Wizards of the Coast Re-Registers Dark Sun With USPTO

Wizards of the Coast recently filed an application to register Dark Sun in the US, a sign that D&D could be bringing back the campaign setting in the near future. The trademark claim was filed on October 13th, 2025 and is poised to replace a previous trademark that was cancelled by the USPTO in 2024. The trademark, like most involving D&D properties, covers both "downloadable electronic games," "games and playthings," and "entertainment services." Similar active trademarks exist for other D&D campaign settings such as Spelljammer and Forgotten Realms, although neither of those have lapsed in recent years.

We'll note that, as the previous Dark Sun trademark lapsed a year ago, this could be a case of simple paperwork, or it could be the latest sign that a Dark Sun product is eminent. Earlier this year, Wizards released an Unearthed Arcana for the Psion class and several subclasses that all but spelled out a return to the setting, complete with mentions of sorcerer-kings, gladiatorial fights, and preservers and defilers.

 

[jayoungr]

There's still folks on this forum arguing that Dark Sun will Never Happen.

I mean, I understand why they formed that thought - but we've been faced with what I would call "Overwhelming Evidence" that it is happening. And sooner rather than later.

I believe they are at least trying to make a Dark Sun conversion. I just don't know why, since so many elements of it would be controversial nowadays. If they change the setting, they get flak from one side, and if they change nothing, they get flak from the other side. It seems there's no way for them to win here, so why go to all the effort?

 

[MGibster]

I believe they are at least trying to make a Dark Sun conversion. I just don't know why, since so many elements of it would be controversial nowadays. If they change the setting, they get flak from one side, and if they change nothing, they get flak from the other side. It seems there's no way for them to win here, so why go to all the effort?

I kind of wonder how controversial it'd really be. Curse of Strahd had several elements you'd think would be rather controversial including genocide, human trafficking, child murder, cannibalism, domestic abuse, sexual abuse (at least hinted at), and maybe a few others I can't think of off the top of my head. The two big controversies that got traction were the depictions of the Vistani and the fact that an NPC went through the trouble of keeping her prosthetic limb hidden from the rest of the world. Instead of causing a lot of trouble for WotC it's fondly thought of as one of the best campaigns they've made since 2014.

It's entirely possible what concerns a lot of us online isn't something the majority of D&D players really care about.

 

[TiQuinn]

I kind of wonder how controversial it'd really be. Curse of Strahd had several elements you'd think would be rather controversial including genocide, human trafficking, child murder, cannibalism, domestic abuse, sexual abuse (at least hinted at), and maybe a few others I can't think of off the top of my head. The two big controversies that got traction were the depictions of the Vistani and the fact that an NPC went through the trouble of keeping her prosthetic limb hidden from the rest of the world. Instead of causing a lot of trouble for WotC it's fondly thought of as one of the best campaigns they've made since 2014.

It's entirely possible what concerns a lot of us online isn't something the majority of D&D players really care about.

They also went even farther with Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft and removed or rewrote a number of darklords and domains for the same reasons. They’ve tackled this stuff before.

 

[Scribe]

I kind of wonder how controversial it'd really be. Curse of Strahd had several elements you'd think would be rather controversial including genocide, human trafficking, child murder, cannibalism, domestic abuse, sexual abuse (at least hinted at), and maybe a few others I can't think of off the top of my head. The two big controversies that got traction were the depictions of the Vistani and the fact that an NPC went through the trouble of keeping her prosthetic limb hidden from the rest of the world. Instead of causing a lot of trouble for WotC it's fondly thought of as one of the best campaigns they've made since 2014.

It's entirely possible what concerns a lot of us online isn't something the majority of D&D players really care about.

Strahd came out before the world went bat naughty word for a few years.

The majority do indeed realize games, are games, and evils can be discussed and fought within them.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

A good strategist avoids unnecessary conflicts that only cause wear and tear. WotC will not touch the lore but givin the name of characters and places. They will be more focused into crunch, players' options and monsters.
Other point is players with enough experencie in strategy+economic games they could notice the economy of the city-states only allow certain size for the armies. How to explain it? Let's imagine somebody created a mod for Warhammer: Total War to play Dark Sun setting, and then we notice there is a limit for the size of the armies, and the demographic cost would be too high, so any victory could easily become Pyrrhic.
I would justify a retcon of the rest of continents. Maybe the civilitation survived in secret underground vaults like in the videogame sage "Fallout", or other continents are being slowly restored thanks planar-settlers from other world or wildspace. Why weren't they attacked by Borys the dragon? maybe they were pardoned in exchange for an annual tribute of slaves or they could hide the signals of sentient beings.

Maybe the death-lands are being reforested thanks shadowtouched plants from the "Endless-Night" ( = Athasian Shadowfell) that can't be damaged by necrotic energies.

Or maybe the other continents were conquered by fiends who don't need food or water, and there are towns with living residents because the infernal lords want new souls to join to their troops. Or in other continent there is a secret colony of "rhul-tan" (advanced halflings) who are attacked by the sheens (biomechanical horrors from other plane) but the corpses of these can be used for reverse engineering crafting new biopunk creations.

Other retcon could be the mulzhennedar aren't sterile but they need some medical help to breed. Reproduction is possible but not so easy.. or cheap. Some times the mulzhennedars are created by means of a reincarnation spell. This is possible but it is very slow. At least one year in special magic tombs.

I imagine the elans like the elite of the noble houses from the city-states, a special reward for loyalest agents. The Grey (can we change the name, for example Graydread?) is not so dessert and some secret guilds of merchants use this zone like meeting point for interplanar trade.

Other secret is there are "upper" dragons (from celestial planes: battle, radiant, adamantine, Elysian, Arboreal, beast, and Oceanus) hidden in Athas and they can "work" like living vortices. This means they can used to channel celestial energy allowing divine magic. Their weak point is they aren't used to work without arcane magic.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Oh, WotC wants to do Dark Sun?

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Strahd came out before the world went bat naughty word for a few years.

The majority do indeed realize games, are games, and evils can be discussed and fought within them.

It was also done by Chris Perkins on his holiday back when the D&D design department run on the smell of an oily rag. No one was really watching...

 

[QuentinGeorge]

1. Bruh.
2. Are they?

A Dark Sun branded book is coming. Just as the other settings have faced adjustment, so to will DS.

 

[GrimCo]

I'm interested in mechanics of it and whole defiler/preserver thing with magic and 5e classes all having at least one caster subclass and quite a few full casters.

To capture the spirit of DS, they would need to do lot of reworking on that side ( classes, races, feats etc). In 2ed, DS was almost game of it's own, very different than vanilla d&d.

 

[Corinnguard]

To capture the spirit of DS, they would need to do lot of reworking on that side ( classes, races, feats etc). In 2ed, DS was almost game of it's own, very different than vanilla d&d.

DS broke whatever mold WoTC uses to create a setting in D&D by making so many changes to its' classes, races and history. The biggest change of all being that DS is heavy in psionics.