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 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.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Hasbro still can use the franchise for products for "young adult" audiences, for example novels, comics or an animated adaptation in Paramount+.

There is a possible solution suggested by me: a (insert X name here)'s Guide of the Shattered Lands, an update of "Sandstorm" with some pages about the city-sates from the Athasian Tablelands, and others about Amonketh and Kaladesh (settings from Magic: the Gathering), an update of the crunch (PC species and the blighter as a subclass with a special game mechanic of defiler magic). The almost return by a back door should be an option to be considered.

We could study variants of the defiler magic, with different effects, to be used in other campaigns. For example with that defiler magic the vernim and flora survive, but it becomes poisonous, or toxic spores are created in the zone, or in the night the taint by the "shadow" is worse allowing a planar invasion by creatures from the Shadowfell, or infernal outsiders are stronger in those tainted zones enjoing a special bluff.

In my opinion the worst handicap besided the lack of a system for psionic powers in 5Ed is limits of options for PCs with the classes and species. Why not to add dromites, psiforged, shardminds, maenads, xephs and elans? Then or we reboot the setting, or we create a spiritual succesor recycling/reusing the favorite elements from the previous one.

Slavery is something not only happened in the XIX but it is real today in some places in the world, even in our countries, when ilegal inmigrants are catched by criminal groups and sent to forced works...but that doesn't mean it has to be a complete taboo in the TTRPGs. Let's use the good sense. We have to avoid the frivolity.

Maybe my point of view if different because in my society the injuries from the past are different, or these have been enoughly healed. If it is something like this, then your duty is to bury the resentment and to search the reconciliation. To stop the hate and the bigotry we also need to earn mutual trust.

I could understand the risk of the franchise to be manipulated by no-roleplayers and to be used as a symbol or allegory about the fight against the tiranny of the reptilian elite or something like this.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, I vaguely recall one of their talking heads saying something along those lines; "old canon is only canon if we say it is" or somesuch. Kind of like Disney's approach to Star Wars lore.

But if they tried, they could find an explanation that doesn't suck. Like back in 4e, when people were up in arms about Dragonborn in their Dark Sun, and I'm like, well, what about the Dray?

The Dray weren't waking around being a normal race they were hidden away.

And had distinct abilities from Dragonborn. And 4E had Arabian night vibes. And was kinda meh in many ways adding stuff that shouldn't be added and removing clerics.

I'm not a Darksun purists in terms if adding new stuff but you probably want to be careful what you add vs shoehorning in whatever with stupid retcons and poor justifications.

 

[Cadence]

Tangentially...

 

[Staffan]

The Dray weren't waking around being a normal race they were hidden away.

And had distinct abilities from Dragonborn. And 4E had Arabian night vibes. And was kinda meh in many ways adding stuff that shouldn't be added and removing clerics.

Removing clerics in DS4 made sense, because the DS2 cleric wasn't really a traditional cleric. The Dark Sun cleric was an elementalist, but the 4e cleric list is filled with rays of light and shining beacons and all other nonsense that has nothing to do with elements. The solution was to use the 4e shaman to fill the role instead, giving you a class that called upon elemental spirits rather than distant gods.

 

[Parmandur]

I'd put it a bit differently.

Warforged serve the same sort of purpose in D&D as replicants do in Blade Runner or as the tin man does in Oz. One could even draw a comparison to Pygmalion. They are essentially sympathetic characters, who provide both a general vehicle via their presence in the fiction, as well as a specific vehicle with each particular character, to explore "What does it mean to be human?" and "What does it mean to create beings who are entitled to live independently of their creator?"

Darks Sun, on the other hand, is not only "Howard porn" but treats chattel slavery as a more-or-less "natural" way of humans establishing a viable social structure in a relatively brutal world. As I posted upthread, I think there are probably ways of doing this which can be thoughtful and critical, but it would require an approach to the writing that I don't think is WotC's style.

The Warforged are a great literary device, because the surreality of their existence creates enough distance from real word parallels to allow for creative exploration of resonant themes without being a massive turnoff or uncomfortable.

 

[Vaalingrade]

For the record, 'Howard Porn' isn't literal pornography, but the gratuitous use the tropes from Howard's work just because they were in his work with little to no thought to it. It's just empty fan service. Like the apparent other Howard porn people thought I mean. Jaysus--it's almost as bad as Piers Anthony covers...

 

[Alzrius]

The Dray weren't waking around being a normal race they were hidden away.

And had distinct abilities from Dragonborn.

As I recall, there were first- and second-generation dray, with different PC racial information. So using dragonborn for both would erase one or the other of them.

 

[Zardnaar]

As I recall, there were first- and second-generation dray, with different PC racial information. So using dragonborn for both would erase one or the other of them.

Pretty much. The context was they were also hidden, had to be discovered and also in product set after events mist Darksun don't seem to like.

If I was rebooting Darksun I woukd use the original set. It also cuts out stuff like genocide, metaphot etc.

 

[humble minion]

Removing clerics in DS4 made sense, because the DS2 cleric wasn't really a traditional cleric. The Dark Sun cleric was an elementalist, but the 4e cleric list is filled with rays of light and shining beacons and all other nonsense that has nothing to do with elements. The solution was to use the 4e shaman to fill the role instead, giving you a class that called upon elemental spirits rather than distant gods.

Yeah, and the original Dark Sun of course was a 2e setting, where the spell lists of clerics were very customisable via the Sphere mechanic, so it was easy to remove all the water spells from the fire cleric list etc. There's not really an equivalent to either design strategy in 5e. Although if I was doing 5e Dark Sun and had unlimited page count, I'd almost be tempted to replace both druids and elemental clerics with a new 'shaman' type class that gets its powers from the spirits it allies with. Clerics can ally with powerful elementals to get elemental powers (like how was described in Earth Air Fire and Water), druids with genius loci, fey-analogous land spirits.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, and the original Dark Sun of course was a 2e setting, where the spell lists of clerics were very customisable via the Sphere mechanic, so it was easy to remove all the water spells from the fire cleric list etc. There's not really an equivalent to either design strategy in 5e. Although if I was doing 5e Dark Sun and had unlimited page count, I'd almost be tempted to replace both druids and elemental clerics with a new 'shaman' type class that gets its powers from the spirits it allies with. Clerics can ally with powerful elementals to get elemental powers (like how was described in Earth Air Fire and Water), druids with genius loci, fey-analogous land spirits.

Or you just redo the cleric spell list, tweak the class features and have elementary domains.