Spelljammer Dark Sun confirmed? Or, the mysterious case of the dissappearing Spelljammer article...

[grimslade]

You fly your fleet of spelljamming ships into Doomspace and immediately all your air goes to fouled (poisonous). The Living Flag Ship of the expedition, commanded by Entmaster Duravale begins to shrivel as all the ships return to jamming speed after slowing when crossing the system border. Duravale dies, turns to ash, and the Living Ship is adrift while it is beset by flocks of defiling space zombie pirates of previous visitors. The fleet arrives upon Athas and as they descend to the surface, the massive drain of magical power of the helms drains what precious little life remains in the Tyr Valley. You have conquered Athas and completed its doom. Magic has a price in Doomspace and without the knowledge of the way of Preservation, magic is default defiling. This is why no one goes to Doomspace. It is a trap. Ships that enter, never leave.

 

[humble minion]

You fly your fleet of spelljamming ships into Doomspace and immediately all your air goes to fouled (poisonous). The Living Flag Ship of the expedition, commanded by Entmaster Duravale begins to shrivel as all the ships return to jamming speed after slowing when crossing the system border. Duravale dies, turns to ash, and the Living Ship is adrift while it is beset by flocks of defiling space zombie pirates of previous visitors. The fleet arrives upon Athas and as they descend to the surface, the massive drain of magical power of the helms drains what precious little life remains in the Tyr Valley. You have conquered Athas and completed its doom. Magic has a price in Doomspace and without the knowledge of the way of Preservation, magic is default defiling. This is why no one goes to Doomspace. It is a trap. Ships that enter, never leave.

Nice!

(Or else Borys senses your fleet coming, psionically shunts the lot of you sideways into a pocket dimension, and then pulls you out and eats your souls next time he needs a bit of a power boost to keep Rajaat imprisoned...)

 

[vecna00]

Athas continually changed even in the original material. The Prism Pentad turned it upside down, the number of sorcerer-kings was in continual flux depending on author, halfling biotech got retrofitted in, Black Spine and Dregoth re-introduced planar travel to the setting, etc etc. There's no reason it can't change again.

I think WotC would like to bring back Athas, but there's a few thorny points they keep running into and recoiling. How to do psionics is one, clearly. How to reconcile a world where arcane magic is rare and hated with a game edition where 2/3 of subclasses even of the martial classes are casually throwing flashy magic around is another. And then there's how to treat slavery, and the fact that templars have always been playable in previous Dark Sun editions, but modern mores have a distinctly less sympathetic view on playing the brutal enforcers of tyrannical slave societies.

The question is how much you can change it. Part of the reason you reinvent a setting in the first place rather than make an entire new one is to leverage nostalgia. The massive reinvention of Ravenloft seems to have split opinions right down the middle. Personally I really dislike it (for a number of reasons, but "cos it's different!" is not one of them) but I know lots of people find it a great improvement. Different strokes I guess. But WotC was able to reinvent Ravenloft as a generic horror sourcebook while leaving enough that's recognisable so the older school fans feel a bit catered to as well. They seem to be taking this strategy with Dragonlance as well - reinvent it as a generic mass combat sourcebook mixed with a legacy world/campaign to hit the nostalgia buttons. Dark Sun is a harder sell on that front. Its 'thing' is brutal survivalist sword and sorcery - and that's a long, long way from what the 5e ruleset is optimised for. Ravenloft can still be Ravenlofty if the Core is gone and Azalin is gone and everyone's bopping around between domains like a Planescape berk with a pocket full of portal keys so long as there's doomed darklords and Gothicness and gloom. WotC are betting that Dragonlance can maybe still be Dragonlancey if the campaign is set nowhere near the Inn of Last Home and the Heroes of the Lance don't appear at all (though what they do about clerics and divine magic before the return of the gods will be interesting to see). Can Athas still be Athasy if there's no slavery and wilderness survival is trivial and even the fighters and barbarians are popping off flashy magic all over the place?

There's definitely work that will need to be done, and it won't make everyone happy, but it can be done. Those that really don't like it can still use the old lore with the new mechanics they like. I will probably be doing this with the new Spelljammer, unless what I read makes me super happy!

As far as all the casters go: The PCs are the exceptions. You won't find an order of eldritch knights. You may find a few working for the Veiled Alliance though, but not in any large numbers.

Also, I love me some Life-Shaping!

 

[Charlaquin]

There's definitely work that will need to be done, and it won't make everyone happy, but it can be done. Those that really don't like it can still use the old lore with the new mechanics they like. I will probably be doing this with the new Spelljammer, unless what I read makes me super happy!

As far as all the casters go: The PCs are the exceptions. You won't find an order of eldritch knights. You may find a few working for the Veiled Alliance though, but not in any large numbers.

Also, I love me some Life-Shaping!

I fully believe it can be done. I worry though that it won’t be done, or at least won’t be done well.

 

[vecna00]

I fully believe it can be done. I worry though that it won’t be done, or at least won’t be done well.

That's fair.

 

[ersatzphil]

I fully believe it can be done. I worry though that it won’t be done, or at least won’t be

I’m considerably more pessimistic. I received, as a gift late last year, the original Dark Sun boxed set - it was a joy to revisit, but what struck me was how much of the setting felt bound to the 2e rule set.

It was a bit of a bummer, but I came away with the feeling that it would be easier to teach my group 2e than to try to port it to 5e. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy 5e just fine, but I suspect either Dark Sun would have to change to the point of being unrecognizable to work in 5e, or 5e would change to the point of being a different system to recapture the feel of Dark Sun.

 

[Shardstone]

The thing is, outside of the art and the base ideas of Dark Sun, the Dark Sun adventures are literally trash, and its a near impossible setting to run without making up every Sorcerer-King and city up in detail sans like, two of them. There's so little to go off of in the original material that I Have always abandoned trying to run games with it.

What I like about Dark Sun is the atmosphere portrayed IN THE ART. Brom's art is, as much as I love it, better than anything described in that setting. A new Dark Sun that vibes off Brom's art in tone and changes the setting to be a new bleakworld for me to explore ruled by Sorcerer-Kings who have more then two lines of text about them is a joy I can't wait to have.

 

[Charlaquin]

I’m considerably more pessimistic. I received, as a gift late last year, the original Dark Sun boxed set - it was a joy to revisit, but what struck me was how much of the setting felt bound to the 2e rule set.

It was a bit of a bummer, but I came away with the feeling that it would be easier to teach my group 2e than to try to port it to 5e. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy 5e just fine, but I suspect either Dark Sun would have to change to the point of being unrecognizable to work in 5e, or 5e would change to the point of being a different system to recapture the feel of Dark Sun.

I suspect you have a rather more specific idea of what it “working” would look like than I do. I thought 4e Dark Sun worked beautifully, no reason a 5e version couldn’t do the same. But, again, I have my doubts that it will.

 

[humble minion]

What I like about Dark Sun is the atmosphere portrayed IN THE ART. Brom's art is, as much as I love it, better than anything described in that setting. A new Dark Sun that vibes off Brom's art in tone and changes the setting to be a new bleakworld for me to explore ruled by Sorcerer-Kings who have more then two lines of text about them is a joy I can't wait to have.

Yeah, I can understand that. My personal mental image of Dark Sun will forever be defined by how Lynn Abbey wrote the place in her Urik novels, and there's no game supplement that remotely evokes that atmosphere.

 

[ersatzphil]

I suspect you have a rather more specific idea of what it “working” would look like than I do. I thought 4e Dark Sun worked beautifully, no reason a 5e version couldn’t do the same. But, again, I have my doubts that it will.

I stopped playing RPGs for about a decade and managed to skip 4e in it's entirety, purely by chance. The only experience I've had of the setting was in 2e - though in fairness, I've gotten the impression that a lot of people who were otherwise really down on 4e all seem to begrudgingly admit the Dark Sun books from that era were pretty great.

The biggest thing to me - at least as I recall the setting - was how much your character was defined by what they couldn't do: no gnomes or paladins, no doing magic in public, etc. WotC for good or ill doesn't seem to want to do anything where you can't use all of the bevy of races / classes / subclasses from across the books.