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.

 

[Alzrius]

As an aside, that was a really dumb change, negating both all previous portrayals of defiling and the reason why raiding tribes usually had defilers and farming/herding tribes preservers (a raiding tribe's wizard will mostly be active on someone else's home turf, and who cares about that?).

For what it's worth, Defilers and Preservers: The Wizards of Athas (affiliate link) directly addressed the change, and outlined the specifics of both options in terms of mechanics and presentation, saying that the DM could either mandate which version their campaign used, or if they left it up to the players, a player decided when making their character (and couldn't thereafter change it).

Incidentally, I can't remember if the revised campaign setting said so, but Defilers and Preservers outlined that defilers got an alternative benefit if they used the "defiling during prep" option, which was that they could prepare their spells in half the time that preservers required.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The setting actually does incentivize defiling, in that defilers advance faster than preservers (i.e. defilers have a faster XP progression). This is directly referenced in the "Sage Advice" column in Dragon #182:



Also, characters who are standing in an area as it's being defiled (except for the defiler casting the spell that defiled that area) take a penalty to initiative, though that's as likely to affect allies as it is enemies (and became less likely to affect either as of the revised boxed set, when they changed defiling so that it happened when a spell was memorized rather than cast, for some reason).

The flip side to this is that avangions ultimately end up being more powerful than dragons, but that's a very, very long trek to surpass their "easier path to power" counterparts.

The defiler experience progression is clearly a, "the Dark Side is faster, easier, more seductive" riff. They did the same thing with Black Robes in 1e's Dragonlance Adventures. It's a well-known and long running trope, one I have no problem with. After all, evil is a lot easier to resist if it provides no benefits over not-evil.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To be fair I think we are both presuming... and I can't definitively state I am any more correct than you are... but I feel like if they didn't want it to exist they wouldn't have released it... I think it also says something that people complained to actually get this option.

Perhaps people complain because they don't like options being removed from subsequent versions of a setting.

 

[Imaro]

Perhaps people complain because they don't like options being removed from subsequent versions of a setting.

Uhm... ok. Is that to say people will want a Templar in the 5e version as well? If so I think that just speaks to why WotC is avoiding this setting.

 

[James Gasik]

It's funny that this is the same company that produced a season of D&D Encounters in 4e where the party played backstabbing Drow Elves (and you had a special Treachery deck you could use to betray your fellow party members). Oh and if you refused to play a Drow, you were a slave to the Drow PC's!

Last session was almost a TPK when the Human Druid lost his mind over being treated badly by Drow.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Uhm... ok. Is that to say people will want a Templar in the 5e version as well? If so I think that just speaks to why WotC is avoiding this setting.

Some people would want templars to be available in the same way they want necromancers, assassins and black guards to be available, yes.

 

[Imaro]

Some people would want templars to be available in the same way they want necromancers, assassins and black guards to be available, yes.

Yes, and like I said... it speaks to why this setting is being avoided.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, and like I said... it speaks to why this setting is being avoided.

I am never going to be ok with the concept of removing previously available material. That said, WotC can of course make their own choices about their own content, even if I don't agree with it.

 

[Imaro]

I am never going to be ok with the concept of removing previously available material. That said, WotC can of course make their own choices about their own content, even if I don't agree with it.

Just curious... Were you ok with the removal of gender based attribute limitations?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The class features of the templars were more storytelling effect that useful crunch in the battlefield. Now templar could be only a background.

We know some players like to be the bad guys in the game, but this is not World of Darkness.

DS was very grimm in the surface, but within, in the deep, there was space for the hope. It was about to start from zero again after the fall. The sorcerer-kings were very powerful, but soon they started to fall (in the novels). The sorcerer-kings were powerful but not unstoppable, and it was about the time, sooner or later, the PCs could kick-ass them.

Wild Athasian halflings weren't canniblas but antropophages. Cannibalism is when a creature eats other of its own specie.

A reimagined DS without the original sorcerer-kings from the Tablelands are possible. Maybe it is used by Vecna to hide secret artifacts, or serious menaces against the D&D multiverse are sent to Athaspace because the risk of collateral damages is lower.

* Maybe the "Athaspace" was "rebooted" by fault of a conflict between different time-travelers and chronomancer factions. Then a "clone demiplane" imitating the original "Tablelands" has been created by the "Ageless powers". Why? Maybe this "Athas" is used as a cosmic firewall in the space-time continium.

* In Star Wars Episode 1: the phantom menace there was slavery, and it was an important part of the plot, because the main characters needed Anakin to win the race to get the freedom of the child thanks a bet.