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

[LuisCarlos17f]

Or something has happened, and now this "Athas" is not in the material plane, but in other place, maybe within the "elemental limbo". Or the setting is a demiplane, a clone of the original world, something like "Barovia" in the demiplane of the dread.

Here the challengue for the game designers is the balance between the coherence with the "old style" and the flexibility to can add more things later. The reboots and retcons have got their own risks because these can be rejected by the fanbase. A card may be playing with the ambiguity, or starting from a "spin-off". This allows the option to can more changes.

 

[humble minion]

If there's any D&D world which gains absolutely nothing from being attached to the broader D&D cosmology at all, then it's Athas.

Best stick it in a continuity by itself, isolate it a zillion miles away from anything else in an airless unnavigable void of dead, empty un-wild-space, throw out the regular extraplanar canon and just use the Black and the Grey. The whole thing about Athas is that there's no-one out there to help you, there's no escape, and there's nowhere better than this, so it's all up to you.

If I had my way WotC would keep Athas in its own little multiverse separate to that of every other D&D world. That ship has sailed of course, through various easter eggs in Undermountain etc, but whatever.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Players over the last 30 years have already had Spelljammers arrive on Athas. It's already been a thing in countless campaigns that you probably just never knew about or paid attention to. If you're going to be bummed that 'Athasspace' is going to appear in the Spelljammer book... you should already have been bummed for decades because this is nothing new. WotC is just acknowledging something that has already happened and has always been possible.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Players over the last 30 years have already had Spelljammers arrive on Athas. It's already been a thing in countless campaigns that you probably just never knew about or paid attention to. If you're going to be bummed that 'Athasspace' is going to appear in the Spelljammer book... you should already have been bummed for decades because this is nothing new. WotC is just acknowledging something that has already happened and has always been possible.

You're right. Official products designed to update a setting for everyone and somebody's home campaign are totally the same thing.

 

[humble minion]

Players over the last 30 years have already had Spelljammers arrive on Athas. It's already been a thing in countless campaigns that you probably just never knew about or paid attention to. If you're going to be bummed that 'Athasspace' is going to appear in the Spelljammer book... you should already have been bummed for decades because this is nothing new. WotC is just acknowledging something that has already happened and has always been possible.

Oh I know, but WotC turned all the old Ravenloft lore upside down and inside out to bring it into 5e, in principle there's no reason they couldn't discard some fairly minor and peripheral lore linking Dark Sun to Spelljammer in the same way.

Sigh. WotC seem to be jumping decisively in the opposite creative direction to the one I would have chosen with every single one of their legacy setting reinventions. Ravenloft went hard on the concept of delirious nightmare realm where I would have taken it in a very much more grounded Gothic direction. Spelljammer is going big on the whimsy and the absurd where my favourite bits of the setting were the (admittedly minor, in the scheme of things) more gritty and horrific parts like the Inhuman Wars. Dragonlance's focus seems to be on war and mass combat, where for me the big thing of Dragonlance was the personal drama and interactions and destinies of these romantic epic heroes. And Dark Sun looks very much like it'll be introduced via a multiversal stopover from another setting, where my preference is for it to be as isolated as possible from the wider D&D multiverse.

None of this is a criticism mind you - these creative decisions aren't 'bad' or uncanonical or indefensible - it's just a matter of personal taste. All these settings always were big and diverse and widely thematically varied places. Dragonlance always was both a war setting AND a melodrama setting. It's just that WotC and I seem to be interested in completely different aspects of the settings every time, which is a bit frustrating.

 

[Charlaquin]

Players over the last 30 years have already had Spelljammers arrive on Athas. It's already been a thing in countless campaigns that you probably just never knew about or paid attention to. If you're going to be bummed that 'Athasspace' is going to appear in the Spelljammer book... you should already have been bummed for decades because this is nothing new. WotC is just acknowledging something that has already happened and has always been possible.

Athas merely showing up in a Spelljammer book is something I could live with, perhaps even enjoy if it was done well. And, you know, maybe it will be. I don’t have high hopes though.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

that's definitely a good point. "in general", it's not a good idea for survival of the party to hinge on a single roll or decision... however, I think it would be possible to do a very high risk game, if there is player buy in and if there is some sort of... restart/renewal method, same as Sunless Sea

(you may be amused to learned I explored the entire map with the starter ship and no death )

Yeah with Sunless Sea that's quite possible. I got insanely far on my first go, like 14 hours without dying, explored most of the map, but unfortunately of course when I did finally die that just made the game feel really un-fun, especially as I kept dying repeatedly after that. Sunless Skies usually handles it a bit better in that it's a lot harder to avoid dying on early runs, and that skill/knowledge seem to count for a bit more than luck/RNG.

Paranoia is in a lot of ways what I think a "high risk" game might look like (DCC sort of but not really, it has a "death funnel" but isn't as high risk after that).

 

[DEFCON 1]

You're right. Official products designed to update a setting for everyone and somebody's home campaign are totally the same thing.

They are. They are two things you won't be paying attention to in your own home game. It doesn't matter what appears in either... you're going to do whatever it is that you want in yours.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Best stick it in a continuity by itself, isolate it a zillion miles away from anything else in an airless unnavigable void of dead, empty un-wild-space, throw out the regular extraplanar canon and just use the Black and the Grey. The whole thing about Athas is that there's no-one out there to help you, there's no escape, and there's nowhere better than this, so it's all up to you.

I agree. It even make sense for Athas. The same things which killed the gods and ruined the planet would easily have killed Wildspace around the planet and made planar travel nigh-impossible. It just make sense.

And yeah if planar travel and spelljamming just worked in Athas, there'd be a huge business in getting the wealthier people off-planet, which might make for a cool setting - but it'd be a very different setting, and one the players could basically automatically leave at what, level 13 or 14? Earlier?

 

[Micah Sweet]

They are. They are two things you won't be paying attention to in your own home game. It doesn't matter what appears in either... you're going to do whatever it is that you want in yours.

That argument (and most of your arguments) boils down to nothing in the books mattering at all. If you believe that, why are you even here? I really don't understand.