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.

 

[Minigiant]

Perhaps the people who want to run a Dark Sun campaign should just do what some others in this thread have done and adapt 5E or some other system to the setting themselves?

I always find it funny that they seem to have no problem taking shots at WotC for being lazy/scared/unskilled to do it... and yet they don't step up to the plate to do it either.

I never do.

I get SO MANY downvotes on Reddit because I state that either ideas won't make money or lack an audience big enough for investment or that corporates don't work the way they think.

 

[humble minion]

Some body said the shadar-kai from DS are from Kalidnay.

First I've heard of that, and I'm a pretty serious DS lore nerd. It may have been mentioned in 4th ed, when Kalidnay was talked about as being in the Gray rather than in Ravenloft cos the Gray was kinda like the Shadowfell (no edition of D&D has mapped the Dark Sun cosmology convincingly to the standard D&D cosmology, but they do keep trying). Or it may have been a throwaway reference from the largely-ignored and mostly-reviled time-skip 3rd ed implementation of Dark Sun that appeared in Dragon magazine way back when, though pretty much everyone prefers to pretend that never existed.

 

[humble minion]

There was, at one time, a Domain of Dread that resembled Athas..ah yes, Kalidnay.

Poor old Ravenloft was the target of some brutal cross-marketing at various times in its run. You had almost every D&D setting contribute a domain and a villain to Ravenloft, presumably in an attempt to cross-market the line to fans of other settings. Kalidnay was probably the most egregious and least-well-fitting example, while Soth was the most successful and appropriate (until Dragonlance stole him back)

But there were all sorts of Darklords who were deliberately given backgrounds in Faerun or Greyhawk or even Mystara or whatever, for name recognition. But never one from Al-Qadim, oddly enough, even though the lines were running at the same time. Ravenloft's only quasi-Arabian Darklord instead got to be, rather distastefully, a fanatically religious prophet who committed atrocities against unbelievers.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They've been low of nostalgia bait for a while.

I don't know how they will support ODND without either restarting the nostalgia bait or creating actually new stuff.

Given DS is ruled out and PS is on the way I think the only setting products we'll see in the first few years of 1D&D will likely be an updated and film-friendly take on the FR (probably a lot less bland than SCAG, but also possibly with even less setting detail), and further MtG tie-ins, likely the safest ones they can imagine. As I noted a new setting isn't impossible but I'd strongly expect it to be staggeringly milquetoast if so. Like it might well be more diverse or even non-Western but in a completely bland and safe way that would make stuff like the Mwangi expanse look like a wildly risky staggering work of heartbreaking genius (as opposed to a solid, diverse, playable and fairly interesting subsetting). Talking of playable I'm not sure they'd even remember to put real conflict in a new setting. Too cynical? Maybe, but given Kyle's comment here I don't think so. Not disparaging him personally btw - he's basically on ultra hard mode damage control duty and even if I think he's spinning stuff like DS it's kind of what he has to do given the hole WotC have dug themselves into.

 

[Umbran]

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[AnotherGuy]

Deadpool and Logan slapped higher-age restriction for their content and those movies did well.
The need to play safe and mainstream hampers creativity I feel.
We need to look at publishers other than WotC for something within the mature range, the problem is WotC is sitting with all the licenses.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Personally I do think there is an appetite for a setting like Dark Sun. I also think most people would buy it even if people had complaints from whatever side of the political aisle. I could be wrong but I think there is a growing appetite for settings with less of the rough edges filed down and that have a clear vision of some kind (less design by committee and more realizing the concept of a designer or small group of designers)

 

[Minigiant]

Given DS is ruled out and PS is on the way I think the only setting products we'll see in the first few years of 1D&D will likely be an updated and film-friendly take on the FR (probably a lot less bland than SCAG, but also possibly with even less setting detail), and further MtG tie-ins, likely the safest ones they can imagine. As I noted a new setting isn't impossible but I'd strongly expect it to be staggeringly milquetoast if so. Like it might well be more diverse or even non-Western but in a completely bland and safe way that would make stuff like the Mwangi expanse look like a wildly risky staggering work of heartbreaking genius (as opposed to a solid, diverse, playable and fairly interesting subsetting). Talking of playable I'm not sure they'd even remember to put real conflict in a new setting. Too cynical? Maybe, but given Kyle's comment here I don't think so. Not disparaging him personally btw - he's basically on ultra hard mode damage control duty and even if I think he's spinning stuff like DS it's kind of what he has to do given the hole WotC have dug themselves into.

I think the core issue is the design team can't relate to the 5e audience anymore.

I hate to say something against but if you have so many designers and none of them can really successfully come up with the products that the 5e audience loves, there is a disconnect. Likely out of diversity.

There is a myth that everything in old D&D could be universally loved. But it's 50 years old and things age out. Setting, play styles, archetypes..

 

[Maxperson]

If I recall correctly, the process of elemental destruction was a bit more protracted.

The defiling magic happened earlier, beginning the destruction of the element of Water, whence the Age of Magic.

It was the use of the defiling magic to extend the lifespan that then damaged the sun, turning it dark and hot.

The sun change was sudden, but afterward, the ongoing elemental imbalance by means of defiling, worsened.

Yes, but the second phase was still catastrophe, not climate change. It was just a bunch of small catastrophes over time(lobbing a bunch of nuclear grenades) consisting of defiling magic and a few major events. A protracted WWIII.

 

[Mark Hope]

I think the core issue is the design team can't relate to the 5e audience anymore.

I hate to say something against but if you have so many designers and none of them can really successfully come up with the products that the 5e audience loves, there is a disconnect. Likely out of diversity.

There is a myth that everything in old D&D could be universally loved. But it's 50 years old and things age out. Setting, play styles, archetypes..

This is very true. And let's not forget - Dark Sun wasn't a stone cold hit back in the day either. The initial boxed set sold around 50k units (going by Ben Riggs' figures) while the revised boxed set didn't even manage half of that. Supplements and adventures peaked in 1992, a year after the setting's release, then declined rapidly. Despite many fans' love for the setting (myself included), it was never that broadly popular to begin with. I can't see Hasbro taking a risk on it at all.