D&D 5E (2014) Dark Sun, problematic content, and 5E…

[bedir than]

I think you have a very different definition of twee, let's just say that.

There's no reasonable way that anyone can look at the majority of the art and claim it is twee. There's literally exploding skeletons in some of the images.

Claiming that it is twee art by redefining the term to "art I don't like" is useless

 

[ECMO3]

For those people who say there is a market and WOTC won't suffer if they published it, how do you explain the Hazodee fiasco or the Volos Orc PCs iasco? Both of those were certainly less "mature" than Darksun and WOTC faced a ton of pushback for them. There was a market for both and Volos by most accounts sold well.

WOTC simply does not see a good reason to publish anything controversial and Darksun would certainly be controversial.

 

[GrimCo]

I don't know if anyone considered Dark Sun to be 18+ material back in 1991. But then things have changed over the last 34 years. I was watching an episode of Sandman on Netflix and was flabbergasted to see a content warning that included both self-harm and tobacco use. I can't imagine a parent thinking to themselves, "Oh, I'm okay with the self-harm, but no way will I let little Johnny watch something with tobacco use in it!"

I still don't consider Dark Sun to be 18+ material in 2025. It's perfectly appropriate for teens.

Agree. While DS isn't 18+ per se ( it never goes into graphic details of more unsavory stuff), anything controversial by today's standards is better put in that category just to be on safe side. It gives authors more freedom to delve into darker aspects of the setting. It also gives publishers good excuse when facing criticism for including controversial topics- It's for adults. As an adult, you bear sole responsibility for content which you consume.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The irony is if DS is showed like "too mature for teenages" this could cause the opposite effect, and the teenages wanted to play DS because it seems "for mature audiences".

My opinion is DS is not so marketable by today's standards because the restriction of classes and PC species are against the current philosophy of 5e. I bet WotC would rather to create a spiritual succesor instead continuing the metaplot of the region of Tyr. Maybe in the future there is a new novel, comic or videogame where the metaplot would continue. If I was right then WotC would bet for a new setting with the same vibes and visual style but in a different world instead Athas. The region of Tyr wouldn't be touched but a door would keep opened to allow some posible visit in the future. I imagine something like Rokugan in 3rd Oriental Adventures, where there is a chapter about the setting and some elements mentiones in the rest, but this was designed to be "generic".

We have got the possibility the Athasian civilitation could discover, explore and settle some next wildspace and this was also affected by the defilers. Later this wildspace was conquered by the githyanki queen Thrinth but this suffered a civil war and the new lords were "infiltrated" who worked for infernal-dragon cults.

Or in some wildspace the cult of Tharizdum discovered the defiler magic and they started to use it instead the divine magic because their clerics couldn't reload their spells without certain relics.

Or the creatures from Gamma World could be reused/recycled to create a new post-apocaliptic setting.

Or when Vecna caused the reboot of the D&D multiverse some guild of chronomancers tried to survive within their demiplane, and after they started to create a "cluster of demiplanes" like a "patch-world", and some domains are "variants" of the region of Tyr.

Can't you suggest your own solutions?

 

[Zardnaar]

Yes, I read what you said in 958 where you opened with "Alot of the problem DS came in later product".
That's the problem and what I was directly and explicitly asking you to backup because you seem to be relying on Internet wisdom summaries made with second and third hand descriptions of what was in "later product" rather than what was actually printed and actually read in those game books .

Which later product or products was that? What specific sections in actually published game books?

Rajaat and the cleansing wars for example. Not in early DS product.

 

[Zardnaar]

Of course there is. There are mountains of it out there. Just look at the results of the poll here.

The issue is not that there is no market, or that its 'problematic' or somehow wrong as a very vocal minority loves to try and tell (police, and judge) everyone.

The issue is, Wizards is not, by choice, IN the market for mature content.

Well they wanted big money which is in games and movies.

 

[tetrasodium]

Rajaat and the cleansing wars for example. Not in early DS product.

That is also not answering the question or providing the clarification requested and is why I asked for specific examples & specific books. That's a critical clarification because it very much seems like you are weaving and bobbing around admitting that you are trying to say an updated darksun should drop significant setting fundamentals in order to downplay text that is painfully obvious not actually present in the actual game books. It seems very much like those two things are only objectionable when we ignore actual printed game books and focus exclusively on word of mouth thirdhand statements made for years by people who didn't actually read any of the books purported to support the claim or misrepresented the game book in making the claim.

Removing rajaat and the cleansing wars would do significant harm to the setting because keeping him healed is THE reason why his champions (aka the sorcerer kings) don't just work to start rebuilding civilization or shifting from slavery towards more developed economies instead of regularly engaging in mass human(oid) sacrifices to maintain the seal on something much worse than post apocapyptic status quo cultural stasis. Without the cleansing wars those SKs maintaining the apocalypse are no longer also part of the cause and their extreme power seems like bizarrely unjustified plot armor.


To save everyone time and minimize the snipe hunt you seem to be asking for, here is what they kreen of athas has to say about rajaat and the cleansing wars.

Spoiler: pg3

Bonus inclusion of a page from the back of the book because it includes words

But that reminds me that beyond the prism pentad existed as a game book.

Neither of them seems to be in dse2 blackspire mountains & beyond the prism pentad mentions cleansing wars twice with rajaat being mentioned in relation to others he interacted with many many times but a quick refresh skim isn't seeming too noteworthy either.

So... is your bone of contention with "later product" actually printed in any of those game books or is your entire point focused on taking a bat to deeply interconnected setting details to make changes that avoid embellished or fabricated thirdhand retellings you've read about that themselves were based on of the same sort of second hand retellings? If there is something you think is unreasonable printed in an actual game book, can you point to a specific book that you feel embodies the "problematic content" or can we just acknowledge that you may have been given a bad impression of what was actually printed at some point in the last 30ish years & maybe shouldn't be looked to as the person to guide how to update a setting you aren't too familiar with?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course there is. There are mountains of it out there. Just look at the results of the poll here.

The issue is not that there is no market, or that its 'problematic' or somehow wrong as a very vocal minority loves to try and tell (police, and judge) everyone.

The issue is, Wizards is not, by choice, IN the market for mature content.

In the market for mature content any more. They have changed.

 

[Mercurius]

In what way is Dark Sun 18+? I may be forgetting details, but I don't remember anything in Dark Sun that is significantly--if at all--more for "mature audiences" than, say, a typical high school history class in which you learn all sorts of horrible things, and about the real world, no less.

Or to put it another way, if you learn about colonialism, exploitation, slavery, abuse of power, genocide etc etc, in high school, what is within Dark Sun that is more mature than that? I can see 15+, but 18? (And don't D&D books say for 14+ or 15+? Isn't the intended audience high school or older?).

 

[Micah Sweet]

In what way is Dark Sun 18+? I may be forgetting details, but I don't remember anything in Dark Sun that is significantly--if at all--more for "mature audiences" than, say, a typical high school history class in which you learn all sorts of horrible things, and about the real world, no less.

Or to put it another way, if you learn about colonialism, exploitation, slavery, abuse of power, genocide etc etc, in high school, what is within Dark Sun that is more mature than that? I can see 15+, but 18? (And don't D&D books say for 14+ or 15+? Isn't the intended audience high school or older?).

Nowadays kids learn about this stuff in elementary school. Dark Sun's still 18+ though, somehow...