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.

 

[DorkForge]

First of all, it's "judgment," not "judgement." Sorry, but that always bugs me.

I'm just going to throw this out there: On the internet you speak to people from different cultures and different degrees of language proficiency. Not only is nitpicking someone like this a bit over the top in a forum post, it's hardly like casual internet conversation is the peak of proper language discussion, you're wrong. Judgment vs judgement is an instance of US vs UK English, the e is perfectly acceptable here (the UK), so it might be best to consider what you're correcting if you're going to correct people's language outside of the topic

 

[DarkCrisis]

Honestly, much like Dragonlance, they would just have bare-minimum 5 pages of lore and then an adventure. I'm pretty sure in the 20 or less paragraphs to describe a dying desert world they can avoid everything else, again much like Dragonlance.

The only reason they may have an issue is the Old Stuff they don't want used in the DM Guild stuff. No new material, even fan made and sold on an official channel, that might be considered "to much".

 

[Alzrius]

I'm just going to throw this out there: On the internet you speak to people from different cultures and different degrees of language proficiency.

The issue with throwing things out is that sometimes your aim goes awry. Fortunately, there are people who know better and can offer correction when that happens. In this case, my tagging @Irlo with regard to using "judgement" instead of "judgment" was quite specific, as Irlo has used the latter spelling on more than one occasion. Hence, I feel comfortable that there's no claim of being British to be made as a defense (or if there is, then those other posts are where a misspelling happened).

Not only is nitpicking someone like this a bit over the top in a forum post, it's hardly like casual internet conversation is the peak of proper language discussion, you're wrong.

Leaving aside that, as it turns out, I'm not wrong (and given that @Irlo has been pedantic on other points by their own admission, I doubt they'd fault me there), there's no merit in holding people to lower standards rather than higher ones.

Judgment vs judgement is an instance of US vs UK English, the e is perfectly acceptable here (the UK), so it might be best to consider what you're correcting if you're going to correct people's language outside of the topic

You forgot to put a period at the end of that last sentence.

As for the issue of spelling in the UK, well...I'll let Rex Harrison make a salient point in that regard:

 

[DorkForge]

The issue with throwing things out is that sometimes your aim goes awry. Fortunately, there are people who know better and can offer correction when that happens. In this case, my tagging @Irlo with regard to using "judgement" instead of "judgment" was quite specific, as Irlo has used the latter spelling on more than one occasion. Hence, I feel comfortable that there's no claim of being British to be made as a defense (or if there is, then those other posts are where a misspelling happened).

I interchangeably use American and British English for a variety of reasons, I was raised heavily on American media, I frequently read things written by Americans, and I have to write in American English for my job... which is writing. Flip-flopping between the two doesn't invalidate whichever I use second, nor quite frankly, does it matter.

Leaving aside that, as it turns out, I'm not wrong (and given that @Irlo has been pedantic on other points by their own admission, I doubt they'd fault me there), there's no merit in holding people to lower standards rather than higher ones.

One is being pedantic about spell mechanics for a reason, and being transparent about it to boot, the other is being pedantic about a person just talking. And if you're on a quest to hold people to high standards regarding use of language, I have bad news for you about how languages actually function. Or perhaps I might have missed where we are speaking as if verbalising an overly-flowery bit of Shakespearean prose? You could just as easily argue that not nitpicking someone's spelling when it isn't pertinent to the topic at hand is a low social standard. So, should we hold you to that low social standard, or to a higher one?

You forgot to put a period at the end of that last sentence.

As for the issue of spelling in the UK, well...I'll let Rex Harrison make a salient point in that regard:

I did, I saw it after I posted and decided "that literally doesn't matter, there is no reason to edit that."

I got a minute into that video before I'd had enough of listening to someone prattle on about articulate speech, but I'm thoroughly confused as to why you're pointing at a movie made in 1964, based on a play from 1956, and set in 1910 as anything but a showcase of classism? From a reading of the synopsis it only really highlights that people that obsess over the perceived quality of one's speech are dreadful towards people that don't speak in a way that they deem 'correct.' It rarely ever paints the person doing it in a favourable light, meaningful inform the person it's done to of something they genuinely didn't know, and in this surrounding is 100% immaterial. You understood what they meant, the spelling is even a valid spelling in English, it has achieved everything language is meant to. Pointing out that they dared use an additional 'e' is about as relevant as a cow's opinion, it's moo

You're in a disagreement with someone and saw what you judged to be an error of English to be low hanging fruit to snipe at them.

I make no apologies for any emotional trauma caused by my deliberate omission of a period.

 

[Alzrius]

I interchangeably use American and British English for a variety of reasons, I was raised heavily on American media, I frequently read things written by Americans, and I have to write in American English for my job... which is writing. Flip-flopping between the two doesn't invalidate whichever I use second, nor quite frankly, does it matter.

It apparently matters to you a lot, given that you're intent on continuing this. I'm not sure why you think your personal experiences are indicative of anything for anyone else, but in this case you seem to be asserting that there's no such thing as a misspelling if some version of a word happens to be what's used in some other culture. Which is an...interesting take. Inaccurate, but certainly interesting.

One is being pedantic about spell mechanics for a reason, and being transparent about it to boot, the other is being pedantic about a person just talking. And if you're on a quest to hold people to high standards regarding use of language, I have bad news for you about how languages actually function. Or perhaps I might have missed where we are speaking as if verbalising an overly-flowery bit of Shakespearean prose? You could just as easily argue that not nitpicking someone's spelling when it isn't pertinent to the topic at hand is a low social standard. So, should we hold you to that low social standard, or to a higher one?

Ah yes, the old "language is fluid, so nothing is ever really wrong" bit. Yeah, no, trying to avail yourself of that idea so as to deny that there are any misspellings at all is the lowest of low standards, and not one that you can refute to try and invert the very idea of what standards mean. As for "low social standards," this entire digression that you've introduced and are continuing to run with suggests that perhaps you should practice what you preach, as you've managed to take a minor point (which you were, in fact, wrong about) and derail an entire thread with it.

I did, I saw it after I posted and decided "that literally doesn't matter, there is no reason to edit that."

So you decided that how other people use language matters, but not your own.

I got a minute into that video before I'd had enough of listening to someone prattle on about articulate speech, but I'm thoroughly confused as to why you're pointing at a movie made in 1964, based on a play from 1956, and set in 1910 as anything but a showcase of classism?

It's called "British humour," with the extra "u" and everything. I thought that you would appreciate that.

From a reading of the synopsis it only really highlights that people that obsess over the perceived quality of one's speech are dreadful towards people that don't speak in a way that they deem 'correct.'

Irony, thy name be DorkForge. (How's that for Shakespearean?)

You're in a disagreement with someone and saw what you judged to be an error of English to be low hanging fruit to snipe at them.

And you made an entire post about it. Multiple posts, in fact.

I make no apologies for any emotional trauma caused by my deliberate omission of a period.

Well, I did laugh so hard that I almost burst into tears.

 

[Kobold Stew]

So, relevant to this thread:

ASHEN FRONTIERS, a 3pp update inspired by Dark Sun, has just been announced: here.

Beowulf, by the same author, was great.

 

[SteveC]

So, relevant to this thread:

ASHEN FRONTIERS, a 3pp update inspired by Dark Sun, has just been announced: here.

Beowulf, by the same author, was great.

This is really cool. Liking that it will be for Pathfinder 2 as well. Thanks for the post and heads-up.

 

[Irlo]

@DorkForge @Alzrius

It’s just a typo, folks.

 

[Alzrius]

@DorkForge @Alzrius

It’s just a typo, folks.

A typo indeed, and certainly not worth an entire back-and-forth over. At this point, I'm willing to let bygones be bygones so we can all get back to discussing gaming.

 

[Vaalingrade]

My opinion is before allowing the cancelation

You do know we don't have any right or ability to force them to make new material for the setting or license it out to people, right?

No one here is going to 'allow' anything.