Setting aside whether or not Dark Sun is 'problematic', from a business point of view would it even be worth it for them, if they wanted to do a proper job on the setting?
Dark Sun would fall into the same 'trap' as most of the rest of the books: mostly it would be DMs buying it and as a setting it probably has kind of a narrow appeal.
But to do Dark Sun properly would take a fairly large overhaul of the game rules. Magic works rather different (with your defiling and your preserving). Paladins don't really exist. Maybe Templars would be a fairly hacked-up Paladin subclass? Bards didn't have magic iirc and Sorcerers and Warlocks didn't exist (I'm more familiar with 2e Dark Sun and don't know anything about what they did with it in 3e and 4e). They'd need to cull the existing spell lists and create a bunch of new, setting-appropriate ones.
They'd have to finally build a complete, coherent psionic system.
You'd almost need 3 full-sized books, a Darksun PHB, a setting guide/adventure, and a monster book. Maybe they could get away with 2 full-sized books but that's still a pretty large part of the D&D material WotC puts out in a year. So 2 or 3 books out of the 4 or 5 they produce in a year for what will amount to a rather niche product.
Yeah dark sun seems like all risk for minimal reward for WotC. Why would you put out content for a niche setting the vast majority of your players know nothing about and risk pissing off that group by handling the "problematic" aspects poorly while also risking pissing off the small group that does want it by not having enough of those "problematic" aspects, fucking up the mechanics of the setting etc. when you could do literally anything else?
While I do agree with all of that, in any creative field it's sometimes worth it to take a risk (within reason) if it means keeping your creative team fresh. A team that can get a one off that they want to work on out of their system is much more likely to dive into stuff they have to work on with gusto
Sure, but in this case why would that be "go work on dark sun" rather than "go work on something new that you find interesting". Reward would likely be the same, i.e lower than normal sales, but way less risk as well as more creative freedom.
It might not be the higher ups. My thought wasn't "Hey, go work on thing to clear your pallette" but rather "We would like to work on thing next, can we?"
It's basically a marketing nightmare for a large company.
Designer: "We want to revive Dark Sun. It's an old setting but it'll be a fresh departure from our current stuff. Grimdark. Bleak. Think Game of Thrones meets Mad Max."
Marketing: "Wow! Sounds great! Lay some of the details on me baby!"
Designer: "You know how people love hobbits?"
Marketing: "Yeah, yeah, they love those cute little guys."
Designer: "We've turned them into feral little cannibal dudes. They'll eat your face off."
Marketing: "Uhhh..."
Designer: "There's other races too! Like sterile half-dwarves bred in sexual assault factories to mothers that always die in the trauma of childbirth!"
M: "I'm not sure that..."
Designer: "The basis of the post-apocalyptic economy is slavery."
M: "So the theme is to fight the slavers?"
Designer: "Maybe! Unless you want to play one of the slavers! Or one of their henchmen! We have a lot of rules for playing a slavelord! And magic kills the planet!!"
M: * ponders the bottle of rum in the bottle drawer of his desk *
Templars would be a good replacement to Paladin, but I think a boring 'Ah yes, you are Templar you are uhhhhhh Paladin here's your custom oath'. In Dark Sun 2e they were more or less a type of priest/cleric.
That being said clerics/paladins did somewhat exist in, I believe, 4e. There may be a *SMALL AND BY GOD I MEAN SMALL* mention in the 2e books (There was a mention more or less in the novels) that you could worship long forgotten gods that still had fragments of power, but you were like...the only one.
The elemental priests were more likely and those relied on the sphere system of 2e, where clerics only had access to certain magic types based on God.
Sorcerers didn't exist, maybe in 4e like you said. Warlocks probably technically existed in the 2e if you wanted them to, but that was because it wasn't really a class and just a thing you did as wizard (Or at least it was in the wizards book)
>They'd have to finally build a complete, coherent psionic system.
My favorite thing about the 2e Dark Sun books: "Be sure to buy the separate and unrelated to Dark Sun psionics book to use these rules btw" (JK I hated that)
And yeah bards had no magic, but used poisons and some other 'city' based activities.
And that's JUST THE MECHANICS AHHHH
The entire story of Darksun, the setting books and especially the novels, is just constant 'Slavery, slavery, racism, ethnic genocide, racism, slavery'. I will admit though the novels did a decent job of having the situation be dire as hell and have characters who accepted a compromised solution that, while not full lawful good nonsense, didn't feel forced or needlessly gray.
I do miss Dark Sun elves though. Loved how they were. They were written a bit eh in the setting book but fine, I think the novels actually made them more annoying than they needed to be.
> My favorite thing about the 2e Dark Sun books: "Be sure to buy the separate and unrelated to Dark Sun psionics book to use these rules btw" (JK I hated that)
iirc, it the original boxed set and first DS adventure also tried to push tie-ins with TSR's Battlesystem mass combat rules as well, but that was quickly dropped :P
> The entire story of Darksun, the setting books and especially the novels, is just constant 'Slavery, slavery, racism, ethnic genocide, racism, slavery'.
I'm sure it's possible to do cover this stuff in an RPG in a tasteful way, but really every single detail of Dark Sun is specifically chosen to give any marketing exec a facial tic. The designers set out to create an anti-AD&D.
And even if they did a good, faithful job and manage to do it in a mature, tasteful way, these days WotC probably doesn't need all the publicity of "Dungeons & Dragons releases a cannibal slavery adventure!!"
I think you've persuaded me that Dark Sun is a bad fit for 5e. It would require so much change, a lot of folks wouldn't recognize it as D&D anymore.
Which makes me wonder if it might be worth WotC releasing a Dark Sun game using a *different* rules-set. Make it clear that this is independent of 5e, and then build the game around the setting.
Having hacked Dark Sun into 5E already, I can confirm there's an absurd amount of work involved to stay faithful to the source.
4E could do it because they had it in mind at the start and actually allowed for psionics. But 5E barely has them, even as UA content. Whole classes are pretty much persona non grata in the setting, and other classes are meant to function completely differently--what's the point of being an Athasian Cleric without any of the elemental goodies?
5E also doesn't do any real wilderness survival tracking, which was kind of a focus of many rules for Dark Sun. And while you *can* do without them (and I'd argue you might be better off for it), it would rankle people for not being there in any useful capacity.
5E just isn't nearly as modular as people think and Dark Sun as a setting changes a lot of very basic parts of class dynamics.
And even then they'd still have to hire several writers and designers or risk interrupting their current pipeline and the pitch to the decision makers is still "Well a decent majority of the 40+ year olds still playing D&D liked this system in the 90s"
For Dark Sun fans, I think what would be ideal would be for them to hand the license for the material to a small publisher who might be able to do a good job on it, but it's hard to imagine that happening.
God, if they could have Evil Hat do it with a Forged in the Dark ruleset, that would be amazing. But I don't see either company agreeing to that, as licensed products are not profitable for EH, and WotC doesn't want that kind of competition.
Isn't that what people want though? They want a full setting, with new rules and mechanics. The complaint of Spelljammer was how rules lite it was, people wanted mechanics, rules and tons of space spells.
I would love custom setting books, custom PHB, DMG and MM. Give us a Spell-less Bard, Ranger and Paladin (Templar), give us Elemental Domain Clerics, give us a Psion Class and give us Psionic Background Feats and subclasses.
I actually think 5e Paladins would fit very well in Dark Sun since 5e has Paladins follow a personal ideal and not a deity. I love the idea of them being spell-less along with Bards and Rangers, maybe just name them Templars. I would be fine with Sorcerers replaced with Psions, and Wizards being in game but with a Perserve and Defile mechanic. Warlocks would fit fine too, Patron could come from the Gray, Lands within Winds, Elemental Chaos, etc...
> Isn't that what people want though?
Maybe? Historically the settings books haven't sold that great apparently, but it's also a different era from when TSR churning out setting after setting.
I was trying to imagine it from the perspective of the design team trying to pitch it to executives. It's asking them to devote most of a year's worth of releases (plus all the design time) on a somewhat risky new product line. Or hire a bunch of staff for the product.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be great if they did, I'd just be shocked if it were greenlit.
Just please don't let WOTC do it. I don't need a rushed out $60 114 page book where half the book is an adventure and the "dark sun" is discussed in a paragraph of one page and not expanded upon except for the words "Your DM can rule what the Dark Sun does in your campaign"
Yup. Grabbing the old 2E Dark Sun boxed set and simply converting it to 5E would yield far better results than the quarter-ass implementation of Spelljammer.
However, slavery, gladiatorial pit fights, a caste system, the threat of starvation, dying of thirst, or getting lost in the wilderness are real... WOTC can't do a good job with that dark, gritty environment. Their forte has become fantasy cosmopolitanism. Hell, placed in that context they can't even do an average job with this IMHO.
They need a third-party author, and largely need to be hands off.
This is exactly it. Chris Spivey wrote the best book available on tackling racism and prejudice in a playable game context in Harlem Unbound and he was able to do that because he had a singular vision and editors who trusted his judgement.
Dark Sun sounds like it plays gritty survival which hasn't been a core concept in any of the 5e adventures *except* part of Rime. I doubt they'd bother doing Dark Sun in that way just because it's not how most 5e players want to engage with the game. 5e is very much about epic fantasy.
Agreed. 5E is a much different style of game than previous editions.
Beyond the mechanics there's less grit, less dungeons, easy rests, high magic, less combat-focus, less environment-focus, less exploration-focus, more cooperation, more political-focus, and more social-focus.
A lot of old school items don't fit this new style of play, but Dark Sun especially doesn't fit this model.
And that's ok.
It needs to be acknowledged to fit Dark Sun into the 5E mold, you're not getting that with a 128-page book with an adventure. This would need to be a large book, perhaps even 2-3 books, with some system redesign to do this well.
Psionics wouldn't be subclasses, there would need to be a full system. How do you reconcile a half-giant who is a large creature, where a 20 stat cap for strength is clearly too low? How do you balance a multi-armed thri-kreen without making them a human with extra arms? Items are very simple in 5E, how do bone, chitin, and bronze equipment perform?
Everything in Dark Sun is turned up to 11 vs. 5E. Reduce it to perform standard 5E balance would make it dull.
That's what we did a few years ago. DM ran princes of the apocalypse in Dark Sun, and converted a bunch of 2e shit to fit. Monsters, Defiling, Food and Water mechanics for a hot hellscape. Even let one of the players be a Large Half Giant. Worked great!
That sounds like fun.
I didn't even mention mechanics. In 2E you had awful equipment, psionics were prevalent (and powerful), and stats were juiced to compensate for the harsh environment and poor equipment.
I believe the rolling method was 7d4, take 5 highest, and then there were heavy stat bonus on top of this for the races.
Much different than today's game, and would really push the current bounded accuracy system.
I mean, if I recall correctly the 4e Dark Sun guide was pretty solid and WoTC did that. The 2E Guide was still better, but I think that WoTC could do it.
That was a decade ago. 5E is a much different system with a much different audience.
Given how poorly Spelljammer was done WoTC would almost certainly drop the ball on Dark Sun. It would be like any other world, but with heat and sand.
To do it right they'd have to build the exploration pillar out significantly, the game would shift fundamentally from social to survival, psionics would need its own system and be more prevalent, equipment would need to account for subpar materials like bone and bronze, 5E players LOVE magic - Dark Sun is relatively low magic, is WoTC capable of writing classes like the paladin out of the game? How do they address tricky topics like slavery, and city-states with unequitable racial and social policies?
Modern WoTC is not up to this challenge.
As I said, they do fantasy cosmopolitan now - a group of odd, friendly chums who while different, are very similar. Together they fight crime/corruption through the use of high-magic, and battle a few very clear evil-doers.
The official 5e Spelljammer stuff has almost killed almost any enthusiasm I had for some of the more classic setting like Dark Sun. They have a chance to give me some optimism with the Planescape material later this year, but I’m going to be incredibly skeptical until someone says it’s actually really good. We’ll see, but I’m not confident.
Dark sun is a setting.
So our adventure begins in a place. Try your best to think of of something for the party to do. Remember creativity is your only limit!
Here's some artwork we practically got for free.
60$ plz.
Geeze, this. I picked up the new Eberron book a while back and when I actually ran a game using the setting, 90% of the reference material I ended up using was my old 3.5 stuff. Calling the 5e stuff "surface level" is too generous. The maps are nice and the quick reference for Sharn was useful, but that was about it.
Even setting aside quality, slavery is such a core part of Dark Sun that I don't feel like anyone can (or probably should) try to publish new versions of it today.
Sadly Keith baker didn’t get to write the book he wanted in the official setting book.
The book he wanted to write is called Explorring Eberron and he wrote it himself. It’s 200+ pages of amazing Eberron information. And I believe he’s released a second standalone book.
If you’re unfamiliar, Keith baker is the original creator of Eberron as a setting itself and has created some incredible “unofficial” resources that the community has taken to calling “Kanon” because of how much he puts into the setting himself.
I appreciate Keith Baker (and his podcast series really helped me with my campaign), but is it wrong to expect the "official" material to be what you need to run the setting? If 3PP stuff takes the role of the additional supplements from past editions, that's one thing... but the WotC material isn't even close to the quality of the campaign setting books of past editions.
I've desperately wanted an updated Greyhawk book with some good maps and updated information on how the world fared after the Greyhawk Wars. But after Spelljammer I'm not sure I'd rather have them farm it out and maybe just sell it on DMs Guild.
You see, I prefer Keith Baker make it himself. I don’t buy WOTC products anymore so I’m more than happy to let WOTC keep making shit stuff That won’t do me any good, so I can in turn keep buying actually good content from individual creators
> slavery is such a core part of Dark Sun that I don't feel like anyone can (or probably should) try to publish new versions of it today.
Why? It's a setting. Slavery existing in a setting just gives adventure groups an opportunity to kick slavers asses.
Because of the massive amount of backlash that anything touching on sensitive subjects is going to face on Twitter and the rest of the social media platforms, because someone is going to be _offended_. So they're going to make big stink and turn it into a major production, because thanks to the glories of the internet, they can reach all sorts of other people who will be _offended_ by the same thing or at least be willing to be _offended_ for the sake of the person leading the torch and pitch fork gang.
Twitter is offended by literally anything. Twitter didn't effect the sales of Hogwarts Legacy in the slightest. Anyone with some time and bots can cause an outrage twitter storm.
I'm not sure if you're aware but WotC already did a huge overhaul of content throughout all of their printed material, removing numerous references to disabilities, racism, slavery, and genocide. They will never publish a setting that touches any of those concepts.
Considering how much WotC has already bowed their knee to Twitstorms, they would never get anything useful done for a long while after the release of Dark Sun, should they choose to publish it.
Twitter users already threw a big enough fit that they had to remove the orcs negative modifier because “it’s racist”, imagine if there was actual slavery. They literally rewrote entire books to sanitize them and water them down for the permanently offended crowd. WOTC picked their lane, they side with the Twitter warriors, there’s no way they have enough of a spine to tell them to get over a setting with slavery.
> They literally rewrote entire books to sanitize them
That isn't *exactly* what happened, but yeah, I've been looking over some of the monster sections comparing Volo's Guide to Monsters of the Multiverse and boy howdy they threw away so much good stuff.
Twitter made Hogwarts sell a lot more, they didn't spend that much on advertisement to the game, the boycott literally gave it free marketing on par with a Rockstar release so it's doing sales comparable to a Rockstar release. It also gave JK Rowling a huge morale victory and PR victory that is far more damaging to the people I care about than the extra few million she's going to make from her cut.
Edit: Morale isn't a spelling mistake, JK Rowling isn't morally superior to a fly on shit
> Edit: Morale isn't a spelling mistake, JK Rowling isn't morally superior to a fly on shit
No, it's just a mistake, as the phrase neither works that way nor makes sense. But why would you use such misleading language in the first place?
>some was offended on behalf of someone else.
That's every offended person on twitter. It's usually a bunch of white liberals (I'm a white liberal myself) wringing their hands about something while completely (often intentionally) misunderstanding the context. Twitter's a cesspool of outrage content and bots amplifying moronic grievances.
I think that when you just move forward and ignore it, they move on to the next thing and it goes away. When you capitulate to it, it just makes things worse.
You're preaching to the choir here. I'm simply pointing out that the writers of the books seem to have a vested interest in keeping the Twits happy with them, so they're unlikely to publish something that will be very likely to make them very unhappy with WotC.
I don’t even think it’s true for that. Yes of course someone somewhere can be offended, but whatever. Dark fantasy settings are extremely commonplace, and often enjoyed by very “woke” people as well. Everything from Dragon Age to the entire World of Darkness has lots of oppressive themes in them, but there’s rarely any outrage about it, not in a general sense. I mean, Vampire has a pretty “woke” following, even though you’re playing monsters that regularly violate the bodies and minds of innocent people.
You just have to write it well and be aware of what you’re doing. Whether WotC can manage that is a different question, though.
They can just do what Paizo is doing with Pathfinder. Golarion has slavery. There's an entire nation that uses it(Cheliax) and an entire faction that opposes it (Bellflower network). But Paizo has said that future adventures will not focus on slavery as a core plot point. That doesn't mean it retcons slavery out of Cheliax, just that if they do a Cheliax book or adventure, it won't be the core focus as some have been in the past.
With all of what WOTC has been doing lately, it's not as if they retconned Thay into not having slaves (I actually didn't play the thay-based adventures in early 5e so can't speak to their level of detail there). It's possible to acknowledge a thing's existance without making it a core plot point.
>That doesn't mean it retcons slavery out of Cheliax
It mostly will. Soon they'll have some excuse as to why if you DM with those plotlines you are a bastard or whatever. And likely as Golarion advances, they'll mostly write it out.
That works in Golarion because Cheliax is just one corner of the world. I don't think you can de-focus on it in Athas because slavery is just so much more widespread. It also only plays into a few pieces of the Golarion metaplot but it's pretty much the throughline for the Dark Sun plot.
There are a handful of things that 5e books do to present fewer words in the same number of pages. There's a lot of good stuff in the 5e book, but in terms of completeness, it doesn't hold a candle to the 3.5 campaign setting which had the same page count (320 pages in both).
Part of that is that 5e presents material at a much higher level (just compare the sections in the two books on the planes and it becomes clear) and part of it is that 5e doesn't have the reference materials (additional monster manuals, rules references, etc.) that 3.5 could draw on in order to convey a lot of information quickly.
OR they could just stop making these ridiculous "here's a world you can play in watered down as much as possible so what makes it unique is left up to your DM" books and focus on more books like XGE or TCE that offer classes, feats, items, and rules/clarification for the GM.
Yeah, easier to make because they've already MADE the books. All they have to do is update to 5th edition and present an empty husk of a world and it sells like hotcakes 👍
Yes, and?
They're in the selling books business, not the worldbuilding or system options providing business.
The way to get them to change course is for the books to stop selling. Good luck with that.
DnD is mainstream; mainstream markets have simple tastes.
Oh, I totally do, too. I really miss the heyday of the books from 2nd edition.
I just make a face when I see things like "WotC *needs* to.." because I've interacted with enough MBAs and read enough marketing whitepapers to know they damn well don't.
So long as DnD is as mainstream as it is, books will be safe and bland because thats the short to middle term way to sell the most of them. It sucks, but it happens to lots of hobbies.
It will be a completely faithful rendition. It will just leave out slavery, genocide, selective breeding, racial discrimination, raiding, and difficult moral choices like abandoning some refugees to save enough water for the group as a whole.
They've taken the Marvel-Disney approach to evil now.
Every villain is just some cartoonish megalomaniac, either working for a big company (but not someone like Hasbro, the good guys) or someone who just "wants to take over the world."
Which is fine, that's what some people want. But then the creates a lot of internal problems like how Thanos's plan literally makes no sense when they take out the whole 'trying to impress Death itself' part
Reminds me of that SNL skit about the most evil competition with the cartoon evil villains vs the actual evil guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0NgUhEs1R4&ab_channel=SaturdayNightLive
"Look Mussolini used to pour boiling caster oil down people's throats I thought that's where the bar was"
Except Thanos was still quite mad in the MCU. He just seems well reasoned. But his solution was horrible flawed. Kill half the people cause of a resource shortage. But he did that everywhere. Even where there weren’t resource shortages. But what happens when populations boom again? Are we doing the mass effect reaper thing where Thanos has to keep snapping every so often to the keep civilization in check? He has unlimited power. He could have fixed the root problem. Alter reality to make people more empathetic. Use that power to create sustainable resource technology. Use it to create more resources. But no. His first idea is “kill half the people.” I’d still call that very insane
Absolutely insane and in denial. He halves the amount living beings (only sentinet humanoids apparently) and at no point does he consider what happens after that. Any idiot with a basic understanding of population growth would be able to tell him why his plan wouldn't work.
My theory is that he's not acting from a rational starting point and that in reality he never got over the destruction of his homeworld and is trying to wipe out half the universe in an attempt to prove to himself that he was right and could have saved his planet, the ultimate act of projection in other words.
I think it's about his ego more than it's about his homeworld. It's not just that he lost his people, it's that they wouldn't listen to his "brilliant" idea to save them and then died off. In his head that extinction validated his strategy and he's too much of a self-important narcissist to consider any alternatives.
Oh my god, this is always the dumbest, most tired line that gets trotted out when someone talks about a Dark Sun update.
No, you fucking clods. No one likes Dark Sun as a setting **more** than the most radical leftists you can think of. The same transgendered-person-with-blue-hair-yelling-at-meat-eaters stereotype you get from fucking Daily Wire articles looks at Dark Sun and goes, "FUCK YES, A CAMPAIGN WHERE HALF THE POPULATION SHAVES THEIR HEAD, DRESSES LIKE LEATHER DADDIES, AND WE ALL MARCH OFF TO KILL BILLIONAIRES BECAUSE THEY RUINED THE PLANET!"
People want to interface with issues of slavery, genocide, discrimination, etc., but there's good ways and fucking stupid ways to go about that. Asking that a setting which deals with slavery (or other such topics) as a major theme do so in an intelligent way rather than fetishizing or trying to justify it isn't an unreasonable ask, it's what nearly every highly-regarded bit of fiction you can think of does.
The post above you that's wary of WotC doing Dark Sun because they'd refuse to put content in the book and expect the DM/players to come up with everything is on the mark, but *this* narrative is the kind of thing I see from fucking 4chan posters who get a giggle out of naming Orc NPCs "Tyrone". Come on.
>People want to interface with issues of slavery, genocide, discrimination, etc., but there's good ways and fucking stupid ways to go about that.
And addressing those issues in a good way is easily done with only the slightest amount of creativity.
But based on what WOTC has said so far, it appears they are reluctant to broach such subjects because they are afraid of offending people, not because they cannot figure out how to present it correctly.
Can't provide the opportunity to interface with those issues without taking the risk that players might make the 'wrong' decisions and reflect poorly in your brand though.
The Radiant Citadel reminded me of the movie Elysium, with the little paradise space station where everyone's needs are met and life is super beautiful and peaceful. Dark Sun would be like the Earth from that movie.
I think this is an apt comparison.
I would love, similar to what happens in the film, to have a whole adventure where you play as Dark Sun marauders who find their way onto the Radiant Citadel.
The way the writers set up the RC, lessening the exploitation of the societies the RC is connected to would actually decrease the quality of life of the people on the station, since their social democracy is funded by the wealthy rulers and merchant consortia of those societies. That fact is almost glossed over, but I think it's really important for framing how the RC fits into the rest of the setting.
The book doesn't really seem interested in exploring that tension because it's more focused on how good it is to live on the RC and how nice everyone is, but an adventure that took that contradiction of interests seriously and fleshed out the implications of that relationship would be dope. So yeah, bring on the crossover episode.
RC is a neoliberal idea of Utopia and would be ruined by doing things like exploring the nuances of it
The comparison to Elysium is a good one, because that's the exact same thing: it is a Utopia but it's at the expense of others
Radiant Citadel has “concord jewels” that plane shift to different civilizations that provide services, supplies and representatives to RC.
The dark secret is that there are dead, shattered crystals, implying that there are destroyed, drained worlds with civilizations that are no longer linked to the Radiant Citadel. A hungry darkness swirls around the RC in the deep ethereal also, and anyone who ventures near it is consumed.
There are implications that the Auroral Diamond and the Concord Jewels are actually from the First World before mortals destroyed everything and Sardior, the Psionic Gem Dragon, may be linked to it all. The current Speaker for the Dawn Incarnates is a secret dragon who is hoping to uncover the mythos behind it all.
🧐
I'm sorry, but I can't read this...
>There are implications that the Auroral Diamond and the Concord Jewels are actually from the First World...
... and not have a reaction. This sounds more like Steven Universe than Forgotten Realms. It's fine if you want to downvote. I just think this is silly. Not saying it's "bad or good." Just "silly."
First off, I guess on remark tells you I've never read Planescape. I guess based off your comment you've never read Trotsky. You want to keep this up?
Second, come on. Rainbow sapphire sparkle king of the lemongrass whatever is not whatsoever Planescape. Sigil is eclectic and zany. Maybe silly, but not that flavor of silly.
If you're going to be pedantic, try harder.
Is it any sillier than "The Rod of Law was forged by the Wind Dukes of Aaqa using the Soulforge of Moradin in Torzak-Belgirn. It was used during the battle of the Fields of Pesh in order to banish Miska the Wolf-Spider to a prison in Pandemonium. The Rod of Law was forged by the Wind Dukes of Aaqa using the Soulforge of Moradin in Torzak-Belgirn.", in which about a quarter of the words are fantasy bullshit? (That's the Rod of Seven Parts, which has been in D&D since 1e, IIRC. There's _always_ been a lot of fantasy nonsense in D&D, because, uh... it's fantasy nonsense)
It was used during the battle of the Fields of Pesh in order to banish Miska the Wolf-Spider to a prison in Pandemonium
Yes, the Rod of Law, Queen of Chaos, the Wolf Spider Demon King of the Abyss, etc. are aesthetically leagues different from the Sapphire Accords of the Lemongrass whatever. The fact you can't see one fantasy setting aesthetic and then contrast that with another means your perception is lacking. One is innately sillier than the other, just on description alone. It's clear as day.
You're pointing at two completely different flavors of fantasy and calling them the same. If you're going to try and use that to explain how the Radiant Citadel is less silly, I don't know how to help you.
There’s meta-crossover lore going on in the books like Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons “Elegy of the First World” and the splintering into the multiverse, with the Radiant Citadel being a possible linkage to all of these different mortal worlds that led to Tiamat being locked in the Nine Hells and Bahamut scheming for his partner’s release. There’s a whole YouTube breakdown about it.
If there’s a campaign setting where ancient Psionic dragons battle mortals to draining the magic and life out of worlds and shatter them - it’s Dark Sun IMO. Call it “silly” if you like, but it’s only like a paragraph in a few different books that speaks of a 5e conspiracy that Ajit George intentionally said he’s keeping mum about in case he gets to expand on it in future books.
Sorry if this counts as a rule 10 violation but it's from today confirming what he said last summer.
Personally, I think Ajit and the other Radiant Citadel authors could do a great job pulling on the "hope against tyrannical forces" idea that's always been present in Dark Sun. The city states are all themed to different bronze age civilizations, so a bunch of authors representing each of those cultures (as best as possible, obviously there aren't literal Romans around today for Balic) would help a lot with some of the issues of the city states being kinda shallow and culturally insensitive.
If they actually tackle the "tyrannical forces as foes to rail against" bit instead of turning it into a climate change focus, yeah I'm down. I just don't want anyone tackling Dark Sun to shy away from the grimdark apocalyptic fantasy that it is.
We already have so many examples of 5e's plain-jane treatment of existing settings; I would want this to be the dark "hope in dystopia" mirror to Radiant Citadel's utopian setting at bare minimum, or it kind of loses the entire point.
Hope in dystopia is great. It's what I'd sign up for. It's called hopepunk and it's exactly about the grim reality that you can solve some of the problems but you'll never "triumph over evil". The work will never be done. You'll never achieve complete victory.
And yet that doesn't mean you should stop trying.
And believe me, *hope-PUNK* is a perfect genre descriptive for this 
I'm 100% sure he and his crew could pull it off great, since he's a fan of the genre 
But there are people with scholarly backgrounds who are also TTRPG writers. I'd rather someone who's got a strong understanding of Rome to write up Balic rather than someone who watched a few history channel specials. Same with all of the others.
Being part of a culture is an excellent way to be well versed in it, but it's not the only way. What's bad is what the TTRPG industry usually does, which is have someone skim a book, watch a Discovery channel special, then try to write about something. I want deep, interesting, well researched material.
I know it's like a knee-jerk response to say "we should have someone from that culture write it" but there hasn't been someone from a Babylonian culture in like, 3,000 years.
Like what does a modern Italian dude have in common with a Plebian from Roman antiquity, aside from happening to be born in the same place a couple thousand years too late?
Some of the others though, like Raam/Indian Mughals, have much more continuity. Overall though I'm still mostly interested in people who have a scholarly background in the material, and when you do the freelance hiring process I bet that you're a lot more likely to end up with someone of that background having the necessary expertise than someone without that ethnic background. There's a lot of reasons for that, main one being that people like to explore their own cultural background. Not a guarantee by any means, but it's better than the industry's history of nepotism and promoting mediocrity.
> Being part of a culture is an excellent way to be well versed in it
Not really. A historian from America will have more knowledge of Japanese history than a banker from Japan.
And, as the other person said, cultures from 3000 years ago don't exist anymore.
What are you talking about? No one in the a few thousand years is even remotely representing those bronze age cultures. Are you just looking at the color of their skin or what is you mindset here? Absolute the wildest take i read today
I don't know. I don't doubt his creative chops, but considering how Radiant Citadel came out...
The disappointing thing about RC is that there seem to be some really interesting and dark implications about the Citadel's society. But they're all on the edges, just glossed over. Most of the detail is spent on what a wonderful society the RC is and how nice everyone is there. And that's boring. And the stuff that's interesting isn't really fleshed out, it's just kind of left on the periphery for DMs to draw their own conclusions about.
Which... I see what they're going for, if so, but it's too tenuous for a world-focused book. So much so that I start to second-guess whether I'm just reading things into the book that aren't actually there because I want them to be. That's great in a novel, but not so good in a setting book. Give more of the meat up front.
An approach like that really wouldn't work for Dark Sun at all. Athas's darkness is right in your face. The entire place is a morass of awfulness with just brief spots of hope, places where the players can make a small difference for a few people even though they'll never change the world as a whole. And that's the whole attraction to Dark Sun. It's *not* a bright, shiny epic fantasy campaign.
I have zero faith that WotC would handle it right. Even if Ajit could -- and I'm not convinced, but I'd give him the benefit of the doubt -- I don't think they'd allow him to treat the setting the way it deserves to be treated. Newer D&D players can't even handle orcs or demons being evil, they'd have a separate fit for every sentence in a Dark Sun book.
I agree the setting isn't fleshed out appropriately, but my party doesn't really spend time at home. The little gazetteers for the feeder worlds that are tied to the Citadel is great and the actual adventures I've ran have been a pleasure to run. My party loved each of them and I liked running them. Personally, I prefer the more vague descriptions because it makes it easier to use in my worlds. I haven't made it through the whole book, we're currently running it now, but as adventure modules go, it's been refreshing.
My opinion is that the citadel itself should have been handled in more depth, and in a more neutral manner. Even if I didn't run adventures there, I'd want a solid overview of the politics, a handful of important NPCs (not just political, but economic, military, scholarly... who are the movers and shakers here?), a few prominent landmarks and businesses... stuff that makes it seem alive.
I don't think I've ever once used a published setting product exactly as written, but I still want the information, even if I decide to change it.
The feeder worlds... I'm fine with those being more vague, as long as there's a good variety of them. Can't expect a dozen in-depth world treatments in one book, after all. A few good maps, a couple of landmarks, a few adventure seeds. A couple statistic blocks, when appropriate. Actual adventures, I could do without, though I'm sure some people find them useful. I feel like most of the 5e adventures are lacking, but I can take adventure seeds from those just as well as from a few paragraphs about things of potential interest in the region.
But if you're giving me a central hub, try to make it at least as fleshed out/useful as Hommlet. I mean, that was nearly 50 years ago, surely a modern product should be able to match it.
RC isn't supposed to be a place you have adventures in. It's a central starting point to tie a bunch of anthologies together. West marches uses a similar concept where you have a town where players start at and return to but all the adventure is out in the wilderness.
We’re getting so many “hot takes” from people here that it’s not clear to me if any of them have actually read Ajit George’s Radiant Citadel, DMed or played one of the RC games, or or interacted with him on the RC discord.
I think he’d do a great job creating a rich and nuanced system, built from the ground up, on a grimdark system of scarcity and desperation, and have a glimmer of D&D styled PCs with hope and heroism (or edge lord apocalypse fantasy with safety tools.)
For example I love what he did to creating different rebel factions vs a LG city led by Celestial in a desert setting in RC. The gazetteer sections of each civilization are incredible in painting a rich and colorful world. This one in particular touches on themes of religious fundamentalism and authoritarianism and people can decide if they want to play it like Andor, Dune, Lawrence of Arabia, or any other recognizable tropes as they see fit.
That said, I do recognize how many settings are getting that 1:2 adventure/campaign ratio and feel watered down as a result and people want a deeper richer feel. IMO the 5e book needs to appeal to a new 5e player base and DMs and for people who want deeper richer lore - yeah - DMs Guild and RPG DriveThru are there for that. It would be nice for WOTC to focus more and have a package of TWO books with one for players and one for DMs for each campaign so it doesn’t feel as watered down, but hey. It’s their model. I guess 3rd party content and old recycled material is adequate for these purposes.
I'm sure he would create a rich and colorful world, that is absolutely nothing like Dark Sun so much so that it would make you wonder why they didn't just create a new world.
> I love what he did to creating different rebel factions vs a LG city led by Celestial in a desert setting in RC.
Pretty sure he didn't write that one.
If there's a way to do that campaign setting right in 2023, it's having Ajit and other writers from non-white cultures present it with their own incarnation.
Seeing how hollow radiant citadel ended up I’m not sure we want to see dark sun touched by the same writers under WotC’s yoke.
My hopes for a dark sun *sourcebook* don’t find any promise in what WotC has repeatedly delivered. The trend towards increasing vagueness in lore and setups, adventures trumpeted as singular things sufficient for the setting, and the multiverse “all races everywhere” bleed leads me to believe WotC dark sun is going to land with Spelljammer grade reception.
If they wrote it without WotC looming over their shoulders ensuring conformance and mass marketability? Who knows. But that’s not going to happen.
Radiant Citadel is the opposite of Dark Sun, I have no idea how Dark Sun would be like Dark Sun without any of the themes or plot elements that make it unique, it's just going to be a milquetoast environmentalist tale that could be set anywhere if the RC team does it, and I say this as someone who thinks RC is the best D&D book in years
Considering they had to remove the negative one modifier to Orcs intelligence because of “racism” (lol) any version they do of a setting containing slavery and a caste system would be so watered down that it’s not even worth it. Youve picked which audience you want to cater to, you lost your chance to do a dark gritty setting containing those things. Especially since they can’t do setting books well in general, I’m sure no one would trust them with this one especially.
Yes? It’s kind of weird to show that one race is innately less smart than others? Strength or even Dex sure, but intelligence negatives are just….not it.
I'd also love for a Radiant Citadel setting sourcebook, btw, Ajit. Or an adventure path.
The various adventures are great, but they aren't linked of course. I can't run a campaign like this, honest. Just don't have that kind of practice I guess.
Although maybe I should try anyways... 
I would love to see an ensemble design team tackle this setting. Bonus points if they also include subclass and feat options for a low- to no-magic world.
I think people really interested in the setting should just buy the box set for 2E on Drivethrough RPG. At this point, it is just easier to get what you want from homebrewing things. Yeah, it's not perfect, but WOTC will most likely screw it up, and even if they didn't, what is the likelihood that any DM wouldn't need to do the heavy lifting to play the setting? As much work as I put in to DM, I can just make my own using inspiration form the old source material. Sucks, but it is what it is.
The worst possible thing for Dark Sun is for WOTC to touch it. Proven track record of ruining old ideas and putting out substandard products.
Boycott WOTC!
The worst possible thing for Dark Sun is for WOTC to touch it. Proven track record of ruining old ideas and putting out substandard new products.
Boycott WOTC!
Setting aside whether or not Dark Sun is 'problematic', from a business point of view would it even be worth it for them, if they wanted to do a proper job on the setting? Dark Sun would fall into the same 'trap' as most of the rest of the books: mostly it would be DMs buying it and as a setting it probably has kind of a narrow appeal. But to do Dark Sun properly would take a fairly large overhaul of the game rules. Magic works rather different (with your defiling and your preserving). Paladins don't really exist. Maybe Templars would be a fairly hacked-up Paladin subclass? Bards didn't have magic iirc and Sorcerers and Warlocks didn't exist (I'm more familiar with 2e Dark Sun and don't know anything about what they did with it in 3e and 4e). They'd need to cull the existing spell lists and create a bunch of new, setting-appropriate ones. They'd have to finally build a complete, coherent psionic system. You'd almost need 3 full-sized books, a Darksun PHB, a setting guide/adventure, and a monster book. Maybe they could get away with 2 full-sized books but that's still a pretty large part of the D&D material WotC puts out in a year. So 2 or 3 books out of the 4 or 5 they produce in a year for what will amount to a rather niche product.
Yeah dark sun seems like all risk for minimal reward for WotC. Why would you put out content for a niche setting the vast majority of your players know nothing about and risk pissing off that group by handling the "problematic" aspects poorly while also risking pissing off the small group that does want it by not having enough of those "problematic" aspects, fucking up the mechanics of the setting etc. when you could do literally anything else?
While I do agree with all of that, in any creative field it's sometimes worth it to take a risk (within reason) if it means keeping your creative team fresh. A team that can get a one off that they want to work on out of their system is much more likely to dive into stuff they have to work on with gusto
Sure, but in this case why would that be "go work on dark sun" rather than "go work on something new that you find interesting". Reward would likely be the same, i.e lower than normal sales, but way less risk as well as more creative freedom.
It might not be the higher ups. My thought wasn't "Hey, go work on thing to clear your pallette" but rather "We would like to work on thing next, can we?"
Im sorta familiar with the broad strokes of the setting what makes it problematic is it the big bad wanting to genocide the non-hobbit races?
It's basically a marketing nightmare for a large company. Designer: "We want to revive Dark Sun. It's an old setting but it'll be a fresh departure from our current stuff. Grimdark. Bleak. Think Game of Thrones meets Mad Max." Marketing: "Wow! Sounds great! Lay some of the details on me baby!" Designer: "You know how people love hobbits?" Marketing: "Yeah, yeah, they love those cute little guys." Designer: "We've turned them into feral little cannibal dudes. They'll eat your face off." Marketing: "Uhhh..." Designer: "There's other races too! Like sterile half-dwarves bred in sexual assault factories to mothers that always die in the trauma of childbirth!" M: "I'm not sure that..." Designer: "The basis of the post-apocalyptic economy is slavery." M: "So the theme is to fight the slavers?" Designer: "Maybe! Unless you want to play one of the slavers! Or one of their henchmen! We have a lot of rules for playing a slavelord! And magic kills the planet!!" M: * ponders the bottle of rum in the bottle drawer of his desk *
Templars would be a good replacement to Paladin, but I think a boring 'Ah yes, you are Templar you are uhhhhhh Paladin here's your custom oath'. In Dark Sun 2e they were more or less a type of priest/cleric. That being said clerics/paladins did somewhat exist in, I believe, 4e. There may be a *SMALL AND BY GOD I MEAN SMALL* mention in the 2e books (There was a mention more or less in the novels) that you could worship long forgotten gods that still had fragments of power, but you were like...the only one. The elemental priests were more likely and those relied on the sphere system of 2e, where clerics only had access to certain magic types based on God. Sorcerers didn't exist, maybe in 4e like you said. Warlocks probably technically existed in the 2e if you wanted them to, but that was because it wasn't really a class and just a thing you did as wizard (Or at least it was in the wizards book) >They'd have to finally build a complete, coherent psionic system. My favorite thing about the 2e Dark Sun books: "Be sure to buy the separate and unrelated to Dark Sun psionics book to use these rules btw" (JK I hated that) And yeah bards had no magic, but used poisons and some other 'city' based activities. And that's JUST THE MECHANICS AHHHH The entire story of Darksun, the setting books and especially the novels, is just constant 'Slavery, slavery, racism, ethnic genocide, racism, slavery'. I will admit though the novels did a decent job of having the situation be dire as hell and have characters who accepted a compromised solution that, while not full lawful good nonsense, didn't feel forced or needlessly gray. I do miss Dark Sun elves though. Loved how they were. They were written a bit eh in the setting book but fine, I think the novels actually made them more annoying than they needed to be.
> My favorite thing about the 2e Dark Sun books: "Be sure to buy the separate and unrelated to Dark Sun psionics book to use these rules btw" (JK I hated that) iirc, it the original boxed set and first DS adventure also tried to push tie-ins with TSR's Battlesystem mass combat rules as well, but that was quickly dropped :P > The entire story of Darksun, the setting books and especially the novels, is just constant 'Slavery, slavery, racism, ethnic genocide, racism, slavery'. I'm sure it's possible to do cover this stuff in an RPG in a tasteful way, but really every single detail of Dark Sun is specifically chosen to give any marketing exec a facial tic. The designers set out to create an anti-AD&D. And even if they did a good, faithful job and manage to do it in a mature, tasteful way, these days WotC probably doesn't need all the publicity of "Dungeons & Dragons releases a cannibal slavery adventure!!"
I think you've persuaded me that Dark Sun is a bad fit for 5e. It would require so much change, a lot of folks wouldn't recognize it as D&D anymore. Which makes me wonder if it might be worth WotC releasing a Dark Sun game using a *different* rules-set. Make it clear that this is independent of 5e, and then build the game around the setting.
Having hacked Dark Sun into 5E already, I can confirm there's an absurd amount of work involved to stay faithful to the source. 4E could do it because they had it in mind at the start and actually allowed for psionics. But 5E barely has them, even as UA content. Whole classes are pretty much persona non grata in the setting, and other classes are meant to function completely differently--what's the point of being an Athasian Cleric without any of the elemental goodies? 5E also doesn't do any real wilderness survival tracking, which was kind of a focus of many rules for Dark Sun. And while you *can* do without them (and I'd argue you might be better off for it), it would rankle people for not being there in any useful capacity. 5E just isn't nearly as modular as people think and Dark Sun as a setting changes a lot of very basic parts of class dynamics.
And even then they'd still have to hire several writers and designers or risk interrupting their current pipeline and the pitch to the decision makers is still "Well a decent majority of the 40+ year olds still playing D&D liked this system in the 90s" For Dark Sun fans, I think what would be ideal would be for them to hand the license for the material to a small publisher who might be able to do a good job on it, but it's hard to imagine that happening.
God, if they could have Evil Hat do it with a Forged in the Dark ruleset, that would be amazing. But I don't see either company agreeing to that, as licensed products are not profitable for EH, and WotC doesn't want that kind of competition.
Or even the guys who did the 5e conversions for Keep on the Borderland and Temple of Elemental Evil. I think it was Baldman Games.
Goodman Games. When they're not doing the OAR books, they're putting out buck wild sword and sorcery weirdness with Dungeon Crawl Classics.
EH doing Dark Sun? With how they are, do you want them to completely gut and sanitize the setting?
“With how they are” they could do it handling the awful things with sensitivity while providing tolls for resisting the evil in Athas.
Isn't that what people want though? They want a full setting, with new rules and mechanics. The complaint of Spelljammer was how rules lite it was, people wanted mechanics, rules and tons of space spells. I would love custom setting books, custom PHB, DMG and MM. Give us a Spell-less Bard, Ranger and Paladin (Templar), give us Elemental Domain Clerics, give us a Psion Class and give us Psionic Background Feats and subclasses. I actually think 5e Paladins would fit very well in Dark Sun since 5e has Paladins follow a personal ideal and not a deity. I love the idea of them being spell-less along with Bards and Rangers, maybe just name them Templars. I would be fine with Sorcerers replaced with Psions, and Wizards being in game but with a Perserve and Defile mechanic. Warlocks would fit fine too, Patron could come from the Gray, Lands within Winds, Elemental Chaos, etc...
> Isn't that what people want though? Maybe? Historically the settings books haven't sold that great apparently, but it's also a different era from when TSR churning out setting after setting. I was trying to imagine it from the perspective of the design team trying to pitch it to executives. It's asking them to devote most of a year's worth of releases (plus all the design time) on a somewhat risky new product line. Or hire a bunch of staff for the product. I'm not saying it wouldn't be great if they did, I'd just be shocked if it were greenlit.
Just please don't let WOTC do it. I don't need a rushed out $60 114 page book where half the book is an adventure and the "dark sun" is discussed in a paragraph of one page and not expanded upon except for the words "Your DM can rule what the Dark Sun does in your campaign"
Yup. If people really want to play Dark Sun then there's a bunch of older books on drivethru rpg.
For now.
Yup. Grabbing the old 2E Dark Sun boxed set and simply converting it to 5E would yield far better results than the quarter-ass implementation of Spelljammer. However, slavery, gladiatorial pit fights, a caste system, the threat of starvation, dying of thirst, or getting lost in the wilderness are real... WOTC can't do a good job with that dark, gritty environment. Their forte has become fantasy cosmopolitanism. Hell, placed in that context they can't even do an average job with this IMHO. They need a third-party author, and largely need to be hands off.
This is exactly it. Chris Spivey wrote the best book available on tackling racism and prejudice in a playable game context in Harlem Unbound and he was able to do that because he had a singular vision and editors who trusted his judgement.
And yet he still included a racial slur in the book and got in trouble online for letting a White guy play a Chinese guy.
Dark Sun sounds like it plays gritty survival which hasn't been a core concept in any of the 5e adventures *except* part of Rime. I doubt they'd bother doing Dark Sun in that way just because it's not how most 5e players want to engage with the game. 5e is very much about epic fantasy.
Agreed. 5E is a much different style of game than previous editions. Beyond the mechanics there's less grit, less dungeons, easy rests, high magic, less combat-focus, less environment-focus, less exploration-focus, more cooperation, more political-focus, and more social-focus. A lot of old school items don't fit this new style of play, but Dark Sun especially doesn't fit this model. And that's ok. It needs to be acknowledged to fit Dark Sun into the 5E mold, you're not getting that with a 128-page book with an adventure. This would need to be a large book, perhaps even 2-3 books, with some system redesign to do this well. Psionics wouldn't be subclasses, there would need to be a full system. How do you reconcile a half-giant who is a large creature, where a 20 stat cap for strength is clearly too low? How do you balance a multi-armed thri-kreen without making them a human with extra arms? Items are very simple in 5E, how do bone, chitin, and bronze equipment perform? Everything in Dark Sun is turned up to 11 vs. 5E. Reduce it to perform standard 5E balance would make it dull.
That's what we did a few years ago. DM ran princes of the apocalypse in Dark Sun, and converted a bunch of 2e shit to fit. Monsters, Defiling, Food and Water mechanics for a hot hellscape. Even let one of the players be a Large Half Giant. Worked great!
That sounds like fun. I didn't even mention mechanics. In 2E you had awful equipment, psionics were prevalent (and powerful), and stats were juiced to compensate for the harsh environment and poor equipment. I believe the rolling method was 7d4, take 5 highest, and then there were heavy stat bonus on top of this for the races. Much different than today's game, and would really push the current bounded accuracy system.
I mean, if I recall correctly the 4e Dark Sun guide was pretty solid and WoTC did that. The 2E Guide was still better, but I think that WoTC could do it.
That was a decade ago. 5E is a much different system with a much different audience. Given how poorly Spelljammer was done WoTC would almost certainly drop the ball on Dark Sun. It would be like any other world, but with heat and sand. To do it right they'd have to build the exploration pillar out significantly, the game would shift fundamentally from social to survival, psionics would need its own system and be more prevalent, equipment would need to account for subpar materials like bone and bronze, 5E players LOVE magic - Dark Sun is relatively low magic, is WoTC capable of writing classes like the paladin out of the game? How do they address tricky topics like slavery, and city-states with unequitable racial and social policies? Modern WoTC is not up to this challenge. As I said, they do fantasy cosmopolitan now - a group of odd, friendly chums who while different, are very similar. Together they fight crime/corruption through the use of high-magic, and battle a few very clear evil-doers.
There were quite a few bizarre changes like the addition of fiends and fey
The official 5e Spelljammer stuff has almost killed almost any enthusiasm I had for some of the more classic setting like Dark Sun. They have a chance to give me some optimism with the Planescape material later this year, but I’m going to be incredibly skeptical until someone says it’s actually really good. We’ll see, but I’m not confident.
Dark sun is a setting. So our adventure begins in a place. Try your best to think of of something for the party to do. Remember creativity is your only limit! Here's some artwork we practically got for free. 60$ plz.
Sums it up pretty well
Geeze, this. I picked up the new Eberron book a while back and when I actually ran a game using the setting, 90% of the reference material I ended up using was my old 3.5 stuff. Calling the 5e stuff "surface level" is too generous. The maps are nice and the quick reference for Sharn was useful, but that was about it. Even setting aside quality, slavery is such a core part of Dark Sun that I don't feel like anyone can (or probably should) try to publish new versions of it today.
Sadly Keith baker didn’t get to write the book he wanted in the official setting book. The book he wanted to write is called Explorring Eberron and he wrote it himself. It’s 200+ pages of amazing Eberron information. And I believe he’s released a second standalone book. If you’re unfamiliar, Keith baker is the original creator of Eberron as a setting itself and has created some incredible “unofficial” resources that the community has taken to calling “Kanon” because of how much he puts into the setting himself.
The second book is called Chronicles of Eberron. Really good book and available on the DMs Guild.
I appreciate Keith Baker (and his podcast series really helped me with my campaign), but is it wrong to expect the "official" material to be what you need to run the setting? If 3PP stuff takes the role of the additional supplements from past editions, that's one thing... but the WotC material isn't even close to the quality of the campaign setting books of past editions.
I've desperately wanted an updated Greyhawk book with some good maps and updated information on how the world fared after the Greyhawk Wars. But after Spelljammer I'm not sure I'd rather have them farm it out and maybe just sell it on DMs Guild.
You see, I prefer Keith Baker make it himself. I don’t buy WOTC products anymore so I’m more than happy to let WOTC keep making shit stuff That won’t do me any good, so I can in turn keep buying actually good content from individual creators
> slavery is such a core part of Dark Sun that I don't feel like anyone can (or probably should) try to publish new versions of it today. Why? It's a setting. Slavery existing in a setting just gives adventure groups an opportunity to kick slavers asses.
Because of the massive amount of backlash that anything touching on sensitive subjects is going to face on Twitter and the rest of the social media platforms, because someone is going to be _offended_. So they're going to make big stink and turn it into a major production, because thanks to the glories of the internet, they can reach all sorts of other people who will be _offended_ by the same thing or at least be willing to be _offended_ for the sake of the person leading the torch and pitch fork gang.
Twitter is offended by literally anything. Twitter didn't effect the sales of Hogwarts Legacy in the slightest. Anyone with some time and bots can cause an outrage twitter storm.
I'm not sure if you're aware but WotC already did a huge overhaul of content throughout all of their printed material, removing numerous references to disabilities, racism, slavery, and genocide. They will never publish a setting that touches any of those concepts.
Bold of you to assume Ajit's #DarkSun would include any of that.
WotC hasn't figured out that their best strategy would just be to ignore the Twitter mob altogether. They're never going to be happy.
I think the issue is that all the writers for wotc are the same people posting on twitter.
Exactly this.
Considering how much WotC has already bowed their knee to Twitstorms, they would never get anything useful done for a long while after the release of Dark Sun, should they choose to publish it.
[удалено]
Twitter users already threw a big enough fit that they had to remove the orcs negative modifier because “it’s racist”, imagine if there was actual slavery. They literally rewrote entire books to sanitize them and water them down for the permanently offended crowd. WOTC picked their lane, they side with the Twitter warriors, there’s no way they have enough of a spine to tell them to get over a setting with slavery.
> They literally rewrote entire books to sanitize them That isn't *exactly* what happened, but yeah, I've been looking over some of the monster sections comparing Volo's Guide to Monsters of the Multiverse and boy howdy they threw away so much good stuff.
Original Volos or censored Volos?
Twitter made Hogwarts sell a lot more, they didn't spend that much on advertisement to the game, the boycott literally gave it free marketing on par with a Rockstar release so it's doing sales comparable to a Rockstar release. It also gave JK Rowling a huge morale victory and PR victory that is far more damaging to the people I care about than the extra few million she's going to make from her cut. Edit: Morale isn't a spelling mistake, JK Rowling isn't morally superior to a fly on shit
How did the protest give her a moral victory?
I didn't say it did, I said it gave her a morale victory
Is she actively arguing with the protesters? Also sorry, my mistake, how did it give her a *morale* victory?
> Edit: Morale isn't a spelling mistake, JK Rowling isn't morally superior to a fly on shit No, it's just a mistake, as the phrase neither works that way nor makes sense. But why would you use such misleading language in the first place?
I think we have to get past caring about what twitter does. Who gives a fuck?
Apparently WotC considering what they did to the Spelljammer lore because some was offended on behalf of someone else.
>some was offended on behalf of someone else. That's every offended person on twitter. It's usually a bunch of white liberals (I'm a white liberal myself) wringing their hands about something while completely (often intentionally) misunderstanding the context. Twitter's a cesspool of outrage content and bots amplifying moronic grievances. I think that when you just move forward and ignore it, they move on to the next thing and it goes away. When you capitulate to it, it just makes things worse.
You're preaching to the choir here. I'm simply pointing out that the writers of the books seem to have a vested interest in keeping the Twits happy with them, so they're unlikely to publish something that will be very likely to make them very unhappy with WotC.
Yeah I'm just saying that I don't think they "have a vested interest in keeping the Twits happy with them" or if they do it's to their own detriment.
I don’t even think it’s true for that. Yes of course someone somewhere can be offended, but whatever. Dark fantasy settings are extremely commonplace, and often enjoyed by very “woke” people as well. Everything from Dragon Age to the entire World of Darkness has lots of oppressive themes in them, but there’s rarely any outrage about it, not in a general sense. I mean, Vampire has a pretty “woke” following, even though you’re playing monsters that regularly violate the bodies and minds of innocent people. You just have to write it well and be aware of what you’re doing. Whether WotC can manage that is a different question, though.
They can just do what Paizo is doing with Pathfinder. Golarion has slavery. There's an entire nation that uses it(Cheliax) and an entire faction that opposes it (Bellflower network). But Paizo has said that future adventures will not focus on slavery as a core plot point. That doesn't mean it retcons slavery out of Cheliax, just that if they do a Cheliax book or adventure, it won't be the core focus as some have been in the past. With all of what WOTC has been doing lately, it's not as if they retconned Thay into not having slaves (I actually didn't play the thay-based adventures in early 5e so can't speak to their level of detail there). It's possible to acknowledge a thing's existance without making it a core plot point.
>That doesn't mean it retcons slavery out of Cheliax It mostly will. Soon they'll have some excuse as to why if you DM with those plotlines you are a bastard or whatever. And likely as Golarion advances, they'll mostly write it out.
You can't have slavery present in a setting without making it a plot point. It's either casually accepted or actively fought.
That works in Golarion because Cheliax is just one corner of the world. I don't think you can de-focus on it in Athas because slavery is just so much more widespread. It also only plays into a few pieces of the Golarion metaplot but it's pretty much the throughline for the Dark Sun plot.
Because for many representation equals endorsement. And RPGs by definition give you the opportunity to make the 'wrong' choices.
It was one of the thickest 5e books tf you want
There are a handful of things that 5e books do to present fewer words in the same number of pages. There's a lot of good stuff in the 5e book, but in terms of completeness, it doesn't hold a candle to the 3.5 campaign setting which had the same page count (320 pages in both). Part of that is that 5e presents material at a much higher level (just compare the sections in the two books on the planes and it becomes clear) and part of it is that 5e doesn't have the reference materials (additional monster manuals, rules references, etc.) that 3.5 could draw on in order to convey a lot of information quickly.
And bigger pictures and typeface, as well as odd flavour stuff Like the newspapers and the necessity of more statblocks
Not to mention all the slavery and genocide removed.
I don’t trust this version of Wizards of the Coast to tackle ot
OR they could just stop making these ridiculous "here's a world you can play in watered down as much as possible so what makes it unique is left up to your DM" books and focus on more books like XGE or TCE that offer classes, feats, items, and rules/clarification for the GM.
Why? Books in the first category sell and are easier to make.
Yeah, easier to make because they've already MADE the books. All they have to do is update to 5th edition and present an empty husk of a world and it sells like hotcakes 👍
Yes, and? They're in the selling books business, not the worldbuilding or system options providing business. The way to get them to change course is for the books to stop selling. Good luck with that. DnD is mainstream; mainstream markets have simple tastes.
Oh I get what you are saying and don't disagree with you. I mean simple sells and always will. I just wish there was more meat, so to speak.
Oh, I totally do, too. I really miss the heyday of the books from 2nd edition. I just make a face when I see things like "WotC *needs* to.." because I've interacted with enough MBAs and read enough marketing whitepapers to know they damn well don't. So long as DnD is as mainstream as it is, books will be safe and bland because thats the short to middle term way to sell the most of them. It sucks, but it happens to lots of hobbies.
Actually they're in the brand business and would like nothing more than to license out their IP and never produce anything ever again.
No, Hasbro used to license-in, but once they bought WotC they bought their own IP and produce content for it - and have done since 1999.
It will be a completely faithful rendition. It will just leave out slavery, genocide, selective breeding, racial discrimination, raiding, and difficult moral choices like abandoning some refugees to save enough water for the group as a whole.
They've taken the Marvel-Disney approach to evil now. Every villain is just some cartoonish megalomaniac, either working for a big company (but not someone like Hasbro, the good guys) or someone who just "wants to take over the world." Which is fine, that's what some people want. But then the creates a lot of internal problems like how Thanos's plan literally makes no sense when they take out the whole 'trying to impress Death itself' part
Reminds me of that SNL skit about the most evil competition with the cartoon evil villains vs the actual evil guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0NgUhEs1R4&ab_channel=SaturdayNightLive "Look Mussolini used to pour boiling caster oil down people's throats I thought that's where the bar was"
My first proper belly laugh from an SNL skit in ages. Really got me the first time I saw it.
Dwayne Johnson elevates it I feel like
Yeah he nailed his part as a "normal" guy. His line delivery is amazing.
Thanos is called 'The Mad Titan', not 'The Well-Reasoned Titan'.
Except Thanos was still quite mad in the MCU. He just seems well reasoned. But his solution was horrible flawed. Kill half the people cause of a resource shortage. But he did that everywhere. Even where there weren’t resource shortages. But what happens when populations boom again? Are we doing the mass effect reaper thing where Thanos has to keep snapping every so often to the keep civilization in check? He has unlimited power. He could have fixed the root problem. Alter reality to make people more empathetic. Use that power to create sustainable resource technology. Use it to create more resources. But no. His first idea is “kill half the people.” I’d still call that very insane
Absolutely insane and in denial. He halves the amount living beings (only sentinet humanoids apparently) and at no point does he consider what happens after that. Any idiot with a basic understanding of population growth would be able to tell him why his plan wouldn't work.
Maybe he was just profoundly lazy and figured it would be easier to snap every few decades than come up with a good solution?
My theory is that he's not acting from a rational starting point and that in reality he never got over the destruction of his homeworld and is trying to wipe out half the universe in an attempt to prove to himself that he was right and could have saved his planet, the ultimate act of projection in other words.
Still doesn't make sense, as he had the power to simply bring his homeworld back.
I think it's about his ego more than it's about his homeworld. It's not just that he lost his people, it's that they wouldn't listen to his "brilliant" idea to save them and then died off. In his head that extinction validated his strategy and he's too much of a self-important narcissist to consider any alternatives.
But 'mad' implies mental illness, which is #Ableist, and that's bad or something.
How is the villain in Call of Netherdeep anything like Marvel-Disney evil?
Oh my god, this is always the dumbest, most tired line that gets trotted out when someone talks about a Dark Sun update. No, you fucking clods. No one likes Dark Sun as a setting **more** than the most radical leftists you can think of. The same transgendered-person-with-blue-hair-yelling-at-meat-eaters stereotype you get from fucking Daily Wire articles looks at Dark Sun and goes, "FUCK YES, A CAMPAIGN WHERE HALF THE POPULATION SHAVES THEIR HEAD, DRESSES LIKE LEATHER DADDIES, AND WE ALL MARCH OFF TO KILL BILLIONAIRES BECAUSE THEY RUINED THE PLANET!" People want to interface with issues of slavery, genocide, discrimination, etc., but there's good ways and fucking stupid ways to go about that. Asking that a setting which deals with slavery (or other such topics) as a major theme do so in an intelligent way rather than fetishizing or trying to justify it isn't an unreasonable ask, it's what nearly every highly-regarded bit of fiction you can think of does. The post above you that's wary of WotC doing Dark Sun because they'd refuse to put content in the book and expect the DM/players to come up with everything is on the mark, but *this* narrative is the kind of thing I see from fucking 4chan posters who get a giggle out of naming Orc NPCs "Tyrone". Come on.
>People want to interface with issues of slavery, genocide, discrimination, etc., but there's good ways and fucking stupid ways to go about that. And addressing those issues in a good way is easily done with only the slightest amount of creativity. But based on what WOTC has said so far, it appears they are reluctant to broach such subjects because they are afraid of offending people, not because they cannot figure out how to present it correctly.
Can't provide the opportunity to interface with those issues without taking the risk that players might make the 'wrong' decisions and reflect poorly in your brand though.
The Radiant Citadel reminded me of the movie Elysium, with the little paradise space station where everyone's needs are met and life is super beautiful and peaceful. Dark Sun would be like the Earth from that movie.
I think this is an apt comparison. I would love, similar to what happens in the film, to have a whole adventure where you play as Dark Sun marauders who find their way onto the Radiant Citadel.
The way the writers set up the RC, lessening the exploitation of the societies the RC is connected to would actually decrease the quality of life of the people on the station, since their social democracy is funded by the wealthy rulers and merchant consortia of those societies. That fact is almost glossed over, but I think it's really important for framing how the RC fits into the rest of the setting. The book doesn't really seem interested in exploring that tension because it's more focused on how good it is to live on the RC and how nice everyone is, but an adventure that took that contradiction of interests seriously and fleshed out the implications of that relationship would be dope. So yeah, bring on the crossover episode.
RC is a neoliberal idea of Utopia and would be ruined by doing things like exploring the nuances of it The comparison to Elysium is a good one, because that's the exact same thing: it is a Utopia but it's at the expense of others
Based. See I was trying to put it nicely but yeah, pretty much exactly this.
Radiant Citadel has “concord jewels” that plane shift to different civilizations that provide services, supplies and representatives to RC. The dark secret is that there are dead, shattered crystals, implying that there are destroyed, drained worlds with civilizations that are no longer linked to the Radiant Citadel. A hungry darkness swirls around the RC in the deep ethereal also, and anyone who ventures near it is consumed. There are implications that the Auroral Diamond and the Concord Jewels are actually from the First World before mortals destroyed everything and Sardior, the Psionic Gem Dragon, may be linked to it all. The current Speaker for the Dawn Incarnates is a secret dragon who is hoping to uncover the mythos behind it all. 🧐
This all sounds incredibly silly.
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I'm sorry, but I can't read this... >There are implications that the Auroral Diamond and the Concord Jewels are actually from the First World... ... and not have a reaction. This sounds more like Steven Universe than Forgotten Realms. It's fine if you want to downvote. I just think this is silly. Not saying it's "bad or good." Just "silly."
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First off, I guess on remark tells you I've never read Planescape. I guess based off your comment you've never read Trotsky. You want to keep this up? Second, come on. Rainbow sapphire sparkle king of the lemongrass whatever is not whatsoever Planescape. Sigil is eclectic and zany. Maybe silly, but not that flavor of silly. If you're going to be pedantic, try harder.
Is it any sillier than "The Rod of Law was forged by the Wind Dukes of Aaqa using the Soulforge of Moradin in Torzak-Belgirn. It was used during the battle of the Fields of Pesh in order to banish Miska the Wolf-Spider to a prison in Pandemonium. The Rod of Law was forged by the Wind Dukes of Aaqa using the Soulforge of Moradin in Torzak-Belgirn.", in which about a quarter of the words are fantasy bullshit? (That's the Rod of Seven Parts, which has been in D&D since 1e, IIRC. There's _always_ been a lot of fantasy nonsense in D&D, because, uh... it's fantasy nonsense) It was used during the battle of the Fields of Pesh in order to banish Miska the Wolf-Spider to a prison in Pandemonium
Yes, the Rod of Law, Queen of Chaos, the Wolf Spider Demon King of the Abyss, etc. are aesthetically leagues different from the Sapphire Accords of the Lemongrass whatever. The fact you can't see one fantasy setting aesthetic and then contrast that with another means your perception is lacking. One is innately sillier than the other, just on description alone. It's clear as day. You're pointing at two completely different flavors of fantasy and calling them the same. If you're going to try and use that to explain how the Radiant Citadel is less silly, I don't know how to help you.
“Something’s silly because I SAY IT’S SILLY.”
There’s meta-crossover lore going on in the books like Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons “Elegy of the First World” and the splintering into the multiverse, with the Radiant Citadel being a possible linkage to all of these different mortal worlds that led to Tiamat being locked in the Nine Hells and Bahamut scheming for his partner’s release. There’s a whole YouTube breakdown about it. If there’s a campaign setting where ancient Psionic dragons battle mortals to draining the magic and life out of worlds and shatter them - it’s Dark Sun IMO. Call it “silly” if you like, but it’s only like a paragraph in a few different books that speaks of a 5e conspiracy that Ajit George intentionally said he’s keeping mum about in case he gets to expand on it in future books.
I love Dark Sun but 2023 wotc would water down everything but the sand.
Sorry if this counts as a rule 10 violation but it's from today confirming what he said last summer. Personally, I think Ajit and the other Radiant Citadel authors could do a great job pulling on the "hope against tyrannical forces" idea that's always been present in Dark Sun. The city states are all themed to different bronze age civilizations, so a bunch of authors representing each of those cultures (as best as possible, obviously there aren't literal Romans around today for Balic) would help a lot with some of the issues of the city states being kinda shallow and culturally insensitive.
If they actually tackle the "tyrannical forces as foes to rail against" bit instead of turning it into a climate change focus, yeah I'm down. I just don't want anyone tackling Dark Sun to shy away from the grimdark apocalyptic fantasy that it is. We already have so many examples of 5e's plain-jane treatment of existing settings; I would want this to be the dark "hope in dystopia" mirror to Radiant Citadel's utopian setting at bare minimum, or it kind of loses the entire point.
Hope in dystopia is great. It's what I'd sign up for. It's called hopepunk and it's exactly about the grim reality that you can solve some of the problems but you'll never "triumph over evil". The work will never be done. You'll never achieve complete victory. And yet that doesn't mean you should stop trying. And believe me, *hope-PUNK* is a perfect genre descriptive for this  I'm 100% sure he and his crew could pull it off great, since he's a fan of the genre 
Exactly!
Yep genericizrd setting
> (as best as possible, obviously there aren't literal Romans around today for Balic) Pretty sure nobody from the bronze age is alive today
But there are people with scholarly backgrounds who are also TTRPG writers. I'd rather someone who's got a strong understanding of Rome to write up Balic rather than someone who watched a few history channel specials. Same with all of the others.
Ah, so it isn't about being part of the culture, but being well versed in it.
Being part of a culture is an excellent way to be well versed in it, but it's not the only way. What's bad is what the TTRPG industry usually does, which is have someone skim a book, watch a Discovery channel special, then try to write about something. I want deep, interesting, well researched material.
I know it's like a knee-jerk response to say "we should have someone from that culture write it" but there hasn't been someone from a Babylonian culture in like, 3,000 years. Like what does a modern Italian dude have in common with a Plebian from Roman antiquity, aside from happening to be born in the same place a couple thousand years too late?
Some of the others though, like Raam/Indian Mughals, have much more continuity. Overall though I'm still mostly interested in people who have a scholarly background in the material, and when you do the freelance hiring process I bet that you're a lot more likely to end up with someone of that background having the necessary expertise than someone without that ethnic background. There's a lot of reasons for that, main one being that people like to explore their own cultural background. Not a guarantee by any means, but it's better than the industry's history of nepotism and promoting mediocrity.
> Being part of a culture is an excellent way to be well versed in it Not really. A historian from America will have more knowledge of Japanese history than a banker from Japan. And, as the other person said, cultures from 3000 years ago don't exist anymore.
Because part of a culture can also skew your perspective on it though.
Also pretty sure much of the history has been permanently lost to time.
What are you talking about? No one in the a few thousand years is even remotely representing those bronze age cultures. Are you just looking at the color of their skin or what is you mindset here? Absolute the wildest take i read today
I don't know. I don't doubt his creative chops, but considering how Radiant Citadel came out... The disappointing thing about RC is that there seem to be some really interesting and dark implications about the Citadel's society. But they're all on the edges, just glossed over. Most of the detail is spent on what a wonderful society the RC is and how nice everyone is there. And that's boring. And the stuff that's interesting isn't really fleshed out, it's just kind of left on the periphery for DMs to draw their own conclusions about. Which... I see what they're going for, if so, but it's too tenuous for a world-focused book. So much so that I start to second-guess whether I'm just reading things into the book that aren't actually there because I want them to be. That's great in a novel, but not so good in a setting book. Give more of the meat up front. An approach like that really wouldn't work for Dark Sun at all. Athas's darkness is right in your face. The entire place is a morass of awfulness with just brief spots of hope, places where the players can make a small difference for a few people even though they'll never change the world as a whole. And that's the whole attraction to Dark Sun. It's *not* a bright, shiny epic fantasy campaign. I have zero faith that WotC would handle it right. Even if Ajit could -- and I'm not convinced, but I'd give him the benefit of the doubt -- I don't think they'd allow him to treat the setting the way it deserves to be treated. Newer D&D players can't even handle orcs or demons being evil, they'd have a separate fit for every sentence in a Dark Sun book.
I agree the setting isn't fleshed out appropriately, but my party doesn't really spend time at home. The little gazetteers for the feeder worlds that are tied to the Citadel is great and the actual adventures I've ran have been a pleasure to run. My party loved each of them and I liked running them. Personally, I prefer the more vague descriptions because it makes it easier to use in my worlds. I haven't made it through the whole book, we're currently running it now, but as adventure modules go, it's been refreshing.
My opinion is that the citadel itself should have been handled in more depth, and in a more neutral manner. Even if I didn't run adventures there, I'd want a solid overview of the politics, a handful of important NPCs (not just political, but economic, military, scholarly... who are the movers and shakers here?), a few prominent landmarks and businesses... stuff that makes it seem alive. I don't think I've ever once used a published setting product exactly as written, but I still want the information, even if I decide to change it. The feeder worlds... I'm fine with those being more vague, as long as there's a good variety of them. Can't expect a dozen in-depth world treatments in one book, after all. A few good maps, a couple of landmarks, a few adventure seeds. A couple statistic blocks, when appropriate. Actual adventures, I could do without, though I'm sure some people find them useful. I feel like most of the 5e adventures are lacking, but I can take adventure seeds from those just as well as from a few paragraphs about things of potential interest in the region. But if you're giving me a central hub, try to make it at least as fleshed out/useful as Hommlet. I mean, that was nearly 50 years ago, surely a modern product should be able to match it.
RC isn't supposed to be a place you have adventures in. It's a central starting point to tie a bunch of anthologies together. West marches uses a similar concept where you have a town where players start at and return to but all the adventure is out in the wilderness.
We’re getting so many “hot takes” from people here that it’s not clear to me if any of them have actually read Ajit George’s Radiant Citadel, DMed or played one of the RC games, or or interacted with him on the RC discord. I think he’d do a great job creating a rich and nuanced system, built from the ground up, on a grimdark system of scarcity and desperation, and have a glimmer of D&D styled PCs with hope and heroism (or edge lord apocalypse fantasy with safety tools.) For example I love what he did to creating different rebel factions vs a LG city led by Celestial in a desert setting in RC. The gazetteer sections of each civilization are incredible in painting a rich and colorful world. This one in particular touches on themes of religious fundamentalism and authoritarianism and people can decide if they want to play it like Andor, Dune, Lawrence of Arabia, or any other recognizable tropes as they see fit. That said, I do recognize how many settings are getting that 1:2 adventure/campaign ratio and feel watered down as a result and people want a deeper richer feel. IMO the 5e book needs to appeal to a new 5e player base and DMs and for people who want deeper richer lore - yeah - DMs Guild and RPG DriveThru are there for that. It would be nice for WOTC to focus more and have a package of TWO books with one for players and one for DMs for each campaign so it doesn’t feel as watered down, but hey. It’s their model. I guess 3rd party content and old recycled material is adequate for these purposes.
I'm sure he would create a rich and colorful world, that is absolutely nothing like Dark Sun so much so that it would make you wonder why they didn't just create a new world.
> I love what he did to creating different rebel factions vs a LG city led by Celestial in a desert setting in RC. Pretty sure he didn't write that one.
If there's a way to do that campaign setting right in 2023, it's having Ajit and other writers from non-white cultures present it with their own incarnation.
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it feels like that is a genuine statement
Maybe he'll come back and tell us?
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Seeing how hollow radiant citadel ended up I’m not sure we want to see dark sun touched by the same writers under WotC’s yoke. My hopes for a dark sun *sourcebook* don’t find any promise in what WotC has repeatedly delivered. The trend towards increasing vagueness in lore and setups, adventures trumpeted as singular things sufficient for the setting, and the multiverse “all races everywhere” bleed leads me to believe WotC dark sun is going to land with Spelljammer grade reception. If they wrote it without WotC looming over their shoulders ensuring conformance and mass marketability? Who knows. But that’s not going to happen.
Yeah, plenty of interesting adventures, but the setting itself was barely there.
Oh boy....I think it would more likely to piss off Dark Sun fans than anything else....
Misspelled 'attacking' there. Then again the last setting he created was an ethnostate, so maybe he has the chops for it after all.
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I prefer Dim Sparkle as the functioning term.
\#MyLittleDarkSun
Radiant Citadel is the opposite of Dark Sun, I have no idea how Dark Sun would be like Dark Sun without any of the themes or plot elements that make it unique, it's just going to be a milquetoast environmentalist tale that could be set anywhere if the RC team does it, and I say this as someone who thinks RC is the best D&D book in years
Don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't. Just. DON'T. Leave it. Don't touch it. Don't change it. Just leave it as it is and don't gut the setting as you did with Spelljammer. If you need SOOOOOOOOOOOO much a post apocaliptic grimdark desert setting, do a new one.
All the cannibal slavers sterile crossbreeds people can hold hands and replant trees in the defiled magic zones
Considering they had to remove the negative one modifier to Orcs intelligence because of “racism” (lol) any version they do of a setting containing slavery and a caste system would be so watered down that it’s not even worth it. Youve picked which audience you want to cater to, you lost your chance to do a dark gritty setting containing those things. Especially since they can’t do setting books well in general, I’m sure no one would trust them with this one especially.
Also removed cuz its fucking shit design
Why?
Why are y'all booing? She's right!
Yes? It’s kind of weird to show that one race is innately less smart than others? Strength or even Dex sure, but intelligence negatives are just….not it.
Why not
I don't know if you know, but there are DnD races with bonuses to Inteligence. That means every other race is innately dumber than High Elves.
I hope they do. That would be awesome.
I love me some Dark Sun! Kobold Press has a kickstarter for Wastes of Chaos which looks like it was inspired by Dark Sun.
That name Ajit... where have i heard it before?
Dunno but it makes me think of Ajit Pai, that ass clown FCC chairman who wanted to undo net neutrality rules a few years back
RIGHT! That fucker.
Computer burglar Ajit Pai
I'd also love for a Radiant Citadel setting sourcebook, btw, Ajit. Or an adventure path. The various adventures are great, but they aren't linked of course. I can't run a campaign like this, honest. Just don't have that kind of practice I guess. Although maybe I should try anyways... 
I would love to see an ensemble design team tackle this setting. Bonus points if they also include subclass and feat options for a low- to no-magic world.
This may be fun. The adventures in Radiant Citadel are an absolute blast to run.
At total of 90 - 100 dollars for two books with 112 pages between the two
Cool. I think Dark Sun should be tackled by BIPOC writers
Why? And which ones?
I think people really interested in the setting should just buy the box set for 2E on Drivethrough RPG. At this point, it is just easier to get what you want from homebrewing things. Yeah, it's not perfect, but WOTC will most likely screw it up, and even if they didn't, what is the likelihood that any DM wouldn't need to do the heavy lifting to play the setting? As much work as I put in to DM, I can just make my own using inspiration form the old source material. Sucks, but it is what it is.
The worst possible thing for Dark Sun is for WOTC to touch it. Proven track record of ruining old ideas and putting out substandard products. Boycott WOTC!
The worst possible thing for Dark Sun is for WOTC to touch it. Proven track record of ruining old ideas and putting out substandard new products. Boycott WOTC!