Spelljammer Dark Sun confirmed? Or, the mysterious case of the dissappearing Spelljammer article...

[Shardstone]

I'm sure folks around here will find a way to believe its actually a good thing that the setting has been compromised. It apparently worked for Ravenloft. Seems you can change whatever you want if you're WotC and enough people are fine with it that the one's who aren't don't matter.

Still a little bitter, I guess.

More than a little, brother.

Personally, I prefer the new Ravenloft vs the older. The idea of the Core REALLY put me off the setting, and it strained too much of my credibility for me to enjoy the setting. The new Ravenloft has more exciting Darklords (still wish they had stats), more exciting storylines (Valachan is far better IMO), and are more friendly to short campaigns or stringing a bunch of domains together. I think the horror toolkit and the many roll tables in the book also made Van Richten's a more enjoyable book to read and use. They gave me lots of ideas to spice Ravenloft up with.

The old Ravenloft is not without its merits, and I own the old Van Richten books in PDF format and very much enjoy them, but they don't really make Ravenloft more playable to me, only something that is more or less a novel world.

 

[Charlaquin]

I just find Dark Sun out of all the classic settings to be the weirdest thing to add to a multiplanar game. From what I read on Dark Sun sourcebooks, the setting is specifically designed to be self-contained and breaks away from most of the classic D&D assumptions: There is only one dragon and spelljammer lore had previously mentioned it was not possible to reach Athasspace for reasons (if it wasn't that, I'm sure I read somewhere that World Serpent Inn had a door that opens to Athas, but it explicitly did not allow you to go to the inn through Athas so as to make sure that any hapless Athasians could not escape the torture that is their dying world). To take a setting like this that was explicitly cordoned off from the rest of the multiverse and add it to one of the 2-3 page world descriptions is... weird. Furthermore it really takes away from the hopeless post-apocalyptic feel of the setting. If old Dark Sun was Mad Max, now Max seems to have the option to hitch a ride on a spaceship and get away from crazy biker gangs!

At this point, I think we should be expecting any 5e revival of a classic setting to make significant changes of this sort.

 

[bedir than]

The obscenely wealthy can escape an Apocalypse. It's just everyone else that's stuck

 

[Micah Sweet]

More than a little, brother.

Personally, I prefer the new Ravenloft vs the older. The idea of the Core REALLY put me off the setting, and it strained too much of my credibility for me to enjoy the setting. The new Ravenloft has more exciting Darklords (still wish they had stats), more exciting storylines (Valachan is far better IMO), and are more friendly to short campaigns or stringing a bunch of domains together. I think the horror toolkit and the many roll tables in the book also made Van Richten's a more enjoyable book to read and use. They gave me lots of ideas to spice Ravenloft up with.

The old Ravenloft is not without its merits, and I own the old Van Richten books in PDF format and very much enjoy them, but they don't really make Ravenloft more playable to me, only something that is more or less a novel world.

I know a lot of people around here like it. That's my point.

I liked that the old Ravenloft was a novel world, just like most of the other campaign settings. I would use the mechanics and such for inspiration in my homebrew games, but read the settings themselves for pure enjoyment. Until a couple years ago, I was able to pretend that story was still happening. It saddens me that's officially over now.

 

[Ondath]

At this point, I think we should be expecting any 5e revival of a classic setting to make significant changes of this sort.

To a certain extent, yes, and I'm not entirely against the idea of updating certain settings for modern sensibilities (I wouldn't want a return to Kara Tur that was 100% loyal to OA, for instance), but this is less an update for sensibilities and more a change that is incongruent with the setting's main themes. Eberron, which is also fairly isolated, didn't have this problem and they even took care to put the "Well, maybe Eberron's planes are somewhere that's really out of reach so that's why it doesn't have a lot of contact with the rest of the multiverse" explanation. This seems to go in the complete opposite direction (homogenising settings for the multiverse aspect, and in doing so, removing what made those settings good).

 

[Shardstone]

I know a lot of people around here like it. That's my point.

I liked that the old Ravenloft was a novel world, just like most of the other campaign settings. I would use the mechanics and such for inspiration in my homebrew games, but read the settings themselves for pure enjoyment. Until a couple years ago, I was able to pretend that story was still happening. It saddens me that's officially over now.

Aaaah, I get this od od od. Well, no judgement from me then, that's a pretty human emotion to feel. I will say, I do wish that the new settings had novels for them at the very least, but alas, more Drizz't.

 

[Demetrios1453]

I could see that. Athasspace isn’t far off from Asshatspace, after all.

So, a Wildspace for AL West baseball teams, whose hats can read:

A's
S
H
A
T

Last year, when the standings actually lined them up that way for the first time in AL West history, there was a huge celebration on Reddit's r/baseball sub lol...

 

[Parmandur]

I just find Dark Sun out of all the classic settings to be the weirdest thing to add to a multiplanar game. From what I read on Dark Sun sourcebooks, the setting is specifically designed to be self-contained and breaks away from most of the classic D&D assumptions: There is only one dragon and spelljammer lore had previously mentioned it was not possible to reach Athasspace for reasons (if it wasn't that, I'm sure I read somewhere that World Serpent Inn had a door that opens to Athas, but it explicitly did not allow you to go to the inn through Athas so as to make sure that any hapless Athasians could not escape the torture that is their dying world). To take a setting like this that was explicitly cordoned off from the rest of the multiverse and add it to one of the 2-3 page world descriptions is... weird. Furthermore it really takes away from the hopeless post-apocalyptic feel of the setting. If old Dark Sun was Mad Max, now Max seems to have the option to hitch a ride on a spaceship and get away from crazy biker gangs!

I actually find all of that good reason to believe that Athas is a good destination for a Spelljsmming Adventure: like a deserted island full of magic and treasure in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle.

 

[Shardstone]

Without a doubt Dark Sun is changing.

Look at Doomspace! Is that a saturn or black hole in the center of it? Has the Dark Sun changed form? Hmm...

 

[Charlaquin]

To a certain extent, yes, and I'm not entirely against the idea of updating certain settings for modern sensibilities (I wouldn't want a return to Kara Tur that was 100% loyal to OA, for instance), but this is less an update for sensibilities and more a change that is incongruent with the setting's main themes. Eberron, which is also fairly isolated, didn't have this problem and they even took care to put the "Well, maybe Eberron's planes are somewhere that's really out of reach so that's why it doesn't have a lot of contact with the rest of the multiverse" explanation. This seems to go in the complete opposite direction (homogenising settings for the multiverse aspect, and in doing so, removing what made those settings good).

I don’t disagree with that assessment. But I still think it’s exactly what WotC is doing here.