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

[Ruin Explorer]

You guys have all read Dune.

I should know Arrakis and Geidi Prime change names over the course of the original 6 book series by the end. I think I'll take that angle for Fyreen and Athas.

I mean, we've all read Dune.

I don't think most people have read any of the other books in the series lol. I know based on the discussion around them that I certainly have not.

 

[Shardstone]

I mean, we've all read Dune.

I don't think most people have read any of the other books in the series lol. I know based on the discussion around them that I certainly have not.

Personally, Dune: Messiah and God-Emperor of Dune are every bit as good as Dune 1, and i highly recommend the full 6 book Frank Herbert series. While it does get weird, it isn't offensive, and it all was gong in a direction I really liked.

Regardless. Starting with God-Emperor, which is thousands of years after the saga of Paul has ended, the familiar planets (minus the Chapterhouse of the Bene Gesserit) have all been renamed from cultural inertia. Arrakis just becomes Rakis, Caledan becomes Dan, Giedi Prime becomes Gammu. Since Fyreen is close to Pyreen, the lexicon is there for the name change to happen, especially if I say the Sun was destroyed more than a hundred years ago.

 

[Remathilis]

This is the most bizarre thing I’ve seen in a long long term time. To me it smacks of someone thinking they’re clever by making a parody (except it isn’t very funny) or homage to the old Athas without it being accurate. Either way, it was going to get the backs up of fans of Darksun (of which there are many).

You have to be familiar with Dark Sun, defiling, it’s lack of pantheon, know what a drey or Athasian dragon looks like, and the fact that Fyreen sounds like Pyreen.

All in all a pretty cheap shot. Too similar not to be referential, too different to give fans a hope that anything resembling the original will be forthcoming.

Very disappointing, and just reinforces my feeling that if I want to enjoy 5e going forward I need to rely on third parties, because what’s coming out of WOC is a steaming pile.

Methinks TheSword doth protest too much.

I think they wanted Dark Sun for the aesthetics; dying desert planet is a trope of Sci Fi and I think they thought it would be a clever nod to old players to use a classic setting. They couldn't get it to work. We don't know why exactly, but it didn't score well with playtesters apparently and they salvaged what they could into Doomspace.

Why didn't it work? We don't exactly know and unless someone is/will violate NDA, we won't ever know. Maybe Dark Sun brought too much baggage in the form of changes and legacy rules to fit in a product not intended for it. (For example, would offworlder PC casters be able to defile or preserve? That's a core DS element that touches all casters and you can't address it in a Spelljammer module. Either the answer is no and you make large repressions to future lore or yes and you design a new rule system only used for one part of a module for a completely different setting).

My guess is that they probably got pushback for DS lite not feeling like Athas and decided to redo it as an Athas-like setting without presumptions to get the vibe without having to explain how it all fits together.

Now of course if your agenda is to believe WotC is firing its fans, you'll find conspiracy around every corner. But I think the change was made so as not to sabotage a future DS setting. It was an idea they tried and didn't work and we'd be none the wiser if not for the prototype map that got published by accident. Heck, we'd probably be discussing the opposite and asking why they created a new apocalyptic setting when Athas is right there...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Since Fyreen is close to Pyreen, the lexicon is there for the name change to happen, especially if I say the Sun was destroyed more than a hundred years ago.

Pyreen is the name of a type of druid, not the planet.

That's be like Toril going on to being called Farper (from Harper).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But I think the change was made so as not to sabotage a future DS setting. It was an idea they tried and didn't work and we'd be none the wiser if not for the prototype map that got published by accident. Heck, we'd probably be discussing the opposite and asking why they created a new apocalyptic setting when Athas is right there...

PRECISELY! Especially that last bit. I daresay there would indeed by cries of "Ugh why isn't this Athas! Lazy WotC doesn't respect old lore so just makes up new rip-off lore!", when in fact Doomspace may have pushed Athas out of the way of the bus...

 

[Shardstone]

Pyreen is the name of a type of druid, not the planet.

That's be like Toril going on to being called Farper (from Harper).

Yes, but weirder things have happened in lexicon of things When I was taking my linguistics courses in grad school, I was surprised at just how random names would change IRL, and how the most absurd things would move from one very tangential category to the next. But even if this connection is weak, which admittedly it is, change from Athas to Fyreen is also not entirely impossible over any significant time span. Persia to Iran, Siam to Thailand, Burma to Myanmar, Ceylon to Sri Lanka, and so on.

Anyway, we're getting a bit in the weeds of this now, but when I run Doomspace, this will probably be the spin I take. The sun was destroyed. I'll probably say it was destroyed by people overthrowing the sorcerer-king dragons, and maybe they even did it by saying screw it, we're going to use YOUR WEAPON against you, and somehow got the Dark Lens and over-defiled the sun. Now all that's left is a world being torn apart by the gravity of the black hole, a frozen and eternal night aglow by its accretion disk and the varicolored magma spewing from volcanos made massive by aforementioned gravitational forces. Tyrants rule a waste of stardust and snow, and the few dragon kings left have went to the moons throughout Doomspace (mentioned on the 2-page spread) or are recovering from wounds deeper than flesh and bone underneath Fyreen's boreal tundra.

And there's aurorae everywhere, gg.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But even if this connection is weak, which admittedly it is, change from Athas to Fyreen is also not entirely impossible over any significant time span. Persia to Iran, Siam to Thailand, Burma to Myanmar, Ceylon to Sri Lanka, and so on.

I mean, even the top of my head I know Iran is from Aryan people who lived there and had been used in various forms for over a millennia (maybe two), and the rest are basically "colonial corrections". I don't think any of them are close to "rename the planet after some weirdo druids". I'm just sayin'.

The sun was destroyed. I'll probably say it was destroyed by people overthrowing the sorcerer-king dragons

So the Sorcerer-Kings were right, and people fighting for freedom destroyed the sun? I mean, that's kind of, a hard-conservative (in the historical sense) take there lol. Maybe rethink that? Maybe the Sorcerer-Kings did it to try and last-ditch stop themselves being overthrown (esp. as they appear to still be in charge based on what we know).

 

[TheSword]

Methinks TheSword doth protest too much.

I think they wanted Dark Sun for the aesthetics; dying desert planet is a trope of Sci Fi and I think they thought it would be a clever nod to old players to use a classic setting. They couldn't get it to work. We don't know why exactly, but it didn't score well with playtesters apparently and they salvaged what they could into Doomspace.

Doth protest too much? As in I secretly wanted this parody of much loved setting but don’t want anyone to know about it?

Well I would very much like to know who wrote that section so I can give them a piece of my mind.

 

[Remathilis]

Doth protest too much? As in I secretly wanted this parody of much loved setting but don’t want anyone to know about it?

Well I would very much like to know who wrote that section so I can give them a piece of my mind.

Well, when Gertrude says it in Hamlet, she is referring to the Player Queen in the show she is watching being too free with her criticism of the Player King. Gertrude doesn't know the Player Queen is supposed to represent her though, so by saying the Player Queen is treating her late husband harshly, she is saying more about herself than she knows.

All that goes to say that if you think WotC didv all this to slap Dark Sun fans (and yourself specifically) in the face, it says more about you than it does WotC.

 

[Bitbrain]

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.


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.

Kinda fits with their previous strategy of teasing Spelljammer. Maybe now they’ll begin teasing Dark Sun.