Is Dark Sun Coming To D&D?

WotC staff are dropping cryptic hints about campaign settings again! A couple of week ago it was Spelljammer; this time, it's Dark Sun. At Gary Con this year, during a D&D panel, WotC's Mike Mearls said of the psionic Mystic class -- "we don't need that class until we do Dark Sun."
WotC staff are dropping cryptic hints about campaign settings again! A couple of week ago it was Spelljammer; this time, it's Dark Sun. At Gary Con this year, during a D&D panel, WotC's Mike Mearls said of the psionic Mystic class -- "we don't need that class until we do Dark Sun."


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He followed it up with with the usual note that he can't make product announcements and that all settings were part of the multiverse. You can hear the seminar on the Plot Points podcast. "Ben recorded a seminar wherein six game designers who worked on Dungeons and Dragons (Skip Williams, Jon Pickens, Zeb Cook, Ed Stark, Steve Winter, and Mike Mearls) talk about game design. During the talk, current lead designer Mike Mearls may very well have let slip what the next classic D&D game world he will be reviving next!"

Dark Sun was a campaign setting released back in the 1990s, and was a post-apocalyptic desert world called Athas, with psionics in abundance and dark survivalist themes. It made a reappearance in 2010 for D&D 4E.
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And Dark Sun wouldn't be Dark Sun without everyone getting a wild talent. Which I think would be best done with psionic cantrips, mechanics-wise.

Ah, now that I'd be inclined to stat up as a feat, and allow players to select a psionic version of their race - lower ability adjustments, but they get the feat instead. Of course, the wild talents would then need to be powerful enough to justify a feat, but I don't have a problem with that. :)

(Also, FWIW, I'd be inclined to stat up Eberron's Dragonmarks in essentially the same way.)
 

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Of course we do. We lose Large-sized PCs. We lose the problem of feeding and watering your half giant (power at a price). We lose the elegance of half giants being in between humans and giants in size. We lose half giants being able to peep into second story windows and lift their fellow PCs up over ten foot walls. And most egregiously, we lose the halfling and half giant PCs playing "Master Blaster".

I would revise my statement to be instead "I don't think we lose anything of note by not having Large-sized half-giants."

I just don't care enough about the things you cite as a reason to include Large half-giants. It doesn't add enough to the game experience for me to feel excited about the inclusion of Large PC races.
 

Ah, now that I'd be inclined to stat up as a feat, and allow players to select a psionic version of their race - lower ability adjustments, but they get the feat instead. Of course, the wild talents would then need to be powerful enough to justify a feat, but I don't have a problem with that. :)

(Also, FWIW, I'd be inclined to stat up Eberron's Dragonmarks in essentially the same way.)

I could see this working well with Eberron's Dragonmarks (weren't they feats in the original?)

With Dark Sun... Well it would be easy enough to DO, since we already have feats that grant cantrips. But I think psionics was supposed to be much more prevalent in Athas -- like you never knew which slave or merchant might have the ability to do something unexpected. I think leaving it at "sure, you can take the 'Psionic Initiate' feat if you really want to forego something else" isn't going to be enough to accomplish that. Think about how often Magic Initiate is taken NOW. It wouldn't be enough.
 



I would revise my statement to be instead "I don't think we lose anything of note by not having Large-sized half-giants."

I just don't care enough about the things you cite as a reason to include Large half-giants. It doesn't add enough to the game experience for me to feel excited about the inclusion of Large PC races.

And I don't see enough gained by kludging half-giants into some medium-with-a-twist form via mechanics gymnastics when they could just be Large.
 

And I don't see enough gained by kludging half-giants into some medium-with-a-twist form via mechanics gymnastics when they could just be Large.
How about not having to deal with the hassle of opening the door to accommodations for Large size? How about not presenting blatant power-gamer fuel? How about not returning to the days of old when a race being pigeonholed as good for absolutely only one thing and terrible at everything was somehow supposed to be good game design?

Seriously, I have no real opinions on the half-giant either way; I thought they were basically an even cheesier version of the half-orc, made only to fill the Big Dumb Bruiser niche, despite the Mul already filling the Bruiser niche pretty well. In fact, I think it's only the fact half-giants were such combat monsters that kept them from picking up a similar hatedom to kender and xaositects, with that silly alignment switching fluff.

But... we had Medium + Powerful Build in the last two generations, both of which were WoTC's decision. I really doubt that, in "the simple, nostalgic edition", they're going to break their track record and give us Large Half-Giants now. Hell, I really don't know they're going to give us Half-Giants as just a new backstory for Goliaths at all; take the Large size out of the equation, and the Goliath's Stone Endurance is probably the closest thing we'll get in 5e to the half-giant's doubled hitpoints of AD&D. Just change Mountain Acclimatized to Desert Acclimatized, and, really, you're golden.
 


Glad to hear "that all settings are part of the multiverse." It's a pity that during 4E WotC didn't find a way to leverage all of the IPs in its stable. Many smaller publishers could make a fair living off of WotC's "scrap" IPs (Mystara, Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Mahasarpa, Birthright, and so forth).

Looking forward to a 5E Spelljammer-Planescape-Chronomancer world-hopping, time-hopping, holistic approach to the D&D Multiverse as a single mega-setting of settings.
 
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That's jumping at a pretty vague mention that can easily mean something else entirely.
It could just have easily been the same as saying, "That's totally backburner stuff until we get around to making something that might need it, and currently nothing like that is even on our schedule".

As to myself, I'm really hoping for Spelljammer, and Darksun both. I'm more of a Spelljammer person though, had a lot of fun in that setting as both player and GM.
 

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