Undrave
Legend
Maybe meet halfway and make the Dark Sun product have their own 'core' books, but using the same general d20 framework that would technically make them compatible? Or would having a Dark Sun Players Handbook be confusing?
D&D 5E Assuming Dark Sun is on the horizon, what are your worries?
Maybe meet halfway and make the Dark Sun product have their own 'core' books, but using the same general d20 framework that would technically make them compatible? Or would having a Dark Sun Players Handbook be confusing?
Tales and Chronicles
Jewel of the North, formerly know as vincegetorix
I'd go the ''adventure in middle-earth'' way and have Darksun have its own PHB/Monster manual/Campaign setting guide. It would be risky, but I think WotC could make it work.
LuisCarlos17f
Legend
I think Hasbro wants DS as a multimedia brand, and maybe one of the main candidates for a videogame or screen adaptation beside FR and Ravenloft.
Samloyal23
Adventurer
"Medium" Half-Giants. Excuse me? Yes, I know Large characters cause problems in the game. Suck it up! THIS IS ATHAS!
Paul Farquhar
Legend
Yes, this is the approach I have advocated.
LuisCarlos17f
Legend
I am afair some retcons are going to be totally necessary and even the novels will have to become "secondary canon".
I am starting to think they are creating space for a spin-off placed in some land beyond Tyr, but they would rather to await until to choose what things from previous editions would like to recover, like races, monsters or classes. I imagine something like "we are here, we didn't survive the cleasing wars but arrived later, our homeland was tainted and the gods sent us here within a demiplane like a radiactive residue where it can't hurt any zone with ecosystem".
* My fear? Fans using DS setting to create their ersatz version of the world of Gor.
I am starting to think they are creating space for a spin-off placed in some land beyond Tyr, but they would rather to await until to choose what things from previous editions would like to recover, like races, monsters or classes. I imagine something like "we are here, we didn't survive the cleasing wars but arrived later, our homeland was tainted and the gods sent us here within a demiplane like a radiactive residue where it can't hurt any zone with ecosystem".
* My fear? Fans using DS setting to create their ersatz version of the world of Gor.
toucanbuzz
No rule is inviolate
Dark Sun was created in response to gamers wanting something different than vanilla D&D. Its popularity was unexpected as it was supposed to appeal to a subset of gamers - those bored with the "default" settings.
So that was the idea: get away from the base expectations of D&D. If Dark Sun is molded to fit what we already have, it won't be Dark Sun.
LuisCarlos17f
Legend
DS was a smashing-hit because it was the right mixture of old and new elements like post-apocalypse Mad-Max and Sword&Sorcery + Peplum(sword & sandals) , not too light nor too mature, not too normal, nor too strange.
The main threads were: (post-apocalypse) survival in dessert zones, fight against tyranny, power as a responsability and environmental care and lost past.
* I would bet some players will want to use crunch by 3PPs to survive in the dessert, magic items to create food and like this, but I suggest the water and food could be spend as magic components, and life-draining powers causing hunger, thirst and fatigue, and then players have to worry about saving provisions in the same way healing potions.
* I liked some ideas from Dragon and Dungeon Magazines for DS in the 3rd Ed, for example how to add the new psionic races or the spynewyrms as true dragons with age categories.
* What if the fate of the sould by dead humanoids are in the elemental or paraelemental planes, with courts and dinasties as the genies?
The main threads were: (post-apocalypse) survival in dessert zones, fight against tyranny, power as a responsability and environmental care and lost past.
* I would bet some players will want to use crunch by 3PPs to survive in the dessert, magic items to create food and like this, but I suggest the water and food could be spend as magic components, and life-draining powers causing hunger, thirst and fatigue, and then players have to worry about saving provisions in the same way healing potions.
* I liked some ideas from Dragon and Dungeon Magazines for DS in the 3rd Ed, for example how to add the new psionic races or the spynewyrms as true dragons with age categories.
* What if the fate of the sould by dead humanoids are in the elemental or paraelemental planes, with courts and dinasties as the genies?
LordEntrails
Hero
It's attitudes/perceptions/approaches like what is being discussed here that, imo, makes WotC shy away from existing settings. For some, anything less than a reprint of the 2E settings will be unacceptable. For others they will want varying degrees from just a bunch of new locations and additions to the D&D they already know. But whatever DS 5E is (if it ever gets published) it WILL alienate some fans.
What WotC will have to do is decide, can they come up with something that will attract more new players than the old players who they will alienate. Of course, they also stop and say a totally new setting can accomplish the goal of gaining new players, giving existing players more to purchase, AND not alienate any fans of a given setting.
So, saying that DS 5E "has to have this", or "must be this" just makes it less likely that such a thing will ever come to be. For those who say "must this" or "can't be that", just do what 'we' have always done, make your own version. You probably are not going to be happy with anything official anyway. For those who can accept a new version of something loved for what it is, then encourage a 5E DS and love it for what it is, not for what it isn't.
What WotC will have to do is decide, can they come up with something that will attract more new players than the old players who they will alienate. Of course, they also stop and say a totally new setting can accomplish the goal of gaining new players, giving existing players more to purchase, AND not alienate any fans of a given setting.
So, saying that DS 5E "has to have this", or "must be this" just makes it less likely that such a thing will ever come to be. For those who say "must this" or "can't be that", just do what 'we' have always done, make your own version. You probably are not going to be happy with anything official anyway. For those who can accept a new version of something loved for what it is, then encourage a 5E DS and love it for what it is, not for what it isn't.
