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.

 

[pemerton]

I mean naughty word I dont even care about Dark Sun. I just want a proper Sword and Sorcery/Dark Fantasy book that looks and acts the part, provided by the company that sucks all the air out of the room, to prove me wrong about the direction RPGs are inevitably being pulled in due to its black hole mass.

I don't know what you mean about "the direction RPGs are inevitably being pulled".

The last time I played a S&S game was in August 2022, with visiting family. The system used was In A Wicked Age. You can buy it here for $5: In a Wicked Age

If I wanted to play with a heavier system that's also perhaps a bit more serious, I'd use Burning Wheel, which even has Slavery/Servitude lifepaths. You can buy it here for $35: Burning Wheel - Burning Wheel

I don't buy that there's any shortage of S&S oriented RPGs, that they're hard to find, or that they are being pulled in some inevitable direction by a "black hole mass".

 

[Bedrockgames]

The subject of Dragonlance, at least one of them, is the horror of war

The subject of Dark Sun isn’t slavery or forced eugenics.

But again, and I know we have covered this endlessly, slavery and eugenics very much are part of the core themes about man's pursuit of power and his need to fuel society having consequences. You can draw a pretty strong parallel between using people as a source of power and using magic as a source of power. And in the ancient world, slavery was a source of power that was used to fuel the growth of empires. It is terrible, as are the horrors of war, but if you are making a setting that deals with the evil things men are capable of when resources get scarce, I can certainly see why it is valid to include.

And it is set in a world that violates our own sense of morality. Which I think is an important part of what Dark Sun is trying to do. So things like eugenics being present also makes some amount of sense.

I found the opening of the first box set rather uncomfortable because it seemed to invoke that (or at least racialist science) and to invoke Nietzsche's ubermensch (which I could interpret in a way that made me feel unwelcome, but my assessment is they were reaching for something else there). Due to the history of it in the 20th century, and due to the fact that I can still remember people using these arguments to justify racism when I was young, I am particularly bothered by racialist science and I have never been especially comfortable with Nietzsche's ideas.

Pasting a passage pertaining to this here (it is woven into elements of the setting but I think the passage in the ability scores entry is actually more striking and worthy of discussion because it is alluding to this element of the setting at the very start of character creation):

I have been re-reading the boxed set (again I must emphasize very slowly so I am not 100% refreshed on everything in there yet). But one of the reasons I am also pasting the above is because when I re-read this section for the first time in about 30 years (or however long it has been since this came out), I remembered how this made me feel. It seemed ambiguous to me at first and I honestly wasn't sure what the intention was, which I found troubling. I would compare it to my first reaction to hearing the song Number of the Beast. Now that song just seems a little corny, but when I first heard it, I wasn't sure if it was just telling a story in the voice of a character or if the band endorsed Satan (obviously they don't endorse it, it is ultimately an ant-Satanic song, but the song is a story and the chorus can easily mislead you because its "666 the number of the Beast, 666 the one for you and me"). Ultimately I think what they were doing here is closer to what Iron Maiden did with Number of the Beast. And that means there is a danger it could be misinterpreted (and who knows perhaps I am misinterpreting the intention). But what I came to see in this passage was the writers using an ironic voice, and an aim to immerse you in a world that was by our standards not a moral one, which creates a sense of discomfort and unease. There is danger to that. Just like there is danger to calling your song number of the beast.

And again, I find these particular ideas surrounding racialist science to be the most discomforting, in part because they gained so much mainstream traction in society in the early 20th century and they led to so much horror (it is one of the reasons I am so troubled by the emergence of the Human Biodiversity Movement). But Dark Sun and The Number of the Beasts, these are creative works, drawing on real world ideas to achieve an effect. And to do that they sometimes need to take these kinds of risks, which I think produces interesting results. Reading through the original boxed set again, it is absolutely spectacular (visually, the way it is written, the world it creates and the ideas that it is trying to address in an RPG setting------I would say stuff like this is a good argument for RPGs as art*)

There is a similar section in the Van Richten guidebooks. Van Richten is a heroic vampire killer but he has a significant flaw as a character: he is racist towards Vistani because his son was taken by a Vistani tribe and sold to Baron Metus (a vampire who made him into one). In some of the Van Richten books, his voice suddenly switches from rationale and compassionate to completely irrational and filled with rage towards the Vistani. There is a line in one where he is discussing having a Vistani friend and says something to the effect of "I won't blame a single individual for the failing of an entire race". I think today WOTC would be very wary of including that kind of humor because it can be misinterpreted (obviously the point is Van Richten is the butt of the joke because by reversing the logic of 'don't blame an entire race for the failing of individuals' we see the flaw in his thinking: the book understands that the readers morality is the latter not the former).

*And not in the sense that it is art because it is meaningful but not playable, Dark Sun is very playable, and to me it shows you can have a clear artistic vision in the RPG medium.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't know what you mean about "the direction RPGs are inevitably being pulled".

The last time I played a S&S game was in August 2022, with visiting family. The system used was In A Wicked Age. You can buy it here for $5: In a Wicked Age

If I wanted to play with a heavier system that's also perhaps a bit more serious, I'd use Burning Wheel, which even has Slavery/Servitude lifepaths. You can buy it here for $35: Burning Wheel - Burning Wheel

I don't buy that there's any shortage of S&S oriented RPGs, that they're hard to find, or that they are being pulled in some inevitable direction by a "black hole mass".

We live in a very interesting time in terms of RPG publishing because everyone who wants to can make a game and publish it. It might not have the greatest art, or all the bells and whistles, but if you have a computer, you can probably write and layout an RPG and put it up for sale. So there is no completely stopping any idea in RPGs (which is why something like Myfarog can exist even though I am sure we all, and most of the hobby, find its ideas objectionable). I think where the censoriousness comes in is more in how creatives can be treated when they do try to make something like the product you link, and if it starts to catch enough attention or something in it isn't handles in a way a contingent of people think was done well. Then the writer's may find themselves accused of making something akin to Myfarog even if they aren't doing so at all. And there have been a lot of attempts to remove RPGs from Drivethru and similar platforms. There have also been plenty of attempts to stop RPGs from being made, some successful, when they are announced. Now some go through that gauntlet, still get made, still reach an audience. So I think it isn't this clear cut thing. But just having operated in this industry myself since 2009, the atmosphere has definitely changed. And I can say for sure most publishers second guess their work a lot around these concerns and I am quite sure we are losing a lot of interesting ideas in that process (because the stakes are really high, especially if you are a smaller publisher). And I think where you see this most is at the level of companies like WOTC where they are always going to be risk averse, so in an age where taking creative risks can be a bigger deal (especially if you are coming close to anything controversial), you are going to see that reflected in the content.

A lot of this is just driven by social media. I get the sense that even that is changing now. So I can't say where we are exactly (hard to do when you are in the middle of things as they unfold). But I think there is definitely something to the claim that people who are interested in creating for this hobby feel more constrained by the atmosphere and the tactics people use when they want to criticize something. Perhaps the blame really belongs with the people and companies who are responding to some of these criticisms and giving power to more censorious voices, rather than the people voicing criticism (before social media people would complain about things but it took a lot for that to shape the content of a book or movie, now it can have a very direct effect).

 

[Hussar]

@Bedrockgames - that quote you provided actually dovetails pretty well with the whole subject vs object discussion. Note, the quote tells us that your character will be better in every measurable way. Stronger, more intelligent, more resiliant. The fact that your character is the product of generations of forced rape and murder of "defective" children is ignored. Which is what the Mul are.

Dark Sun isn't "about" eugenics. Eugenics is just the excuse for having higher powered characters - and note, since we're talking AD&D stats, having a 20 stat is godlike in nature. This isn't d20 D&D where a 20 Con is just a smidgeon better than an 18. A 20 constitution makes you virtually unkillable as you now have regeneration. Wahoo!

And, again, "censorious" voices? No. That's NEVER been the issue. Look, it's fairly simple. Do you agree with removing strength limits for female characters? That's just as "censorious". Before, people who complained were just flat out ignored and because the majority controlled every single channel for communication, the ignored voices were safely locked away.

What has changed is those people who want to be in the hobby are now in a position where they aren't being ignored. See, that's the problem with comparisons to censorship. The whole Satanic Panic was a misinformation campaign to stop other people from playing the game. Now, this is people who are in the hobby directly telling you that these sorts of things are not a whole lot of fun. That getting a bust of Lovecraft for winning the World Fantasy Award. Yeah, that's not telling people that they're unwelcome at all.

You claim that the atmosphere has changed?

Good.

 

[Clint_L]

I find it interesting that you read that passage and find irony. There is nothing in that passage that implies ironic intent. You are seeing irony because you find the core ideas so objectionable that the only way to accept them is by adopting the premise that they must be ironic. The irony is coming from your cognitive dissonance, not the passage.

Which speaks to your good qualities as a person, but also suggests to me that the text is indeed thematically problematic in ways that justify WotC leaving it on the shelf.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I find it interesting that you read that passage and find irony. There is nothing in that passage that implies ironic intent. You are seeing irony because you find the core ideas so objectionable that the only way to accept them is by adopting the premise that they must be ironic. The irony is coming from your cognitive dissonance, not the passage.

Well irony isn't always easy to discern, and it isn't always about the text giving you an indication on its own. It does sometimes require effort from the reader to notice, which is one of the powers of irony. What you are saying here could also be said for example about Phil Och's I Kill Therefore I Am if all you had were the lyrics sheet in front of you (but the irony is perfectly clear because of how over the top it is, how much it jars against the sensibilities of the audience and what from Och's perspective established through his previous work). I think you can say something similar is happening here . Like I said, this is the most striking example and the one that made me most uncomfortable when I first read it, and it is worthy of discussion for that reason. But I do think the irony is pretty clear in the end.

I think it is most clear in the whole "The world of Athas has produced races of being that are generally superior-of greater strength and endurance, capable of greater intellect and vision---to those who inhabit other campaign worlds". It sounds over the top. It is clearly meant to have an edge of humor to it, and be in the voice of someone belittling the people of TSR's "other campaign wolds". Further I think in the context of the boxed set this becomes more clearly a device like i was saying to create a sense of discomfort. If there is a problem with it, it is that it is somewhat ambiguous, but I think that ambiguity is part of what makes it function (in the same way the "666, the one for you and me" functioned that way in the early 80s).

Which speaks to your good qualities as a person, but also suggests to me that the text is indeed thematically problematic in ways that justify WotC leaving it on the shelf.

I appreciate the compliment, but I think here we are getting at the heart of the issue. You see problematic text, I see text, again as someone very strongly objects to the ideas literally expressed in the passage, that is interesting because at first it is a bit unnerving to read and sets the tone for the whole setting. Again, one of the reasons people love Dark Sun is it was a progressive vision of a campaign world. It is probably the most progressive from that era, and the writers knew who they were writing for and what they were doing.

This is why 'problematic' is so problematic in my opinion. We are potentially losing interesting content out of fear that it will not pass 2023 optics (which I think are overly simplistic and tend to read things in the worst possible light----and tend to isolate sections of a work without considering how they fit into the whole). It is very easy to hold up this passage and say "see look how terrible this is, how can you support this?" just as it was easy in the 80s to hold up "666, the one for you and me" and say "see how terrible this is, how can you support this?"

 

[Bedrockgames]

@Bedrockgames - that quote you provided actually dovetails pretty well with the whole subject vs object discussion. Note, the quote tells us that your character will be better in every measurable way. Stronger, more intelligent, more resiliant. The fact that your character is the product of generations of forced rape and murder of "defective" children is ignored. Which is what the Mul are.

I think reading through the Dark Sun books the brutality behind all this becomes pretty clear. I don't believe the word rape is ever used in the books (I could be wrong but I haven't seen it) and I think them not specifically getting into this, probably had a lot to do with these books coming out after the Satanic panic (I don't know for sure, I think if anyone can ask any of the writers if such constraints were in place it would be useful, they may just have wanted to handle that stuff in a way that felt tasteful).

Dark Sun isn't "about" eugenics. Eugenics is just the excuse for having higher powered characters - and note, since we're talking AD&D stats, having a 20 stat is godlike in nature. This isn't d20 D&D where a 20 Con is just a smidgeon better than an 18. A 20 constitution makes you virtually unkillable as you now have regeneration. Wahoo!

I really don't think that is the case. It's interpretive obviously but I think the decision to make characters start at 3rd level and to have characters with higher abilities was very much about the themes of the setting, the brutality of the setting, etc. I think the mechanics here, just as with the Ravenloft black box, flowed from the flavor. I think we can debate what the themes were, but I don't think the concept was "Lets give them higher powers and come up with a flavor reason for it".

I am aware of 2E ability score differences, as I mostly play 2E when I run D&D. I think it is a good thing if the mechanics meant to reflect setting concepts actually have some weight to them.

And, again, "censorious" voices? No. That's NEVER been the issue. Look, it's fairly simple. Do you agree with removing strength limits for female characters? That's just as "censorious". Before, people who complained were just flat out ignored and because the majority controlled every single channel for communication, the ignored voices were safely locked away.

Again, we have discussed this before and I think we just disagree on what is happening. I think this is an overly simplistic view of what people want. As I said with this example, that text, if interpreted in a bad light, would make me feel unwelcome potentially. One of the reasons I selected it is because it initially did make me very uncomfortable. But I think what you are missing is not everyone in these groups shares a single view, some of them want this kind of content, some people want content that specifically deals with things their family has for example. And some don't want to be treated with kid gloves by writers and designers. Everyone is different.

Also you can agree with a critique, for example that strength limits for females in D&D are not a good idea, and still not agree that every critique online needs to be given weight. For me it is more about whether creators are exptected to just give in to any criticism or if they are given room to evaluate and make the decision in the end. The problem I have is we are taking creative choices, and turning them into morality tests (i.e. someone might include a mechanic you object to and find problematic, but that doesn't make them a bad person, or someone we need to ostracize, or make the RPG itself something only bad people buy: it just means they reached a different conclusion about the thing in question).

What has changed is those people who want to be in the hobby are now in a position where they aren't being ignored. See, that's the problem with comparisons to censorship. The whole Satanic Panic was a misinformation campaign to stop other people from playing the game. Now, this is people who are in the hobby directly telling you that these sorts of things are not a whole lot of fun. That getting a bust of Lovecraft for winning the World Fantasy Award. Yeah, that's not telling people that they're unwelcome at all.

You claim that the atmosphere has changed?

Good.

Again, I have said there is a difference. I think Tarantino basically got right what is going on. This is the 80s part II, except we are now doing it to ourselves. So I don't disagree that there is a distinction there. But I don't think that distinction means we are heading in a better direction. And I think the narrative of this just being about people who were previously excluded now being heard, is not accurate. I don't think that is what is going on much of the time. A lot of the time, that narrative is being deployed to coy people and to get folks to heed your critiques (not you "Hussar" but you in the general sense). It has become something of a bludgeon, that is very similar to the 'won't someone please think of the children' line from the 80s. And again one can believe its important for people to feel welcome, to want people from different backgrounds to come into the hobby as players and creators, but also think this particular remedy is a bad one

 

[Micah Sweet]

When I open the oven and I touch my jacket potato (baked potato, if you're American), if it is too hot, I will keep the door open and let it cool down. I've already coated my potato with olive oil and rock salt, and it has the potential of providing a satisfying meal.

After it has cooled somewhat, I like to take the time - thoughtfully, so as not to break the skin - to scoop out the flesh, combine it with grated Cheddar, sour cream, black pepper, Parmesan, chopped parsley, and more salt - I am rather partial to salt. I then stuff this mixture back into the skin, and run my fork over the top to create ridges - increasing the surface area promotes a more pronounced Maillard reaction.

When I am ready to eat my potato, I place it under the grill (broiler, if you're American), until it is hot again, and well-browned. There are few things as satisfying as a well-executed Maillard reaction upon the combination of cheese and starches.

I have been patient. My twice-baked potato is now perfect, and ready to eat.

Dark Sun is currently shelved. Hopefully, when the time comes to revive it thoughtfully - without breaking the skin, or scraping off the rock salt - it will be delicious.

That's a cool metaphor, but WotC appears to be saying that they can't bake that potato properly without breaking the skin and scraping off the rock salt, and people here are saying salt and skin are bad things that should be on your potato anyway. If that's what is happening, how is it supposed to change, ever, so that the potato can be made?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Again, subject vs object.

The subject of Dragonlance, at least one of them, is the horror of war

The subject of Dark Sun isn’t slavery or forced eugenics.

Dragonlance has usually been described as a romance, in the traditional sense. War is most often a backdrop. I struggle to see much horror depicted in the current iteration.

 

[Clint_L]

I didn't identify that passage as problematic, you did (though I concur). And this is not like a work of art by an author who might have a history of using very subtle irony that demands familiarity with their work to appreciate it. There is none of that context here. I'm a language and literature teacher, I can spot irony. That text is flatly descriptive with no hint of irony.

Incidentally, I also don't see a ton of irony in the "Number of the Beast" lyrics - to me they are a sort of stream of consciousness description of a narrator being drawn into evil. That is a dark theme but not expressly ironic.

Your point about problematic art still potentially having merit is valid, and "Number of the Beast" is a good example. At the same time, I think we can appreciate why Hasbro would not particularly want the world's most popular RPG exploring ideas from the eugenics movement (not that that passage really explores anything; as Hussar points out, it just accepts those ideas as a given, which is what makes it particularly troublesome). I don't think we are losing content, because you can still access and use the original content if you desire. But it makes sense that as our perspectives and tastes evolve, our art evolves as well, and that includes our games.

To me there is no mystery as to why the Dark Sun setting hasn't been revived by WotC. It seems obvious.