D&D 5E Revising Classic Settings

[TwoSix]

I believe that Muls need a re-work. The name is far too close to the dated and offensive and should just be replaced with half-dwarf just like half elf and half giant.

I'm doing Dark Sun for one of my pending games; I just call them half-dwarves. They're also fairly common, more so than dwarves. They're more akin to the Khoravor half-elves from Eberron, as their own standalone race.

 

[squibbles]

[...]
Dark Sun:
Wizards already rebooted this setting in 4th Ed. They'd probs keep it the same as that. Set things just after the Tyr uprising.

I hope they don't set things just after the Tyr uprising.

There are lots of interesting things to do with Dark Sun that aren't ones we've already gotten.

Consider that they've never done anything with the region on the east side of the Sea of Silt (or its north shore, or its south shore). I'm sure there are lots of other sorcerer kings and such over there--one's who didn't build their petty kingdoms in imitation of real-world societies--ones where socially dubious setting elements are either absent or more fastidiously written. The planet would still be dying from magic fossil fuel overuse, psionics would still be everywhere, metal would still be scarce, and the desert would still be murderous. And it could still connect to the prior publications--the dragon still comes for his his levy or, post-pentad, weird things are happening with the cerulean storm/earthquakes.

Or if they skipped ahead several decades post-pentad--to a point when most book characters have died of old age (and taken knowledge of the hamfisted meta plot to the grave with them). The Tyr region is now menaced by Dregoth and nearly as bleak as it ever was, though WotC could take an opportunity to make social changes due to the time jump.

The expectation I always got from the original boxed set was that you would be fighting against that systemic slavery and exploitation.

In Dark Sun, the current status quo is the real enemy, and your job is to kill it one sorcerer-king and defiler at a time.

Honestly, I think it’s the one setting that DOESN’T need much in the way of a 5e cultural overhaul.

My expectation about slavery and the other evils of Dark Sun was that PCs were expected to oppose or be harmed by them, but that the status quo wasn't going anywhere. According to The Wanderer Journal (p. 6)

"we know from the sheer number of their chronicles that most city-states are thousands of years old. The same sorcerer-king rules over the city for spans of hundreds of years, sometimes for more than a thousand. There are even cases where the current sovereign is credited with founding the city. As incredible as such claims sound, do not discredit them too readily. It is certain that powerful sorcerers live for centuries, and I know of no king that has died in my lifetime, or that of my father or his father."​

PC's are -first- out to survive. If they accomplish that, they can maybe make some local difference--but the world is still doomed and the selfish people who doomed it so that they could rule its ashes aren't going anywhere.

Yeah, folks will absolutely love Dark Sun. Its going to come back with slavery as this thing that your characters are specifically out there to stop. Folks thinking mentions of it are going to stop things are dramatically misreading what people are complaining about. Some of the nations will need reworking, absolutely, but, honestly? Taking the 4E approach to it and going from there is fairly safe. "Here's one place that's broken away from the yoke of an evil tyrant sorcerer king. The rest of the world is still in their grip. What do you do?"

I think Dark Sun will come back, slavery and all.

I'm seeing a lot of assumptions that there'd be outrage over the setting because of the fact that slavery exists there. I think a lot of these assumptions are coming from a flawed understanding of what people do and don't get upset about when it comes to RPG content. If slavery is portrayed as an evil to be fought, as it always was in Dark Sun, then I suspect there'll be very little argument over that.

What changes there might be could be to move the city-states a bit away from cribbing off identifiable real-world civilisations (it's a bit eye-rolly when the only identifiable Cambodian-inspired content in official WotC D&D, for instance, is an evil desert city-state...), and probably a rethinking about whether templars are playable as PCs, given their inextricable identification with a profoundly evil slavery-perpetuating regime. And yes I know, Kurn is a thing, but it's the exception that proves the rule.

I'm not sure what they can do about the city-states being culture copies. On the one hand, it's super cool for Nibenay's Khmer-flavored goodness to get some coverage, same with the depictions of central African Gulg and Indian Raam--and it would be a shame if that was removed. On the other hand, there isn't enough room in the piddling little city-states to give any oxygen to those milieu. How much Khmer stuff can really go into an island of culture in a sea of Mad Max that neither informs the culture nor is affected by it. And the strong implication is that these islands of culture are just reflections of the interests and proclivities of their thousand-year-old eccentric jerkwad dictators. Why does Balic have a Senate? Because Andropinus like senates and decided that his toy city would have one.

Hence my suggestion for them not to do the uprising in Tyr setup yet again.

Beyond the Prism Pentad has an interesting bit about Lilali Puy sending her templars abroad to quasi-religiously advocate for the restoration of forests on Athas (as a power play to spread her city's influence). That, at least, would justify an extended cultural writeup.

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

Then make new Hero's. You don't go and fundamentally change what existed.

I don't see how Tasslehoff having or lacking a penis is a fundamental aspect of the character. Its not like Tas or Flint got any action during the main novels.

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

Dragonlance/Krynn: Draconians are anything BUT "just dragonborn." They need to be their own, completely independent and separate creatures...with five distinct, completely individual sub-types that all do different things. Tinker gnomes, gully dwarves, and kender are supremely irritating, and I wish they'd never been created, but they are distinctly and foundationally "Krynn." They have to stay in and receive their own gnome, dwarf, halfling, respectively, sub-races. Play up the "Moon-alignment (arcane) Magic" thing. Play up the Krynn Pantheon of deities, besides just Paladine ("Fizban"), Mishakal, Takhisis. It was a rich, pretty cool pantheon/mythology.

Don't think we need two or three slightly different types of dragon-folk. And one whose one unique thing is dying in weird ways is much less cool than breathing fire and lightening.
And the degenerate innately evil race is rather racist. Wizards be avoiding it now.

Moon alignment never worked at the table. Tracking three different moons and the exact passage of time was boring bookkeeping. And it wasn't fun to be adventuring when your moon was low and you sucked balls and then doing a social adventure with no combat or downtime days at full moon o'clock.

Greyhawk doesn't need to change a thing. Just reprint/put out the original box set "anniversary edition," better and more abundantly illustrated, and make everyone happy.

You can get the original folio printed on demand on dmsguild.com. Not sure why they'd need to reprint beyond that.

 

[Eltab]

I don't see how Tasslehoff having or lacking a penis is a fundamental aspect of the character. Its not like Tas or Flint got any action during the main novels.

Introduce Tas' nephew / aunt / neighbor / a hero-worshipping kid down the block / whatever, and write them as the character you desire. Do not write a new character and stick Tas' name on him/her.

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

And those things are explicitly recognized as evil and wrong, and perpetuated by bad and evil leaders.

I have no problem with slavery in game, gladiators, conscripted labourers, slave soldiers etc as long as I’m trying to defeat the b’stards who are doing this to people.

There is a reason newly freed Tyr was the main campaign setting.

The prob is that having slavery encourages the players to be "oppressions tourists." It turns real people's pain into their characters tragic emo backstory. And brings an ugly thing people might want to escape into their DnD.

It comes up a couple times in the BlackAF panel in D&D Live 2020

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

Introduce Tas' nephew / aunt / neighbor / a hero-worshipping kid down the block / whatever, and write them as the character you desire. Do not write a new character and stick Tas' name on him/her.

If it's a complete reboot and not a continuation how would that work?

Everyone freaked out over that happening in BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and that was just fine. For a couple seasons at least.

 

[grimslade]

Dark Sun. I love the Burnt World of Athas, but it needs an update. It is a setting where evil has won. The Witch-King of Angmar and all the other Nazgul threw Sauron into the outer dark and rule Middle Earth as undisputed tyrants. So let's start with some of what makes Dark Sun attractive to me.
- Grim and gritty survival in a harsh world Water is precious. Metal, a substance owned only by the fabulously wealthy.
- Magic is power taken from the land. It is a destructive force. You can lessen the destruction with patience and care or just grab power and leave ash in your wake. Magic use is reviled. It is the baddest of bad juju.
- Psionics are everywhere. The world is harsh but the harsh conditions have brought inner strength to the remaining life of Athas. This is the acceptable form of 'magic'. There are schools that teach the Will and the Way to master the Inner powers. Everyone has at least a little psionic knack, even plants.
-No gods. The celebration and protection of the elements is one religious path. The worship of Sorcerer Kings is typically the city-state mandated religion.
- Not the typical races and animals. Thri-kreen, kanks and Urdlus. Cannibal halflings and lanky desert nomad elves. Athas is alien to a traditional fantasy setting. Even the familiar is altered by the burning sands.

The rest can be up for change.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't see how Tasslehoff having or lacking a penis is a fundamental aspect of the character. Its not like Tas or Flint got any action during the main novels.

Just gender-flip the entire party, with the exception of Caramon and Raistlin (I think brothers fits their vibe better than sisters does). That's a much cooler party.

if that's too much, Tanis, Sturm and Riverwind are the best candidates for a gender flip.

 

[humble minion]

It comes up a couple times in the BlackAF panel in D&D Live 2020

Hmm. I hadn't seen that before, but it's worth a watch.

A lot of the slavery discussion there sounded (to me) more like an argument for a deliberate session zero in which players could flag subject matter they wanted the game to steer clear of, which is certainly what should be done anyway.

You're right though, given the strength of conviction the panellists were talking with there, maybe the treatment of slavery in DS should indeed be rethought or rejigged somehow. Given i'm a white Australian, I'm a long way from the issue personally, but you certainly want a setting that doesn't slap the faces of a significant portion of the player base every time they open it up...

 

[squibbles]

The prob is that having slavery encourages the players to be "oppressions tourists." It turns real people's pain into their characters tragic emo backstory. And brings an ugly thing people might want to escape into their DnD. [...]

I recognize there's a logic to that as a general principle, but where it applies to slavery in Dark Sun it seems like a strange argument to me.

Dark Sun has oppression of many kinds--slavery, but also genocide, totalitarianism, and state organized ritual murder--all part of a system of destruction that is gradually ending life on the planet. It wouldn't be a good source of escapism for the many people who have lived with the specter of those other evils either, if that's what they were looking for.

But for groups of players who are looking for grimdarkness in their entertainment media, it seems like it's okay for them to enjoy it, no?

 

[Mind of tempest]

addressing slavery for dark sun is going to be difficult no matter what.

 

[TheSword]

The prob is that having slavery encourages the players to be "oppressions tourists." It turns real people's pain into their characters tragic emo backstory. And brings an ugly thing people might want to escape into their DnD.

It comes up a couple times in the BlackAF panel in D&D Live 2020

That is a fair reason not do these things.

The downside is that if that were the case a broad swathe of artistic expression wouldn’t be possible... at least 4 Assassins creed titles for example, anything set in ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece, medieval Scandinavia.

There is a difference between saying that I don’t want to be sitting across the table from someone playing an escaped slave, and saying No one anywhere can play an escaped slave including the DM.

I’m uncomfortable with the blanket statement that no one anywhere can represent slavery in a game. As detestable as it was/is, it is a part of human existence, along with the other bad things I have referenced. Now if there was a conversation here about how to reference it sensitively, then that would be a different question. Shutting it down completely, as a history student, feels disproportionate and deeply troubling.

Now a completely different question is whether WOC can be bothered to go to the effort, when they have lots of other IPs.

I hope they chart a middle path, reference it, but in a sensible, mature non-sensational way. With advice written by POC on how not to be a douche about this stuff at the gaming table.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think here's where we're having the disconnect, as I'd argue very strongly that Dark Sun doesn't centralise slavery. Its a setting element, yes, but a central one? You can very easily have adventures in Dark Sun where it will never come up. I would not call it a central element in Dark Sun at all.

I would argue that it does make it central. The fact that you can have entire adventures avoiding it doesn't mean it isn't. The same is true of literally any setting that centers a certain idea. You can run a Planescape adventure where no-one uses a portal or talks philosophy. You can run a Ravenloft adventure that doesn't involve the Mists and isn't very scary (I think that's most Ravenloft adventures actually). And so on.

But as soon as you go to any major town or encounter a big caravan or the like, slavery is going to be everywhere. The DM and players may not want to engage with it, but the setting seems pretty clear about it. The issue with slavery in particular is that the US is still recovering from that fact that barely 150 years ago they had chattel slavery (the worst form of slavery) in full force (not as something half-forgotten or decaying). And slavery in DS tends towards being chattel slavery (certainly Muls make it clear it is). So turning it into entertainment, which is what this does, effectively, without being disrespectful/weird, requires a level of engagement with the consequences of slavery that is probably not something Dark Sun really wants to engage with.

To put it another way - using it as a cheap background element that's constant and never actually looking at it in a serious way is a problem. Maybe it won't be a problem in another 50-150 years. Maybe it feels like way less of a problem in countries which weren't engaging in chattel slavery 150-odd years ago.

And I don't think it's really necessary to make it focused.

Personally I think Dark Sun needs a serious re-working, from the ground up, and I say that as a huge DS fan. Keep the basic concepts and visual style, but take an "anything can go" attitude to specifics beyond the concepts.

That's Dark Sun's whole thing. The world is dead and there's people trying to make it worse. You have the chance to stand up against them and make it better. Its Mad Max or Conan. Honestly there's a good argument for enviromentalism being a strong theme in it.

Yes absolutely. It's post-post apocalypse. Not peri-apocalypse or immediate post-apocalypse. I don't think it's even an argument that environmentalism is a theme. It definitely is. It's about as subtle as a brick to the face! It's part of why DS is even more relevant now. Especially with cryptocurrency and NFTs and so on, which whilst not yet primary contributors to climate change, use more and more energy every year on pointless idiocy (and seem likely to grow exponentially), which feels very akin to Defiling.

I’m uncomfortable with the blanket statement that no one anywhere can represent slavery in a game.

Who is saying that though? I haven't watched the full panel, do they say it there? No-one in this thread has said anything like that.

What I am saying, for example, is that if you're going to make chattel slavery a major theme of your setting, one that's nigh-ever-present (in the City-States at least), you either need to really engage hard with the horrors of that (not really suitable for a WotC D&D setting imo), or y'know, not do it, which means having it not be a major theme.

That doesn't mean you can't have chattel slavery, let alone other forms of slavery, in your setting, but they should probably not be ever-present nor key to entire races existing. Look at other historical forms of oppression and slavery - particularly indentured servitude and use those as your main forms, and probably have City-States that don't use slavery but are horrifically oppressive anyway.

The downside is that if that were the case a broad swathe of artistic expression wouldn’t be possible... at least 4 Assassins creed titles for example, anything set in ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece, medieval Scandinavia.

All those games massively downplay slavery and oppression, note. In Odyssey, which is the one I've played most, it's barely even a thing to a highly-unrealistic degree (just about everything about the people in the game is unrealistic, which is fine).

AC actually did have a spin-off game, possibly two, that engaged pretty hard with slavery (I forget the names, it was around the time AC Black Flag was the main game), and which were actually I thought fairly well-regarded for their treatment of it (I could be misremembering).

 

[Mind of tempest]

I would argue that it does make it central. The fact that you can have entire adventures avoiding it doesn't mean it isn't. The same is true of literally any setting that centers a certain idea. You can run a Planescape adventure where no-one uses a portal or talks philosophy. You can run a Ravenloft adventure that doesn't involve the Mists and isn't very scary (I think that's most Ravenloft adventures actually). And so on.

But as soon as you go to any major town or encounter a big caravan or the like, slavery is going to be everywhere. The DM and players may not want to engage with it, but the setting seems pretty clear about it. The issue with slavery in particular is that the US is still recovering from that fact that barely 150 years ago they had chattel slavery (the worst form of slavery) in full force (not as something half-forgotten or decaying). And slavery in DS tends towards being chattel slavery (certainly Muls make it clear it is). So turning it into entertainment, which is what this does, effectively, without being disrespectful/weird, requires a level of engagement with the consequences of slavery that is probably not something Dark Sun really wants to engage with.

To put it another way - using it as a cheap background element that's constant and never actually looking at it in a serious way is a problem. Maybe it won't be a problem in another 50-150 years. Maybe it feels like way less of a problem in countries which weren't engaging in chattel slavery 150-odd years ago.

And I don't think it's really necessary to make it focused.

Personally I think Dark Sun needs a serious re-working, from the ground up, and I say that as a huge DS fan. Keep the basic concepts and visual style, but take an "anything can go" attitude to specifics beyond the concepts.


Yes absolutely. It's post-post apocalypse. Not peri-apocalypse or immediate post-apocalypse. I don't think it's even an argument that environmentalism is a theme. It definitely is. It's about as subtle as a brick to the face! It's part of why DS is even more relevant now. Especially with cryptocurrency and NFTs and so on, which whilst not yet primary contributors to climate change, use more and more energy every year on pointless idiocy (and seem likely to grow exponentially), which feels very akin to Defiling.

Who is saying that though? I haven't watched the full panel, do they say it there? No-one in this thread has said anything like that.

What I am saying, for example, is that if you're going to make chattel slavery a major theme of your setting, one that's nigh-ever-present (in the City-States at least), you either need to really engage hard with the horrors of that (not really suitable for a WotC D&D setting imo), or y'know, not do it, which means having it not be a major theme.

That doesn't mean you can't have chattel slavery, let alone other forms of slavery, in your setting, but they should probably not be ever-present nor key to entire races existing. Look at other historical forms of oppression and slavery - particularly indentured servitude and use those as your main forms, and probably have City-States that don't use slavery but are horrifically oppressive anyway.

should a thread be made for such a discussion? as oddly dark sun is more close to familiar to me than makes sense for my age bracket and it seems worth talking about?

 

[TheSword]

I would argue that it does make it central. The fact that you can have entire adventures avoiding it doesn't mean it isn't. The same is true of literally any setting that centers a certain idea. You can run a Planescape adventure where no-one uses a portal or talks philosophy. You can run a Ravenloft adventure that doesn't involve the Mists and isn't very scary (I think that's most Ravenloft adventures actually). And so on.

But as soon as you go to any major town or encounter a big caravan or the like, slavery is going to be everywhere. The DM and players may not want to engage with it, but the setting seems pretty clear about it. The issue with slavery in particular is that the US is still recovering from that fact that barely 150 years ago they had chattel slavery (the worst form of slavery) in full force (not as something half-forgotten or decaying). And slavery in DS tends towards being chattel slavery (certainly Muls make it clear it is). So turning it into entertainment, which is what this does, effectively, without being disrespectful/weird, requires a level of engagement with the consequences of slavery that is probably not something Dark Sun really wants to engage with.

To put it another way - using it as a cheap background element that's constant and never actually looking at it in a serious way is a problem. Maybe it won't be a problem in another 50-150 years. Maybe it feels like way less of a problem in countries which weren't engaging in chattel slavery 150-odd years ago.

And I don't think it's really necessary to make it focused.

Personally I think Dark Sun needs a serious re-working, from the ground up, and I say that as a huge DS fan. Keep the basic concepts and visual style, but take an "anything can go" attitude to specifics beyond the concepts.


Yes absolutely. It's post-post apocalypse. Not peri-apocalypse or immediate post-apocalypse. I don't think it's even an argument that environmentalism is a theme. It definitely is. It's about as subtle as a brick to the face! It's part of why DS is even more relevant now. Especially with cryptocurrency and NFTs and so on, which whilst not yet primary contributors to climate change, use more and more energy every year on pointless idiocy (and seem likely to grow exponentially), which feels very akin to Defiling.

Who is saying that though? I haven't watched the full panel, do they say it there? No-one in this thread has said anything like that.

What I am saying, for example, is that if you're going to make chattel slavery a major theme of your setting, one that's nigh-ever-present (in the City-States at least), you either need to really engage hard with the horrors of that (not really suitable for a WotC D&D setting imo), or y'know, not do it, which means having it not be a major theme.

That doesn't mean you can't have chattel slavery, let alone other forms of slavery, in your setting, but they should probably not be ever-present nor key to entire races existing. Look at other historical forms of oppression and slavery - particularly indentured servitude and use those as your main forms, and probably have City-States that don't use slavery but are horrifically oppressive anyway.

All those games massively downplay slavery and oppression, note. In Odyssey, which is the one I've played most, it's barely even a thing to a highly-unrealistic degree (just about everything about the people in the game is unrealistic, which is fine).

AC actually did have a spin-off game, possibly two, that engaged pretty hard with slavery (I forget the names, it was around the time AC Black Flag was the main game), and which were actually I thought fairly well-regarded for their treatment of it (I could be misremembering).

Great so if it’s presence is possible, what we’re talking about is how it can be dealt with as a topic responsibly. I’m all for that.

It sounded like it was being suggested that the topic was off the table. Glad it’s not.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Dark Sun is a distopy, but we should take care about some threads becoming taboo too fastly. Some episodes of Law&Order: Special Victims Units is about sexual slavery. Are we going to ban Law&Order? Machismo (male chauvinism) is wrong, but in woke fiction, even marvel and DC stories there are sexist characters to be reported, not to be promoted. Athas suffers a total ecological disaster, but the message is we have to avoid this in our real life.

We can agree we should avoid frivolity about some serious threads, but if there is some complain, it should be first against the literary saga of the world of Gor (this is like mixing planet romance with 50 Gray Shades). There are slaves in the fiction about Conan the Barbarian.

In Dragonlance not only Caramon became a slave, but also a gladiator in the arena.

Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil - TV Tropes

Wikipedia defines slavery as a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. It's not just bad: it's literally treating them as less than a person — and barely better than cattle — …

tvtropes.org

And we can't slavery in evil realms, for example drows or illithid domains.

* Some tropes can be tolerated but when they are always linked with negative stereotypes. For example a villain can be a no-Caucasian human, but then others from that ethnic group should be in the side of the good guys. A religious zealot or a preacher/false prophet can be an antagonist, but then also other believer characters have to be showed to mark faith doesn't the end nor the reason neither the mercy.

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

That is a fair reason not do these things.

The downside is that if that were the case a broad swathe of artistic expression wouldn’t be possible... at least 4 Assassins creed titles for example, anything set in ancient Egypt, Rome, Greece, medieval Scandinavia.

Theros was set in ancient Greece/ Rome and it managed to ignore slavery. Because it's a fantasy game and not historical fiction.

There is a difference between saying that I don’t want to be sitting across the table from someone playing an escaped slave, and saying No one anywhere can play an escaped slave including the DM.

I’m uncomfortable with the blanket statement that no one anywhere can represent slavery in a game. As detestable as it was/is, it is a part of human existence, along with the other bad things I have referenced. Now if there was a conversation here about how to reference it sensitively, then that would be a different question. Shutting it down completely, as a history student, feels disproportionate and deeply troubling.

Now a completely different question is whether WOC can be bothered to go to the effort, when they have lots of other IPs.

I hope they chart a middle path, reference it, but in a sensible, mature non-sensational way. With advice written by POC on how not to be a douche about this stuff at the gaming table.

Added emphasis.
Because you're correct. A "no slavery" rule would be unenforceable. DMs and players can do whatever they want. But that don't mean Wizards gotta do a setting that puts slavery at the forefront when they could do DRAGONLANCE and GREYHAWK and AL QADIM instead.

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

Dark Sun is a distopy, but we should take care about some threads becoming taboo too fastly. Some episodes of Law&Order: Special Victims Units is about sexual slavery. Are we going to ban Law&Order?

Naw...
But if there was only going to be THREE classic TV shows remade (joining five other TV show) , would the show about sexual slavery be the first choice?

Even Law & Order didn't start with SVU. That came after ten years of regular L&O. (And the idea of doing a show heavily focusing on sexuality based crimes drew headlines and controversy on its premiere.)

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My father sometimes sees it, but I feel unconfortable when I think about the horrible things happening in the real world, but that serie shouldn't be cancelled. I trust nobody who tries fixing everything with new rules, orders or banning because he doesn't hope free citizen to do the right actions when you explain the reasons.

Some animes not only show slavery but even some main character sidekics are former slaves themself, even children.

There was a episode of the legendary journeys of Hercules about slavery with Lucy Liu.

Should I ask to cancel movies about pirates? My land was victim of pirates and slaver trafickers. Some weeks ago I read about fishers in Almeria, Sourth-East Spanish coast, almost catched by Frenchs...to be sold as slaves in the north of Morocco. The coasts of my land being attacked by Otoman pirates to catch slaves. But Hollywood movies don't tell about pirates as slavery traffickers.