D&D 5E (2024) Unconfirmed Dark Sun World Book

[LuisCarlos17f]

The franchise of Dragonlance is mainly novels and my opinion is the setting to be more playable needs to set in an alternate timeline. Players should be allowed to create their own reboot.

The weak point of Ravenloft is the dark domains are too "small" to allow space for more supernatural factions like World of Darkness where hundreds of vampires can live in great cities.

The failure about Spelljammer and Planescape is to sell together three books when the adventure should be read only by the DM.

* Now I am thinking the Athaspace is a demiplane like the dark domains of Ravenloft but not created by the Dark Powers but other group. Maybe the intention was to create a "cosmic prison" for deities who lost in the war against the primal powers and their torment is to be reincarnated into ordinary mortals without memories of their previous divine existence. The sorcerer-kings would be working like jailer-bosses and the irony is they can't recover the lost divine spark because they can't trust others and they would rather to rule in the hell than serve in the Heaven. Maybe Rajaat didn't mind the destruction of the life in Athas because this is a "clone world" and the original Athas is in other place.

 

[Zardnaar]

The Original setting, as described in Ravenloft and House on Gryphon Hill, was excellent. It was the boxed set that messed it up with its unhorrific trade between domains, hit list of dark lords and boring point-missing pastiches of much better stories. VGR, far from being slop, was a well thought out book on how to do horror in D&D, that wisely ignored the 2nd edition box, which really was slop.

Its more you constantly dismiss others opinion. Not disagree thats fine just dismiss and state it as fact.

If you don't like the originals thats fine. I didnt Ike Ravenloft because of its genre not because it was slop.

The WotC ones are imitations of the originals. They wont have the same long term impact imho. They've most been forgotten already it seems. Except as examples of not what to do.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The WotC ones are imitations of the originals

Objectively false. Really, this is absolutely what they are not. Imitating the originals would be the easiest, laziest, AI sloppiest thing to do, and the path of least resistance to the old guard who object to the slightest change.

Irrespective of if you like them or not, the new books clearly are not imitations of the old books.

 

[mamba]

The WotC ones are imitations of the originals. They wont have the same long term impact imho. They've most been forgotten already it seems. Except as examples of not what to do.

they certainly retread a path created in 2e, in a similar way to Hollywood reboots. They are more ‘inspired by’ than imitations.

As to long term impact, who knows. On the one hand doing it first always will have some impact, on the other they have sold more for longer now than the 2e versions ever did, and they are still selling. Don’t underestimate the impact of a 10 year growth curve (5e itself) vs a first year decent sales, then crash and burn one.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

they certainly retread a path created in 2e, in a similar way to Hollywood reboots. They are more ‘inspired by’ than imitations.

As to long term impact, who knows. On the one hand doing it first always will have some impact, on the other they have sold more for longer now than the 2e versions ever did, and they are still selling. Don’t underestimate the impact of a 10 year growth curve (5e itself) vs a first year decent sales, then crash and burn one.

I think the older settings have become legend. The older players remember how much fun they had with the settings when they where kids, without remembering the details, and all the younger players know about the settings are the romantic reminiscences of the older players.

 

[Maxperson]

But the original 2nd edition boxed set was a 2.

A lot of us loved the original boxed set. The 3e Van Richten stuff was really good as well.

 

[SkidAce]

Neither could the original. It’s an interesting idea in concept, but in practice, why would players care about imaginary environmental damage to a world that does not exist?

Because their character would? (Or not if playing a character that wanted power without personal repercussions)

 

[Superchunk77]

There is not a single person who wants and prefers 2E Dark Sun that should be following or concerning themselves with any information regarding a Dark Sun book for 5E24. If you are... you are basically repeatedly slamming your face into a wall right now for absolutely no reason.

You KNOW how this is going to go. You KNOW what WotC is going to produce. You KNOW you are going to hate the result. So why you are actually watching how things are progressing is beyond the realm of sanity.

There are lots of Dark Sun fans, much like myself, that just want to see the IP treated with the respect and care that it was in previous editions. Hell, I didn't play the 4e version, but the books were still very good and they added some neat ideas to the setting. And they didn't have to remove any of the so called "problematic" elements that only seemed to become an issue 5 years ago.

 

[Chaltab]

Yes, buuuut... I rated them based on 1) how much I would have to refer back to my other stuff, and 2) the changes made to the settings. The less I would have to refer to my older materials and the more changes were made to the core of the settings, the lower the rating.

I don't necessarily think making changes is a bad thing in and of itself. God knows there were some elements of 2E Spelljammer that haven't aged well. Or, hell, were godawful even for the time (Aperusa). But outside of Bral, the 5E Spelljammer material felt empty. It made space feel small.

 

[SableWyvern]

Double post.