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]

About a year ago, Jared Rashcher wrote a pretty insightful article about a possible 5E Dark Sun, over on the What Do I Know? blog.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Dark Sun?

I’ve seen a lot of discussion on what the “other” classic setting will be for D&D 5e, and a lot of that speculation has been either that Dark Sun is a shoe in for this other setting, or that th…

whatdoiknowjr.com

This article highlights the main issue with making a modern Dark Sun book.

Either you:
rewrite most of it and then whats the point of converting Dark Sun
OR
you focus on the adventure itself and go lore-light then you leave old problematic works to define the lore for tables who seek more lore.

It's kinda a lose/lose/lose situation.

 

[Stormonu]

Eberron's Warforged troubling past (and entire race created to fight and die for others, given their "freedom" at the end of the war) flew under the radar, I don't see why they can't get away with leaving slavery in Dark Sun.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Eberron's Warforged troubling past (and entire race created to fight and die for others, given their "freedom" at the end of the war) flew under the radar, I don't see why they can't get away with leaving slavery in Dark Sun.

Mostly because they're artificial beings, their sapience during the war is softened by the 'how to human' theme in the present making it seem like they weren't suffering during the war due to lack of understanding, their past is left in the past rather than being milked for Howard porn in the present, and everyone was too busy shrieking about 'magic robots' to actually explore the species.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This article highlights the main issue with making a modern Dark Sun book.

Either you:
rewrite most of it and then whats the point of converting Dark Sun
OR
you focus on the adventure itself and go lore-light then you leave old problematic works to define the lore for tables who seek more lore.

It's kinda a lose/lose/lose situation.

They went with option 2 for Dragonlance, which allowed them to open the setting to the DMGuild, who have done some great work fleshing out the setting for 5e, alongside the old lore.

Sounds like win-win to me.

 

[pemerton]

Eberron's Warforged troubling past (and entire race created to fight and die for others, given their "freedom" at the end of the war) flew under the radar, I don't see why they can't get away with leaving slavery in Dark Sun.

Mostly because they're artificial beings, their sapience during the war is softened by the 'how to human' theme in the present making it seem like they weren't suffering during the war due to lack of understanding, their past is left in the past rather than being milked for Howard porn in the present, and everyone was too busy shrieking about 'magic robots' to actually explore the species.

I'd put it a bit differently.

Warforged serve the same sort of purpose in D&D as replicants do in Blade Runner or as the tin man does in Oz. One could even draw a comparison to Pygmalion. They are essentially sympathetic characters, who provide both a general vehicle via their presence in the fiction, as well as a specific vehicle with each particular character, to explore "What does it mean to be human?" and "What does it mean to create beings who are entitled to live independently of their creator?"

Darks Sun, on the other hand, is not only "Howard porn" but treats chattel slavery as a more-or-less "natural" way of humans establishing a viable social structure in a relatively brutal world. As I posted upthread, I think there are probably ways of doing this which can be thoughtful and critical, but it would require an approach to the writing that I don't think is WotC's style.

 

[SerHogan]

play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't know what you mean?

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[LuisCarlos17f]

Maybe there is a reason because now in this current moment the slavery could become a taboo thread. I was reading the news... and one told about a horrible thing could be happening in a far country.... and this means now the slavery is real in some places, even when oficially it is forbidden. Even it could be happening in all the Western countries, when criminal groups force inmigrants to work against their will.

This doesn't mean DS is going to be buried underground, but we will have to await some time until its official return.

Now we only need game mechanic for defiler magic and the rename of the mul, I guess now they will be the "mulzhenneder".

I have suggested before a sourcebook of DS but without the lore about the city-states of the Tablelands. I imagine the title: "Shaltered Lands" and it would be mixed with the PC species and monsters from 3.5 Sandstorm, and some little touchs from "Kaladesh" and "Amonkhet". This means it would be sold as a generic sourcebook with only some pages about the Tablelands.

 

[Panzeh]

Honestly, psionics in d&d always felt like someone just deciding to write a better magic system but then they couldn't call it magic because of the history of the game, so finally someone made a setting where psionics was normal. You can fluff it how you want, but psionics, at its baseline, is just magic designed in a more granular way, informed by modern game design.

Psionics is kinda critical to dark sun the way the enhanced realm management was critical to birthright, at least from a game perspective.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

WotC knows DS would help to seel the update psionic handbook.... but what about other classes with any special mechanic? For example the shadowcaster, the (ki) martial adepts(crusader, swordsage and warblade), the vestige-pact binder or the (incarnum soulmelder) totemist shaman. Would you allow psiartificers or alchemist in your DS?

And what if there is a future sourcebook about chronomancers? This could alter the metaplot of all D&D settings, and be used to explain the possible retcons or reboots of someones.