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Dark Sun:
Wizards already rebooted this setting in 4th Ed. They'd probs keep it the same as that. Set things just after the Tyr uprising.
I hope they don't set things just after the Tyr uprising.
There are lots of interesting things to do with Dark Sun that aren't ones we've already gotten.
Consider that they've never done anything with the region on the east side of the Sea of Silt (or its north shore, or its south shore). I'm sure there are lots of other sorcerer kings and such over there--one's who didn't build their petty kingdoms in imitation of real-world societies--ones where socially dubious setting elements are either absent or more fastidiously written. The planet would still be dying from magic fossil fuel overuse, psionics would still be everywhere, metal would still be scarce, and the desert would still be murderous. And it could still connect to the prior publications--the dragon still comes for his his levy or, post-pentad, weird things are happening with the cerulean storm/earthquakes.
Or if they skipped ahead several decades post-pentad--to a point when most book characters have died of old age (and taken knowledge of the hamfisted meta plot to the grave with them). The Tyr region is now menaced by Dregoth and nearly as bleak as it ever was, though WotC could take an opportunity to make social changes due to the time jump.
The expectation I always got from the original boxed set was that you would be fighting against that systemic slavery and exploitation.
In Dark Sun, the current status quo is the real enemy, and your job is to kill it one sorcerer-king and defiler at a time.
Honestly, I think it’s the one setting that DOESN’T need much in the way of a 5e cultural overhaul.
My expectation about slavery and the other evils of Dark Sun was that PCs were expected to oppose or be harmed by them, but that the status quo wasn't going anywhere. According to The Wanderer Journal (p. 6)
"we know from the sheer number of their chronicles that most city-states are thousands of years old. The same sorcerer-king rules over the city for spans of hundreds of years, sometimes for more than a thousand. There are even cases where the current sovereign is credited with founding the city. As incredible as such claims sound, do not discredit them too readily. It is certain that powerful sorcerers live for centuries, and I know of no king that has died in my lifetime, or that of my father or his father."
PC's are -
first- out to survive. If they accomplish that, they can maybe make some local difference--but the world is still doomed and the selfish people who doomed it so that they could rule its ashes aren't going anywhere.
Yeah, folks will absolutely love Dark Sun. Its going to come back with slavery as this thing that your characters are specifically out there to stop. Folks thinking mentions of it are going to stop things are dramatically misreading what people are complaining about. Some of the nations will need reworking, absolutely, but, honestly? Taking the 4E approach to it and going from there is fairly safe. "Here's one place that's broken away from the yoke of an evil tyrant sorcerer king. The rest of the world is still in their grip. What do you do?"
I think Dark Sun will come back, slavery and all.
I'm seeing a lot of assumptions that there'd be outrage over the setting because of the fact that slavery exists there. I think a lot of these assumptions are coming from a flawed understanding of what people do and don't get upset about when it comes to RPG content. If slavery is portrayed as an evil to be fought, as it always was in Dark Sun, then I suspect there'll be very little argument over that.
What changes there might be could be to move the city-states a bit away from cribbing off identifiable real-world civilisations (it's a bit eye-rolly when the only identifiable Cambodian-inspired content in official WotC D&D, for instance, is an evil desert city-state...), and probably a rethinking about whether templars are playable as PCs, given their inextricable identification with a profoundly evil slavery-perpetuating regime. And yes I know, Kurn is a thing, but it's the exception that proves the rule.
I'm not sure what they can do about the city-states being culture copies. On the one hand, it's super cool for Nibenay's Khmer-flavored goodness to get some coverage, same with the depictions of central African Gulg and Indian Raam--and it would be a shame if that was removed. On the other hand, there isn't enough room in the piddling little city-states to give any oxygen to those milieu. How much Khmer stuff can really go into an island of culture in a sea of Mad Max that neither informs the culture nor is affected by it. And the strong implication is that these islands of culture are just reflections of the interests and proclivities of their thousand-year-old eccentric jerkwad dictators. Why does Balic have a Senate? Because Andropinus like senates and decided that his toy city would have one.
Hence my suggestion for them not to do the uprising in Tyr setup yet again.
Beyond the Prism Pentad has an interesting bit about Lilali Puy sending her templars abroad to quasi-religiously advocate for the restoration of forests on Athas (as a power play to spread her city's influence). That, at least, would justify an extended cultural writeup.
