D&D General Dark Sun fans: What are the essential elements of Dark Sun to you?

[Mark Hope]

Really, it's all of the above but I tried to strip out things that I have not used during some Dark Sun games without the game feeling like it wasn't DS. So I ended up with Dragon Kings, environmental collapse, swords and sandals, and slavery. Oh, and Brom art but that's a vain hope these days.

For me, swords & sandals is the big one. This isn't Tolkien fantasy and it needs to have that specific S&S feel at its core before all else.

Dragon Kings and slavery are actually part of the same point to me. So if there had been a poll option for "Massive Wealth and Power Disparity", I would have chosen that instead. I'm not wedded to the idea of slaves, or to the idea of Dragon Kings, but there must be massive inequality, oppression, and societal horror of that nature because this is the reason the world is in the state it's in. Abuses of power in one form or another led to the state of Athas and that needs to be a core theme so the PCs can fight against it and smack slavers in the face and free slaves and overthrow the Dragon Kings and make the world a better place.

So environmental collapse is tied into that same point - it's the result of unchecked power and needs to be there to reinforce what the world has become and why it needs saving. Or maybe it can't be saved (can ours?) and then you have some interesting decisions to make about what you do in the face of extinction.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Promised explanation:

Before the heroes arrive, the world is fully hurtling toward total destruction. Even with their presence, the world may still meet its end. For those who want it so, they may decide this darkness locked in, it cannot be changed: the world was already doomed, the best they can do is make the most of the remaining time they have.

For those who do not want that, they are not required to hold it so, and the official (but now deprecated) 2e metaplot shows one possible path things can follow. The heroes will be tested against the darkness of the setting, rather than simply guaranteed to fail or succeed.

As far as I can tell, it is the latter that is the most interesting for fans of Dark Sun. The world sucks. It's miserable and cruel and savage. Full of darkness and monsters, and the worst monsters are sapient. But, crucially, it isn't totally beyond saving. Many in Athas will claim it is! Many will look at that darkness and be filled with rage or despair or nihilistic hedonism: why bother saving a corpse? Just feed on the still-warm blood while you can. But the PCs can be people who dare to believe that even a world this dark can still come back into the light, that doing something can in fact make a difference, that being alive means you still have a chance. That it is better to burn out trying to do something worthy than it is to fade away.

In some sense, it is a world where Greek heroism (great people doing great things, whatever their goals) and modern heroism (morally upstanding souls struggling for what is right and good) cease to be separate things. That's a compelling idea, especially when many folks could rightly say that there is nothing worth saving in Athas, and thus heroes trying to save it have their work cut out for them just to sell people on the idea of the world being worth saving.

 

[Scribe]

But the PCs can be people who dare to believe that even a world this dark can still come back into the light, that doing something can in fact make a difference, that being alive means you still have a chance. That it is better to burn out trying to do something worthy than it is to fade away.

Doing something will always make a difference, just not on the grandest scale. There is still 'doing Good' in a crapsack grimdark world.

(This message brought to you buy one who lives and breathes for grimdark crapsack worlds )

 

[James Gasik]

It's weird, and I don't really know how you would remotely put this into a bespoke game that generally takes place on Athas, but the John Carter-esque superhuman feats that Athasian PC's are capable of were a fairly integral part of the setting.

Especially in my favorite adventure, Black Spine, where the Githyanki find a portal to Athas and make the mistake of thinking "pfft, these people barely have magic, it should be easy to conquer them"...only to have their pasty butts beaten back to the Astral Plane for their hubris.

 

[Zardnaar]

Basically the 1991 boxed set. Very little of what came later is that important to me.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Doing something will always make a difference, just not on the grandest scale. There is still 'doing Good' in a crapsack grimdark world.

(This message brought to you buy one who lives and breathes for grimdark crapsack worlds )

Yeah...sorry, I just don't really feel the tiniest bit of positive response to that, based on the grimdark crapsack worlds I've seen. Any "good" you do is instantly and usually very thoroughly slapped down, often with extreme and graphic prejudice. That's literally what "grimdark" is. It's a world where heroes don't exist and nothing ever actually improves--the world is either static, or it only changes in one way, getting slowly worse. If you made something better it's always because something else got even worse to compensate.

Lest we forget, "grimdark" was defined by Warhammer 40,000, and elaborated upon by the World of Darkness games, where it...pretty much literally is the case that you can't ever make anything better, unless you make something else even worse, and even then, the good you did probably won't last beyond your own lifetime if you're lucky, and that lifetime is almost certainly going to be very short because you tried to change things.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Genuine question - Why is it ok to watch a movie or tv series about the protagonists being slaves etc but when it comes to RPGs we lose our minds? What is it about the latter type of entertainment that somehow makes us brittle?

 

[James Gasik]

Genuine question - Why is it ok to watch a movie or tv series about the protagonists being slaves etc but when it comes to RPGs we lose our minds? What is it about the latter type of entertainment that somehow makes us brittle?

I think people have come to view the gaming table as a safe space for things that would bother them (at least in good games). You can choose to avoid a movie about slavery, for example. So the analogy you're making is that you could just avoid playing Dark Sun.

And you could, but you can see how that creates a barrier; I want to play D&D, but the local group plays Dark Sun. I am bothered by depictions of slavery, but to play D&D I would have to play Dark Sun.

I don't think that's something positive, but, that's just my opinion.

 

[Mark Hope]

I think people have come to view the gaming table as a safe space for things that would bother them (at least in good games). You can choose to avoid a movie about slavery, for example. So the analogy you're making is that you could just avoid playing Dark Sun.

And you could, but you can see how that creates a barrier; I want to play D&D, but the local group plays Dark Sun. I am bothered by depictions of slavery, but to play D&D I would have to play Dark Sun.

I don't think that's something positive, but, that's just my opinion.

I've no idea whether that's why there's resistance to depictions of slavery or the like but I have heard members of my own groups describe their gaming time in similar terms - it's their sanctuary from real-life stresses. And for some people being confronted with the ramifications of slavery is a real-life stressor. So I can empathise with it. That said, I do strongly believe that there needs to be space for different types of game or gameworld. I don't think gaming should be homogenous and I think there should definitely be space for games that touch on difficult subjects (just as there should be pastoral games that are safer and more comforting). I just don't think that Hasbro is the company that is going to make them. They need to maximise profit and that means appealing to the mainstream.

 

[aco175]

Is there something about the 80s mindset that made DS work? Is it still true in the 2020s? Back then we still had the cold war and threat of nuclear destruction. Climate change was more just recycle and such. Was there some sort of backlash from making just another Greyhawk or FR? What about today can work, and can it modify DS?

 

[James Gasik]

Is there something about the 80s mindset that made DS work? Is it still true in the 2020s? Back then we still had the cold war and threat of nuclear destruction. Climate change was more just recycle and such. Was there some sort of backlash from making just another Greyhawk or FR? What about today can work, and can it modify DS?

The TTRPG market in the 80's was very "throw a concept at the wall and see if it sticks". TSR was a juggernaut with D&D, but they were always trying to break into other genres, without a lot of success (Boot Hill, Top Secret, Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Marvel Super Heroes, Alternity, Buck Rogers, and a few more that I'd instantly go "oh yeah, that one!" if you mentioned it, but my old man brain is forgetting at the moment.

Dark Sun itself is a Frankenstein monster of a setting, since they wanted to push the new Psionics book and their latest attempt to get back into the wargaming market, Battlesystem, so the setting was literally built around these ideas (even if the Battlesystem stuff was largely marginalized, even with the high level rules in Dragon Kings, Athas isn't really a great setting for large scale battles to happen very often; I mean, just think of the logistics required!).

They wanted a "Battlesystem" campaign setting, and originally, their concept was "War World." The team envisioned a post-apocalyptic world full of exotic monsters and no hallmark fantasy creatures whatsoever. TSR worried about this concept, wondering how to market a product that lacked any familiar elements. Eventually, elves, dwarves, and dragons returned but in warped variations of their standard AD&D counterparts. The designers credited this reversion as a pivotal change that launched the project in a new direction

Steve Winter came up with the desert setting, and from there, the idea to make it a post-apocalyptic Swords & Sandals/Swords & Sorcery setting followed.

It got popular simply because it was something completely different than what D&D was usually about...and some great Brom art. I don't think it was a reaction to any specific real-world events, any more than the other post-apocalyptic TTRPG's of the time were (but I don't know that for sure, having never played Twilight 2000, Aftermath, or even the TMNT After the Bomb setting).

 

[Mark Hope]

Is there something about the 80s mindset that made DS work? Is it still true in the 2020s? Back then we still had the cold war and threat of nuclear destruction. Climate change was more just recycle and such. Was there some sort of backlash from making just another Greyhawk or FR? What about today can work, and can it modify DS?

Dark Sun is 90s, not 80s. Climate change was waaay more than just recycling - it was a huge issue that everyone was aware of. Several games (Werewolf: the Apocalypse most notably) and a variety of media made it a central theme. Although the Cold War was over in the 90s, we instead got to see ethnic warfare up close and personal in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and western society had to come to terms with the fact that these things had never really gone away (and still haven't). This is part of why I think that DS is just as appropriate now, even moreso than back then. Its themes are not just abstract concepts to anyone anymore. You just have to look outside.

 

[Digdude]

Id like slavery, enviromental vs magic themes, psionics for all, dragon king overlords, as well as non typical dnd weapons and armors for my Dark Sun themes. It should be oppresive with the pcs trying to be the force of change. Give extra xp for freeing slaves or breaking up those orginizations. Plus archaeology of maybe a pre dragon king civ.

 

[Scribe]

Yeah...sorry, I just don't really feel the tiniest bit of positive response to that, based on the grimdark crapsack worlds I've seen. Any "good" you do is instantly and usually very thoroughly slapped down, often with extreme and graphic prejudice. That's literally what "grimdark" is. It's a world where heroes don't exist and nothing ever actually improves--the world is either static, or it only changes in one way, getting slowly worse. If you made something better it's always because something else got even worse to compensate.

Lest we forget, "grimdark" was defined by Warhammer 40,000, and elaborated upon by the World of Darkness games, where it...pretty much literally is the case that you can't ever make anything better, unless you make something else even worse, and even then, the good you did probably won't last beyond your own lifetime if you're lucky, and that lifetime is almost certainly going to be very short because you tried to change things.

Changing the world doesnt have to be the goal. Doing a small kindness for the people close to you, still counts as doing good, and even the comically satirical 40K doesnt prevent that.

 

[Arakhor]

I went for Dragon Kings (or similar corrupt, all-powerful, oppressive overlords), environmental collapse (especially if the overlords caused it), psionics (or other variant magic style) and the sword & sandals theme. Everything else can be ignored or iterated upon.

 

[Staffan]

Dark Sun is 90s, not 80s. Climate change was waaay more than just recycling - it was a huge issue that everyone was aware of. Several games (Werewolf: the Apocalypse most notably) and a variety of media made it a central theme.

My recollection of the 90s is somewhat different. Focus on environmentalism and pollution was definitely a thing, but climate change as such took a back seat to things like toxic waste, acid rain, and the ozone hole.

 

[bloodtide]

Is there something about the 80s mindset that made DS work? Is it still true in the 2020s? Back then we still had the cold war and threat of nuclear destruction. Climate change was more just recycle and such. Was there some sort of backlash from making just another Greyhawk or FR? What about today can work, and can it modify DS?

Most Defiantly. Dark Sun is a brutal, difficult game with no easy buttons or nerf padding. The Nickname for Dark Sun is Hard Fun.

It's not really "society at large" it's just more how people think. A typical 2023 game has no character death, a typical 1973-2000 game had TONS of character death.

Dark Sun has very little "auto heal" like in modern games: nearly all the clerics in the world are your enemy. So they are not going to heal you. You can't do the modern "fight a little" then "auto heal" in a Dark Sun game.

Lets take a typical Dark Sun plot:

The character is born a slave and has nothing. One day you develop of strange mind power, to whip your ego at foes. With this power you escape slavery and run out in to the wastelands. Your only possessions are your torn ragged clothing, and your lone weapon: a dagger made from the jaw of a kank(aka giant ant monster). It's a daily, harsh struggle to find food and water. Plus survive against the monsters in the wastelands. Plus avoid the bounty hunters and templars(evil clerics) looking for you.

Your character might be able to find a couple others like themselves, but the can trust few. Nearly the whole world is your enemy, and the few that are not are neutral and might still harm you. Evil oppressive society on one side, harsh wasteland on the other, and your character is stuck in the middle.

 

[cbwjm]

The two things that I don't require are psionics and different core races. I'd like psionics, but I don't think it is necessary to the setting.

I'd definitely want to keep the sorcerer kings, the wastelands, the focus on the elements, and the destructive power of magic.

 

[Mark Hope]

My recollection of the 90s is somewhat different. Focus on environmentalism and pollution was definitely a thing, but climate change as such took a back seat to things like toxic waste, acid rain, and the ozone hole.

I guess it depends where you were. I spent the 90s in the Netherlands and Thailand (with travel to a handful of other locations), where climate change was (and remains) a central issue. I don't mean to dismiss your experiences, only to reaffirm that awareness of the larger climate picture gained public traction at different rates in different places. It had to have at least been on the Dark Sun designers' minds in the USA, I feel, given that they made it such a central part of the setting

 

[ProfessorDetective]

I've never played in Dark Sun. But, given what I've absorbed from the Net over the years, the image I get is a "best of" blend of Zothique, Barsoom, Hyborea, and Mad Max's Australia.