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]

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.

That was more the way they were done. Lavish boxed sets and supporting novels and lines.

One if the less popular ones made money while Planescape for example sold more and lost money.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The setting starts falling apart if the world itself isn't a climste hell scape because then civilization will do everything it can to dig itself out of the rubble before or after overthrowing the sorcerer kings as a result of constant revolutions

I was suggesting keeping the climate crisis.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Don't forget the cannibalistic halflings!

In fairness, still better than Kender!

And yet, they published Dragonlance. Home of Kender and Gully Dwarves.


ahem.

Joking aside, this makes me sad. Dark Sun was one of the truly distinct and flavorful settings. I find it difficult to believe that the material can't be dealt with appropriately while still preserving the dark themes that made the setting so flavorful. Just like you can have scary PG-13 movies, you can have a great 5e (or OneD&D now?) Dark Sun setting if there is the will for it.

At a minimum, when the decision is made to not support a canonical setting, they should at least consider opening it up for others to use- whether it's 3PPs through licensing or others through the DMs Guild.

 

[overgeeked]

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

Of course. They do it all the time. They all tend to be orders of magnitude smaller than WotC so have far fewer eyes on them.

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."

I think that comes down to thinking of the community as a monolith when it's anything but. One group wants the morally ambiguous settings and materials. Another group wants everything to fit modern sensibilities or else. They're not the same people. You cannot satisfy one without antagonizing the other. Best you can hope for is to be noticed by the "we want X" crowd while going unnoticed by the "I don't like X therefore it shouldn't exist" crowd. For some reason people simply cannot abide others having fun "wrong".

 

[Jadeite]

The thing with Planescape is that literally all that's needed to run it are updated rules for factions--are they backgrounds, feats, factions a la Ravnica, or something else? All the other mechanics have been covered already in 5e.

It's not the mechanics I fear for, it's the setting.
The mechanics of Ravenloft were okay (I didn't like the changes to Power Checks), but they destroyed the Core as a coherent setting that White Wolf (and WotC before them) had brought together.

 

[Reynard]

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."

There's no doubt a smaller company could put out "a Dark.Sun" without worry. Look.how many S&S style settings and OSR games exist.

I don't think that many people free too much over most "objectionable" content, but those that do are loud, and for a company like WotC that noise is not welcome. But how much does it affect their bottom line? Does the MM sell poorly because creatures still have alignments? Could a drop in sales in Spelljammer be traced to the minstrel show problem? I don't think we know or can know.

Aesthetics and tropes change over time, and in western pop culture they tend to change in the direction of inclusivity and accessibility. This is a good thing but isn't without some turbulence. Go back and watch some 90s film and television working hard to legitimately include LGBTQ+ characters. It's ghastly even if it was well meaning.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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

There are companies that do little else.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

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?

One change was revealed in the Prism Pentad and then put in the Revised edition that in the world’s Blue Age, when the oceans covered the planet and the sun was blue colored, the halfling-creator race fought against something that was destroying the life-creating source of the oceans so used the Pristine Tower to drain energy from the sun to power a counter measure and destroy this ‘brown tide”. It worked and turned the sun yellow and drained the oceans and the halflings-creators then used their life-shaping magic to create all the standard D&D races and monsters in what is called the Green Age which lore says was typically supposedly base-standard D&D.

Thousands of years pass and one really bad dude in the Green Age discovered the past of the world with the halflings life-shapers ruled an ocean-covering planet and wished to Make Athas Ocean Again and restore halfling life-shaper rule to the world. Starts recruiting humans (because AD&D rules say have unlimited potential) to wage genocidal war to exterminate non-humans (the leaders of the war each get a specific race to target). The really bad dude discovers arcane magic and sees that it is powered by life. Teaches the method that does not drain life to most, but secretly teaches a more powerful style that drains life permanently to the leaders of his war of genocide. The setting lore calls this the Cleansing Wars, it lasts decades.

Eventually the champions of the Cleansing War learn the bad dude’s true plan was to destroy the world including them and they teamed up and betrayed him. Imprisoning the bad due in a planar prison. Used the Pristine Tower again, this time changing the sun into the current start of a dark crimson. The defiling method spread beyond the champions, and Athas slowly wasted away.

 

[Zaukrie]

So much over thinking. There just isn't a TON of money here......it is a very niche setting, not the kind of heroic / generic fantasy that is The Realms or even Dragonlance or Spelljammer.

They can re-use all the monsters in other settings (like PS, which can be high fantasy and acts as a gateway, unlike DS which is a place), they can even steal the use of plants to power spells if they want......what is the upside here for them to publish another setting? They can go deeper or wider in the settings they already have if they want.

Little payback, plenty of risk. (also, setting creep is bad for them......just more lore and stuff to keep in line and to dilute the line)

 

[James Gasik]

One change was revealed in the Prism Pentad and then put in the Revised edition that in the world’s Blue Age, when the oceans covered the planet and the sun was blue colored, the halfling-creator race fought against something that was destroying the life-creating source of the oceans so used the Pristine Tower to drain energy from the sun to power a counter measure and destroy this ‘brown tide”. It worked and turned the sun yellow and drained the oceans and the halflings-creators then used their life-shaping magic to create all the standard D&D races and monsters in what is called the Green Age which lore says was typically supposedly base-standard D&D.

Thousands of years pass and one really bad dude in the Green Age discovered the past of the world with the halflings life-shapers ruled an ocean-covering planet and wished to Make Athas Ocean Again and restore halfling life-shaper rule to the world. Starts recruiting humans (because AD&D rules say have unlimited potential) to wage genocidal war to exterminate non-humans (the leaders of the war each get a specific race to target). The really bad dude discovers arcane magic and sees that it is powered by life. Teaches the method that does not drain life to most, but secretly teaches a more powerful style that drains life permanently to the leaders of his war of genocide. The setting lore calls this the Cleansing Wars, it lasts decades.

Eventually the champions of the Cleansing War learn the bad dude’s true plan was to destroy the world including them and they teamed up and betrayed him. Imprisoning the bad due in a planar prison. Used the Pristine Tower again, this time changing the sun into the current start of a dark crimson. The defiling method spread beyond the champions, and Athas slowly wasted away.

I remember this lore. Athas used to have Gnomes, for example.

Though early in Dark Sun's production history, the origins of the world were a bit murky. One early adventure has players encounter evidence that Athas had skyscrapers and modern-Earth-style cities and technology!