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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 9670838" data-attributes="member: 6796468">In short: Marketability and ease of Design. In Long:1) Climate Change is a charged political issue rather than something even children understand is a continuous problem.2) The aggregation of global power into the hands of a few magocratic elite who lie and manipulate the populace to try and force their compliance rings too true to the modern day.3) Psionics. They've yet to make a decent psionics class. This is as close as they've gotten in over 10 years.4) They painted themselves into a corner making the "Weave" a universal source of magic for designing a world where that makes no sense.5) "Brutality". Dark Sun was originally a scaled up "More Difficult" version of D&D with higher stat values and bigger scarier monsters that kill you and make you grab a new character. And the current urge to balance everything in the blandest way possible makes that original design intent a non-option, stripping away more of the setting's identity.6) A buncha classes aren't the current shiny happy version. Some are specifically not typically present at all, resulting in a desire to either alter the setting, or the classes.7) Most of the massive kitchen sink of gonzo heritages don't exist on Athas, which might make it hard for some players who refuse to play anything other than the one heritage they like.8) Cannibal Elves and Halflings instead of lofty fae creatures and chubby adorable cooks breaks the current narrative schema of trying to make everything homogeneous across as many settings as possible. The core races would need to be redesigned.9) Mul. A half-breed which cannot produce offspring plays into some ugly historical stereotypes and racist ideologies.10) Dark Sun is an untested property on the current primary market. The 4e market was mostly people who had played 3e hanging with the people who played 2e. 5e's market is way younger and doesn't have that experience, making it a shot in the dark on whether or not it'll actually be something people will like outside of nostalgia purchases for the older players. And without widespread adoption it's practically doomed.11) Dark Sun is a drastically different setting to traditional fantasy. At least Ravenloft's Gothic Horror typically has a place -in- high fantasy settings. But apocalyptic fantasy is wholly different and less likely to be widely adopted. The sheer divergence of identity from -everything- that has sold well in the past decade may be too far a gulf for Hasbro's board of directors who are just trying to keep WotC and D&D in a place of profitability.</blockquote>

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