Professor Murder
Hero
Some really solid ideas here. Thanks.So over in Snarf's most recent thread on sexism in gaming (which is a really -good- thread and you should absolutely check out some of the stuff being said, there), we wound up in a kind of brief aside this morning about Dark Sun and how you "Can't do that setting, nowadays". I will die on the hill that you -can-, it's just going to depend on how it's presented and who it is presented to.
Like. If you're trying to sell the book for 12 year olds you can't really expect them to understand the horror inherent to eugenics unless they've personally been exposed to the concept before the age of 12 (Which generally requires the kid to be a member of, or a friend of, a minority group dealing with the threat, or aftermath, of eugenics).
But for 16 year olds and older? I think you could make a decent case for a modern Dark Sun setting with a single, important, stipulation:
Evil must be presented as Evil.
You can't really write a Dark Sun book where slavery exists and is a totally normal uncontroversial aspect of reality that the players and their characters must, or even should, accept. No, slavery in a modern Dark Sun setting would need to be shown as evil, outright. Innocents trampled, anger, resentment, and a general expression of hatred for the institution by the majority of people should be a part of the setting when it comes to slavery. Everyone knows it's evil, but they feel they can't -do- anything about it.
Except the PCs can.
Dark Sun's original modules often had you freeing slaves for that very purpose: The writers knew slavery was evil, the players knew slavery was evil, slaves existed, and this motivated action against the institution. But the institution was often written of in fairly neutral terms. It was acknowledged that slaves existed and were very common and presented without much cultural context. In part because the setting was fairly grimdark overall, but mostly because when it came out in the 90s EVERYONE KNEW slavery was wrong and people should fight to oppose it.
Nowadays... some folks seem to have forgotten what we collectively decided was evil decades or even centuries ago.
So it bears explaining in the setting guide that, yeah. It's evil. And everyone hates it except the people directly benefiting from it.
Mul being the result of eugenics is the same. You have to show that it is, both tacitly and explicitly, evil. That these people are valid and worthwhile beings who deserve their freedom and their lives, and that if humans and dwarves wanna get together, fall in love, and raise a family of mul that's totally fine. But that the eugenics that brought them about and the people who continue to force people into breeding them are, to the last, evil people who deserve great violence heaped upon their heads and for all they have worked for to be destroyed.
Most people can't do that. They don't have the social, physical, or mystical power to do so... Except the PCs do. And thus should.
D&D has always been about creating stories about terrible evils that the players have to fight. In the beginning these stories were haphazard or loosely framed. A series of dungeon levels to delve into, a town to sell stuff in. All you need.
Over time it got more complicated and more refined in different 'waves' of social pressure. Pretty quickly the "Orc and Pie" structure of gameplay made way for more complex narratives like the Dragonlance Trilogy. Okay. So it's not that complex or extremely well written, but it's more complex than Orc and Pie.
Fighting against entrenched evils and harsher threats isn't some big scary impossible challenge. It's what D&D has built to and done over and over and over again. The issue is, and always will be, showing what is evil and meant to be destroyed, as opposing what "Just happens to exist" in a wholly neutral manner as if there was no social weight to any of it.
With that in mind, what the heck do I mean about Hopepunk?
Hopepunk, as a concept, is one in which hope is the core thrust of the story. Yes, you live in a horrible and dystopic place surrounded by great evils that seem insurmountable. But in spite of those evils you struggle and eventually thrive. You are able to be good in a place of darkness, and to make that place a little brighter for your presence. Given enough time, you'll save everyone and banish the darkness itself.
"But wait" I can imagine you saying, my cardboard cutout of a forum poster generated specifically as a caricature for this thread, "Isn't that the definition of a ton of stories like Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy Six and STAR WARS?" And the answer, my dear, humble cardboard cutout caricature, is yes. Yes, that's the point. Hopepunk has been with us for a -very- long time. Every WW2 movie about the French Resistance, even the spoofs, is at its core Hopepunk.
.... told you so.
Dark Sun even included -some- hopepunk within the basis of the setting itself. The Preservers were looking to build the world back health and life, again. To restore things to how they once were. One of the Sorcerer Kings (Oronis) even bounced on the idea of becoming a Dragon to instead become a brilliant golden Avangion, capable of restoring life to the barren wastelands he had helped to create like some kind of UrSkeks.
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Obviously not a perfect comparison, but since Dark Crystal came out in '82 and Dark Sun was in '91 you have to imagine there was some influence!
So how do you make Dark Sun for 5e into a Hopepunk setting? Easy. Kill Kalak.
"But that was the worst novel series ever" Yeah, so don't make it a novel series. Make it what happens in the first adventure. Not "Someone else killed Kalak, read the book to find out who!" but actually center the players killing Kalak as the central story feature for the adventure. Curse of Strahd has us killing Strahd by the end of it, so have us kill Kalak by the end of the adventure set in and around the City-State of Tyr and the surrounding areas. Sidequests in Kled and on the Forest Ridge, stuff.
Start it out with the players freeing a group of slaves because someone they know is in the cage. Like, with a backstory note for one or more party members to have an explicit reason to save -those- slaves, in particular. And have them run into a Preserver or someone else looking to do good deeds and fight against the oppression everyone faces. Over the course of the first little bit of content they're introduced to the secret organization of Good People™ and get caught up in a plot to overthrow Kalak.
The rest of the adventure is about helping progressively larger groups of people and freeing slaves and otherwise doing stuff big enough and good enough for Kalak to send his Templars after you to drag you to the arena to fight and die on the golden sands during his Draconic Ascension. When does the ascension happen? Whenever the player characters are dragged to the arena to fight and die for his amusement, obviously, and not a -moment- before that happens!
And then the players attack and fight Kalak with the Spear of Life or whatever other magical macguffin the book desires and chase him to the Rainbow Pyramid for the final showdown. Tadaaaaah!
And then release a Van Richten-Style setting book for Dark Sun in which you include the full map of the Tablelands and then an overview into the domains of the Sorcerer Kings. Call it "The Chronicler's Guide to Dark Sun" or "The Chronicler's Atlas of Athas" with a big Dark Sun logo on it. Whatever's clever.
In that book really expand on the Good Guys™ group in the setting and show the DM where they are in every settlement in that book and give player-options that play up those aspects and also Psionics. Just a whole Psionics class in the Chronicler's Book of Dark Sunnery. Don't worry! You can use the Esper if you want. I did release it under the OGL, after all, you just need to include Paranormal Power in the OGL Backmatter and give me appropriate credit for my work.
And... really. That's the main thrust of how to do it. Though there is still a Giant in the room. The Heritages.
Some of the heritages of Athas are really wonky and bad because of the way they stigmatize various elements of human experience. Whether it's the "Lolrandom" Giants or the "I must obsessively work on this one task or literally die" dwarves there are PROBLEMS in the heritages. And the answer, surprisingly, isn't "Just ignore it and use regular D&D heritages" for me. The answer is to spin those things out into character traits.
You know how you have those d10 lists of Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws? Do that. Add in a 4th slot of "Quirks" which includes those as an option on the table. The whole "Randomly change alignment at dawn" can go on there with a suggestion to reroll your personality trait and ideal every day. Make a sidebar note that in Dark Sun in 1991, these quirks were tied to the heritages in a specific way that came off as somewhat demeaning and so the table was created for more variety. Include the original set just in case someone wants to be "As true to the original as possible" without being bound to do so.
HUGE problem solved, there, amirite?
And then there's the art. Which. Honestly. Isn't a problem.
Don't get me wrong! There has been some -problematic- Dark Sun art over the past 30 years. But you don't need to use -that- art. You can commission -new- art. Art which better reflects your more modern sensibilities of inclusivity and variation on the theme of "People" beyond white dudes with bulging muscles and white women with bulging... eyes.
Go all "Scorpion King" with the skin color variety and clothing variety and add in some additional body diversity and you're pretty much golden. Yeah, some people will yell about 'Realism' in the fact that there's a lot of diversity and people who look like they're from specific places on Earth... well yeah? Their world basically ended. Everyone who survived from wherever they survived at kind of got condensced into these tiny settlements with high relative diversity 'cause world-conquerors conquered the world at the end of the last age.
Disabilities, too. People with missing limbs and prosthetics made of bone and stone. People riding crude wheelchairs with broad flat wheels to handle the sand. Master Blaster situations with people being carried by people they know and trust. People using crappy quality glasses or crystals fitted to eyepatches to try and see the world.
As far as player variety for heritages: Desert Mutants are 100% a thing in the setting. Sure you can play a Tabaxi in a world where there are no Tabaxi. Is your catboy the child of a human, elf, or someone else? Go from there, easy peasy.
Anyway. Yeah. Dark Sun could be done really well and really easily. I, personally, would still prefer to market it toward people 16 and older just for the eugenics aspect of it, but... who knows.
What do you think? Should Dark Sun go Hopepunk for 2024D&D?
Only bit that I'm less all in for is the heritage variety solve. But that comes down to GM style and how willing one is to enforce option limitations. All told, some great pitches here.
