D&D 5E WotC: Why Dark Sun Hasn't Been Revived

In an interview with YouTuber 'Bob the Worldbuilder', WotC's Kyle Brink explained why the classic Dark Sun setting has not yet seen light of day in the D&D 5E era.

I’ll be frank here, the Dark Sun setting is problematic in a lot of ways. And that’s the main reason we haven’t come back to it. We know it’s got a huge fan following and we have standards today that make it extraordinarily hard to be true to the source material and also meet our ethical and inclusion standards... We know there’s love out there for it and god we would love to make those people happy, and also we gotta be responsible.

You can listen to the clip here.

 

[Zardnaar]

Not really. By including them as something that's legal (and therefore socially acceptable) and readily available, that's basically giving PCs carte blanche to buy a slave

It's also a way to free them or if tests not legal some sort of private estate where essentially they're not/are allowed to escape.

Think people forget slavery was the default pretty much most of the world not that long ago. So any RPG that is vaguely based n pre industrial societies might include it.

Personally where I draw the line is an rpg that promotes it as a good thing Eben in 90's Darksun the slavers were villains.

 

[James Gasik]

It's been a looong time since I read it and I may be misremembering, but didn't Athas also have nomadic, thieving, swindling elves? Because given the awful stereotype of "thieving, swindling gypsies", that's potentially also a thing of problem for WotC, I imagine.

Don't forget the cannibalistic halflings!

 

[Undrave]

I don’t really know Dark Sun lore so I was wondering: Is there a singular ‘moment’ where the world went to crap or was it a slow descent? I feel like they could make a ‘Dark Sun Origin’ book set before the current nations and factions are properly established. Really sell it as a post-apocalyptic setting and challenge the players to build a better tomorrow than the canon one? You could include enough 5e versions of rules to let fans of the older version build their own perfect Dark Sun without selling the problematic content?

 

[Aldarc]

In an interview with YouTuber 'Bob the Worldbuilder', WotC's Kyle Brink explained why the classic Dark Sun setting has not yet seen light of day in the D&D 5E era.

I’ll be frank here, the Dark Sun setting is problematic in a lot of ways. And that’s the main reason we haven’t come back to it. We know it’s got a huge fan following and we have standards today that make it extraordinarily hard to be true to the source material and also meet our ethical and inclusion standards... We know there’s love out there for it and god we would love to make those people happy, and also we gotta be responsible.

You can listen to the clip here.

I hear that the Nentir Vale would be easy for WotC "to be true to the souce material and also meet our ethical and inclusion standards."

 

[edosan]

I can't say I'm shocked by any of this - Wizards isn't interested in settings, period. The whole "quick and dirty box set" a la Spelljammer really wouldn't work here because they'd have to rework pretty much everything and that's not going to work in three slim softcovers, and that's not even counting the "objectionable material" which I'm guessing they want to avoid as much as possible now.

 

[tetrasodium]

Don't forget the cannibalistic halflings!

I don't remember much outrage over

Spoiler: this

or this

 

[Clint_L]

I doubt that you'll ever see WotC do setting to anything like the extent of 2e, and they have very good reasons for that: almost all of those settings, including Dark Sun, lost money.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I know this works in D&D, but the impression I get is that this attitude is one of the sticking points. It's seen as kinda trivialising the real-world issue, because slavery etc simply wasn't that easy to get rid of and was backed by overwhelming force, and it runs the risk of portraying the people who didn't escape as losers who were partially responsible for their situation. I know it's not your intent, but the argument can lead to the sort of 'why didn't the Jews fight back on the way to the gas chambers?' counterfactuals which are so often made in bad faith.

That 100% makes sense.

Probably the only way to do Dark Sun would be with a big time jump. But change enough things that way, and the question is whether the Dark Sun brand will appeal to anyone at that point.

Better to just plow those energies into a new sand & sandals setting, I guess.

 

[Argyle King]

Do you think it's possible for a company (probably not WoTC) to publish a setting with "problematic" content?

It seems there is a market for morally ambiguous problems and settings. Hypothetically, I would posit that such a market cannot exist without members of the gaming community wanting to buy things. But, at the same time, the community also takes a very strong stance against anything which doesn't fit "modern sensibilities."

It's sometimes difficult to wrap my head around the idea of an audience saying "we want X, but we won't support any company which produces X."

 

[Zardnaar]

I don’t really know Dark Sun lore so I was wondering: Is there a singular ‘moment’ where the world went to crap or was it a slow descent? I feel like they could make a ‘Dark Sun Origin’ book set before the current nations and factions are properly established. Really sell it as a post-apocalyptic setting and challenge the players to build a better tomorrow than the canon one? You could include enough 5e versions of rules to let fans of the older version build their own perfect Dark Sun without selling the problematic content?

Original boxed set didn't say.

Revised boxed set iirc it took about 2000 years with a singular event making it worse