D&D 5E Would you buy a Dark Sun setting book for 5e?

[Snarf Zagyg]

Don’t overthink it.
Dark Sun would be awesome!

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I'd probably never actually play it, but I'd want to mine it for ideas, and there would probably be some character options, which I almost always get sucked in to buying.

 

[Guest 6801328]

0% chance here.

 

[touc]

I'm a huge fan, though if they do it like 4E, shove naughty word in that doesn't belong (e.g. tieflings, dragonborn) and lazily reskin material (goliaths = half-giants), I'll run my homebrew conversion instead.

I'm not hopeful we'll see a full commitment to a Dark Sun line, or any other line. And here's why: Brand Dilution. TSR ran itself into the ground by not understanding the market. WOTC has a very good understanding of the market. It's what allowed them to buy up their ailing competitor eventually. And that understanding is that Brand Dilution means the more product you put out for alternate settings, the worse off you are. A Dark Sun player won't buy your latest Realms adventure, or Book of Goblins, because it's useless to their favored setting. Under this model, the more you diversify your line with new settings, the more you shoot yourself in the foot, and this was true for TSR. Since WOTC bought TSR after seeing this firsthand, I think they'll be gun-shy doing what TSR was doing.

So, if WOTC is following this principle, I don't expect to see much innovation, just a half-assed adaptation to plug-and-play with material we already have. I wish they'd be bold at a risk to their bottom line, but when I'm disappointed I'll understand why it had to happen the way it happened.

 

[Argyle King]

What do you feel are the best lore sources for Dark Sun from prior editions?

 

[Samloyal23]

It would need to have an update of the TW&TW psionics rules, and the half-giants would need to be Large, like they were in the original 2E rules, none of those Extra Medium half-giants we got in 3E.

 

[was]

I wouldn't totally rule out purchasing a new setting book. It would, however, take the strong recommendation of gamers that I personally know and trust, as well as the opportunity to peruse their copy, in order to motivate me.

 

[humble minion]

What do you feel are the best lore sources for Dark Sun from prior editions?

It's funny, I've been rereading a bunch of old Dark Sun stuff recently and a lot of it doesn't hold up that well, to be honest. Sorceror-kings are often written as cackling evil overlord stereotypes who nonetheless find reasons to send PCs on important quests, the geographic logic of the world is significantly lacking (there's all these grassy plains just west a bit over the mountains, why hasn't everyone moved there away from the horrible desert?), massive setting elements are never described in an official product (the Pristine Tower, for instance...) and the setting design of when it comes to things like planar travel etc is all over the place and frequently contradictory. And the amount of pagecount that goes into things like the dragon/avangion/elemental ascension process is vastly overblown, especially given how few PCs must have taken this route given how onerous the 2e dual-classing rules were.

I think that everyone who gets deeply into Dark Sun has a different mental image of what 'real Dark Sun' is, based on their home games and selective mental editing of the canon. I know there's huge chunks of 2e DS canon I'd entirely disregard if I were running a game. This is probably why everyone who wants DS back for 5e argues about it all the time - everyone played in a fundamentally different world.

If you want the best lore sources

• the original Dark Sun boxed set (not the Revised one).
• the Prism Pentad novels (I don't think they're very good as novels, and they were disastrous for the game line, but they are fundamentally important sources of lore)
• Rise and Fall of a Dragon King, the novel by Lynn Abbey. And Brazen Gambit and Darkness Before Dawn, by the same author, but less significant lore-wise. Abbey was imho by far the best writer who worked on Dark Sun fiction, and she brings the way the world works for everyday people to life better than anyone, and her depiction of Hamanu, and the lore of the origins and interactions of the Sorcerer-Kings are defining in my mind. The end of Rise And Fall can be discarded from a lore point of view, but the portrayals and history are awesome.

Beyond that depends what you want. Defilers and Preservers, Earth Air Wind and Fire, and Dragon Kings are all very 2e-mechanics-heavy sourcebooks but do contain some good lore on magic, the way elemental clerics/wizards/etc fit into the world. When it comes to regional books,Ivory Triangle is a decent location book set right where most games will take place. Valley of Dust and Fire is another well-detailed sourcebook but it's written as such a hostile place that it's unlikely PCs will ever live to get there. Thri-Kreen of Athas is well-written and contains some interesting stuff but I think it veers wildly from the core themes and logic of the setting, so I can't recommend it except as a source on roleplaying Kreen.

There are others, but I haven't read them in years, so can't really comment!

 

[Bacon Bits]

I'd love to have rules for Thri-kreen, Muls, actual non-Goliath Half-Giants, and revised stats for the other Athasian races. I'd like rules for the Athasian class kits, altered magic rules, and rules for Psionics including minor talents. I'd like a revised crude weapon materials rules and unique weapon stats. I'd like updated class spell lists. I want rules for desert survival and heat exposure. I want rules for the silt sea and the ships used on it and on the deserts. I want monster stats for all the weird dark sun creatures, and NPC stats from gladiator slaves to templar to sorcerer kings.

I don't want a lore update. I'm going back to my Dark Sun boxed sets for that. I can use that map and gazetteer (I think it has city details, it's been awhile). I don't want rules that leave the characters portable. I don't care if PC power is higher.

I can do all the above myself, but I don't have the time to do it all. I've found partial conversions before, but I don't really care for them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

A hundred acre wood would probably start wars. There would have to be quite a bit of water there.

Nah, Tigger would just spam defiler spells until it was a hundred acre desert.