D&D 5E (2024) Unconfirmed Dark Sun World Book

[Necropolitan]

I think that's kind of the heart of the issue with Dark Sun. It's not a family friendly setting, and making it family friendly turns into something different (not necessarily worse, just different). The other settings definitely have family unfriendly elements in them, but the mature topics in Dark Sun are embedded in its core.

The majority of the people buying D&D products are adults or soon will be, but the idea that a section of the hobby should be for adults is offensive to some people.

As I previously pointed out in this thread, all the things people were wringing their hands over RPGs having (in-universe bigotry, slavery, imperialism, torture, writing more complicated than a young adult novel, and morality that isn't obvious Good vs Evil) are all already present in media for children.

Apparently it's fine to have a Dalek (a genocidal imperialist bigoted body horror eugenicist space fascist torturer slaver) on TV, but the moment you add the same exact details to a RPG it becomes a cognitohazard that needs to be scrubbed clean to ensure the moral purity of the public.

 

[Zardnaar]

The majority of the people buying D&D products are adults or soon will be, but the idea that a section of the hobby should be for adults is offensive to some people.

As I previously pointed out in this thread, all the things people were wringing their hands over RPGs having (in-universe bigotry, slavery, imperialism, torture, writing more complicated than a young adult novel, and morality that isn't obvious Good vs Evil) are all already present in media for children.

Apparently it's fine to have a Dalek (a genocidal imperialist bigoted body horror eugenicist space fascist torturer slaver) on TV, but the moment you add the same exact details to a RPG it becomes a cognitohazard that needs to be scrubbed clean to ensure the moral purity of the public.

This. BG3 also comes to mind.

Its not 2019 I think the moral panics mostly gone. Ran out of steam and wasnt organically popular anyway.

What is popular? BG3.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Let's remember Conan is fiction for adults but Hasbro produced an child-friendly animated serie of this franchise.

I say again Hasbro's intentions aren't to earn money with DS sourcebooks but with a future DS videogame.

Surely it will be an atlas or gazeteer of the region of Tyr omiting those gruesome details. In the age of internet WotC wants to sell crunch instead fluff/lore/background. Unlocking in the DMGuild should be enough.

* What if there is an alternate Athas that relatively seems a utopia but it's a deception. Teorically champions from the future traveled time to the past and defeated the sorcerer-kings before these became tyrants.. but it is a trick. Not only they are alive but they are the secret rulers from the shadows.

They faked their own defeat and death to avoid direct betrayal and rebellion against them. If one of their puppets on the throne is neutralized, they are simply replaced by another, leading the rebels to believe they have succeeded.

Other alternate Athas is a "green age" where Rajaat created a fungus-plague style "last of us" and only pureblood halflings are inmune. After the cure was discovered but the sorcerer-kings says there is always a new mutant strain and only they know the right antidote. Other secondary effect this plague also affected the animals and the fauna was decimated but this could survive thans special mutations becoming mutant plantanimals.

 

[Zardnaar]

I dont think a Darksun videogame is on the cards.

 

[Mecheon]

Apparently it's fine to have a Dalek (a genocidal imperialist bigoted body horror eugenicist space fascist torturer slaver) on TV, but the moment you add the same exact details to a RPG it becomes a cognitohazard that needs to be scrubbed clean to ensure the moral purity of the public.

Daleks are salt shakers who can't handle stairs and always get defeated by the end of the episode. Maybe they'll have a two parter if they're lucky

They're a little different from tyrannical fascist dictators doing it en-mass to peoples, and slamming face first into racist stereotypes with the halflings

You don't need to scrub stuff clean but stuff published originally over 30 years needs to be reviewed if it actually serves a modern audience, and adjusted for that audience. Otherwise you end up as horrifically dated as something using 90s slang and trying to appear hip and modern. Or, well, as dated as half of Ravenloft's domains that are blatant expies of "wow you just wrote down the plot to an 80s horror movie and expected it to stand the test of time"