D&D 5E WotC: Why Dark Sun Hasn't Been Revived

In an interview with YouTuber 'Bob the Worldbuilder', WotC's Kyle Brink explained why the classic Dark Sun setting has not yet seen light of day in the D&D 5E era. I’ll be frank here, the Dark Sun setting is problematic in a lot of ways. And that’s the main reason we haven’t come back to it. We know it’s got a huge fan following and we have standards today that make it extraordinarily hard to...

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In an interview with YouTuber 'Bob the Worldbuilder', WotC's Kyle Brink explained why the classic Dark Sun setting has not yet seen light of day in the D&D 5E era.

I’ll be frank here, the Dark Sun setting is problematic in a lot of ways. And that’s the main reason we haven’t come back to it. We know it’s got a huge fan following and we have standards today that make it extraordinarily hard to be true to the source material and also meet our ethical and inclusion standards... We know there’s love out there for it and god we would love to make those people happy, and also we gotta be responsible.

You can listen to the clip here.
 

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Zehnseiter

Adventurer
Actually they were accidentally omitted from the revised set and available on the WotC site at the time.
Ok that is actually news to me. I needed to import that box to Germany back then. I need to look at the box but wasn't it still made by TSR ?

Edit: Ok did a quick look. That box while still TSR came out 1995. So shortly before the end. So I retract my statement about the Templars as I always assumed that the were removed and not forgotten. Still a whole class. How can you forget that in the main setting setting box ?
 
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Minigiant

Legend
Supporter
Again, you were there, not me. I can only guess at things you have much better insight into. One possibility, though, is age. In 1991 I was much, MUCH younger and we(the groups I played with) did things as DMs and had things done to us as players that we would never do now and thought nothing much of it. The viewpoints of people in their teens and 20's much different than people in their 30's to 50's. :)
There is also like I said before changing culture and changing demographics.

DArk Sun the setting encourages or at least grants incentives to being a DM or Player who commits problematic acts.

Dark Sun the adventures do not..

But Dark Sun the setting has character options that power up PCs and NPC by being evil or a jerk. And WOTC doesn't want to promote that, doesn't think it's money, and is in too much hot water to attempt fixing it.
 

Imaro

Legend
Ok that is actually news to me. I needed to import that box to Germany back then. I need to look at the box but wasn't it still made by TSR ?

Edit: Ok did a quick look. That box while still TSR came out 1995. So shortly before the end. So I retract my statement about the Templars as I always assumed that the were removed and not forgotten. Still a whole class. How can you forget that in the main setting setting box ?
Well funnily enough WotC also include the Templar as a theme for 4e Dark Sun as well...
 

Zehnseiter

Adventurer
Well funnily enough WotC also include the Templar as a theme for 4e Dark Sun as well...
Yes they put in a Dragon King as Epic destiny as well.....so yea I won't deny that the Templar or the Defiler have problems as player classes but the thing is it won't break a whole setting or makes Dark Sun especialy bad. You are able to play a Necromancer, Thief or Assassin right in the PHB before a setting even enters the question. Having evil stuff available for players is as old as D&D.

Edit: The thing with the Templar is that it actually hits closer to home then lets say a Cleric of an evil god. It less the spell casting aspect. The corrupt privileged bureaucrat that props up a evil dictatorship aspect is what makes them so uncomfortable. I call it the Dolores Umbridge factor.
 
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Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
There is also like I said before changing culture and changing demographics.
Changing culture might be a factor as well, but age change like I mentioned is a changing demographic, so on the same page with that one. :)
DArk Sun the setting encourages or at least grants incentives to being a DM or Player who commits problematic acts.
I strong disagree with this. The existence of things like slavery in now way incentivize players to commit those sorts of acts in game. Not any more than murder and kidnapping do with the existence of those things in a normal game. When it comes to things like Defiling and being a Templar, that's no different than being a blackguard/anti-paladin or death domain cleric in the base game.

Since the beginning it has been assumed in all settings that the PCs will be heroes, but also provided some small number of things for those who wanted to play evil. Dark Sun is not greater than normal at these things. I just offers different paths than the standard anti-paladin or cleric of an evil god. It may seem like it's incentivizing things more because you're used to the traditional paths and so those don't stand out as much.
But Dark Sun the setting has character options that power up PCs and NPC by being evil or a jerk. And WOTC doesn't want to promote that, doesn't think it's money, and is in too much hot water to attempt fixing it.
The only power ups are defiling(the setting disincentivizes being one) and becoming a dragon which means level 20/20 dual class and is pretty much never going to happen. The setting also gives Avangions as the good equivalent of becoming a dragon.

"In most cases, defilers are outlaws (even in the eyes of the corrupt sorcerer-kings), so they keep their magical abilities under cover. Unlike preservers who have a loose organization in their underground, outlaw defilers tend to be loners, keeping their ambitions and powers to themselves."

Better to be a preserver who doesn't have to hide magical ability and has friends. Defilers can't even sneak a spell while they are in town or around NPCs, because the pain and vegetation death are a blatant giveaway.
 

Imaro

Legend
Yes they put in a Dragon King as Epic destiny as well.....so yea I won't deny that the Templar or the Defiler have problems as player classes but the thing is it won't break a whole setting or makes Dark Sun especialy bad. You are able to play a Necromancer, Thief or Assassin right in the PHB before a setting even enters the question. Having evil stuff available for players is as old as D&D.
The evil that a necromancer (make believe) or an assassin (real but probably outside the range of the vast majority of most people's immediate experiences, history or family circle) represent vs a slave master is IMO comparing apples and oranges. The fact tghat this type of stuff gets presented as comparable to each other is exactly one of the reasons I think there is a large swath of gamers who just wouldn't get why this type of thing in a WotC sourcebook or being played out at a table would be extremely problematic for alot of gamers... As a black man I'm much more comfortable playing in a game where I am watching someone roleplay as a necromancer or assassin than I am in a game where someone is pretending to be a slave owner. These things don't hit real life in the same way.
 

Zehnseiter

Adventurer
As a black man I'm much more comfortable playing in a game where I am watching someone roleplay as a necromancer or assassin than I am in a game where someone is pretending to be a slave owner. These things don't hit real life in the same way.
Fair enough. We all get uncomfortable by different things because of history and our own cultural lens.
 
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Vaalingrade

Legend
The evil that a necromancer (make believe) or an assassin (real but probably outside the range of the vast majority of most people's immediate experiences, history or family circle) represent vs a slave master is IMO comparing apples and oranges. The fact tghat this type of stuff gets presented as comparable to each other is exactly one of the reasons I think there is a large swath of gamers who just wouldn't get why this type of thing in a WotC sourcebook or being played out at a table would be extremely problematic for alot of gamers... As a black man I'm much more comfortable playing in a game where I am watching someone roleplay as a necromancer or assassin than I am in a game where someone is pretending to be a slave owner. These things don't hit real life in the same way.
Yeah.

And that includes watching people who weren't effected and don't have a history of it revel in how 'easy' and 'trivial' it is for their real He Man characters to throw off said enslavement and very easily with hardly a sweat murder their way out of an institution that took 500 years, a dead president and a civil war to deal with for our people and the residuals are still in play.
 

pemerton

Legend
Sword and planet and sword and sandals seem to rest on a whole host of tropes and cultural premises that I can see a big commercial publisher not wanting to buy into. Slavery is one, and maybe the most prominent, but not the only one. There're are various sorts of exoticism (and slavery can be an aspect of this too), ranging from architecture to geography to "desert tribes" and "desert mystics".

There are probably ways of doing something in this genre that aren't racist, have some sort of self-awareness, maybe even biting irony. But WotC doesn't seem the sort of publisher that is going to do that.
 

Yaarel

🇮🇱He-Mage
My take on the "sword and sandal" genre:

It is Greco-Roman, whether it actually is or isnt (Mesopotamia, Pharonic, Medieval, etcetera).

Its main feature is minimal clothing to show of bodybuilders.

It might or might not feature fantasy magic.

This genre seems doable without the problematic content. (No one is pretending historical or archeological accuracy.)

Heh, then again some people feel the body idealism is itself problematic.
 

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