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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There also needs to be room for disagreement about what is problematic. It is fine to have the conversation. But if you don't convince someone, it might not be that they can't recognize the truth. They may simply have taken another view of the trope than you have, and that is okay.

Thank you! Please let everyone accept that their opinion is not fact, and not shared by everyone else.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I love Lovecraftian-style literature, media, and games. Big fan of Call of Cthulhu, and Eldrtich Horror might be my favourite board game. That's because, despite (possibly because of?) his abhorrent world views, Lovecraft came up with a story concept that is really compelling. But the thing is, you can do Loveraftian horror without all those abhorrent views.

So look at the current starter set for Call of Cthulhu. It opens with a bit of historical detail about HP Lovecraft, specifying his nasty views, and then stipulates that an objective of the game is to use the cosmic horror ideas while "lampooning" and otherwise discrediting his obnoxious beliefs. Then, it includes player character sheets representing a diversity of genders and ethnicities. One of the starting adventures is set in 1920s Harlem and features mostly Black characters. Or take Victor Lasalle's novella The Ballad of Black Tom, which retells Lovecraft's "The Horror at Red Hook" from the perspective of a Black protagonist (HBO's Lovecraft Country, though flawed in many ways, attempted something similar).

I think you're not wrong about the ideas of Lovecraft being bigger than the man, but there is inevitably a tension between the ideas and the fact that people love to use his name to advertise their products. And I think a lot of products are smart to deal with him early, but it doesn't stop the fact that they are still using his name a bunch.

It's also worth noting, like you do, that there have been a lot of people using his work to reclaim and move specifically against what he talked about. You mention The Ballad of Black Tom, and I would add in Harlem Unbound as another example. It shows how complicated the situation is, and why context is so important rather than demanding hard rules to be applied impersonally to all things.

So if Lovecraft's mythos can be reclaimed, you could certainly take what is good in Dark Suns and update it, if you wanted. My perspective is: why? Lovecraft had a BIG IDEA about the horror of a cosmos largely indifferent to us that, artistically speaking, has a lot of legs. What is Dark Sunsoffering that makes it worth the trouble to reclaim and update it? Sell me on it.

I think there are interesting ideas in Dark Suns that have been outlined (the idea of ecological disaster and climate change being a massive part of the setting), and I think changes can be made to things like slavery and eugenics (changing the latter to a different mode of oppression, while the later can probably be straight-up removed) could be done.

Though if I'm being honest, I feel like D&D is just a bad system for dealing with these sorts of things. To me, 5E and its future iteration looks like it sits in a bad middle ground being too crunchy for the sort of narrative game that could explore these aspects without just killing people, but also maybe not crunchy enough to make realistic, deadly combat. I dunno, that's just my opinion.

Most, doing some lifting.

It happens, it's happened in the last 3 days, it's happened by various posters, on various topics.

Everyone, yes indeed everyone, sees it.

Not really doing much lifting. Someone already tried to get me over on badly interpreting one of @Hussar 's posts and I'm not particularly moved by the argument. On the other hand I can point to people who liked (even "loved") posts that resulted in people getting kicked from threads due to being non-inclusive.

So really, if you want to call me out for liking certain posts, I'm not particularly worried about that given how it'll go in the other direction.

Thank you! Please let everyone accept that their opinion is not fact, and not shared by everyone else.

That'd be a great conversation for you to start instead of talking about being "shunned" or "persecuted".

 

[Alzrius]

Oh for the love of...

That's not calling people racist for liking Lovecraft, that's asking people to put yourself into the shoes of the peoples that Lovecraft hated and despised.

No, it's really not. To be honest, I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone can make that point without a straight face, short of concern trolling.

There is a real point to be made about our continued focus on him as an individual author, putting him front and center at this sort of stuff. It is not calling you racist, but asking you to imagine that you were called subhuman by an author and in 2023 watch as people support something that uses his legacy.

Yeah, no. In fact, it's saying that if there's even one thousand people who are willing to pay money for a Cthulhu game, then the entire hobby is unwelcoming, which is self-evidently an unreasonable stance to take. At no point did that other poster call for empathy; they said that anyone who liked something they hate necessarily make them feel unwelcome. That's not "asking you to imagine" anything; it's saying that people who like Lovecraft's content are bad people.

This is the reason why we need to be so welcoming: because it's so hard to divorce ourselves from certain elements that we should try in every instance because some things will be difficult to get rid of.

"Get rid of"? What happened to, "nobody's saying you're a bad person for liking problematic content"? Funny how the goalposts shifted there, isn't it?

This is what @Hussar is talking about, and if you hadn't cut out the next paragraph which makes it clear the viewpoint he is talking from

Um, what? The next paragraph was a rambling screed which somehow goes from "one thousand people liking a Cthulhu RPG means that I don't feel welcome" to "something something Rings of Power." At no point did it come anywhere close to a coherent point, beyond "the hobby is full of immoral things and immoral people who like those things." Which is, of course, categorically wrong.

So yeah, not a great example for you.

Given that you claim how @Bedrockgames was concern trolling despite their making rational points in a calm manner, while defending a hysterical rant about how one thousand people liking Cthulhu poisons the entire hobby, I think you need to take a step back and analyze the perspective you're coming from.

 

[Scribe]

So really, if you want to call me out for liking certain posts, I'm not particularly worried about that given how it'll go in the other direction.

I'm not calling you out, simply lets acknowledge that yes people absolutely get tarred, sometimes pre-emptively, for simply not agreeing on the degree to which we must denounce, renounce, and never indeed engage, with topics that some call "problematic".

I mean dude, can we include art like that comic you linked me to or does that make you and I sexist?

 

[Micah Sweet]

That'd be a great conversation for you to start instead of talking about being "shunned" or "persecuted".

Both things are worth talking about, and both have truth to them.

 

[Justice and Rule]

No, it's really not. To be honest, I'm having a hard time understanding how anyone can make that point without a straight face, short of concern trolling.

I mean, it literally is? Just read what they wrote. The concern-trolling here is people talking about how they feel persecuted, not people talking about the actual issue. This is just like any other thread on the matter, where it turns into "But what about my feelings?!" rather than actually examining the matter.

Yeah, no. In fact, it's saying that if there's even one thousand people who are willing to pay money for a Cthulhu game, then the entire hobby is unwelcoming, which is self-evidently an unreasonable stance to take. At no point did that other poster call for empathy; they said that anyone who liked something they hate necessarily make them feel unwelcome. That's not "asking you to imagine" anything; it's saying that people who like Lovecraft's content are bad people.

They literally call for empathy when they are talking about being at a table where someone is complaining about there being black hobbits in Rings of Power. They are asking you to understand how that feels. I don't know how this can be put any more clearly.

"Get rid of"? What happened to, "nobody's saying you're a bad person for liking problematic content"? Funny how the goalposts shifted there, isn't it?

I'm referring to getting rid of bad tropes and such. That is so self-evident in reading what I wrote that I can only assume this was just made in bad-faith.

Um, what? The next paragraph was a rambling screed which somehow goes from "one thousand people liking a Cthulhu RPG means that I don't feel welcome" to "something something Rings of Power." At no point did it come anywhere close to a coherent point.

It does, it's just not the point you want. @Hussar is talking about how unwelcoming things can feel in the RPG community, whether it be Lovecraft's name being used to advertise a popular kickstarter to people complaining about diversity in roles in fantasy media. It's making a broad point about the atmosphere of the hobby and how hard it can be to feel welcomed.

Given that you claim how @Bedrockgames was concern trolling despite their making rational points in a calm manner, while defending a hysterical rant about how one thousand people liking Cthulhu poisons the entire hobby, I think you need to take a step back and analyze the perspective you're coming from.

Do you understand what concern trolling is? It's not about "rational points", but rather arguing about something that is not actually the subject. Instead of discussing slavery in Dark Suns they are talking about shunning and persecution of RPGers who don't agree with the idea that slavery is problematic. It's a tactic to avoid talking about the subject, to try and move off to a tangent. It is a side issue that really isn't relevant to the discussion that is suddenly being made into the discussion.

That's what concern trolling is, trying to find an issue and morph the subject at hand into it to avoid talking about what we are really talking about. So I don't know how I could be concern trolling when all I want to talk about is Dark Sun and the actual topic at hand. What I find frustrating and disingenuous is the persecution complex that always comes up in these topics about people thinking they are going to be somehow booted out of the community.

I'm not calling you out, simply lets acknowledge that yes people absolutely get tarred, sometimes pre-emptively, for simply not agreeing on the degree to which we must denounce, renounce, and never indeed engage, with topics that some call "problematic".

I mean dude, can we include art like that comic you linked me to or does that make you and I sexist?

Sure? I'll do it myself.

You didn't think she was always dressed in the classic get-up, did you?

Both things are worth talking about, and both have truth to them.

No, not really? If you want to start a topic about how shunning and player persecution are a problem, please do. I'd love for you to post that with some examples. But as it stands, it's just a really bad topic.

 

[Voadam]

Media that deals or references situations or portrays people in a way that might be considered disrespectful or harmful to others given modern outlooks.

That seems an overly broad definition that labels lots of things problematic that I don't think we want to.

Plenty of things could be disrespectful without being generally considered problematic.

"Might be considered" seems too wide open to things that most would not consider problems. "Potentially problematic" does not seem a redundant phrase.

Harmful I think could be a key aspect to work from for a definition.

 

[Justice and Rule]

That seems an overly broad definition that labels lots of things problematic that I don't think we want to.

Plenty of things could be disrespectful without being generally considered problematic.

"Might be considered" seems too wide open to things that most would not consider problems. "Potentially problematic" does not seem a redundant phrase.

Harmful I think could be a key aspect to work from for a definition.

The definition is broad, but part of it is because it's not meant to be a hard rule. It's meant to be an example of what to look for, what to examine, what to discuss.

 

[Scribe]

You didn't think she was always dressed in the classic get-up, did you?

Based on the Google hits when you offered that author up? lol yeah I did.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Based on the Google hits when you offered that author up? lol yeah I did.

Does liking the classic get-up make you sexist? I'm pretty sure that was the implicit question here, @Justice and Rule .