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.

 

[Reynard]

I love that publication. The playbook character generation is so evocative of S&S vibes.

But there are a few things in the gazetteer that pretty much scream "I am copied from the Elric series"

Is that a bad thing?

 

[squibbles]

Is that a bad thing?

Not at all. Again, I love that publication.

Just noting that it has some faux XYZ content, since faux content was something mentioned in the post I was replying to.

 

[Reynard]

Not at all. Again, I love that publication.

Just noting that it has some faux XYZ content, since faux content was something mentioned in the post I was replying to.

Ah. I was just confused because the point was you can do Sword and Sandals just fine if you avoid casting Earth cultures as good guys and bad guys, since someone suggested S&S is inherently problematic.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not really. By including them as something that's legal (and therefore socially acceptable) and readily available, that's basically giving PCs carte blanche to buy a slave.

You said including an official way for PCs to own slaves. That, I standby being easy to leave out.

 

[Gradine]

I would think that if you were to create a Venn Diagram out of all the various different possibilities of an official 5e Dark Sun product; the attempts that would please die hard fans of the setting and the attempts that wouldn't alienate a good chunk of the new player base would be two circles that will never, ever, touch.

Why bother then, at that point?

 

[Bitbrain]

Reply to OP.

Preaching to the choir here, I know, but in Dark Sun the defilers/sorcerer-kings/templars polluting the environment with magic and enforcing a regime of oppression, slavery, and terror ARE. THE. VILLAINS.

And it’s your job as heroes to first survive the wilderness and then kill as many of the bad guys as you can, thereby helping to make the Burnt World just a little bit better.

But you know what? I think I’m okay with WOTC avoiding my favorite setting. Means I can keep introducing it to more and more new players without having to worry about WOTC mismanaging it.

Literally everyone I’ve run a Dark Sun campaign for has fallen in love with the desperate and grim beauty of Athas.

Same, but it goes to show that they don’t really care about the actual messaging of their content, all they care about is avoiding controversy. Dark Sun is thematically straight-up woke, it’s just tonally edgy and that alone is enough to make WotC scared they’ll get “canceled” (inasmuch as a giant corporation can even meaningfully be “cancelled”).

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Count me among those who think this is for the best. I don't need to see my favourite D&D setting dug up and turned into a mindless revenant.

Dark Sun is dead. Let a thousand weird planetary romance settings bloom.

Currently working on a homebrew planetary romance solar system setting for Shadow of the Demon Lord, so I’m doing my part!

 

[wellis]

I doubt it would be considered "woke" no matter how much people here are trying to finangle it into that. WotC is correct that newer gamers nowadays would probably find it offensive.

Someone will try to stir up outrage and claim it's pro-genocide or something. Or that it approrpriates something.

The only way it can probably be done in 5e today is if it was published by someone smaller and much less known I would say.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I love that publication. The playbook character generation is so evocative of S&S vibes.

But there are a few things in the gazetteer that pretty much scream "I am copied from the Elric series"

Yeah, Flatland's playbooks are even more blatant than the ones in Monster of the Week.

"Here's your Conan playbook. Here's Belit. Here's the Grey Mouser. And here's Elric. Let's roll up the characters now."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

After the thrashing WOTC got from the old schoolers over Thac0 the Clown

I cannot imagine they remember that dozens of people were momentarily angry about that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Something else not mentioned. They just did Dark Sun in 4e. I know, I know, that was a while ago...

But it was longer since WotC had touched Greyhawk, Raveloft, Spelljamer and Dragonlance as full on campaign settings.

Planescape is probably incoming, and there are other older Campaign settings not yet revived that probably should be on the thicket prior to Dark Sun being revived...

But...who knows.

Planescape is explicitly coming this year. There was a whole press event.