Dirty and gritty is good to play and DM once in a while. It gives you perspective on all your other games.
You can roll back that setting to a time before the sorcerer kings fully ruled and slavery was the norm. Could the PC's stop the final outcome? Could they save one of the lost races?
Or will they also turn to evil acts to reach their end goal?
How do the characters gain wealth and fame without working for or with the evil.
Bring back the dirty, bring back the gritty, make evil tangible and in your face.
Why was the franchise SAW or even Die Hard so popular? People want evil stories. They want to see the good guys win but the bad guys have to be real real bad. Your only as good as your opponent makes you look. The harder he is to defeat the better you look. The more evil he is the better you look. Heck 007 was technically a mass murderer with over 590 kills through all the movies. The bad guys killed more and planed to kill billions.
Did anyone else notice "Athaspace" on the map in the latest Spelljammer article?
*No! But that’s really cool.*
It doesn't have Dragonlance, Exandria, or any of the other settings that WotC has the rights to and has made books of. Why would it have *ATHAS* over Greyhawk? *ATHAS*, a setting that hasn't even been touched by a 5e rulesbook except in one or two adventure setting change guides. *ATHAS*, a setting that WotC hasn't even mentioned as being a remote possibility that it could get a reboot. Makes no sense. Wild if true, but... yeah, I'm not buying it just yet.
My heart is hopeful though, because while I have never played and probably never will play the setting, people love it. Let them eat cake!
Welp apparently they changed that map and now it says "Doomspace". So either Athas was added accidentally somehow and wasn't meant to be in the book, or it is in the book and the map spoiled some kid of surprise.
Welp apparently they changed that map and now it says "Doomspace". So either Athas was added accidentally somehow and wasn't meant to be in the book, or it is in the book and the map spoiled some kid of surprise.
...I'm leaning towards the former.
Unfortunately does seem like a mistake - a great shame. This is one thing that will probabaly have to go in the 5e Athas that was in the original - the complete inaccessibility and the fact that the Athasian races were better in almost all ways from their equivelents in other worlds. Hopefully it is still almost impossible to get to though if they do bring it back.
I saw a Nightmare Beast in the free Spelljammer Monstrous Compendium. Maybe they are doing Dark Sun and just didn’t wanna announce it officially yet. I think a progressive Athas would be pretty cool as a new 2020s take on a classic setting.
The way WotC has been handling the "reimagining" of lore these days, I don't ever want to see Athas tarnished by the 'make sure we can't offend anyone with fictional races and characters' mentality.
You know, I have really had just about enough of people’s snide little insinuations that any step Wizards takes to deal with the game’s problematic history is a problem itself. You know what’s perfectly fine to have in a 2022 modern rendition of Athas?
Cannibalism.
Slavery.
Tyranny.
Racism.
Injustice.
Dancing snake cultists.
You know what’s not fine to put into a modern 2022 rendition of Athas?
Celebrating those things and assuring the players those things are fine, splendid, and highly desirable end states for all of modern society.
Athas is a broken, dying world ruled by immortal monsters. It is a godawful miserable place to live and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies. That gives it space to be compelling as a game setting and adventure sphere, for the same reason post-apocalyptic settings have been popular for centuries in our stories. “What would happen if everything broke?” is a fascinating question to explore. That does not mean the results are less broken, it means the players are tasked with surviving a broken world rather than saving one on the brink of breaking. Athas doesn’t ask you “what would you do to save the world?” Athas asks you “what would you do to survive, in a world barely worth living in?”
That question is a fine proposition for a D&D game to strive to answer. So maybe stop with the snide little digs. One can be a fan of dark, awful post-apocalyptic settings without also being an exclusionary jerk actively desiring to harm and expel other people from the game.
More sensitive themes could be briefly cited in the setting's background with appropriate disclaimer note and leave it up to each and every DM how much or how little, if any, they want to feature in their campaign.
From some of the flip-throughs I'm seeing on the web, Doomspace looks something new and cool, but reminiscent of Athas. See this post from EN World for details.
From some of the flip-throughs I'm seeing on the web, Doomspace looks something new and cool, but reminiscent of Athas. See this post from EN World for details.
Disappointing, but cool nonetheless. I hope this doesn’t mean that an actual Dark Sun sourcebook/adventure is completely ruled out.
My thought was that they changed the name to Doomspace so they could keep open a Dark Sun option. Maybe they'll use it, maybe they won't, but they leave the door open, at least. if they call is Athaspace, then that's it, and it really shrinks the possibilities. Now there can be a Doomspace, and there's still room for Athas.
You know, I have really had just about enough of people’s snide little insinuations that any step Wizards takes to deal with the game’s problematic history is a problem itself. You know what’s perfectly fine to have in a 2022 modern rendition of Athas?
Cannibalism.
Slavery.
Tyranny.
Racism.
Injustice.
Dancing snake cultists.
You know what’s not fine to put into a modern 2022 rendition of Athas?
Celebrating those things and assuring the players those things are fine, splendid, and highly desirable end states for all of modern society.
Athas is a broken, dying world ruled by immortal monsters. It is a godawful miserable place to live and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies. That gives it space to be compelling as a game setting and adventure sphere, for the same reason post-apocalyptic settings have been popular for centuries in our stories. “What would happen if everything broke?” is a fascinating question to explore. That does not mean the results are less broken, it means the players are tasked with surviving a broken world rather than saving one on the brink of breaking. Athas doesn’t ask you “what would you do to save the world?” Athas asks you “what would you do to survive, in a world barely worth living in?”
That question is a fine proposition for a D&D game to strive to answer. So maybe stop with the snide little digs. One can be a fan of dark, awful post-apocalyptic settings without also being an exclusionary jerk actively desiring to harm and expel other people from the game.
This. If you have a liberal/progressive outlook Athas is a great place for adventure. You can't throw a stone without finding an opportunity to fight oppression. The Veiled Alliance is a resistance sytle organisation. The possibility that a setting may be misused exists for every setting.
You know, I have really had just about enough of people’s snide little insinuations that any step Wizards takes to deal with the game’s problematic history is a problem itself. You know what’s perfectly fine to have in a 2022 modern rendition of Athas?
Cannibalism.
Slavery.
Tyranny.
Racism.
Injustice.
Dancing snake cultists.
You know what’s not fine to put into a modern 2022 rendition of Athas?
Celebrating those things and assuring the players those things are fine, splendid, and highly desirable end states for all of modern society.
Athas is a broken, dying world ruled by immortal monsters. It is a godawful miserable place to live and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies. That gives it space to be compelling as a game setting and adventure sphere, for the same reason post-apocalyptic settings have been popular for centuries in our stories. “What would happen if everything broke?” is a fascinating question to explore. That does not mean the results are less broken, it means the players are tasked with surviving a broken world rather than saving one on the brink of breaking. Athas doesn’t ask you “what would you do to save the world?” Athas asks you “what would you do to survive, in a world barely worth living in?”
That question is a fine proposition for a D&D game to strive to answer. So maybe stop with the snide little digs. One can be a fan of dark, awful post-apocalyptic settings without also being an exclusionary jerk actively desiring to harm and expel other people from the game.
This. If you have a liberal/progressive outlook Athas is a great place for adventure. You can't throw a stone without finding an opportunity to fight oppression. The Veiled Alliance is a resistance sytle organisation. The possibility that a setting may be misused exists for every setting.
I don’t dislike Athas. I think it’s a great setting and my group passionately fought against slavery. I just think it might be cool to see it updated.
You know, I have really had just about enough of people’s snide little insinuations that any step Wizards takes to deal with the game’s problematic history is a problem itself. You know what’s perfectly fine to have in a 2022 modern rendition of Athas?
Cannibalism.
Slavery.
Tyranny.
Racism.
Injustice.
Dancing snake cultists.
You know what’s not fine to put into a modern 2022 rendition of Athas?
Celebrating those things and assuring the players those things are fine, splendid, and highly desirable end states for all of modern society.
Athas is a broken, dying world ruled by immortal monsters. It is a godawful miserable place to live and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies. That gives it space to be compelling as a game setting and adventure sphere, for the same reason post-apocalyptic settings have been popular for centuries in our stories. “What would happen if everything broke?” is a fascinating question to explore. That does not mean the results are less broken, it means the players are tasked with surviving a broken world rather than saving one on the brink of breaking. Athas doesn’t ask you “what would you do to save the world?” Athas asks you “what would you do to survive, in a world barely worth living in?”
That question is a fine proposition for a D&D game to strive to answer. So maybe stop with the snide little digs. One can be a fan of dark, awful post-apocalyptic settings without also being an exclusionary jerk actively desiring to harm and expel other people from the game.
Could i get you to elaborate a little bit? I agree with everything your praising Dark Sun for, as well as with the mentality it should be approached with, but it also seems like your defending WotC for changing/removing those very things in DnD as of late. Most people who have an issue with WotC's approach to lore aren't trying to exclude anyone from anything, i personally would encourage everyone to pickup a setting guide for Dark Sun and have a go, a few google searches will yield some great advice for converting it to 5e.
As you say, surviving in the world of Athas amidst all its "problematic" content is a great basis for a story-based RPG, yet the very founded fear held by some advocates of the setting, is that those things will be lessened or removed entirely should present-day WotC treat it the same way they have treated all their lore that hasn't particularly aligned with whatever agenda they're catering to. The things, as you so poetically articulated (not sarcasm), which are the core appeal and style of story when playing within the setting.
You could argue that if a dumbed down version of the setting were released for 5e, that anyone who preferred it the way it was could simply continue to run it as it was (as i would do should it happen), however the same argument can be made in reverse that anyone who feels it needs to be dumbed down can do so for their own games. The way that lore has been unceremoniously carved out of D&D's worlds and stories is like watching one of your favorite movies in a franchise get disregarded from the cannon of future entries; you can always just go back and enjoy the movie as it was, but there will always be that sore spot that future official content wont really reflect it.
Of course, this is all hypothetical. Its entirely possible WotC might pucker up and make an unfettered, un-remorseful 5e release of Dark Sun, in which case i'd be all for it. But to bring me back to my original question, it seems like you are saying Dark Sun was fine they way it was while denouncing anyone who simply wants it to stay that way.
EDIT: If what you mean by "Celebrating those things" includes having NPCs that, as a part of their story, are enthralled by them or revel in them, wouldn't the setting feel a little hollow if those problems were its core presence but no NPC ever desired them (aka, were part of the problem of why the world is that way at all)? I don't recall ever playing in a Dark Sun game or reading a module that ever regarded those things as 'good' outside the context of describing a non-player character who thought as much.
Could i get you to elaborate a little bit? I agree with everything your praising Dark Sun for, as well as with the mentality it should be approached with, but it also seems like your defending WotC for changing/removing those very things in DnD as of late.
This statement shows a deep, possibly fundamental, misunderstanding of what Wizards is doing. One that is unfortunately far too common, both in D&D and elsewhere. The goal has never been to 'remove evil' from D&D. Let me repeat that, with all the emphasis I can reasonably muster.
THE GOAL HAS NEVER BEEN TO REMOVE EVIL FROM D&D
People have been ranting and wailing and gnashing their teeth over this, but allow mt to state this: removing something from the system is different than removing that thing from the world. Removing systemic, above-the-table racism from D&D is not the same thing, at all, as removing it from the fictional worlds D&D is played in. The realms of D&D are flawed places where people make mistakes and even entire civilizations can be skewed from true. The last few years have simply seen Wizards trying to backpedal on the idea that these things are baked into the essential nature of entire sapient species, and people who do not understand why this is a problem worthy of fixing assume it's going to continue and they're going to strip everything away from the game instead. Because they do not understand, and in many cases it is a willful, intentional, and malicious refusal to understand rather than honest lack of clarity. Sadly, that malicious nonunderstanding pollutes many of these discussions and they turn into forum fires the moderators have to shut down, over and over and over again until the whole subject is on the brink of being verboten.
It should not be. But malicious bad actors have pushed it as close as a subject can get without quite crossing the line yet. I'm trying my hardest to keep in mind that you seem to be making an honest request for clarification and treat it accordingly, but please also remember that I am very angry about this entire state of affairs. Please pardon me if I am brusque.
As you say, surviving in the world of Athas amidst all its "problematic" content is a great basis for a story-based RPG, yet the very founded fear held by some advocates of the setting, is that those things will be lessened or removed entirely should present-day WotC treat it the same way they have treated all their lore that hasn't particularly aligned with whatever agenda they're catering to. The things, as you so poetically articulated (not sarcasm), which are the core appeal and style of story when playing within the setting.
And this is one of the big reasons why I'm so angry about this whole situation. People assume (or rather, are told to assume by off-website people I am not mentioning here) that Wizards is being a craven, cynical money-chasing Twitter-appeasing jerkbag about this rather than making an honest effort to correct issues that affect a great many players. They assume there's no 'good' reason behind the change in direction over the last few years and that a bunch of "woke" people are trying to simply ruin the game with no intention of sticking around when the work is done. The assumption has always seemed to be that the only thing we want is to "woke-ify" D&D and once that is accomplished we'll all get bored and move on to the next thing to "woke-ify", because the only reason any of us are ever protesting any of these things is for the sake of having something to protest about.
That is patently untrue, and goes right back to malicious misunderstanding. There is no agenda, save for the "Agenda" of not needlessly harming and expelling many thousands of players from the game. The general tone of Athas as a broken world is not problematic at all, at least not in the way people keep attempting to maliciously misunderstand.
You could argue that if a dumbed down version of the setting were released for 5e, that anyone who preferred it the way it was could simply continue to run it as it was (as i would do should it happen), however the same argument can be made in reverse that anyone who feels it needs to be dumbed down can do so for their own games. The way that lore has been unceremoniously carved out of D&D's worlds and stories is like watching one of your favorite movies in a franchise get disregarded from the cannon of future entries; you can always just go back and enjoy the movie as it was, but there will always be that sore spot that future official content wont really reflect it.
I could argue that. It would be a stupid thing to argue and wasn't what I was arguing at all. What I am arguing is that the system - the mechanical and instructional text in the books - does not and never has needed to be making value judgments for the players above the table. A section on Badlandia in a world gazetteer saying "this region is primarily inhabited by the Blood Pimple raider tribe, a band mostly composed of orcs, goblins, and bugbears. The Blood Pimple raiders are a brutal, merciless band of pillagers with no regard for anything but personal strength, preying on any weaker than themselves" is fine. A little clumsy and heavy-handed for my tastes, but fine. A section in the species write-up for orcs as a playable species saying "whatever world or culture they originate from, orcs are a brutal, merciless breed with no regard for anything but personal strength. They prey on anyone weaker than themselves, and no orc unable to hold their own survives long in these vicious societies" is not f@#$ing okay. It has never been okay to present a playable species in that way. Not in 5e, not in 4e, not in all the different 3e's, not in any damned edition of the game. This is simply the first time enough people have had the courage to stand up and say "Hey, that's not okay" for TSR/Wizards to take notice.
People assume that removing these value judgments from the core books that need to be valid and viable for any setting - Athas, Faerun, Eberron, Exandria, the infinite myriad of homebrew worlds out there - is somehow equivalent to "ruining the lore" for every other specific setting. Again, either that's an absolutely daft and utterly unsupported leap of logic, or it's malicious misunderstanding.
Of course, this is all hypothetical. Its entirely possible WotC might pucker up and make an unfettered, un-remorseful 5e release of Dark Sun, in which case i'd be all for it. But to bring me back to my original question, it seems like you are saying Dark Sun was fine they way it was while denouncing anyone who simply wants it to stay that way.
EDIT: If what you mean by "Celebrating those things" includes having NPCs that, as a part of their story, are enthralled by them or revel in them, wouldn't the setting feel a little hollow if those problems were its core presence but no NPC ever desired them (aka, were part of the problem of why the world is that way at all)? I don't recall ever playing in a Dark Sun game or reading a module that ever regarded those things as 'good' outside the context of describing a non-player character who thought as much.
I am denouncing people who want a "raw, uncut, unfiltered, filthy and gritty Dark Sun just like Mama TSR used to make!" so they can spend an entire game session lovingly narrating their character/party wandering into the market, buying themselves a harem of sobbing, brutalized, traumatized sex slaves, spending the day merrily ****** them, cooking them alive and eating them for dinner that night, and then doing it all over again the next day. I am denouncing the people who say "you have to be evil in Athas!" and punishing their players for not wallowing in the setting's misery and doing their best to become the Sorcerer-Kings' trusted right hands so they can be crowned the Kings of Crimes Against Kithkind. I am denouncing those people who want Dark Sun to come out unchanged because they're looking to be complete monsters and they want an official D&D product to tell them it's perfectly okay to be a complete monster. That all those things I mentioned in my last post are not the realities of a broken world, but are instead super fun and cool and are a great way to pass the time in this splendid world.
I am denouncing people who want Dark Sun to make the value judgment, above the table, that cannibalism, slavery, tyranny, racism, and injustice are all super awesome and we should all support them wholeheartedly.
I'm not denouncing people who want Wizards to make the above-the-table value judgment that dancing snake cultists are awesome, though. Thank the stars for Zee Bashew.
That is why I've had it up to here with malicious misunderstanding. It's honestly why I no longer care if Dark Sun is ever released. Do I think it has the potential to be an excellent place to play a game? Of course. The Grim Hollow setting is every bit as broken and awful as Athas is usually portrayed as and those books sold like gangbusters. I personally have all three (if only one in hardcover) and am planning my next game to take place in the land of Ostoya. Which, to the uninitiated? Is a resource-poor country infested with unpredictable outbreaks of malignant undead from an Underworld beneath the surface, and which is ruled by a group of powerful vampires that have seized control of the nation and treat it like their own personal bloodbank and ant farm. It is awful, and I'm quite looking forward to smashing it and Curse of Strahd together in a blender to create my very own vampiric hellscape to subject my poor unprepared players to the next time it's my turn to DM.
The difference? My players won't get mad at me for portraying the land of Ostoya as a vampiric hellscape instead of a resort town full of delightful opportunities for some good, clean, wholesome peasant-torturing fun.
Dirty and gritty is good to play and DM once in a while. It gives you perspective on all your other games.
You can roll back that setting to a time before the sorcerer kings fully ruled and slavery was the norm. Could the PC's stop the final outcome? Could they save one of the lost races?
Or will they also turn to evil acts to reach their end goal?
How do the characters gain wealth and fame without working for or with the evil.
Bring back the dirty, bring back the gritty, make evil tangible and in your face.
Why was the franchise SAW or even Die Hard so popular? People want evil stories. They want to see the good guys win but the bad guys have to be real real bad. Your only as good as your opponent makes you look. The harder he is to defeat the better you look. The more evil he is the better you look. Heck 007 was technically a mass murderer with over 590 kills through all the movies. The bad guys killed more and planed to kill billions.
It is back up, but they edited the map to be "Doomspace".
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It doesn't have Dragonlance, Exandria, or any of the other settings that WotC has the rights to and has made books of. Why would it have *ATHAS* over Greyhawk? *ATHAS*, a setting that hasn't even been touched by a 5e rulesbook except in one or two adventure setting change guides. *ATHAS*, a setting that WotC hasn't even mentioned as being a remote possibility that it could get a reboot. Makes no sense. Wild if true, but... yeah, I'm not buying it just yet.
My heart is hopeful though, because while I have never played and probably never will play the setting, people love it. Let them eat cake!
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Welp apparently they changed that map and now it says "Doomspace". So either Athas was added accidentally somehow and wasn't meant to be in the book, or it is in the book and the map spoiled some kid of surprise.
...I'm leaning towards the former.
Unfortunately does seem like a mistake - a great shame. This is one thing that will probabaly have to go in the 5e Athas that was in the original - the complete inaccessibility and the fact that the Athasian races were better in almost all ways from their equivelents in other worlds. Hopefully it is still almost impossible to get to though if they do bring it back.
Well looks like we might have an answer on whether they currently intend to to make Dark Sun 5e.
The spelljammer book leaks show a lot of Athas monsters in it. Even one that can defile.
The fact that they are putting them here probably means they're trying to "stealth" dark sun stuff so people can piece it together on their own.
I get the feeling that they WANT to make it but know that it will be wrecked by their current politics.
I saw a Nightmare Beast in the free Spelljammer Monstrous Compendium. Maybe they are doing Dark Sun and just didn’t wanna announce it officially yet. I think a progressive Athas would be pretty cool as a new 2020s take on a classic setting.
As someone who loves Dark Sun, god I hope not.
The way WotC has been handling the "reimagining" of lore these days, I don't ever want to see Athas tarnished by the 'make sure we can't offend anyone with fictional races and characters' mentality.
DARK SUN is a classic campaign setting i really hope 5E release one day its so unique!
You know, I have really had just about enough of people’s snide little insinuations that any step Wizards takes to deal with the game’s problematic history is a problem itself. You know what’s perfectly fine to have in a 2022 modern rendition of Athas?
Cannibalism.
Slavery.
Tyranny.
Racism.
Injustice.
Dancing snake cultists.
You know what’s not fine to put into a modern 2022 rendition of Athas?
Celebrating those things and assuring the players those things are fine, splendid, and highly desirable end states for all of modern society.
Athas is a broken, dying world ruled by immortal monsters. It is a godawful miserable place to live and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies. That gives it space to be compelling as a game setting and adventure sphere, for the same reason post-apocalyptic settings have been popular for centuries in our stories. “What would happen if everything broke?” is a fascinating question to explore. That does not mean the results are less broken, it means the players are tasked with surviving a broken world rather than saving one on the brink of breaking. Athas doesn’t ask you “what would you do to save the world?” Athas asks you “what would you do to survive, in a world barely worth living in?”
That question is a fine proposition for a D&D game to strive to answer. So maybe stop with the snide little digs. One can be a fan of dark, awful post-apocalyptic settings without also being an exclusionary jerk actively desiring to harm and expel other people from the game.
Please do not contact or message me.
More sensitive themes could be briefly cited in the setting's background with appropriate disclaimer note and leave it up to each and every DM how much or how little, if any, they want to feature in their campaign.
From some of the flip-throughs I'm seeing on the web, Doomspace looks something new and cool, but reminiscent of Athas. See this post from EN World for details.
My thought was that they changed the name to Doomspace so they could keep open a Dark Sun option. Maybe they'll use it, maybe they won't, but they leave the door open, at least. if they call is Athaspace, then that's it, and it really shrinks the possibilities. Now there can be a Doomspace, and there's still room for Athas.
This. If you have a liberal/progressive outlook Athas is a great place for adventure. You can't throw a stone without finding an opportunity to fight oppression. The Veiled Alliance is a resistance sytle organisation. The possibility that a setting may be misused exists for every setting.
I don’t dislike Athas. I think it’s a great setting and my group passionately fought against slavery. I just think it might be cool to see it updated.
Could i get you to elaborate a little bit? I agree with everything your praising Dark Sun for, as well as with the mentality it should be approached with, but it also seems like your defending WotC for changing/removing those very things in DnD as of late. Most people who have an issue with WotC's approach to lore aren't trying to exclude anyone from anything, i personally would encourage everyone to pickup a setting guide for Dark Sun and have a go, a few google searches will yield some great advice for converting it to 5e.
As you say, surviving in the world of Athas amidst all its "problematic" content is a great basis for a story-based RPG, yet the very founded fear held by some advocates of the setting, is that those things will be lessened or removed entirely should present-day WotC treat it the same way they have treated all their lore that hasn't particularly aligned with whatever agenda they're catering to. The things, as you so poetically articulated (not sarcasm), which are the core appeal and style of story when playing within the setting.
You could argue that if a dumbed down version of the setting were released for 5e, that anyone who preferred it the way it was could simply continue to run it as it was (as i would do should it happen), however the same argument can be made in reverse that anyone who feels it needs to be dumbed down can do so for their own games. The way that lore has been unceremoniously carved out of D&D's worlds and stories is like watching one of your favorite movies in a franchise get disregarded from the cannon of future entries; you can always just go back and enjoy the movie as it was, but there will always be that sore spot that future official content wont really reflect it.
Of course, this is all hypothetical. Its entirely possible WotC might pucker up and make an unfettered, un-remorseful 5e release of Dark Sun, in which case i'd be all for it. But to bring me back to my original question, it seems like you are saying Dark Sun was fine they way it was while denouncing anyone who simply wants it to stay that way.
EDIT: If what you mean by "Celebrating those things" includes having NPCs that, as a part of their story, are enthralled by them or revel in them, wouldn't the setting feel a little hollow if those problems were its core presence but no NPC ever desired them (aka, were part of the problem of why the world is that way at all)? I don't recall ever playing in a Dark Sun game or reading a module that ever regarded those things as 'good' outside the context of describing a non-player character who thought as much.
This statement shows a deep, possibly fundamental, misunderstanding of what Wizards is doing. One that is unfortunately far too common, both in D&D and elsewhere. The goal has never been to 'remove evil' from D&D. Let me repeat that, with all the emphasis I can reasonably muster.
THE GOAL HAS NEVER BEEN TO REMOVE EVIL FROM D&D
People have been ranting and wailing and gnashing their teeth over this, but allow mt to state this: removing something from the system is different than removing that thing from the world. Removing systemic, above-the-table racism from D&D is not the same thing, at all, as removing it from the fictional worlds D&D is played in. The realms of D&D are flawed places where people make mistakes and even entire civilizations can be skewed from true. The last few years have simply seen Wizards trying to backpedal on the idea that these things are baked into the essential nature of entire sapient species, and people who do not understand why this is a problem worthy of fixing assume it's going to continue and they're going to strip everything away from the game instead. Because they do not understand, and in many cases it is a willful, intentional, and malicious refusal to understand rather than honest lack of clarity. Sadly, that malicious nonunderstanding pollutes many of these discussions and they turn into forum fires the moderators have to shut down, over and over and over again until the whole subject is on the brink of being verboten.
It should not be. But malicious bad actors have pushed it as close as a subject can get without quite crossing the line yet. I'm trying my hardest to keep in mind that you seem to be making an honest request for clarification and treat it accordingly, but please also remember that I am very angry about this entire state of affairs. Please pardon me if I am brusque.
And this is one of the big reasons why I'm so angry about this whole situation. People assume (or rather, are told to assume by off-website people I am not mentioning here) that Wizards is being a craven, cynical money-chasing Twitter-appeasing jerkbag about this rather than making an honest effort to correct issues that affect a great many players. They assume there's no 'good' reason behind the change in direction over the last few years and that a bunch of "woke" people are trying to simply ruin the game with no intention of sticking around when the work is done. The assumption has always seemed to be that the only thing we want is to "woke-ify" D&D and once that is accomplished we'll all get bored and move on to the next thing to "woke-ify", because the only reason any of us are ever protesting any of these things is for the sake of having something to protest about.
That is patently untrue, and goes right back to malicious misunderstanding. There is no agenda, save for the "Agenda" of not needlessly harming and expelling many thousands of players from the game. The general tone of Athas as a broken world is not problematic at all, at least not in the way people keep attempting to maliciously misunderstand.
I could argue that. It would be a stupid thing to argue and wasn't what I was arguing at all. What I am arguing is that the system - the mechanical and instructional text in the books - does not and never has needed to be making value judgments for the players above the table. A section on Badlandia in a world gazetteer saying "this region is primarily inhabited by the Blood Pimple raider tribe, a band mostly composed of orcs, goblins, and bugbears. The Blood Pimple raiders are a brutal, merciless band of pillagers with no regard for anything but personal strength, preying on any weaker than themselves" is fine. A little clumsy and heavy-handed for my tastes, but fine. A section in the species write-up for orcs as a playable species saying "whatever world or culture they originate from, orcs are a brutal, merciless breed with no regard for anything but personal strength. They prey on anyone weaker than themselves, and no orc unable to hold their own survives long in these vicious societies" is not f@#$ing okay. It has never been okay to present a playable species in that way. Not in 5e, not in 4e, not in all the different 3e's, not in any damned edition of the game. This is simply the first time enough people have had the courage to stand up and say "Hey, that's not okay" for TSR/Wizards to take notice.
People assume that removing these value judgments from the core books that need to be valid and viable for any setting - Athas, Faerun, Eberron, Exandria, the infinite myriad of homebrew worlds out there - is somehow equivalent to "ruining the lore" for every other specific setting. Again, either that's an absolutely daft and utterly unsupported leap of logic, or it's malicious misunderstanding.
I am denouncing people who want a "raw, uncut, unfiltered, filthy and gritty Dark Sun just like Mama TSR used to make!" so they can spend an entire game session lovingly narrating their character/party wandering into the market, buying themselves a harem of sobbing, brutalized, traumatized sex slaves, spending the day merrily ****** them, cooking them alive and eating them for dinner that night, and then doing it all over again the next day. I am denouncing the people who say "you have to be evil in Athas!" and punishing their players for not wallowing in the setting's misery and doing their best to become the Sorcerer-Kings' trusted right hands so they can be crowned the Kings of Crimes Against Kithkind. I am denouncing those people who want Dark Sun to come out unchanged because they're looking to be complete monsters and they want an official D&D product to tell them it's perfectly okay to be a complete monster. That all those things I mentioned in my last post are not the realities of a broken world, but are instead super fun and cool and are a great way to pass the time in this splendid world.
I am denouncing people who want Dark Sun to make the value judgment, above the table, that cannibalism, slavery, tyranny, racism, and injustice are all super awesome and we should all support them wholeheartedly.
I'm not denouncing people who want Wizards to make the above-the-table value judgment that dancing snake cultists are awesome, though. Thank the stars for Zee Bashew.That is why I've had it up to here with malicious misunderstanding. It's honestly why I no longer care if Dark Sun is ever released. Do I think it has the potential to be an excellent place to play a game? Of course. The Grim Hollow setting is every bit as broken and awful as Athas is usually portrayed as and those books sold like gangbusters. I personally have all three (if only one in hardcover) and am planning my next game to take place in the land of Ostoya. Which, to the uninitiated? Is a resource-poor country infested with unpredictable outbreaks of malignant undead from an Underworld beneath the surface, and which is ruled by a group of powerful vampires that have seized control of the nation and treat it like their own personal bloodbank and ant farm. It is awful, and I'm quite looking forward to smashing it and Curse of Strahd together in a blender to create my very own vampiric hellscape to subject my poor unprepared players to the next time it's my turn to DM.
The difference? My players won't get mad at me for portraying the land of Ostoya as a vampiric hellscape instead of a resort town full of delightful opportunities for some good, clean, wholesome peasant-torturing fun.
Please do not contact or message me.