If you changed "psionics" to "clerical magic", that would be a fundamental change to the Dark Sun concept.
Sure. Agreed.
If you can "slaves" to "serfs with no real opportunity to escape their life of subsistence farming from land owned by the sorcerer-kings", that barely impacts the way Dark Sun is presented.
Except...you know...the myriad of ways serfdom is
wildly and
drastically different than slavery. That's the point. Those two things are not "close enough" to each other. They're fundamentally different things.
I've seen no evidence that trying to free the slaves was a common driver of Dark Sun campaigns in either 2e or 4e.
Well, other than...you know...all the stuff in the setting material and adventures about it. The main novel series was literally centered on that. In 4E WotC wrote up a list of the eight characteristics of Athas. #2 was heavy on slavery. Right after "the world is a desert." Before listing the scarcity of metal, defiler magic, sorcerer-kings, city-states, how everything is trying to kill you, and how familiar races are different here. Must be pretty central to the themes of Dark Sun to be listed above all of that.
They also explicitly call out anyone living in cities as directly benefiting from slavery.
"City dwellers enjoy more security than do nomads or villagers living in the deserts, but it takes legions of workers—most of them slaves toiling in the fields to support a city’s population."
I get that you don't care if it's
changed. And that's cool. But you're acknowledging that it is a big part of the setting and that it should be
changed going forward.
I don't think either of us have any particularly strong evidence for our viewpoints.
Literally reading any of the Dark Sun material published to date will show you that slavery is a big part of the setting.
Your viewpoint seems to be that WotC must keep all previously published details about a setting as close to their previous presentation as possible, or fans of that previous work will become angry.
Not really, no. It's their IP, they're clearly free to do whatever they want with it, including nothing. Historical precedent suggests that fans of a thing want it to be updated in the rules, but not the lore or feel, tone, etc. Look at Ravenloft. Some fans loved the update, some hated it. Look at the changes made to FR in every edition of the game...some fans loved the updates, some hated it. Look at any setting that's carried forward at all. You have fans split on the changes made. Some Greyhawk fans are still salty about changes made from the original folio. Yes, fans really like the details. I get that you don't care about the details. But a lot of other people do.
I think that viewpoint lacks a lot of nuance.
Funny. You're the one advocating for taking a wider view and ignoring the details.
You mean the one (1) time I did it? I thought you were being overly broad in your use of fans to indicate those who are attached to previous implementations. You can be a fan of something and still happy to see some parts jettisoned and other parts changed.
Ah. Too right. It's just the once you put fans in scare quotes. I was lumping in the bit where you said fans who disagreed with you weren't worth considering.
I think the number of "fans" who would skip the setting over that element is much smaller than you're presupposing. You can disagree, of course, but we're both just guessing.
Anyone who says “It’s not really Dark Sun without rampant slavery” isn’t a part of the fan base worth worrying about.