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Message: <blockquote data-quote="grimslade" data-source="post: 8755904" data-attributes="member: 6061">Athas will never be a utopia. It is a fundamentally broken world. This is not solarpunk. It shouldn't be. To quote the cinematic masterpiece Roadhouse, "... is like putting an elevator in an outhouse. It don't belong." It does a disservice to a good solarpunk setting and to Dark Sun. Does Dark Sun need to brood all the time in misery? No. There are points of light. The PCs and the people of Athas can make more and make those points glow brighter. There are smaller villages and areas beyond the despotic reach of the Sorcerer Kings. The City-States are bureaucratic machines, after all, lots of cracks to fall between.  The key to Dark Sun is that magic is not the solution. It is the problem. The central tenet is Rajaat taught the SK how to defile. How to steal the life of the planet to give vast power. Even preservation magic destroys, it just allows the earth to recover. To have magi-tech in Dark Sun is to pour kerosene onto a bonfire. A bright optimistic setting deserves to have a foundation that leads to that setting. Shoehorning a bright optimism into Dark Sun (Bright Sun) does a disservice to the stories that could be told with the existing setting.</blockquote>