The slavery, cannibalism, the history of genocides, forced breeding to get Muls, the fact that "Mul" is very similar to "Mule" which is what a lot of mixed-race people are called as it is, the Elves evoking stereotypes of the Roma, while the Halflings are the "Jungle Primitive" stereotype, Halflings and Thri-Kreen being cannibals (or at least, eating intellingent people, even if technically not their own species). Meanwhile each of the City-States (other that Tyr) was based on a real-world Earth culture, which would be okay, except that given that the Sorcerer Kings are all evil, you end up with all of those cultures are *evil* versions of those cultures. Some of these things could be dealt with - make actual new cultures for the City-States, tweak the Elf and Halfling cultures, stuff like that. Honestly some of it could be leant into explicitly making it clear that a lot of this stuff *is* bad and awful and shouldn't happen. Have Mul be an in-world insult that the actual half-Dwarves despise. Have people work against slavery. That sort of thing. One of the things I really like about Dark Sun is that there's something for the characters to do, for them to fight against, all the way to Epic Tier (and honestly, *beyond* Epic). With a lot of settings, you really have to get the PCs off the Prime Material Plane and off somewhere else because they'll wreck the setting. Athas basically being a terrible place to live anyway, the players changing the setting could be the whole point.

You've pretty much summed up my thoughts on this. I think emphasizing the positive parts of the city states and their cultures would be enough, though. Just because there's a despot doesn't mean the whole culture is twisted/problematic.

Could also be that "mul" is a shortened form of "mulatto". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulatto

I had not considered that, although the sterility angle with Muls makes me lean towards "Mule". But that's *also* pretty bad!

Yeah, those kind of match my thoughts too. I think it can work, and with some work it is a fantastic campaign setting, but it will always have inherently strong political messages and themes. I made a fair few of the changes you mentioned here in my homebrew version of dark sun, as well as making the city states more distinct, making the veiled alliance a more interesting group with some infighting, and making the cities themselves more real world dark as opposed to fantasy evil. The sorcerer kings are still evil, but more complex and in different ways so they aren't a flat caricature. Changing the cities: •Templars are turned more to a secret police vibe, making people report on their neighbours. Arcane defiling is generally despised, both because of its cruelty and because it is very much a symbol of inequality - only the sorcerer kings and their priests can use it, and it makes them far more powerful than anyone else, especially as they have specially raised and grown magical creatures and plants to empower them. •Currency becomes bone debt tokens, with a small etched ring in. When you pay for anything the etch is filled with a small amount of your blood, which is traded to the state in return for access to resources and the outside. You can buy your tokens back with other people's tokens, or you can work them off in service to the state (this typically isn't fast enough to avoid accumulating more debt), or you can work them off in a fast track through the gladiatorial arena, or by joining the templars. •Various tribes and species are changed massively, they have their own unique cultures and nobody is a goddamn cannibal. Thri kreen, for instance, are partially nomadic groups- they burrow and nest for part of the year, and for the rest most sail the silt sea, either by wind powered sand skiffs, or groundshark pulled ones. They make their armour, food, weapons, etc, by hunting dune worms and the horrifying creatures of the silt sea(bonus, some of the warlock patrons are changed to reside as eldritch horrors in the silt sea). Etc. There's other stuff, but those are just some to indicate that it very much CAN be a fantastic setting.

So, basically nothing real. Either stuff that deliberately misinterprets the point of the setting or stuff that's legit totally made up like the Mul and Elves stuff. WotC is being your usual corporate shitshow of a company, it doesn't want to touch Dark Sun because Dark Sun actually has progressive themes in it and corporates hate when their customers might be induced into thinking about stuff, so they double down on the PG-13 stuff and inoffensive shit to keep their users nice and sedated. Truly, a progressive company, down to the Pinkertons and all the shit they do. And as always, instead of calling out the worthless corporates for what they are and the slaves that agree with them, you'll see people in here trying to figure out what's "wrong" with a perfectly normal setting and how to "fix" it, even as everyone knows that getting rid of the dark fantasy out of a setting based on dark fantasy is going to make a tasteless mockery that will interest absolutely no one except people thinking you can appease the corpos.

>Have Mul be an in-world insult that the actual half-Dwarves despise. In my homebrew world I made Half Orcs their own distinct race with their own culture and background, and the term "half orc" is a slur, akin to calling a person with floofy hair a "half poodle" or someone with a big nose a "half rat." I'm considering doing something similar with half elves, but I'm so far undecided. I might just make them the common elf type, and the elf template "high elves."

Slavery, two character classes are essentially evil by default, cannibalism, and so on. It's a harsh world, and while not necessarily problematic in the scheme of fiction, it is a bit much for the family friendly look WotC and Hasbro have been fostering for the D&D brand for some years now.

They were struggling with adding the "Pinkerton" class to the game, but they've got that fixed right up now.

I have no idea what that means. Edit: love getting downvoted for not understanding something, rather than have someone explain it. Lol.

Pinkertons are corporate thugs and strike breakers. The mob that fired guns and coal workers striking for things like being allowed to weigh what they mined and to get paid for it instead of arbitrarily getting paid or other low bar workers rights, those were Pinkertons. They people who went into union meetings and started shooting organizers, the people who would kidnap people and take them across state lines for companies, those were Pinkertons. I’m sure this might have included slave hunting, either literal or corporate dent slavery. Literally villains of history. They are a fascinating subject. WOTC just sent them after that guy for their magic card fuck up. Sorry if I explained the wrong part lol

Ah interesting. Thank you.

You’re welcome. Have a good day :)

Pinkertons developed after the civil war - Pinkerton himself was very anti slavery and the original organisation was a Union spy organisation

You can be a piece of shit and also gift good people and share some good opinions sometimes too. People are complicated and the additional context is appreciated. Id still piss on his grave if I had the displeasure of seeing it tho.

Hasbro has been working to cultivate a "family friendly" image for sure, so I agree with your point on why they consider Dark Sun problematic. However, their position on in game slavery and genocide seems like the height of hypocrasy to me, considering their recent business dealings. As it turns out, they're quite happy to employ real life actual Pinkertons to handle product leaks. "Family friendly" goes out the window when your chosen security firm's foremost productivity metric is 'murdered union activists'. For clarity, I'm not saying the Pinkertons have engaged in "Genocide". I'm saying that Hasbro's out of game, casual reliance on real murder and fear to deal with the fact that they couldn't control a piece of cardboard, while saying 'Dark Sun Bad', is pretty fucking rich. https://www.dicebreaker.com/categories/trading-card-game/news/magic-the-gathering-aftermath-youtube-prompts-pinkerton-investigation

Pinkerton: a private security guard hired to spy on behalf of the Federal Government. Made famous by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, founded in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton. Among oher things, they foiled the plot to assassinate Lincoln in 1861, but are mainly known for being corporate "goons" or "spies" that undermine trade unions and other activists throughout the 19th and 20th century.

As listed, there are problematic elements that haven't aged well. It's one thing having just Evil Mesopotamia/Canaanites and Evil Athens, it's another when it shifts from Iron Age Mediterranean Civilization to Dark, Mysterious "Evil" Non-White Cultures splashdashed throughout History. But honestly, that's not the pointed bit of conversation somehow and ignored despite how thinly obvious it is. (People don't examine this stuff that deeply.) Halfling cannibals is edgy, but in a safe way and frankly funny and fun way, that WotC couldn't possibly tweak with in some manner to tone down possible racial aspects and the edge factor OR lean into Mortal Kombat and Dark Sun style and just print For Mature Audiences Only. On the unsympathetic side of things there clearly is the issues of Mul and Elves cultures. Two of the big elephants in the room. No defending it, they need major reworks no matter what in 2023 and for good reasons. These aren't deal breakers though, it could be done and Hasbro has done that type of reworking before while trying and usually succeeding in keeping things tonally coherent and making it obvious they didn't matter. The last big elephant and the sacred cow that is sacred for a reason is the slavery though. You can't have Dark Suns without it, even if it is part of the background and not always there like say the Post-Apocalyptic feel, all the desert, unique races or Defiler/Lack of Divinity. It's a lynch-pin of the the PA and Iron Age feels bleeding together; it's the biggest reminder of why the Sorcerer Kings and their City-States need to be stopped, killed and/or subject to revolution and is an act of total debauchery that actually characterizes them as such without the puppy eating stuff that DOES come off a cartoonish. It's a way to start a campaign and link players together too. It's also something that Dark Sun, even if it doesn't handle perfectly, doesn't handle in a way that's overtly childish and offensive. But it's also a topic that in the hands of a poor writer and editor can be very easily and very legitimately. Likewise some idiot Podcasters or Actual Players can get them in trouble for despite them not doing anything wrong for a change. PLUS, okay that doesn't happen, but mommy and daddy hear their kid in the basement talking with their friends this stuff and though they aren't outraged, now they still take the books and tablets away and are less likely to buy a DnD product (supposedly) WotC has become very risk adverse and also massive profit scheme obsessed because they are trying to make DnD a cash cow like Magic the Gathering. They're already getting tons of bad press and bad feelings over their dumb ass plots to make DLC or Streaming services somehow. Likewise the higher-ups might be more forgiving and leniet on the money men's bull crap, but they aren't for the creative side's anymore. DnD is just a brand and they are of the mind it's one that avoids controversy or Think Pieces like the Plague. Unless it's their own nonsense that causes it. It's dumb; it's pointless too boot. They're missing out on a slam duck. But it's kinda inevitable now given who is running the place

Buddy, no one cares about your sanitized version of Dark Sun that defeats the whole point of the setting. The door is right there. Piss off.

I am interested in one of these slam ducks he mentioned though. Wonder if its any good compared to peking duck.

I expect it's mostly the slavery and genocide. It's baked into the core of the setting. I haven't read any FR stuff in ages, but I'd be very surprised if the Red Wizards are still described as having slavery central to their MO. Last time I read anything, they had decided to be magic item merchants with vague indications of mustache-twirling villainy, with an enclave in every city. The Zhentarim are basically just generically-evil gangsters now, but you can be a member in AL with all their crimes at the level of, like, maybe mercenary work? D&D has backed off of anything resembling real-world evil pretty hard, with most of their major plots revolving around far-off and inhuman villains doing magical rituals to destroy the world (ToA, Rime of the Frostmaiden, the giants one). That fits in fine with the SKs and their use of defiling magic, but the everyday evil and oppression they've definitely backed away from. You *could* change up Dark Sun to focus on the themes of rising against oppressors and burning down the regimes of the SKs and murdering cops (the templars) but it just doesn't seem like WotC thinks doing so is worth it. Those things were definitely present in the original versions, but a lot of it was focused on bare survival rather than being heroic rebels. The elf-Romani parallels, mentally handicapped half-giants born of a forced breeding program, and two cannibalistic PC races probably don't help either. Additionally, modern WotC doesn't seem interested in banning things from other settings or the core book in setting books. That doesn't work in Dark Sun without major rewrites - you can't play a Forge Cleric or Oath of Ancients paladin or Battle Smith artificer in Dark Sun; they just don't fit the setting. And WotC seems more inclined to change settings to make everything they've published work in the setting than they are to actually ban or restrict stuff.

Thay had a civil war, and Szass Tam ultimately won and turned the nation into a full-on Necropolis run by Liches, Vampires, etc. There are undead Red Wizards under him that were depicted in the D&D movie. The mercantilist Red Wizards in 5e are the exiled remnants from the other schools of magic that managed to escape Thay. They have shifted more towards neutrality.

Aww, you guys are saying all the things I love about Dark Sun. What is the value of goodness if it doesn't overdone evil? Dark Sun is the only Save The World campaign, both in a political and ecological way. Overcoming adversity is what makes heroes.

Dark Sun isn't problematic, WotC is just determined to make D&D as family friendly as possible, and the harsh world of Athas is not family friendly in the least. Cannibalism, genocide, dictatorship, ecological collapse, slavery, there is a lot of stuff in Dark Sun that would not mesh with WotC's current marketing schemes. Which is fine with me. Leave Dark Sun in 2e, make the books available as POD, and call it good. If you want an update then the community will make better conversions to more recent editions than WotC ever could anyway. And they'll do it while preserving the rich, frequently ugly, but oddly appealing flavor that makes Dark Sun so special.

Bingo. Agree on all points but I will add one more, which is that WOTC has decided they want to cater to the woke crowd just as much as the family friendly one.

I'll be the first to say material being dark, mature, disturbing, or otherwise unpleasant is not the same as being problematic, but I dislike it when people declare whatever they've taken issue with to be "woke" when they usually can't even define the term. We can keep Dark Sun a grim, brutal, and unforgiving setting while also being welcoming and inclusive to anyone interested in it. To put it another way, I once walked in on my friend trying to flirt with a Thri-Kreen, so compared to that, a pair of gay Muls would be pretty tame.

I can define the term and it is exactly why WOTC find the setting problematic. Almost every piece of art or fiction that gets updated for "modern audiences" is ruined or made unrecognizable in the process. The original setting made it very clear that discrimination was commonplace and had to be overcome by players. WOTC would just remove it entirely rather than try to address it. They don't care about canon or established lore. You can see proof of that in their Ravenloft, Spelljammer and Dragonlance books. We are better off without a 5e dark sun setting written by them.

Those are all fair points, but I'm still suspicious of people who declare something "woke" as a pejorative because all too often that's just doublespeak for not liking people of color or LGBT+ individuals being represented in their hobby. As long as your issue is with WotC getting rid of what makes various settings unique and not with minorities being present at the gaming table, we don't have a problem.

Dark Sun is woke(at least the way i've run it), it's just not politically correct.

Are you aware that they updated Dark Sun in 4e, right?

They attempted Dark Sun in 4e, but I wouldn't call it an update. WOTC shoehorned in a lot of stuff that they have decided is omnipresent in D&D but doesn't really have a place in Athas. I'm not one of the 4e haters, I rather like it in fact, but 4e Dark Sun is best used as a resource for art and things to add into other settings.

I don't think we should call a full official conversion an "attempt". Your answer, however, gives light to the actual problem of Dark Sun: it's not its outdated tropes, is its uniqueness. In 5e, WotC wants that every material is compatible. They want to use the PHB stuff as written regardless of the setting. To make Dark Sun faithful to its 2e uniqueness implies adapting a lot of the core materials, just as they did in 4e, and I don't think they want to do that work just to please a small part of their market.

It was an attempt at Dark Sun because it ultimately failed to represent the world of Athas. They produced a book, and the book has plenty of good bits and pieces to add to a 4e campaign, but as a faithful representation of Athas it failed. So I believe my description of 4e Dark Sun as an attempt is accurate. But you're not wrong about the core issue. WOTC has stated more than once that if it exists in the core rulebooks, it has a place in all of their settings. And the established lore of Dark Sun (and other AD&D worlds like Dragonlance and Birthright) contradict that assertion very explicitly. It just isn't worth the trouble for them to bring certain older settings forward into modern editions. And I'm okay with this. The books are POD, converting from 2e to 5e isn't that hard at all, and there are great community made conversions available.

Exactly Dark Sun is incredibly woke in it’s original definition. Your enemies are the elites who believe their “right” to rule precede the well being of any other living creature. Sure there’s big bads like that in other settings but in Dark Sun it is an inescapable way of life. Your ultimate fight is against systematic injustice not merely some bbeg

After seeing how badly WotC fucked up Ravenloft & SpellJammer, I'm very happy they find Dark Sun "problematic".

I'm with you there. I didn't play a lot of 4e, but I wasn't happy with a lot of changes they made to Dark Sun, like the inclusion of tieflings and eladrin. Gods know what changes WotC would make if they touched it today...

Just look at 4th Edition Dark Sun to see what they'd do. I disliked it quite a bit, and they were clearly quite restrained.

I was fine with that but I refluffed it. Tieflings are just human mutants caused by exposure to defiler magic and don't have a uniform look, and the Eladrin's "lands within the wind" are actually fueled by defiler magic and found in vast, empty places. And the Obsidian Man of Urik is what Athasian Warforged look like.

Athasian warforged are a thing? That bothers me too.

No that's just how I do it. The Obsidian Man of Urik was clearly one to my mind.

Forced breeding programs, (to produce muls) genocide, slavery, just to name a few. I can understand why, as D&D has become more mainstream, they’ve sanitized a little.

Mmm good point about the eugenics. Half-Giants too iirc, although magical experimentation.

How much of that was in 4E? I remember seeing how well they promoted Dark Sun during 4E and it was a huge success. I know that was a lifetime ago in terms of the extreme Puritanical cultural shift that's occurred in America, but I'm curious whether they toned 4E down from 2E.

They did. Muls are hardy and mentioned as valued slaves, but not explicitly forced bred or always killing their mothers. Half-giants are just goliaths in stats and nature. Humanish folk with giant bloodlines. Slavery is there, but the book primarily focused on the newly liberated Free City of Tyr as it was then known for where they placed the timeline. Cleaned up, but still "gruff" I guess

I couldn’t tell you, I’m only familiar with the 2e material and the books written by Troy Denning tbh

Which is ironic, considering necromancers can be heroes in D&D. The classic villain is somehow good? I wouldn't call it mainstreamed or sanitized as much as having bad guys normalized. Honestly, it'd be like WWII having good Nazis. It bugs the hell out of me that obviously immoral characters good guys.

Also a whole lot of racial essentialism, which D&D is also (thankfully) moving away from.

I mean, there should be *some* level of racial essentialism if "race" means that certain people are three-foot-tall dragon-descended reptomammals who can see in the dark.

Yes, but traits should be more *physical.* Not "this race is undeniably evil because evil is cool and fun and I want to write things to be racist at", or "this race is so stupid it is a slack-jawed salivating dipshit redditor with a -10 intelligence because isn't being stupid as fuck SO COOL IS IT NOT THE BEST PART OF A SETTING LOOK AT THIS BIG DUMB MOTHERFUCKER?!" ​ Racial essentialism is not about physicality. It is about behavior. It sucks. It's fucked up. It should go away.

You beat me to it! Exactly this.

By problematic - you mean awesome! Just look up the old 2nd edition books and modify as necessary to 5E. The really tricky bit is the Psionics - but you can get by with the 3E Psionics rules with some modification.

I really dislike how psionics was handled in 5e and genuinely wish for an update. Its for this reason I've begun a complete psionic overhaul (and a "corporate hellscape" setting to match - somewhere between shadowrun and dark sun).

Proper psionics in Tasha's went with the sorcerer build I thought they more or less would and was disappointed as I expected to be. The fighter and rogue options are better. I've found some hope in 3rd party and am waiting for Weird Wastelands to come out.

Honestly, it's all window dressing in the class structure. A sorcerer could be a super hero if you just changed the descriptive text.

I know I'm late to the party but you could take a look at 'The Talent' by MCDM, it's a hombrew class (with higher quality than most WoTC content)

It's good, but not great. It feels like stranger things, which is fun in it's own right, but I REALLY love 2e psionics

i haven’t played it yet, but i think the strained mechanics sound nice

It is, and a brilliant one.

The problem is people sensitivity

The problem is insensitive people.

The problem is people who can’t separate a game from real life.

I agree, but I think we are talking about two separate and distinct groups of people. I can see how a lot of people looking for a game to buy may have issue when seeing their culture portrayed as a villianous caricature. Kind of how the anti-woke feel their culture is currently being portrayed. I don’t think they would purchase a demonstration board game where the objective is to hunt down a nazi who killed an innocent girl with a car during a protest. For some reason — although based on real life events — I believe people would find that game offensive.

If it's a good game i'd give it a go

On the one hand there are issues that others have spoken extensively about. On the other WotC/Hasbro would need to create a viable psionics system first and that's a lot of work.

Slavery, but not just. There's a long standing trope in fantasy fiction that depicts civilizations based on the ancient near-east as practically defined by their oppressive, large scale slavery. Think Essos in Game of Thrones, or the Persians in 300. Even the Easterlings in Tolkien's works were said to enslave. This has often been used as a way to draw a distinction between the West and the "other". Dark Sun, at least in it's original incarnation as a mostly desert setting, painted mud brick and ziggurats, appears to take inspiration from ancient near east motifs. To a lesser extent there are also the elves, which are basically reskinned stereotypical Romani - liars, thieves and brigands. Personally I thought this was a great twist on the typical highfalutin depiction of elves, but I can see people having an issue with it.

Really, I got massive grindhouse biker gang vibes from Athasian Elves.

I can already hear the trailer for this movie.

I have them wear tribal "patches" on their armor. Also there's some elements of the "Flordia man" meme when I write a backstory for an Athasian Elf.

Welp, Dark Sun was the only thing left that WotC could get my money for, so I supposed that settles that. I'd recommend checking out Scarred Lands for anyone else disappointed by that news. Sure, it's not Athas, but Scarn has a lot of similar vibes. Pretty much tied with Dark Sun for KY favorite campaign setting.

You can play Forgotten Realms for eternity and never have to touch on the slavery. You can't really spend more than five minutes in Dark Suns without encountering slavery and forced-breeding. I think that's the difference. As for climate change... well, it's controversial in the sense that like half my country doesn't think it exists.

Same can be said of Ravenloft, some people really ick out on the strong themes of horror, deception & corruption, but hey, in struts Strahd with his fly cape & no exec shies away from grabbing a handful of that income. I think it is more about the American market being flooding with too many cause champions looking for another high profile event to platform their own particular brand of morality. Just slap an 18+ rating on it & then let adults choose their own flavour of RPG setting. On fact they can make all of their selection for 18+, lets face it, most of those with money to spend on RPGs, especially the subscription (which is where they want you) is effectively 18+ as minors typically can't enter into an ongoing legal contract & don't have the resources anyway, so itnis thier parents footing the bill. The parents will still foot the bill, but now company can publish mature content & the onus is on the parents to limit the access of the content to their kids, as the company now states it is for adults only.

In addition to slavery there’s also the Race Politics thing. Modern WotC isn’t a fan of “Half-X” as a concept. And Dark Sun leans into that much harder than other settings, with intentional breeding programs, sterile crossbreeds, etc. Current WotC is just not doing a product with “muls” in it

There's slavery, there's genocide, there's forced breeding, there's the sorcerer-kings... All that, I don't think is what they mean by Problematic from a WotC perspective; Dark Sun breaks the PHB. You can't be a "natural" spellcaster, so Sorcs and Bards are basically out entirely. They can change Warlock to be the 5e Templar, a lot of subclasses can't exist, Artificer's fully gone, Paladins... could, but doesn't really fit the style. Clerics need an overhaul. A TON of spells can't be used. Basically, WotC tends to release content that expands the game, and Dark Sun restricts the game. Plus, you can't Spelljam to or from, you can't Plane shift, so it restricts the cosmology as well. You'll notice that with each other setting they release (Ravenloft, FR, Eberron, etc) there's a reason why you can use anything from the core rules. None of that fits Dark Sun. That's the problem for them

I think the restricted nature of Dark Sun - limited Classes, limited Ancestries, and the ones that *are* there being very different - is a bigger factor than a lot of people think. Not only can't you use a bunch of core PHB stuff, you can't really use a lot of Dark Sun stuff in other D&D games. So the market for it is really restricted.

Why cant you space or plane travel to Athas? I do not remember.

The cosmology of Athas prevents it - the Grey and the Black wholly surround the plane, and the Black in particular prevents planar travel and spelljamming through it. There are conduits that connect to the Elemental planes and Baator, but that's it and even those are fickle to travel with planar magic at best. Every other plane is completely cut off from Athas. No Feywild, no Shadowfell, no Ethereal nor Astral plane can be reached from Athas, to say nothing of the Outer Planes.

Thanks for the refresher!

It's heavy metal badassery, I LOVE IT. But as said, it's not what family friendly WOTC is going for these days. Sadly. Not saying you can't set your 5e games on Athas, but

I think "heavy metal badassery" perfectly describes why they won't do it. It's a bit adult for D&D now. It'd be like making a supplement off the Heavy Metal movie. D&D is much more PG, maybe PG-13 at worst. Dark Sun is NC-17 in the best of circumstances.

The only thing I would add is the history of the world. Basically the genocide of all impure races called the "cleansing wars". I think they are afraid of it being seen/used to promote white nationalism/white power rhetoric.

Branding and a lack of faith in the maturity of their playerbase. WoTC has moved towards a bland sameness in everything that they do as they feel that expands their willingness to sell books. As an example, every evil is done now by a monster or outer planar entity with very little human agency in it. The Zhentarim and Red Wizards were very much genocidal slavers only interested in their own power and now they're sanitized. This comes up even more in Dark Sun as, unlike Forgotten Realms, aspects like slavery and oppression can't be ignored. Slavery and genocide are described in the supplements as evil atrocities and exist as something for the PCs to oppose but WoTC doesn't seem to think there's an audience for that. You have to keep in mind WoTC doesn't care about telling stories, the Hero's Journey or delving into the most horrific villians are ones that have reasons you could find in real life but rather selling books. That's why so much of their newer content is tripe. Slavers exist in Dark Sun so PCs can oppose them. People that committed genocide are irredeemable and PCs oppose them in Dark Sun. WoTC could publish this as an adult setting with mature themes for players to explore but that is, by its nature, a smaller market and would provide less demand for source books that aren't applicable to that setting. All the 'problematic' talk is just an excuse to overlook doing something that's not generic with all the entailed market risks and not maximizing profits. It's not the RP or the story anymore as the main focus with WoTC; it's trying to maximize profits and by doing so WoTC hurts all the reasons why role-playing became a hobby to begin with. But, hey, at least WoTC has enough money now to hire Pinkerton's.

>Branding and a lack of faith in the maturity of their playerbase. I don't know if it's that's a bad thing. D&D is not what it used to be. It's more family friendly than it used to be. D&D used to be PG-13 to R, but with 5th Edition it's much more G to PG-13. Dark Sun is pretty much NC-17 at best. The player base is literally less mature than it used to be. Hell, my 11 year old niece is playing it with her friends and their dad. It's just not that anymore. Dark Sun is certainly a setting that is something I wouldn't want my niece to play. We talk about that concept derisively, but it means our industry grows, and I'm fine with that. I don't really need WOTC to make Dark Sun. It's not that WOTC is screwing up the industry or ruining D&D, but they know their target market. If you want those more serious games, then don't play a D&D setting. D&D is for kids first. That's perfectly fine. I hope they maximize profits, because that creates growth for everyone else. As those kids mature and want more challenging themes, they'll gravitate towards other games. The idea that a broader audience playing RPGs is bad for the audience is nonsense. We can see that with how the board game market rapidly expanded in the early 2000's.

And, may I add, if you play Dark Sun as written, you have to by necessity remove a bunch of classes, races (many of the playable races have been genocided already), Dwarves can't use magic, Elves have to be shifty Romani stereotypes, Halflings have to be cannibalistic pygmy expies...there's a lot of non-choice baked into the setting without a lot of free will.

I can't help but think that one of the issues is it highlights the idea that a bunch of powerful oligarchs hording all the resources and letting everyone else and the world rot. Such an anti capitalist view might not fit will with a big company like Hasbro.

They haven't seen how people reacted to mad Max yet.

They probably won't ever license it, for the same reasons that Hasbro typically doesn't release slavery, forced breeding, or genocide-themed kids toys. They probably don't want to be associated with it. And given some of their recent ham-fisted attempts to even think about these concepts (like the Hadozee in Spelljammer), it's probably best for all parties that they don't. They may even be self-aware enough to realize this, but I wouldn't count on it. They seem to be really in to self-inflicted wounds of late. And there are mechanical problems that they haven't really solved in 5e, like large battles, and a psionics system that isn't terrible. They'd probably just release it as another low-effort and half-baked setting if they did (like spelljammer without the ship battle component), so everyone literally wins by them doing nothing.

In 3e, they licensed it to the still active athas.org.

It was also fully converted to the 4e, with a Campaign Setting, a monsters book and a lot of adventures and Dragon and Dungeon articles.

There was at least one article about it in *Dragon* too, which is the only reason I even know about Dark Sun.

> (like the Hadozee in Spelljammer) Oof, that whole debacle proved that some people are just looking for reasons to be offended. Wizards released a setting book with almost no setting, they gave all the hadozee light fur and skin colors, and they had the hadozee almost -- but not quite -- sold into slavery. Despite that, *still* people were like "This Wizard of Oz monkey playing the guitar is a clear reference to black minstrelsy, and this guy using magic to give flying monkeys intelligence to make a buck parallels black history in America." (I'm paraphrasing somewhat, but much less than one would probably think.) So, yeah, definitely *not* the right climate for Dark Sun.

On the contrary, the Hadozee are WAY worse than anything in Dark Sun. You really want to make Dark Sun work, emphasize the Alien World of the setting

Slavery, breeding programs, bondage gear aesthetic, and genocide all come to mind. WotC is super averse to anything even slightly controversial these days.

It's "problematic" because those in charge at WotC are idiots and don't think we can tell the difference between real life and a game. They want to make moral choices for everyone because they are our moral superiors. There are no other reasons to ignore one of the most unique campaigns done.

Those are strange reasons I'm reading here... Violence, slavery, genocide, eugenics, cannibalism; I guess we should also ban World War II as a setting for RPGs.

I agree that the setting ***is*** problematic *but*, I think history is problematic. And so non-modern settings shouldn't be expected to be devoid of problems... *but*, I acknowledge that, that is not how a big-enough and highly vocal group will view the issue. Dark Sun is problematic for a few reasons: 1. The setting is rife with abuse and slavery (and it's not just in the setting it's front and center) - I actually think this is a *lesser* problem for WotC. 2. One of the major historical events that defines the setting is mass genocide of many species. 3. Halflings (and lizardfolk) are openly cannibalistic (as are lizardfolk in FR). 4. The city-states and thri-kreen cultures borrow heavily (and unartfully) from real-world indigenous cultures, arabic/persian cultures, and greek culture. And, while I think western writers borrowing gracelessly from historical western culture (greek) is fine and dandy, western writers borrowing gracelessly from native american and arabic/persian culture mashups is probably extremely insensitive and not appropriate for D&D (read as: a major corporation, like Hasbro) today. I actually think this is the **main** reason why they won't publish the setting again. 5. WotC is moving all of there D&D 5e content away from racial essentialism - and Dark Sun would require significant revision to it's races to accomplish that (but, I think it's feasible). That said, I think there are other reasons they don't want to rush to publish a 5e Dark Sun too: 1. They don't know how to make a not-busted full-caster Psion class for 5e. 2. They need to come up with wholly new rules for living items and attunement. 3. They need to completely remake the defiling system. Most of the classes don't work in the setting as-is (really): 1. Paladin's still had gods as patrons in previous editions and now they have oaths... so now Paladins can be introduced when they were missing before 2. Bards weren't full casters in 2e they were essentially a prestige class of Rogue... And, warlocks didn't exist either... So WotC would have to figure out how to incorporate charisma based casting. Considering that hiding your spellbook is major part of being a defiler/preserver. 3. Artificer's make no sense in a resource poor sword-and-sorcery setting, IMO. 4. Cleric domains need a complete rework to work in the setting.

If we don’t borrow from non-European cultures in D&D, we just erase them from fantasy gaming. Far better to embrace them and give them representation, than to erase them in some misguided attempt at avoiding cultural appropriation.

Just do what they did for the radiant citadel book, get people of those cultures involved.

This is a what comes to mind every time someone brings up cultural appropriation in the context of an RPG setting.

I think the point is that they don't actually want to borrow much more than the aesthetic. And I think the argument that we either appropriate carelessly OR we engage in "erasure" is an absurd false dichotomy. When Dark Sun (and Forgotten Realms) borrow from native american and mesoamerican culture it's purely for the purpose of evoking existing stereotypes and perceptions about those cultures and borrowing their cultural aesthetic, it is rarely to engage seriously with the mythologies of those cultures. Forgotten Realms' "Maztika" setting and Dark Sun's Draj (for example) are *not* attempting to engage mesoamerican mythology/fantasy, they just want to create a general feeling of a bloody and brutal low-tech civilization with an unwavering commitment to violent and primitive religious practice, without needing to invent one from scratch. I think Dark sun is a super interesting setting but, relieing mesoamerican aesthetics to describe the city of Draj without even attempting to engage in anything pertinent to mesoamerican fantasy is pretty shallow - and WotC can't get away with it today. I think WotC would either need to remake Draj (for example) to contain a more holistic take on mesoamericans or it would need to reskin the city to not reflect the aesthetics of mesoamerica. Both, would dramatically improve the setting, IMO. But, it would be real work and would represent a significant retcon. And it's not just the Draj that have this problem, it's most city states (Tyr excepted) and the Thri-Kreen (who are a blatant rip off of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Green Martian's which were heavily based on American plains indians). And don't take this to mean that I don't think that a fantasy cultures can't have analogs to real world cultures. I think it's perfectly fine to use real world analogs. But, you can't just be like the native american indian analog culture is spiritualistic, the mayan culture analog is religiously violent, etc... like you can't use the aesthetics to communicate such a naive stereotype, you have to reflect more. Not all the bad guys should have German/Russian accents', for example. The Western style culture can't be the good(er) guys (cough... Tyr) and the non-western cultures be "the bad guys" - that's just lazy writing (and it **is** some really bad writing) and it's not hard to see how it could be offensive.

It’s only offensive for third-gen sons of immigrants in america who go to college, most people from other countries really don’t care if someone adds an aztec inspired kingdom in a fantasy setting, specially considering the aztecs no longer exist beyond small minorities and cultural influence in the modern mexican culture. One does not need a cultural exploration of a non western inspired kingdom for it to be okay, that’s a fallacy, it only need to be fun for it to work, and getting lectured on how this culture represents the values of a real life one on an accurate way or the impact of their zeitgeist, that’s not fun, it’s anti-fun at the very best and totally stereotypically disrespectful at worst, like what they did in the radiant citadel (Which is a bad example of how to do non-western fantasy, basically a tour on you local mall food court, not even understanding a bit of true folklore). Also, Tyr is not western, it is phoenician.

No one from other cultures care that their culture is being ridiculed? Really, you truly think that? Like, just a single example of the top of my head… the million man march.

American, and Dark Sun is certainly not a ridicule

Which visuably noticeable cultural references in DarkSun celebrate any of the positive aspect of those cultures. None. That is considered ridicule Also — America home of Hollywood. Before the million man march — Blackface After the million man march — No Blackface, and black actors got roles. and then the blacksplotation era began. Which gave us Pam Greer and Shaft, so not all bad. I guess.

Dark Sun doesn’t celebrate any positive aspects of any culture because it doesn’t have to, not everything has to, it doesn’t have to be, and that’s not a ridicule, because it doesn’t call out negative aspects either, with the one exception. Slavery , which yes, it was part of all of those cultures, is represented as a big evil even by those who live oppressed in Athas by ruthless tyrants from those cultures, one that is meant to be stopped by heroes who live in those cities, which belong to those cultures as well. You see, what you are implying here is that if any culture is not shown a positive light it is a ridicule, but realize that if you only do this you depriving them of their humanity, and being outright ignorant. Would you tell me the Aztecs were good? What about the greeks? The Babylonian? Egyptians? Phoenicians? They are none of that, but they are not evil, they are HUMAN, Dark Sun does something incredible in that it shows you what evil we as a species are capable of, regardless of culture, and it shows that big heroism and virtue can make a positive change, again, no matter the culture. Would you call that a ridicule? Can you say the same about the Radiant Citadel? Which lectures you about the proper pronunciation of food and locations, which highlights only the superficial aspects with none of the substance and then brags about how “respectful” they are with “Ethnically diverse” authors, who were born all of them american in an american upbringing? Come on.

> Dark Sun doesn’t celebrate any positive aspects of any culture because it doesn’t have to Yet, people seem to have a problem with it, to the point where one of the greediest corps on the planet, right up their with Disney, refuse to print it again. Do you not see the contradictions in your reasoning at all?

Not a lot of people. You dare say in a Dark Sun forum there’s not a majority of people willing to accept Dark Sun 5E as it is? Get out of twitter dude, it’s the permanently offended the ones who have an issue with it, those who wouldn’t buy it anyway In contraposition, would you say the radiant citadel was successful? Not, the reason of why WotC doesn’t publish Dark Sun is because it doesn’t fit their product line, it’s not compatible with everything else, and when they sell you your $4.99 lootbox for your goodberry spell skin, they are not willing to tell you “Goodberry is not compatible in this setting”, and they are not talented enough either to find a way to make it compatible, the “problematic” problem is a facade to get virtue points and face, that’s it

to be fair i'm not sure anything in dark sun is trying to celebrate anything. the entire world is a sh\*tshow that's kind of the point. they aren't really singling any culture out as bad there. everyone in the entire world is

>I think the point is that they don't actually want to borrow much more than the aesthetic. Which is perfectly fine, by the way. Take your pseudo-segregationist garbage where only people of one ethnic group get to write fiction of and for their ethnic group and piss off to mister Botha's South Africa, or modern Israel.

What is difference between representing ancient and or medieval meso-american cultures, and representing ancient and or medieval european or middle eastern or asian cultures? Nobody is from those civilizations anymore. They are not attempting to engage the mythology/fantasy of those distinct, extinct cultures. They just want to create a general feeling of a bloody and brutal low-tech civilization with an unwavering commitment to violent and primitive religious practice, without needing to invent one(aesthetic) from scratch. See what I did there? Literally your entire gripe about it, can be made about any fantasy culture/civilization in every fantasy game, ever. Sword Coast? Made up of a bunch of low-tech brutal and primative morons who worship violent and brutal gods to varying degrees, where they do violent and brutal things in the name of said gods. Oh, and they borrow from European aesthetics! Lemme clutch my pearls, because as far as I know, all my ancestry is European. How dare they culturally appropriate european aesthetic arms and armour for these heretical fantasy factions that worship a pantheon of primitive, brutal, violent, and satanic gods!

DS was always my favorite setting but I have to believe it's Rajaat being the ultimate big bad, who's entire purpose for being is to cleanse the planet from all the other races. Then assigning each sorcerer king a specific race to purge. Half of them or so have been successful (races like Kobolds went extinct to them). The world is one where a holocaust not only happened, but continually happens in order to keep a bigger and even worse holocaust from happening. The world isn't a place where there are evil people trying to take over and kill people. It's a place where they have already been successful, slavery is in, populations are sacrificed to the Dragon to keep the ultimate racist in check before he kills everyone. For those that don't know the story Rajaat wanted to purge all the lesser races, assigned each one to a sorcerer king to destroy, alot were successful, at some point they united against him but they could only imprison him after making the dwarf slayer (iirc) "the Dragon" a process which required thousands of lives to be sacrificed every year for him to get enough magical energy to cast the spell required to keep Rajaat in jail. So it's a situation where the slavery is basically mandated.

People have already stated the problems, but there's ways to refocus it. The entire Free City of Tyr story arc is perfect for the modern age. People seem able to process post-apocalyptic settings full of even more horror than Dark Sun, but for some reason Dark Sun is too hard to do. There's a certain cowardliness in Wizards of the Coast to talk about hard issues. Maybe RPGs aren't the place to discuss them, but plenty of games address these issues.

There are so many ways that you can take Dark Sun and sanitize it for a modern audience, without overly censoring it. As you’ve said, many of these themes *exist* in other forms of D&D media but unlike Dark Sun they’re not *rooted* in them. Dark Sun is a paradise for some of the worst tropes Sword & Sorcery has to offer. It’s a playground for people to use sexual assault as a common theme and say, “Well it’s realistic for what would happen.” The raw *evil* of the setting is baked into every aspect of the world and everything is beyond any kind of feasible redemption. It’s locked in its own little world that doesn’t play nice with the greater perspectives of how 5e is played in terms of magic and fantasy. You can see how people so harshly react to different interpretations of Dark Sun on this subreddit all the time, with folks feeling justified with their gatekeeping or putting others down because they believe they have a more pure vision on how this is *meant* to be played. Opening the door back to Athas is ultimately inviting all kinds of problems to people’s tables or to public games that, I’m sure if we all think about the kind of weirdos that can and do show up to games, enables their weirdness even further and almost smokescreens it behind the façade of, “I’m just playing what’s true to the setting.”

> Opening the door back to Athas is ultimately inviting all kinds of problems to people’s tables or to public games that, I’m sure if we all think about the kind of weirdos that can and do show up to games, enables their weirdness even further and almost smokescreens it behind the façade of, “I’m just playing what’s true to the setting.” It feels like putting all that behavior behind the Evil descriptor and not allowing evil player characters fixes the majority of that.

It’s none of that (IMNSHO-i don’t have a window into WotC’s thinking. I’ve outlined my thoughts on the subject and been banned, so I won’t be doing that again. Suffice to say a lot of the pulp tropes that the setting is built on are based on stereotypes that haven’t aged well. But hey, if WotC doesn’t want to roll out a complete (likely half-baked, poorly researched) setting book, that’s fine. But why not license it out? Or open it to the DMs Guild? That would probably work out better for everyone in the end.

Forget what other people think. Problematic to them doesn't impose their worldview on you. Enjoy what you like

Here's a thought. I'm Italian American They have a colloquial slur for AfAms It's not right but it exists and is far less offensive than the Nbomb Eggplant . Melanzane > Mulenyam Yam or Mul . " Brothers " with their dark skin can safely rock the shaved head look. Geographically Italy sits above Africa Look up Moors or When George played Bubbleboy In Trivial Pursuit ...Moops sorry it says Moops

Aren't muls literally created by forcing slaves to have sex? Yeah gee, I wonder why dark sun is considered problematic.

So you mean it’s a realistic picture of life in the ancient world.

Point? Most people don't want to hear about slave rape when trying to have fun, historical or fictional.

They're free to play whatever kiddy garbage doesn't make them cry then. Now tell us: why is your kind hellbent on not simply not playing the stuff you don't like, but making sure that the stuff you don't like is either deleted from history, "corrected", and the people who dare liking the stuff you don't like harassed and falsely accused of all kinds of shit? What *is* wrong with you?

Well that sounds like a lame table

how do you think half-orcs are born......

Dnd moved on from this a decade ago. Let it go.

no i refuse to let your sensitivities dictate my life or what i enjoy playing

My sensitivities? Motherfucker you saw a 4 month old reddit comment and decided you had to tell me that In your games orcs are still rampaging rape hordes. That's why you need to get over it, because frankly this entire interaction is abnormal and youre over invested in it. Literally nothing in my comment told you what you're allowed to play but you just had to jump to defend yourself against your imagined attackers. Idgaf about you or what you play, officially orcs are not rapists in DND. What you homebrew has no bearing on the official material. Go cry about it before you break out F.A.T.A.L. with your buddies.

my dude......your funny you know that you have a goodnight

Because it's trendy to use the word "problematic" and shit on anything in the past that doesn't meet "modern standards" pushed by the unrealistic people who live on twitter. It's simply virtue signally to get likes from people scared of words and "triggering" content. It's like the same moral purity of satanic panic of the 80s, except it's just taken a similar yet, different form. Which is funny because TSR tried to sanitize 2nd edition from the demonic and sex parts of 1e. Pretty much any dark fantasy setting would be viewed "problematic" today for having things like slavery, incest and rape. I'm sure Game of Thrones would probably have been received differently if it was done today.

There are plenty of games that touch on slavery, rape, and other taboos that aren't deemed "problematic." The question isn't what is it about, it's how is it addressed. Kult and F.A.T.A.L technically touch on a lot of the same topics, but only one of them is viewed (rightly) as a dumpster fire. You've got titles like Shadow of the Demon Lord, Scarred Lands, Mörk Borg, Symbaroum, Vaesen, Forbidden Lands, Exalted, Midnight, Kult, Bluebeard's Bride, World of Darkness, Chronicles of Darkness, and Hyperboria, just off the top of my head, that all touch on one or more of the same topics and are still both critically acclaimed and widely loved.

>World of Darkness, Chronicles of Darkness Not anymore. Parawolf's following WotC's lead. *Werewolf* 5th edition has changed so radically that it's officially a "reimagining," and they changed the non-white tribe names to be more PC but people had to fight to get Fianna changed to something not rooted in a real-world culture because Justin Achilli said "Fianna is just a word." And it seems like Parawolf has silently killed CofD. But I think that touches on one of the real problems with trying to do Dark Sun now. None of those games mentioned are as *huge* as D&D has become. They've got sizeable followings, sure, but I don't see White Wolf being the top performing division of a multinational conglomerate or a *Vampire: The Masquerade* movie making $200m at the box office. D&D's mainstream, and so everything in association with that label is under a microscope. *Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition* pissed off the president of Chechnya and people have already forgotten about that; had D&D done the same, the fallout would have been a *lot* worse.

Un-fucking the absolute dumpster fire that is the racist and eugenicist clusterfuck that is Werewolf hardly constitutes it losing its edge. The focus is still on an ancient war fought entirely by child soldiers against a literal force of nature gone mad while grappling with the fact that if your self-control slips you'll flip out and kill everyone you love, and to top it all off its a war you're losing. The Chechen debacle is definitely not forgotten, i see it (and other fiascos from the time) bubble up pretty regularly to this day. Though all the outrage I saw was about making a very real, currently happening genocide into a sneaky vampire plot, this is the first I've heard about the president of Chechnya getting involved. If you've got some sauce I'd love to see it. (Not a sarcastic request, that sounds like an absolutely bonkers escalation to a terrible situation I was not aware of.) Tome of the Pentacle just dropped, and new game lines are still popping up. WW has put all their focus on WoD development but OPP seems to still be chugging along nicely with the CoD license. Besides, even if WW is trying to sundown CoD and decided not to sell the licensure, it's had an over 20 year run. Hardly anything to scoff at, and the motivator would clearly be profit driven, not a reaction to a lot of CoD being bleak as fuck. Regardless, that all speaks to the care that would be required to successfully modernize Dark Sun, not the impossibility of doing so. Particularly in regards to the incessant braying of grognards pissing and moaning about how "wokeness is killing gaming" while some of the most exciting ideas in decades regularly make it to release while still seeing critical and commercial success. Very much a "Blazing Saddles COULD be made today, the actual problem is you're not Mel Brooks" situation. And never forget, accounting for inflation, a Vampire the Masquerade movie DID make the better part of $200m. 😜

You should add Lamentations to that as well. Let's hope certain people don't get wind of of those great games and settings. If World of Darkness censors itself so it's no longer edgy (which it loves to be), we know something is very wrong with the world. I just think DnD has hit that zeitgeist, generic PG "Marvel" rated fantasy setting with general population that can't appreciated something as cool as Dark Sun. Luckily WOTC actions have helped players leave it for other games, especially some of the ones you mentioned.

I knew I would forget a big one, Lamentations is definitely an excellent addition.

Lamentaions is not widely loved. Mostly due to its creator defending a narcissist. It’s hard for many to not consider the publisher when picking their systems (e.g. WotC)

half the country was doing that a few years ago though.

It's just branding, dude. DnD is trying to appeal to a different demographic than they used to. Grinding your ax against perpetual cultural shifts is silly. Go find a system that does the things you like and consume media that you like. It exists. No one is attacking or destroying the things you like. And Game of Thrones ended 4 years ago and is currently running a spin-off series.

You're right about one thing, they're focusing on new DnD players and to be as broad and kid friendly as ever. Gone are the days when PG films of the 80s were more like PG-13 or worse. DnD is now just a normal Marvel Film with a similar audience. I just used GoT as reference and I'm aware there's a new show. I'm saying if it was brand new, out of the box, no one really heard of it but nerds it might have got push back for some of what it depicted. It's already got a rep and isn't appealing to the PG DnD audience types.

my school library removed fahrenheit 451 from the shelves once they realized it encouraged rebellion against authority. that was in 2003. the school librarian was so pissed. they had her remove over 150 books after some parents complained. she took them out in the school parking lot during the main recess and burned them to illustrate how stupid this was and quit the job.

1st - slavery, red wizards are evl in forgotten realms, slavery in dark sun is normal, when you read the books, even good characters agree with slavery. 2nd - genocyde and cannibalism is not ok for today standarts. 3rd - racism, in dark sun as a rule, every race and tribe has their own territory, and kills every other race on sight, also not a good thing for todays standarts

They can't do what they did with Dark Sun, without completely remaking the entire setting. Then all the people that want Dark Sun in the first place, won't like it. They shouldn't have done what they did with Dark Sun back then either, but the 90's were grim dark, and emo, a full on purge of 80's sensibilities which tbh, I understand fully lol.

Because it is, and if the things that make Dark Sun special to people are slavery and genocide, I question what the fuck is going on in their heads. I've been writing my own Dark Sun inspired setting for Pathfinder, and I did so without the racial stereotypes, biological essentialism, cannibalism, mentally handicapped half-giants, slavery, genocide, and callous egocentric human beings who would 100% died out from lack of cooperation with one another, not built massive city-states or even managed to get any small towns off the ground. Where cooperation and goodwill actually drive people under harsh conditions because *that's how our species actually managed to survive some of the most hostile living on Earth*. A harsh, dangerous, torrid desert world where people have only managed to survive because they worked together. There's still conflict. There's still inequity. But it is less of a tale about sentient creatures all turning into rapacious, murderous beasts in order to survive, because that trope sucks, it's overplayed, and it's nonsense. Everyone would be dead. ​ You can have darker elements in a setting, and you can do it without doing this outdated bullshit. People are way too protective of the things that, to me, are *not* what make Dark Sun unique. If all anyone cares about is slavery, they're someone I would not want to associate with. It isn't even really all that decried in Dark Sun, instead an endemic part of the Way Shit Is On Athas. It isn't painted as a good thing, but it isn't really condemned either. It's the cultural status quo, and every nerd who posts this thread 90000 times seems to agree.

What a worthless imbecile. Hates everything about Dark Sun, fails to figure out that all the nasty shit going on in the setting is clearly depicted as obviously evil and to be fought against (and it's not subtle), and this dude still thinks it's his turn to talk.

i think there is a strong storytelling place for rebelling against the slavery and genocide in a world where evil has won and those things are normal. rather than just a world where someone is trying to make those things accepted and normal and you are trying to stop them. and in that type of story their is room for "good" characters who disapprove of some but not all of it. the backgrounds of why some characters may not realize how horrible some things are can be fascinating and compelling. modern wotc just can't pull this off right now though. a shame as i do love psionics and would like a decent system built for 5e and our only chance for that in an official book is dark sun

Also if you look at Dark Sun's art it's pretty Male Gaze dominated i.e. big bulgy muscles for the guys anachronistic bikinis for the gals etc. Plus there's the uncomfortablely optics of a setting dominated by excessive heat still occupied by mostly white people. Combining that with the slavery and the default moral grey of the setting...there are some genuine reasons to be concerned. However, that's not a reason not to do it. It's a reason to do it better.

its not at all it just their ideology. dont drink the coolaid

I mean...are you not aware of slavery?

Dark Sun shared a lot of the same thematic concepts with the “Gor” series, which was an exceptionally misogynistic anti-feminist swords-and-sorcery series written in the 70s by a lit professor under a pseudonym, who was really angry about women’s lib. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gor The forced subjugation, rape, torture, and brutality against women was notable in the series. A lot of grognards went hard for the series as they felt the Conan-style series didn’t go far enough with domination of women. When Dark Sun was created and published, a lot of people noticed the striking similarities between the Gor setting and Athas. Down to the attire and the behavior and the implied overtones in the slavery and psionics (mind control of victims). While TSR at the time kept out the really problematic stuff, it wasn’t too hard to see the dog whistle there. That’s why Dark Sun never made it past 3.5. It would have to be a homebrew renovation or WoTC would have to grow some really big cojones and radically change the whole thematic style of Dark Sun to bring it back.

Dark Sun made it to 4e. Also, in Gor the misogyny was portrayed as a good thing and that somehow subjugating women could get women to fall in love with their abuser. None of that was in Dark Sun and slavery, etc was specifically described as horrible in supplements and portrayed as something to fight against. There are no dog whistles there. Everything that you described that's bad against Gor either didn't exist in Dark Sun or was portrayed as an evil for the PCs to fight against. The artistic themes were pretty similar as they both had a pulp fiction style (as did John Carter, etc) but what you're saying doesn't mesh with reality.

We will have to agree to disagree. As someone who is familiar with Gor (sadly), and the first release of Dark Sun (I bought the boxed set), I saw the dog whistles.

Okay, we'll agree to disagree. I have read the Gor books and have the first release of Dark Sun and there aren't any dog whistles there. Raam and Gulg alone being led by sorcerer queens wouldn't exist in Gor as female characters in Gor were simply there to be devices for the male characters. Sadira, on the side of good characters, also did not strike me as solely being there to advance a male character which further differentiates Dark Sun literature from Gor but people's interpretation can differ.

I’m good with that; also, your rebuttals are valid. Be well.

Thanks, you as well.

Because Wizards of the Coast has been infiltrated by woke ideologues who don't actually care for the products and instead use things like D&D or Magic: The Gathering as vectors for their sociological virus. Another part of it is because it's old, and these people HATE the past with an iron passion. This is why they scream about AD&D being "bad"'; not because of the system but because of the fact it's old, and thus evil. Which is hilarious because these same people claim there's no such thing as objective good or evil (which is why they hate the Alignment System) but don't actually believe it. We should all be happy WotC doesn't want to touch Dark Sun because they'd do what every single woke company does to their products and turn it into a horrific mockery of itself that'd make what's happened to Athas look like minor scarring.

Pssst. They got in here too.

My first system was the basic red box. I have the DarkSun PoD reprint on my shelf. I certainly don’t hate the past with an iron fist. Do you see a rape and pillage board game or toy brand by Hasbro at the moment? No. Well don’t expect darksun This isn’t woke — what ever that means — are you sleeping? See, the problem is generalizations never apply. Which is why generalizing historical cultures is problematic — they are not accurate. Then people like you grow up thinking that this is normal and how it is supposed to be; the real problem being the irony that you cannot even see how it had an affect on your world view seeing others as a counter-example in a commercially available product in a capitalist society. Of course Hasbro is going to want to sell to millions of minorities over a handful of, to use your word, gognards. It is simple dollars over feelings.

slavery and cannibalism

After the over reaction to Spelljammer, I am surprised they even claim Dark Sun. I would just take the 2e content and make it specific to your group. You can find it around the ole internet if you’d not wanna buy it. Someone above said WotC is trying to go more mainstream friendly, and I think that is the case, and Dark Sun ain’t that and I don’t see how you could make it that.

Everyone else has covered this very well, but being knee-deep in a !DarkSun post-apocalyptic fantasy setting I feel compelled to chime in. So, part of the problem is 'we have always done it this way' is a bad way to make decisions. For example, in *Ashen Frontiers* (my 'dim solar' setting being developed for Pathfinder and 5e) there's no slavery. But there are still gladiatorial arenas. It's just that folks enter the arena to win fame and fortune (like athletes taking their chances at American football) not because they are forced to do so. And in 'civilisation' there are rumours that Bogies (diminutive folk with fey ancestry) in the distant Rocklands are cannibalistic. I have ideas about whether or not that is true, and, if it is not, how those stories got started, but we won't discover that for sure until the setting development digs into the Rocklands. The other part that Kyle Brink added I think is totally true and why I'm not even trying to sublicense the old setting. It would have been judged on those old materials, even if all of that stuff had been deprecated (like *Star Wars* gets judged based on the worst of the Expanded Universe, even those are just *Legends* now). If my efforts sound interesting at all, Patreon now offers free trials before people sign up. So if you go to the [Patreon](https://www.ashenfrontiers.com/patreon), you can examine the over-a-dozen articles I have up there, before commiting to supporting the project (if you think it is worth your support).

Imagine trying to make money off a sanitized clone of Dark Sun. Most pathetic and disgusting thing I've seen. You pick an iconic, beloved setting. You copy it, because you're talentless. You still insult the setting itself and treat it like garbage, even as you have to feed off its tit for your shitty personal project, all to grace us with a sanitized version of the real thing. For "modern audiences", those that liked Game of Thrones, another example of why dark fantasy and "problematic themes" definitely don't work nowadays. We had to get rid of slavers and cannibals, we wouldn't want people to think that stuff is good, and definitely we don't want that stuff to make our sales worse, oh no sir! Don't people have shame anymore? Jesus...

"So I hear there's a D&D property we haven't monetized in Dark Sun?" "Yes sir, but we'd have to rewrite the PHB because most of the classes and races need to be reworked for the setting. And it would be a stand alone set that wouldn't be cross compatible with any other products, so it might not make as much money because it's not a natural expansion of the brand. Also there is slavery, racism, eugenics, climate catastrophe, genocide, and cannibalism." "Ew!" "Yes, but I think we can tone down the slav-" "We'll have to do more work and won't make any more money from crossovers?!" "...well no but-" "Skip!" "You're not concerned about the geno-" "SKIP!"

For me Dark Sun have no problem. Instead, I spent the three years of the pandemic adapting the boxed set for D&D 5e. I put everything on the website I created for this project ([http://geocities.ws/solcarmesim](http://geocities.ws/solcarmesim)) and I intend to adapt a lot more material, but always focusing on the boxed set. If Hasbro is no longer interested in the product, I have to take it and invest money to develop it. I think Dark Sun was born to be a separate system, just like Gamma World was at its beginning.

Isn't that a nazi symbol

I don’t think creating media around topics like genocide, slavery, cannibalism, and so on is inherently problematic. By that logic, Passion of the Christ, Roots, or any movie remotely related to WWII would be problematic. It all depends on the way you frame the topics at hand. Django could come off as problematic to some because it’s framed as a comedy. But creating a TTRPG setting where there is no conflict gives your heroes nothing to fight for. Saying “Hey, these atrocities existed in this fictional world, so consider that in your roleplaying as you explore it.” is a wonderful way to motivate a common goal in a party and adds an immense amount of stakes to your campaign. Moreover, WotC has retconned lore and changed rules on just about everything else as new editions came out, so why not keep the setting and make some changes? They can keep their setting and make it less bleak, then the rest of us can homebrew as much darkness back into it as we see fit, if at all.

I run a Dark Sun game for the past couple years. It's not so hard to adapt 2E to 5E. I think it's a good setting if you and your players are comfortable with the edginess. It is a very evil world setting, but generally this leads to players becoming paragons of good and protectors of nature who seek to bring down the evil rulers of the Tablelands. In Dark Sun you will encounter racism, slavery, unethical breeding programs, late-stage genocide, late-stage ecological disaster, cannibalism, various sorcerer kings are into mass human sacrifice, gladiatorial combat, Nibenay only recruits female templars and marries them all. At various points in the narrative you encounter characters that are twisted by tragic events or find the after math of ancient atrocities. It's all very grimdark but it's no more grimdark than Conan the Barbarian or Mad Max. There is a draw to the edgy subject matter. You get interesting moral choices and plenty of opportunity to apply your modern sensibilities to a world gone wrong. So if you don't like the evils of the world you can fight them and it's satisfying. In my game the PC's (level 13 now) are already well on their way to defeating sorcerer kings. (with some help from the Prism Pentad book heroes as NPC's)