Dungeons & Dragons Releases New Unearthed Arcana Subclasses, Strongly Hinting at Dark Sun

Wizards of the Coast has released four new D&D subclasses for playtesting, all of which have heavy thematic ties to the post-apocalyptic Dark Sun setting. The four subclasses, released as "Apocalyptic Subclasses," include the Circle of Preservation Druid, the Gladiator Fighter, the Defiled Sorcerer, and the Sorcerer-King Patron Warlock. Although not stated outright, the Gladiator and Sorcerer-King Patron are explicit nods to the Dark Sun setting, set in a ruined world ruled by Sorcerer-Kings where gladiatorial fights were common.

The Circle of Preservation Druid creates areas of preserved land that grants buffs to those who stand upon it. The Gladiator adds secondary Weapon Mastery properties to their attacks, with bonus abilities. Notably, the Gladiator uses Charisma as its secondary stat. The Defiled Sorcerer can expend its hit dice to amp up damage to its attacks and can also steal the life of its targets to deal additional damage. The Sorcerer-King Patron gains a number of abilities tying into tyranny and oppression, with the ability to cast Command as a Bonus Action without expending a spell slot, causing targets to gain the Frightened Condition, and forcing those who attack them to re-roll successful attacks.

The survey for the subclasses goes live on August 28th.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I had a conversation with Steven E. Schend on Ed Greenwood's personal discord, where I asked the question "I often hear Calimshan described as 'Fantasy Ottomans', but what is specifically Ottoman about them?"

Schend responded with a fascinating reply; it's not that Calimshan is specifically Ottoman, it's that after the publication of Al-Qadim and its firmly Arabic inspired Zakhara setting, TSR then tasked Schend with flavoring Calimshan as "generically middle eastern but NOT specifically Arabian" in character, so that Zakhara seemed more distinct. So the notion that Calimshan is just kind of "undefined orientalist fantasy" is the point, and I can kind of agree with that, because there is also a corresponding notion of "generic medieval european fantasy" and "generic Chinese fantasy" (in the form of Wuxia), though it would be better if "orientalist fantasy" actually originated in those cultures.

Oooof that's not great. Very interesting but not great!

Especially as the Ottoman Empire... doesn't come from the middle east, it comes from Anatolia! Also its culture is really distinct from most of the major actual middle-eastern cultures of the medieval and renaissance era (despite ruling over them for much of that time - it also ruled over much of Eastern Europe and all of Greece). But definitely there's been stuff that painted them in a specifically Ottoman-esque light at times, including really, frankly racist stuff.

Slavery is a good example, maybe the perfect example (kinda relevant to this thread!)

You can say "Well medieval Europe didn't have slaves!" and that's kinda-true (not really but let's not go too deep, let's go with that), but you know what pretty much all of medieval Europe had? Serfs. Brutal obviously unfair nasty serfdom. For centuries the whole place was rife with it. You know what doesn't appear in "medieval European fantasy" settings at all, like even slightly? Serfdom. Because frankly, any 20th or 21st century person getting a close look at medieval European serfdom would say "Yo that's basically slavery wearing a hat and sunglasses!". And these romanticized settings just delete that because it would be a massive downer and it doesn't get anyone off (whereas for some reason some people don't slavery as much of a downer, especially when they assign it to other cultures, and some people find it rather titillatory even - c.f. fascination with harems etc.). No-one is the Forgotten Realms is a serf, not even in the most directly faux-medieval areas like Cormyr, instead it's all stout freemen, yeoman farmers and the like. Free brave men living off the land in a curiously American 1800s West-like manner, strangely not impaired by the nobility at all. Nor are other constant horrors of medieval Europe present, but I think serfdom alone makes this particularly brand of racism clear. Because what does Calimshan have in spades? SLAVES. Why? Because for some guys in the 1980s or w/e that was the defining feature of the Ottoman Empire or the medieval middle east or w/e, and instead of romanticizing it out like they did with faux-Arthurian Britain (Cormyr), faux-Northern Britain (the Dales), faux-Ireland/Wales/Sweden (?!? what's the last one doing there? The Moonshaes anyway), faux-New York (Waterdeep), faux-Spain (Amn), and so on, they decided to keep it in and make it a big part of the culture. And this at the same time as they were aggressively romanticizing the European colonization of the Americas with Maztica lol.

Going on from that, I don't really buy the "generic" theory personally, in part because I don't really buy that there's a "generic medieval European fantasy" either, because the fantasy that's described that way isn't really rooted in medieval Europe at all, but in modern, mostly American, pop-culture referents that are vaguely associated with medieval Europe (far more Prince Valiant than even say Le Morte de Arthur etc.), and random, mostly American-originated ideas about medieval Europe, usually stemming from really simplistic and often inaccurate understandings of medieval European history. Certainly almost nothing about the FR really evokes "medieval Europe" beyond some of the shallowest aesthetics. It's so distant and romanticized and filtered through an American lens (again I refer you back to Cormyrean peasants acting more like Midwestern farmers than medieval British peasants) That's not a really a critique of the Realms, which are kind of fascinating, but it certainly is one of the very concept of "medieval European fantasy" as an RPG subgenre (some fantasy novels hew a hell of a lot closer to the actual European middle ages, I would note - if you want to call say Tad Williams' work "medieval European fantasy" I think that's broadly accurate, if one notes the quasi-Japanese aesthetics of the Elves and so on).

Also, trying to do "generic middle eastern" but excluding Arabia (and thus effectively much of the middle east, well beyond modern Arabia itself) is pretty damn wild. That's like trying to do "generic medieval European fantasy" and saying "But no French or British Isles stuff!". Wow. That's kind of a side-issue though.

Wuxia isn't really "generic Chinese fantasy", it's a far more distinct and precise style than that. It's a certainly a form of historical fantasy, and, thankfully, as you point out, actually originates in China (and is pretty comprehensible to the West, not least because some was filtered through the very Western-influenced Hong Kong film-makers of the 1970s through 1990s).

Feels to me like Schend, with the greatest respect, was basically demonstrating the problem pretty well there.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Edit - Ironically I think slavery is still a poor fit for Dark Sun because the scarcity-based society means slaves (especially big butch 5000 calorie a day types!) are less likely to be economically efficient as compared to a brutalized underclass or serfs or similar, who you don't have to feed, clothe, provide water and health care for and so on, and can just horrifically underpay or overtax because they're desperate.

If humans behaved rationally to conserve scarce resources they wouldn’t be in that situation in the first place.

 

[kermit4karate]

Edit - Ironically I think slavery is still a poor fit for Dark Sun because the scarcity-based society means slaves (especially big butch 5000 calorie a day types!) are less likely to be economically efficient as compared to a brutalized underclass or serfs or similar, who you don't have to feed, clothe, provide water and health care for and so on, and can just horrifically underpay or overtax because they're desperate.

Do your players really question things like this? -- whether it makes economic sense for a fantasy society to have slaves because it would be less efficient than serfs?

Do they also have concerns about the existence of, you know...all the monsters?

 

[Alzrius]

Do your players really question things like this?

Of course not. D&D's economy has always been pre-broken right out of the box; it's why the prices of equipment are always treated as absolutes rather than fluctuating in response to market forces. There's no reason to expect slavery to be any more realistic in its economic implications.

 

[Chaltab]

Do your players really question things like this? -- whether it makes economic sense for a fantasy society to have slaves because it would be less efficient than serfs?

Do they also have concerns about the existence of, you know...all the monsters?

I don't think that's the point. The point is WOTC probably doesn't want to have a setting where chattel slavery is such a prominent aspect of the setting. Retconning them to be serfs is a metatextual choice but it's also entirely justifiable within the fiction for the logistical reasons.

 

[Parmandur]

faux-Arthurian Britain (Cormyr)...faux-Ireland/Wales/Sweden (?!? what's the last one doing there? The Moonshaes anyway),

The key here os that Coromyr is Greenwood's Arthuriana, based on a pop version of the French chivalry tradition, while the Moonshaes are Douglas Niles Arthuriana, based on a vague pop version of the reconstructionist takes based on the (somewhat) more "historically grounded" idea of Post-Roman Brytnonic warlords fighting Saxon invaders. Also, Saxons and Vikings, what's the difference anyways I guess...?

Basicly everything Douglas Niles did (from the Moonsahes to The Hordelands to Maztica) makes a ton of sense in the context of the "Manly Historical Adventures...for Kids!" novels thst were big in the Midwest im the mid-20th century.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Do your players really question things like this? -- whether it makes economic sense for a fantasy society to have slaves because it would be less efficient than serfs?

Yes. And I do also. If it comes up, which it usually doesn't, but can.

Do they also have concerns about the existence of, you know...all the monsters?

Depends on the setting and origin of "all the monsters", but they're not generally fans of "how could that possibly live down here?" dungeons for example. In a lot of cases it doesn't come up, but it has come up at times.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Oooof that's not great. Very interesting but not great!

Especially as the Ottoman Empire... doesn't come from the middle east, it comes from Anatolia! Also its culture is really distinct from most of the major actual middle-eastern cultures of the medieval and renaissance era (despite ruling over them for much of that time - it also ruled over much of Eastern Europe and all of Greece). But definitely there's been stuff that painted them in a specifically Ottoman-esque light at times, including really, frankly racist stuff.

Slavery is a good example, maybe the perfect example (kinda relevant to this thread!)

You can say "Well medieval Europe didn't have slaves!" and that's kinda-true (not really but let's not go too deep, let's go with that), but you know what pretty much all of medieval Europe had? Serfs. Brutal obviously unfair nasty serfdom. For centuries the whole place was rife with it. You know what doesn't appear in "medieval European fantasy" settings at all, like even slightly? Serfdom. Because frankly, any 20th or 21st century person getting a close look at medieval European serfdom would say "Yo that's basically slavery wearing a hat and sunglasses!". And these romanticized settings just delete that because it would be a massive downer and it doesn't get anyone off (whereas for some reason some people don't slavery as much of a downer, especially when they assign it to other cultures, and some people find it rather titillatory even - c.f. fascination with harems etc.). No-one is the Forgotten Realms is a serf, not even in the most directly faux-medieval areas like Cormyr, instead it's all stout freemen, yeoman farmers and the like. Free brave men living off the land in a curiously American 1800s West-like manner, strangely not impaired by the nobility at all. Nor are other constant horrors of medieval Europe present, but I think serfdom alone makes this particularly brand of racism clear. Because what does Calimshan have in spades? SLAVES. Why? Because for some guys in the 1980s or w/e that was the defining feature of the Ottoman Empire or the medieval middle east or w/e, and instead of romanticizing it out like they did with faux-Arthurian Britain (Cormyr), faux-Northern Britain (the Dales), faux-Ireland/Wales/Sweden (?!? what's the last one doing there? The Moonshaes anyway), faux-New York (Waterdeep), faux-Spain (Amn), and so on, they decided to keep it in and make it a big part of the culture. And this at the same time as they were aggressively romanticizing the European colonization of the Americas with Maztica lol.

Going on from that, I don't really buy the "generic" theory personally, in part because I don't really buy that there's a "generic medieval European fantasy" either, because the fantasy that's described that way isn't really rooted in medieval Europe at all, but in modern, mostly American, pop-culture referents that are vaguely associated with medieval Europe (far more Prince Valiant than even say Le Morte de Arthur etc.), and random, mostly American-originated ideas about medieval Europe, usually stemming from really simplistic and often inaccurate understandings of medieval European history. Certainly almost nothing about the FR really evokes "medieval Europe" beyond some of the shallowest aesthetics. It's so distant and romanticized and filtered through an American lens (again I refer you back to Cormyrean peasants acting more like Midwestern farmers than medieval British peasants) That's not a really a critique of the Realms, which are kind of fascinating, but it certainly is one of the very concept of "medieval European fantasy" as an RPG subgenre (some fantasy novels hew a hell of a lot closer to the actual European middle ages, I would note - if you want to call say Tad Williams' work "medieval European fantasy" I think that's broadly accurate, if one notes the quasi-Japanese aesthetics of the Elves and so on).

Also, trying to do "generic middle eastern" but excluding Arabia (and thus effectively much of the middle east, well beyond modern Arabia itself) is pretty damn wild. That's like trying to do "generic medieval European fantasy" and saying "But no French or British Isles stuff!". Wow. That's kind of a side-issue though.

Wuxia isn't really "generic Chinese fantasy", it's a far more distinct and precise style than that. It's a certainly a form of historical fantasy, and, thankfully, as you point out, actually originates in China (and is pretty comprehensible to the West, not least because some was filtered through the very Western-influenced Hong Kong film-makers of the 1970s through 1990s).

Feels to me like Schend, with the greatest respect, was basically demonstrating the problem pretty well there.

What prompted me to ask the question is, personally, I'm part Greek and so I was like "Hey does Calimshan have absolutely nothing to do with the historical Ottoman empire, or is it just that the Greek-American conception of the Ottomans is very much out of step with American pop culture's conception circa 1993?"

(That being said, the Greek narrative of the Ottoman period absolutely does emphasize slavery, but the thing I was looking for in Calimshan and didn't find was no analogue of the Millet system or its unique ethnic stratification; Calimshan seemed to be an homogeneous ethnostate before the Genasi showed up in 4e).

Again, they weren't trying to make a middle eastern setting explicitly, but I used that term because "oriental" has different connotations in D&D than as used in the work of, say, Edward Said; Calimshan is more "orientalist but not Arab" in the Said mode of orientalism, but I didn't want to call it "Orientalist" and have people say "Where the Wu-Jins at?"

 

[Parmandur]

What prompted me to ask the question is, personally, I'm part Greek and so I was like "Hey does Calimshan have absolutely nothing to do with the historical Ottoman empire, or is it just that the Greek-American conception of the Ottomans is very much out of step with American pop culture's conception circa 1993?"

(That being said, the Greek narrative of the Ottoman period absolutely does emphasize slavery, but the thing I was looking for in Calimshan and didn't find was no analogue of the Millet system or its unique ethnic stratification; Calimshan seemed to be an homogeneous ethnostate before the Genasi showed up in 4e).

Again, they weren't trying to make a middle eastern setting explicitly, but I used that term because "oriental" has different connotations in D&D than as used in the work of, say, Edward Said; Calimshan is more "orientalist but not Arab" in the Said mode of orientalism, but I didn't want to call it "Orientalist" and have people say "Where the Wu-Jins at?"

Yeah, I imagine the Greek-American folk memory of the Ottoman period would be somewhat more interesting than the vague Hollywood version Calimshan was in the day.

 

[SteveC]

The last time we had this discussion, I thought it might be better to just release this into products that could be in the DM's Guild. I say that because I don't think WotC will really do the world justice. And then when fans of classic Dark Sun complain, it will be their fault. I would say it's better to concentrate on a product line that they can make in the way the fans want.