mutants in the wastelands? Not just Dark Sun.
I refuse to take credit for the work done by the good folks at TSR. To claim someone else's work as my own is a disgusting idea to me. But I will whole-heartedly claim credit for the year I spent creating mechanics that transfer the lore of Dark Sun, and worlds like it, to the 5th Edition of D&D. I spent months iterating and reiterating, collecting and analysing feedback, to get the mechanics to where they are today. I will proudly claim that my work here is the closest I have seen anyone get to something that feels like an official post-apocalyptic supplement, and I know for a fact that it hews more closely to WotC's 5e design philosophy than some DM's Guild products made by teams three times bigger.
I believe that this product, and my time put into it, is worth people's money. In order to legally sell it, I had to change all the names and terms. If I could use the original names on the release, I would, but I can't. I've also tried to distance myself from Dark Sun a bit, because I didn't want to be seen as "leeching off" the Dark Sun brand (although I suppose that that backfired
). If people want to play Dark Sun and understood the origins of some of the races, great! If people want to play generic post-apocalyptic fantasy, and they buy
Deadworlds, then hopefully I've put in enough info on Dark Sun to make them want to seek out more. I certainly have put in all that I felt legally comfortable with.
I’ll end with this statement: I don’t ever remember reading about a flame-spewing, heavy metal bard in any Dark Sun material, but take a look at the cover and the free material that I’m using to represent the work. D&D has made its name in taking tropes and popular characters and putting them on the tabletop in mechanical form, and that is exactly what I have done here. Dark Sun happens to include a butt-tonne of those tropes, and it would be remiss of me to make a post-apocalyptic D&D product that did not allow DMs to use it to run that famously deadly setting.
TL;DR - I changed all the names to avoid legal troubles, not to try to claim them as my own. I didn't mention Dark Sun more (a) because I wanted the product to stand more on its own as a homage and as a quality product in its own right, rather than lean on the recognition of a brand that I have no professional connection to, and (b) because the DM's Guild doesn't allow authors to use WotC-owned settings that it hasn't approved, so I had to keep it generic.
. Yes, the 14th-level feature is called "War Pig". I regret nothing.
