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

[Charlaquin]

I'm fine with it conceptually. I usually don't bother with grimdark so the trope isn't played out for me.

Execution is everything.

Grimdark isn’t necessarily bad, but grimdark for its own sake usually is. Grimdark needs conscious intent behind it to work well.

 

[Zardnaar]

Grimdark isn’t necessarily bad, but grimdark for its own sake usually is. Grimdark needs conscious intent behind it to work well.

It doesn't have much appeal for me I think 40k is just stupid.

I liked DS due to the first boxed set.

 

[Remathilis]

To be fair, I like all of those things; those are all things I would want to see in a Dark Sun spiritual successor (well, I could take or leave psionics I guess). The problem for me is that here they feel blindly copied without understanding why they’re important to Dark Sun.

The slave race thing is a good example. Slavery is a reality on Athas, but it’s a reality good PCs aren’t supposed to tacitly accept. Mul aren’t “the ideal slave race,” they’re a people who were born into slavery. They exist to allow the players to live out stories of rebellion, not to make the setting edgier.

I guess I saw it as "why is there psionics?" And the answer was "because Dark Sun had them" without a good hook as to why it fits THIS world. If Dark Sun didn't exist, would this setting use them? Lather, rinse, repeat.

Maybe if they opted for not including one element of DS (no psionics, activist warring gods, no half-giants) or they added something new like eldritch horror or Mad Max style vehicles, I'd feel this was a project inspired by Dark Sun but stands out on it's own. Right now, it feels like "We have Dark Sun at home."

 

[Charlaquin]

I guess I saw it as "why is there psionics?" And the answer was "because Dark Sun had them" without a good hook as to why it fits THIS world. If Dark Sun didn't exist, would this setting use them? Lather, rinse, repeat.

Agreed! That’s how I felt reading it as well. “Dark Sun had it” seems to be the main reason behind anything’s inclusion, with no real thought to why Dark Sun had it or whether their world should have it and why or why not.

Maybe if they opted for not including one element of DS (no psionics, activist warring gods, no half-giants) or they added something new like eldritch horror or Mad Max style vehicles, I'd feel this was a project inspired by Dark Sun but stands out on it's own. Right now, it feels like "We have Dark Sun at home."

Exactly.

 

[CapnZapp]

Not differentiating your product from Dark Sun is not a bad thing. Dark Sun is great, so the only argument to move away from my that would come from the lawyers.

If I got my wish, I would go more metal in my version and not make a PG-13 game. Dark Sun always held a potential for controversial subjects such as slavery, cannibalism and inequality; I would personally double down on that and include NSFW imagery and bring controversial subjects into scenarios; a bit like how a game like KULT can be played to test your limits.

(Yes, it would limit the audience, but luckily I don't have to break even when daydreaming like this...!)

 

[jerryrice4949]

Seems a lot of people on this thread are overly critical. I am not involved with this project nor have I backed it, but a lot of harsh assumptions are being made based a tiny bit of information on the KS page.

 

[squibbles]

This looks less like a spiritual successor and more like a carbon copy with the serial numbers filed off. Though, one notable difference seems to be that a big cataclysm is responsible for the state of the world, and also changed the way magic works, rather than magic always having drawn its power from the natural world and its over-use being to blame. And for me, that’s pretty much a dealbreaker. The number one selling point of dark sun for me is the environmentalist themes, and this change weakens them significantly.

This looks way too similar to Dark Sun... I don't know how I feel about it. I understand "inspiration", but this is just a copy/paste

That was my immediate response too.

But, on reflection, I have been hoping for more and novel Dark Sun content for a while--new regions mapped, new city states, new sorcerer kings. And reading the Kickstarter's short blurbs about each of the cities, they didn't seem too bad.

• Cyrda - a massive salt mine in the side of a cliff that borders an evaporated sea
• Drel - like Balic, but a Potemkin Village
• Knoss - monumental ruined ziggurats covered in vines and moss
• Krull - a nest of tunnels at the bottom of giant crater

The whole of the production looks like it will be a bland ripoff, but the particulars might have germs of creativity worth stealing for an actual Dark Sun game.

 

[Charlaquin]

Seems a lot of people on this thread are overly critical. I am not involved with this project nor have I backed it, but a lot of harsh assumptions are being made based a tiny bit of information on the KS page.

Well, the information on the KS page is all we have to go on to decide whether or not it’s worth pledging money to, so it’s in the creators’ best interest to make sure that information is enough to convince people it’s worth the investment. For me, it isn’t.

 

[Malmuria]

Not differentiating your product from Dark Sun is not a bad thing. Dark Sun is great, so the only argument to move away from my that would come from the lawyers.

If I got my wish, I would go more metal in my version and not make a PG-13 game. Dark Sun always held a potential for controversial subjects such as slavery, cannibalism and inequality; I would personally double down on that and include NSFW imagery and bring controversial subjects into scenarios; a bit like how a game like KULT can be played to test your limits.

(Yes, it would limit the audience, but luckily I don't have to break even when daydreaming like this...!)

Hmm. Is that the problem with including slavery, including chattel slavery of entire races, in your dnd game? That it's too "metal," or R-rated, or "not safe for work"? That including this theme can be there to "test your limits"?

This is similar to the discussion of the "grimdark" Goblin Slayer game. Including gratuitous violence, especially violence that has resonance with people's histories and life experience in the real world, does not, IMO, make a game more adult or mature or serious. Many grimdark settings strike me as in fact childish in the way they present exaggerated and graphic violence as an attempted means to build narrative stakes, and I think it has the effect of actually trivializing the impact and trauma both within the setting and, more importantly, for players at the table.

 

[Zardnaar]

Hmm. Is that the problem with including slavery, including chattel slavery of entire races, in your dnd game? That it's too "metal," or R-rated, or "not safe for work"? That including this theme can be there to "test your limits"?

This is similar to the discussion of the "grimdark" Goblin Slayer game. Including gratuitous violence, especially violence that has resonance with people's histories and life experience in the real world, does not, IMO, make a game more adult or mature or serious. Many grimdark settings strike me as in fact childish in the way they present exaggerated and graphic violence as an attempted means to build narrative stakes, and I think it has the effect of actually trivializing the impact and trauma both within the setting and, more importantly, for players at the table.

I'm pretty much don't like it don't buy it.

Something like this though is a decent contrast to the sanitized boring stuff WotC has been making though. It's not one or the other for me options are good.