D&D 5E "Doom Sun" − reconstructing a 5e Dark Sun setting for the DMs Guild

[Charlaquin]

I think you're kind of both right.

This is a very obvious not-Dark Sun. In fact, what it plus "Athasspace" looks like is that, right up until fairly recently, this was going to be the 5E take on Dark Sun.

However, something caused a last-minute (or at least "last quarter of the game") change of plans. So late that maps were made with the old name in place and even distributed digitally and so on. Fyreen almost certainly was Athas, imho. It somewhat much doubt that a huge amount of the text was re-written, because from the pictures, it looks fairly together and well-written, and not some sort of last-minute deal. So the 5E take on Athas was probably pretty different.

So why did they change course? To me there seem two obvious possibilities:

1) They felt like it was a waste to put any version of actual, named Athas into Spelljammer, because they intend to make an Athas setting, but just not any time soon. This might have been a very recent decision. Clearly they had planned to put Athas in previously.

2) The specific take on Athas that was previously in Spelljammer was decided against. So, it could be that the Fyreen-Athas was decided as not cool enough, or too wack. Or it could be a more standard Athas was planned, but the book was cancelled or punted into the future. Ray Winninger did say they often cancel setting books (and he seemed to be implying sometimes it was pretty late in the day).

Either way, in the short term, it seems an Athas book is unlikely, because either they've either A) suddenly decided they want a full Athas book where previously it wasn't going to be one, B) decided that the approach for Athas, whatever it was, was wrong, or C) cancelled an Athas book entirely, which the setting would previously have match.

I actually think C is kind of the least likely there. But again, in the short term, i.e. next year or two, I think it's very unlikely we'll see an Athas book because of this. But equally, in the significantly longer term, like 3+ years, the decision not to use the Athas name here means that they have flexibility and could well be planning an Athas book.

If I'm really crystal-ballin' it, like my honest prognostication, then my theory would be, this was essentially a "trailer" for a wilder 5E Athas remake, but they cancelled that, because they want to go with a more standard Athas. You may say "wishful thinking!", but I'm on record as actually hoping for a remake (i.e. similar ideas but different) of Athas rather than a reboot (i.e. same ideas, not merely similar), and I think a reboot is now more likely. Just in 3+ years.

Obviously I may be on crack here.

I would be inclined to agree with your speculation here, except that it feels like if Fyreen had been Athas, they wouldn’t have had enough room to follow it up with a full campaign setting. I may have misremembered which celestial body was days away from falling into the doom maw, but either way, they wrote themselves into a bit of a corner with would-be-Athas on an inexorable and pretty short path to destruction.

I think they wanted to be done with Dark Sun, so they wrote its demise as a side-note in their Spelljammer campaign. But just before pulling the trigger they realized they would upset more people by publicly executing the setting than just quietly ignoring it.

But I am self-aware enough to recognize that I’m probably just being overly pessimistic.

 

[darjr]

Whatever it was, even if it was maybe an internal joke got out a hand, I’m sorry for interrupting this thread.

I love the idea of this thread, but what’s more I’d love to see a deeper exploration of Doomspace regardless.

I’m very intrigued with the idea of black hole shenanigans and racing agains the literal destruction of the planet and system.

A race agains getting trapped in the future sounds awesome too.

I’d love to see reasons people come up with to draw adventures there.

 

[Charlaquin]

Whatever it was, even if it was maybe an internal joke got out a hand, I’m sorry for interrupting this thread.

I love the idea of this thread, but what’s more I’d love to see a deeper exploration of Doomspace regardless.

I’m very intrigued with the idea of black hole shenanigans and racing agains the literal destruction of the planet and system.

A race agains getting trapped in the future sounds awesome too.

I’d love to see reasons people come up with to draw adventures there.

Yeah, I will say, as much as the Doomspace situation saddens me with regard to Dark Sun, I do think it seems quite cool as its own thing.

 

[Jer]

The backstory of primoridals driving off the gods sounds familiar though - was that from the 4e setting book? Or am I just having a phantom memory here? I'll need to check when I get some time. Interesting cameo for crystal spheres too.

Aha - found it. Way at the end of the DM's section of the Dark Sun campaign setting book for 4e is the "Secret History of Athas" sidebar has a sentence saying that the gods were either destroyed or driven off by primordials. I knew I'd read that before.

However, something caused a last-minute (or at least "last quarter of the game") change of plans. So late that maps were made with the old name in place and even distributed digitally and so on. Fyreen almost certainly was Athas, imho.

So here's a crackpot theory. You know how they milked the "Spelljammer Confirmed!" stuff for years? Two years of April fools jokes teasing Spelljammer, lots of teasing the setting without committing to it, etc. Turns out they were doing viral marketing, whether they were intentionally doing it or it was just a side effect of devs having fun.

What if the whole "Athasspace" "leak" wasn't an accident? What if all of this is just to set up another round of teasing to get people online who normally wouldn't talk about Dark Sun talking about Athas? And putting a not-Athas into the book is just another level of tease? A bit more conspiratorial than I normally go, but is it something that the folks on the D&D team might do?

Does anyone know where that original map image came from? I've tried using Google and I'm not coming up with anything except a link to a missing thread here on enworld.

 

[Tutara]

Yeah, I will say, as much as the Doomspace situation saddens me with regard to Dark Sun, I do think it seems quite cool as its own thing.

I agree completely- and this is subsequently a source of confusion for me. Doomspace sounds like a great concept - very similar, in fact, to my own plans for a darker Spelljammer campaign.

Why then must we crowbar in an old campaign setting? Why not let Athas be Athas, and explore the possibility of something different for Doomspace? We have Darksun - it's there, it's codified in numerous books, and it can exist in any game the GM wishes to run. Why try and force the square peg into such a resolutely round hole?

This is not a direct response to Charlaquin, but rather my perplexed reaction to the concept of hijacking something that is not Darksun and trying to make it Darksun.

 

[pukunui]

Does anyone know where that original map image came from? I've tried using Google and I'm not coming up with anything except a link to a missing thread here on enworld.

It was briefly posted on D&D Beyond before the article was taken down and then reposted with the new map.

Here's a Twitter post about it:

 

[Jer]

It was briefly posted on D&D Beyond before the article was taken down and then reposted with the new map.

So sadly that does nothing to refute the idea that it was an "accident" rather than an accident.

Why then must we crowbar in an old campaign setting? Why not let Athas be Athas, and explore the possibility of something different for Doomspace? We have Darksun - it's there, it's codified in numerous books, and it can exist in any game the GM wishes to run. Why try and force the square peg into such a resolutely round hole?

I think this is a good idea, and looking at Athas for ideas of the kinds of creatures and societies you might find on Fyreen is something I'd want to do with that. Much like you might look at the Forgotten Realms for things to modify and use in another pseudo-middle ages D&D setting.

(I blame Wizards for folks wanting to make it into Athas tho - they started it by posting the map with Athas's name on it. Without that I suspect the reaction would have been a lot more of a "hey this place sounds like they ripped off Athas" instead of "hey this seems like this was their plan for Athas and they changed their mind".)

 

[dave2008]

I mean, saying Fyreen is any amount of time from falling into a black hole is a meaningless statement by itself; from who’s frame of reference is it that amount of time away? The book says it’s days away, so the maximum amount of time we can give it is if we assume that’s days away from Fyreen’s frame of reference. If it was days away from a frame of reference outside the black hole’s influence, it would be an immeasurably short amount of time away from Fyreen’s frame.

And don’t get me wrong, “you only have a few days to escape Fyreen before it falls into the black hole” is a very cool premise for an adventure. But it’s pretty limiting to Fyreen’s usability as a long-term campaign setting.

Easy enough to turn those days to weeks, months, or years away though.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think they wanted to be done with Dark Sun, so they wrote its demise as a side-note in their Spelljammer campaign. But just before pulling the trigger they realized they would upset more people by publicly executing the setting than just quietly ignoring it.

I mean that's possible, but I don't think even WotC would have been foolish enough to even plan to publicly execute a setting. I feel like even if one guy at WotC was that spice-y, it'd have been caught a lot earlier on and nixed. One thing 5E has been pretty careful about has been horribly offending fans of existing settings - like the 5E version of the Forgotten Realms is very much "Whooops we went too far in 4E, here's basically-3E FR back!".

I would be inclined to agree with your speculation here, except that it feels like if Fyreen had been Athas, they wouldn’t have had enough room to follow it up with a full campaign setting. I may have misremembered which celestial body was days away from falling into the doom maw, but either way, they wrote themselves into a bit of a corner with would-be-Athas on an inexorable and pretty short path to destruction.

That could be, but here's my counter-theory.

Originally Fyreen-Athas wasn't that close to destruction (though maybe one of the other planets was). The limited (or significant?) re-writing to push it closer to destruction so people didn't get hyped about Fyreen as an upcoming setting or rather more importantly because it was kewl.

 

[dave2008]

The four biggest bits for a 5E Dark Sun are psionics, defiling, templars, and muls.

To be clear this is a Doom Sun project, not Dark Sun. Similar, but not the same. That is why OP said half-dwarves for Muls.

Psionics. WotC has a half-baked psi system currently that leaves a lot off the table. Namely the full psionics class. This would be the most work. Unfortunately, WotC seems to have zero interest in pursuing psionics any further. Fortunately, several 3PP have made or are making psionicists.

Also for clarity, this is a DMsGuild thought project. So if someone wants to add a Psion to Doom Space they can! The whole point is to give it Dark Sun qualities that you like in a "legal" way.