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."

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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[Yaarel]

Why is it okay that they drag their feet on new content?

Designers have mentioned the ‘feet dragging’ is on purpose. They want 5e to survive many years, so they dont want to release new content until as many of the possible combos are fully understood.

I suspect the main motive for the PH+1 policy is reducing the number of books in use to two, dramatic reduces the number of character optimization combos that might break the game.

 

[conclave27]

Always made me laugh as they keep saying Dark Sun is a "post-apocalyptic" setting. Forgotten Realms has an apocalypse every edition change, Dragonlance has had three (Cataclysm, Return of Chaos, and the Age of Mortals), Greyhawk....never really had a major threat....just regional stuff, Birthright had it apocalypse at Mt. Dessimar.....even Ravenloft had a few weird dire events.... I think the only true none apocalyptic settings are are Spelljammer, Planescape, and Eberron.

 

[Parmandur]

Always made me laugh as they keep saying Dark Sun is a "post-apocalyptic" setting. Forgotten Realms has an apocalypse every edition change, Dragonlance has had three (Cataclysm, Return of Chaos, and the Age of Mortals), Greyhawk....never really had a major threat....just regional stuff, Birthright had it apocalypse at Mt. Dessimar.....even Ravenloft had a few weird dire events.... I think the only true none apocalyptic settings are are Spelljammer, Planescape, and Eberron.

Eberron had it Cataclysms, just ask the Hobgoblin Empire.

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

Dark Sun is so METAL! CHITIN!

 

[Wulffolk]

I never cared for Dark Sun. I just don't get it. We play D&D because we like fantasy. Magic is a major part of fantasy. Dark Sun removes magic to be "edgy", but not really, because we have Psionics! Psionics are not "magic", because . . . because they are Sci-Fi! Oh, we also replaced all of the practical weapons and armor with super-spiky and ridiculously designed gear that is so cool! Let's not forget about the 6 limbed insects that you can play as characters! YAY! *vomits*

I am sure that somebody (or many somebodies) will tell me how I totally missed the point and have it all wrong. Let me refer you back to the second sentence of my post, "I just don't get it."

 

[Parmandur]

I never cared for Dark Sun. I just don't get it. We play D&D because we like fantasy. Magic is a major part of fantasy. Dark Sun removes magic to be "edgy", but not really, because we have Psionics! Psionics are not "magic", because . . . because they are Sci-Fi! Oh, we also replaced all of the practical weapons and armor with super-spiky and ridiculously designed gear that is so cool! Let's not forget about the 6 limbed insects that you can play as characters! YAY! *vomits*

I am sure that somebody (or many somebodies) will tell me how I totally missed the point and have it all wrong. Let me refer you back to the second sentence of my post, "I just don't get it."

Literally everything that you picked comes from the Barsoom books, classic Appendix N literature.

 

[Coroc]

[MENTION=95216]conclave27[/MENTION] #132 Greyhawk had at least one major cataclysm - Google "rain of colorless fire" - although this event was long ago the past of the game time it heavily influences some of the features of the settings. Think about the Fantasy equivalent of an atomic war between two of the greatest human nations, with "magical fallout" and geographical changes lasting up till the present of the setting.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Again with the at-will flight is OP stuff, huh? I've never understood that assertion. I've DM'd games with at-will flight before and it was never OP.

It depends entirely on the adventure. If the DM has planned on one of the challenges for a low level party is crossing a raging torrent when the bridge is out, then a character who can fly removes the challenge. Even more drastically the DM may have planned out a wilderness adventure based on forest trails (The old adventure C4 I was looking at yesterday had one of these). If a character can fly over the trees directly to the destination is could wipe out an entire session.

Obviously, this only applies to adventures below level 5, when Fly becomes generally available.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I never cared for Dark Sun. I just don't get it. We play D&D because we like fantasy. Magic is a major part of fantasy. Dark Sun removes magic to be "edgy", but not really, because we have Psionics! Psionics are not "magic", because . . . because they are Sci-Fi! Oh, we also replaced all of the practical weapons and armor with super-spiky and ridiculously designed gear that is so cool! Let's not forget about the 6 limbed insects that you can play as characters! YAY! *vomits*

I am sure that somebody (or many somebodies) will tell me how I totally missed the point and have it all wrong. Let me refer you back to the second sentence of my post, "I just don't get it."

Psionics is space magic. And it was part of AD&D long before Dark Sun. Dark Sun just made more use of something that was already part of the game. As already mentioned, Dark Sun is very much based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom, which was one of the original inspirations for D&D.

It's not strictly accurate to describe it as "post-apocalyptic". The apocalypse is something that is currently happening. The phrase was applied because of similarities to Mad Max, but Dark Sun is actually based on much older material. Barsoom is a dying world, leading inevitably to the dead Mars we know today.

"mid-apocalyptic" would probably be a more accurate term.

 

[SkidAce]

It depends entirely on the adventure. If the DM has planned on one of the challenges for a low level party is crossing a raging torrent when the bridge is out, then a character who can fly removes the challenge. Even more drastically the DM may have planned out a wilderness adventure based on forest trails (The old adventure C4 I was looking at yesterday had one of these). If a character can fly over the trees directly to the destination is could wipe out an entire session.

Obviously, this only applies to adventures below level 5, when Fly becomes generally available.

How does the rest of the group get across the river?