Wizards of the Coast Re-Registers Dark Sun With USPTO

A Dark Sun book is rumored to be released in 2026.
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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.
 

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Christian Hoffer

Christian Hoffer

What I'm saying is that WotC did something new, and imho it wasn't the runaway success everyone expected. Two editions later it's just a core book and a future class expansion book. Compare to all the FR books that have been released, the old rehashed stuff that's most certainly not new. And D&D as a property is currently probably in the best place it has ever been (profit wise). TSR also did some 'new' things in it's later life, someone mentioned Jakandor, but we also saw things like Council of Wyrms, Tale of the Comet, I would even rank Birthright as something new TSR did. And then there were the plethora of Mystra sub-settings...

Some old things don't seem to work, but there's no guarantee that new things will work either.

And I've seen many a 'new' thing from third party publishers, and some of that is even very cool and interesting. But even cool and interesting doesn't mean it'll ever see the table... And that's amongst oodles and oodles of boring/uninteresting stuff, just as what happened with the D20 glut.
But Eberon is the most supported setting outside of FR and possibly Ravenloft. There is a DMsGuild book with official support. The WotC campaign book (which many consider the best campaign book of the 5e era up until at least the new FR books), and a new WotC book on the way and several setting expansions on DMsGuild by the original author.

It was also one of the very few settings (just it an FR I think) that got rebooted during 4e.

It is not my taste, but it is one of the most popular D&D settings consistently since its release with 3e.
 

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That's completely untrue.

The metaplot adventures were limited to "Freedom" and "Road to Urik". I believe there was one small adventure in "Beyond the Prism Pentad" that was also metaplot related. The rest of them, and there were a lot, were not related to the metaplot whatsoever.

The rest are often heavily railroaded and poorly laid out.

Ive got a lot of them on pdf. Can't recall a good one.
 

The rest are often heavily railroaded and poorly laid out.

Ive got a lot of them on pdf. Can't recall a good one.
I have all of them (assume you're referring to the flip book adventures). They are railroady in places for sure, but that doesn't make them bad adventures. It's just one of the many adventure styles, like sandboxes, hexcrawls, event driven, etc. and its still used by WotC, Paizo, and many other publishers to this day.

I've run Freedom and Road to Urik in both 2e and 5e. My 2nd time was a lot better mostly due to having more experience as a GM. So I'd call those adventures "complicated to run" rather than just "bad".
 

I have all of them (assume you're referring to the flip book adventures). They are railroady in places for sure, but that doesn't make them bad adventures. It's just one of the many adventure styles, like sandboxes, hexcrawls, event driven, etc. and its still used by WotC, Paizo, and many other publishers to this day.

I've run Freedom and Road to Urik in both 2e and 5e. My 2nd time was a lot better mostly due to having more experience as a GM. So I'd call those adventures "complicated to run" rather than just "bad".

Sone where ok. None were great or even good.
Useful to mine though.
 

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