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.

 

[Zehnseiter]

My fighter got assassinated in the hotel armorless by a slaver's merc.
Next fighter was beat down by a Psionicist's mind controlled muls.
Then my replacement replacement rogue got TPKed with everyone else by boosted defiler spells.

Then we rerolled as morally grey jerks.

So you had a bad DM. Why blame the setting and not the DM ?
This can happen at every game table. Regardless of setting. Regardless of what RPG game you play.

You can in the end only judge a setting on what is written for it and not what you did with it. For the former the first official adventure was about overthrowing a a dictatorship and free a city and all the slaves in it. The latter is matter of the game table you play at.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

So defiling magic released green house gases into the air and slowly affected the climate? And debt is climate change? Really?

What you are describing is bad behavior. It's people disregarding what they are doing to the environment and future generations. That does not make what happened in Dark Sun climate change, though. It's just evil behavior.

Climate Change did not happen in Dark Sun. Cataclysmic defiling magic by evil people did.

Nope. If you destroy nearly all the plants on earth and heat up the ocean, then you have a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere... but as I said, loaded topic.

 

[nevin]

So you had a bad DM. Why blame the setting and not the DM ?
This can happen at every game table. Regardless of setting. Regardless of what RPG game you play.

I agree completely. I will note that IME the darker settings tend to attract more of these types of DM's. Unfortunately it doesn't help thier popularity.

 

[Maxperson]

Nope. If you destroy nearly all the plants on earth and heat up the ocean, then you have a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere...

Here. On Dark Sun air comes from psionic energy.

And before you look that up, I really have no idea where air on Dark Sun comes from, but it's clearly not from the plants that don't exist in great enough quantities.

 

[nevin]

HBO which made Game of Thrones is owned by Warner Brothers which is publicly traded. Game of Thrones had slavery, rape, and more. WotC is risk averse, not necessarily publicly traded companies.

WOTC just blew up magic the Gathering, started a huge fight over the OGL. Also the entire Game of Thrones fan base that Martin had built over the years got what they asked for and had been consuming as content. Like it or not DND mean's 12 to adult. Not anywhere close to the same thing.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Here. On Dark Sun air comes from psionic energy.

Enough wishful thinking might do it.

 

[Yaarel]

In 4e Dark Sun, even the Eladrin made sense.

Traditional DS has a Positive Material Plane (elemental balance and life) and a Negative Material Plane (imbalance and death). The Eladrin are the Elves from the last remnants of Positivity, here and there.

 

[nevin]

The big problem with settings like this is they gain a good sized following from people that like the fact that they are different. The minute everyone starts pushing for the setting to have all options then it's not different you might as well play Forgotten Realms, so why would the company put out a new campaign setting so everyone can do the same old things?

 

[Zehnseiter]

In 4e Dark Sun, even the Eladrin made sense.

Traditional DS has a Positive Material Plane (elemental balance and life) and a Negative Material Plane (imbalance and death). The Eladrin are the Elves from the last remnants of Positivity, here and there.

Very generally speaking you could drop almost anything into Dark Sun given that almost everything was somewhat mutated and differently looking. So basically anything goes. Just take it make it look stranger then usual an it fits just fine into the setting.

Just look at te description of for example humans in the original box. There you get the pretext and an easy explanation for it as GM.

 

[Minigiant]

I mean, you were there, but based on that I don't see how morally grey jerks wouldn't have also been beat down by mind controlled muls or boosted defiler spells. That's not really alignment based. The slaver thing could have been revenge for something you did as a good guy against slavery, but how did the slaver know it was you?

We worked for the slaver and templars. Or at least didn't anger them in their loopsided power struggles.

It might not be intended by at least more than 4 DMs thought that angering but not killing slaver's, Defilers, or templars puts you on the assassin and bounty hunter conga line.