Would love to have the Dark Sun setting back up again. I know the part of it having stereotypes and cannibalism but what about forgotten realms and the drow.

I'd rather see new stuff.

Dark Sun, as a setting does not appeal to me - in a lot of ways it reads like a middle schooler who just watched Mad Max and got his first Iron Maiden t-shirt was magically transformed into a setting.  I also find a number of the people who like Dark Sun seem like incredibly problematic individuals - on these forums, for example, some of the loudest voices crying their support for Dark Sun have been some of the loudest voices against Wizards removing the game’s racist elements. I doubt that is a coincidence - a lot about Dark Sun seems tailor made for that kind of regressive D&D player.

All that said, I voted Yes. 

For starters, distasteful as many of the setting’s fans may be, there are a LOT of folks I know who are perfectly well adjusted and like the setting. Just because the setting lends itself to some bad apples doesn’t mean the good ones should have to suffer.

Additionally, while the setting would never appeal to me for a campaign, it has a lot of neat elements I could repurpose. Psionics. Some pretty gnarly monsters that could make fun challenges on other planes.  I love when we get planes with different aesthetics - it means more variability in my homebrew options.

Plus, I am a big fan of sending players on quests across planes. While I would never use Dark Sun as a primary campaign setting, in a small dose of a session or two I think the tonal shift could be quite fun.

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen interviews where the design team has said they’d like to, but the content would be too difficult to transition to 5e. And while part of that is changing attitudes in society, another part is mechanical game play.

For example, while I liked the idea of dark sun, and ran campaigns with it back when it first came out. The actual game wasn’t as fun as the idea. The best example I can give, and the one most at odds with 5e, is food and water. Tracking your food and water supply — and the weight associated with carrying all that — was just not fun. A lot of bookkeeping, but really just annoying. Thing is, if you don’t track it, and just decide you have enough supplies, it kind of defeats the purpose of the world. And not tracking stuff like rations is kind of the way 5e works. 
Ditto breaking equipment, it’s a tough needle to thread between giving characters enough that they can use their abilities, but also making it scarce enough to keep with the theme of the world. 

Quote from Xalthu >>

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen interviews where the design team has said they’d like to, but the content would be too difficult to transition to 5e. And while part of that is changing attitudes in society, another part is mechanical game play.

For example, while I liked the idea of dark sun, and ran campaigns with it back when it first came out. The actual game wasn’t as fun as the idea. The best example I can give, and the one most at odds with 5e, is food and water. Tracking your food and water supply — and the weight associated with carrying all that — was just not fun. A lot of bookkeeping, but really just annoying. Thing is, if you don’t track it, and just decide you have enough supplies, it kind of defeats the purpose of the world. And not tracking stuff like rations is kind of the way 5e works. 
Ditto breaking equipment, it’s a tough needle to thread between giving characters enough that they can use their abilities, but also making it scarce enough to keep with the theme of the world. 

It's pretty much this for me. Dark Sun just doesn't fit 5e -- and trying to shoehorn it in would render it so far removed from the source as to be pointless and unrecognizable, pleasing nobody

Now, if WOTC wants to make a different setting with an explicit Burroughs-y vibe to take Dark Sun's place, that's fine by me

Quote from Xalthu >>

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen interviews where the design team has said they’d like to, but the content would be too difficult to transition to 5e. And while part of that is changing attitudes in society, another part is mechanical game play.

For example, while I liked the idea of dark sun, and ran campaigns with it back when it first came out. The actual game wasn’t as fun as the idea. The best example I can give, and the one most at odds with 5e, is food and water. Tracking your food and water supply — and the weight associated with carrying all that — was just not fun. A lot of bookkeeping, but really just annoying. Thing is, if you don’t track it, and just decide you have enough supplies, it kind of defeats the purpose of the world. And not tracking stuff like rations is kind of the way 5e works. 
Ditto breaking equipment, it’s a tough needle to thread between giving characters enough that they can use their abilities, but also making it scarce enough to keep with the theme of the world. 

 5e requires water and ration tracking in the rules as well.   If a group ignores them to eliminate that pillar of exploration difficulty to make for an easier game that's up to them (and many do).

What I really liked about Dark Sun was the extent to which they reframed many of the game elements to feel totally new. Elves were mysterious desert dwellers not unlike the Fremen of Arrakis. Halflings were feral jungle natives. Thri-kreen felt really exotic and alien. Arcane casters were defilers of nature.

I don't really need to have Dark Sun, but I'd love to see another setting where WotC has the courage to completely reskin so many "classic" elements of the game. Even Eberron doesn't really mess with the various common D&D cultures that much. People are so quick to fall back on default lore in 5e when there are so many more possibilities for campaign settings. I feel like a good part of the blame for that is 90% of 5e being Forgotten Realms or FR-adjacent.

The grittiness I can take or leave, but give me some imagination. I've played the game where elves live in trees and dwarves mine under mountains. Show me what else they could be.

I find it interesting that among the things noted so far are that the Dark Sun setting was not an aware setting in a lot of ways, that the current dev team doesn't think they could do it, that it doesn't quite fit 5e's larger overall tonal basis, and that yet despite this it had some cool ideas.

Assuming thieves haven't wrecked it, I still have my original dark sun stuff sitting in a storage shed in another state. I was not a fan of the setting -- the constant, unending grind of resource management was a whole thing, lol. I used parts and ideas from it to inform some stuff, but I and my players were not attracted to it as a setting in which to play.

I want to point out that a Dark Sun setting could totally be done today. The catch is that it would need to move away from the Brom and Corben inspirations (it was not heavily inspired by Burroughs directly, though both those artists used Burroughs themselves) because of the nature of Brom's work and the overarching challenges in the modern world around Den. That would anger a lot of the original folks (who, as noted, tend to have some odd ideas), but would ultimately still open it up to wider play and more interesting growth.

It also wouldn't be family friendly. Putting a 10 year old player into a setting like Dark Sun is going to be pretty rough -- ttrpg is not like a trip to the movies, lol.

But Dark Sun as a concept does show a direction and makes a larger point about D&D in general -- as a Brand, it has been set to be family friendly, and as many long time players (including the aforementioned Dark Sun lovers) will say, it has also become very generic, and trends towards a narrow subset of possible fantasy stories (with some products only very recently beginning to gently break that mold).

Pathfinder's early iterations explicitly took and ran with a Dark Sun clone. The the 4e release of Dark Sun (the last official one) was when Tieflings were introduced, after all, so to say that it is all bad is to ignore some key things.

So it is wholly possible to pull out some of the icky stuff and still retain and preserve the aspects of Dark Sun that make it a fun environment for more people, while still being something other than a "generic medieval fantasy world". I created a version for a campaign in I think it was 2004 or so that still has some good talk to day -- but I also operate on the basis of creating a setting for a campaign, and once the campaign is done, the setting is.

Summation:
Dark Sun is a great setting that could easily be brought to the modern era by someone who understands the challenges and problems that it has -- something the current devs do not, lacking firm grounding in those issues themselves. Like many things, these days, it would not make some people happy, but the majority of folks would likely enjoy it for a new way to look at D&D. It would also be a 16+ setting, which is a challenge for the Corporate Owners, who want more for the 8 to 15 range and require a family friendly basis.

I think WotC should make more settings, not fewer, in general, and that they need to stray from the "generic medieval anachronism fantasy world" significantly -- including completely distinct and specific classes, species, and more.

Quote from multiversegm16462 >>

I can't support this.

Based on what I've seen, heard, and read about recent releases, I don't think the current design team would do this setting any justice.  A lot of care and imagination was put into creating the original, and I'm afraid that wouldn't happen this time around.

 
This.  

I'm not against an updated Dark Sun, in fact, I fully support it, just not one done by Wizards of the Coast.  They already utterly decimated Forgotten Realms, Spell Jammer, Eberron and Dragonlance, we don't need them destroying another classic. 

Well, given all of that, I will remind that https://athas.org/ is out there still, for 5e.

Quote from scatterbraind >>

What I really liked about Dark Sun was the extent to which they reframed many of the game elements to feel totally new. Elves were mysterious desert dwellers not unlike the Fremen of Arrakis. Halflings were feral jungle natives. Thri-kreen felt really exotic and alien. Arcane casters were defilers of nature.

I don't really need to have Dark Sun, but I'd love to see another setting where WotC has the courage to completely reskin so many "classic" elements of the game. Even Eberron doesn't really mess with the various common D&D cultures that much. People are so quick to fall back on default lore in 5e when there are so many more possibilities for campaign settings. I feel like a good part of the blame for that is 90% of 5e being Forgotten Realms or FR-adjacent.

The grittiness I can take or leave, but give me some imagination. I've played the game where elves live in trees and dwarves mine under mountains. Show me what else they could be.

WotC: how about where elves live under mountains and dwarves live in trees?

I mean...

This is the thread line of a lot of posts. FR is a generic anachronistic medieval fantasy world. Eberron is a generic anachronistic fantasy world. It starts to repeat from there. 

When everyone draws from the same well, everyone gets the same water.

A question more complicated than it would first appear...
A) Would I like to SEE Dark Sun ported into 5e/5.5e or whatever "One D&D" is retitled to?  Yes.
B) Do I think the current climate and talent pool within WOTC is up to the task and would produce an actually good version of it?  Most certainly no.

I generally ascribe to the idea of "do it right or don't do it at all"; so, given how under-cooked some of WOTC's recent output has been... have to say "no".

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

Quote from CaptainCorvid >>

A question more complicated than it would first appear...
A) Would I like to SEE Dark Sun ported into 5e/5.5e or whatever "One D&D" is retitled to?  Yes.
B) Do I think the current climate and talent pool within WOTC is up to the task and would produce an actually good version of it?  Most certainly no.

I generally ascribe to the idea of "do it right or don't do it at all"; so, given how under-cooked some of WOTC's recent output has been... have to say "no".

 
Dragonlance consistently was given positive reviews—it was a whole bunch of 4/5s and 80+/100s.  In fact, most of the products recently have been given overwhelmingly positive reviews.  Some products, like Spelljammer, were critiqued for lack of content—but those have been the minority of releases these past couple of years (and the reviews of the content itself are often “dang, there is a lot of great stuff here—I’m just sad I did not get more of it).

Which, of course, you already know - it has been pointed out to you before on multiple threads.

 And frankly; I don't care what numbers reviewers arbitrarily give a book if when I get it in my hands it's nothing like what it was sold as.  I was told Strixhaven and Witchlight were "great": I was told wrong.  You couldn't pay me to do all the leg work actually running one of those would entail to fill in all the blank space WOTC left.

Quote from CaptainCorvid >>

A question more complicated than it would first appear...
A) Would I like to SEE Dark Sun ported into 5e/5.5e or whatever "One D&D" is retitled to?  Yes.
B) Do I think the current climate and talent pool within WOTC is up to the task and would produce an actually good version of it?  Most certainly no.

I generally ascribe to the idea of "do it right or don't do it at all"; so, given how under-cooked some of WOTC's recent output has been... have to say "no".

in small print at the bottom of the site I linked to earlier, it reads:

DARKSUN, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, D&D, the DARK SUN logo, the WIZARDS OF THE COAST logo and the D&D logo are trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc., and are used by permission. (c)2002 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.

This site is recognized by WotC as the Official Dark Sun site on the internet. Content created on the official website is considered to be derivative work (as it is based on the intellectual property owned by Wizards of the Coast). This means that fan-created add-ons (such as new net books, adventures, etc.) are jointly owned by both Wizards of the Coast and the creator; neither can do anything outside the official website without the permission of the other.

I have no clue as to the truth or merits of the claim, but they are making it.

If it is true, then there is your 5e port.

Quote from Xalthu>>

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen interviews where the design team has said they’d like to, but the content would be too difficult to transition to 5e. And while part of that is changing attitudes in society, another part is mechanical game play.

For example, while I liked the idea of dark sun, and ran campaigns with it back when it first came out. The actual game wasn’t as fun as the idea. The best example I can give, and the one most at odds with 5e, is food and water. Tracking your food and water supply — and the weight associated with carrying all that — was just not fun. A lot of bookkeeping, but really just annoying. Thing is, if you don’t track it, and just decide you have enough supplies, it kind of defeats the purpose of the world. And not tracking stuff like rations is kind of the way 5e works. 
Ditto breaking equipment, it’s a tough needle to thread between giving characters enough that they can use their abilities, but also making it scarce enough to keep with the theme of the world. 

 I wonder if a gizmo tracking it would make it any better? Like a slider that you run up and down at the end of each day. Kind of interesting that TOR, which puts massively more emphasis on journeys than 5e...actually drops the idea of tracking provisions. Instead, losing provisions is a one-event that causes problems, then gets dropped beyond the immediate consequences. The 5e campaign I'm running is about to come to where we'd decided to bother tracking rations etc...I have no clue how to not make it a drag.

Quote from scatterbraind >>

What I really liked about Dark Sun was the extent to which they reframed many of the game elements to feel totally new. Elves were mysterious desert dwellers not unlike the Fremen of Arrakis. Halflings were feral jungle natives. Thri-kreen felt really exotic and alien. Arcane casters were defilers of nature.

I don't really need to have Dark Sun, but I'd love to see another setting where WotC has the courage to completely reskin so many "classic" elements of the game. Even Eberron doesn't really mess with the various common D&D cultures that much. People are so quick to fall back on default lore in 5e when there are so many more possibilities for campaign settings. I feel like a good part of the blame for that is 90% of 5e being Forgotten Realms or FR-adjacent.

The grittiness I can take or leave, but give me some imagination. I've played the game where elves live in trees and dwarves mine under mountains. Show me what else they could be.

 That I'd really like. Like you said, I'm really not sold on the grittiness, we much prefer light-hearted affair, but reimaginings that really twist things up could be really interesting. That's a lot of effort though, so certainly not something that'll come out until after 1D&D, if it does.

Quote from Linklite >>

I can't say Dark Sun per se appeals to me. Ironically, WotC sugarcoating it might actually make something I'd find interesting...but whatever. If others want it, why not? I just won't be likely to buy it.

Quote from Xalthu>>

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen interviews where the design team has said they’d like to, but the content would be too difficult to transition to 5e. And while part of that is changing attitudes in society, another part is mechanical game play.

For example, while I liked the idea of dark sun, and ran campaigns with it back when it first came out. The actual game wasn’t as fun as the idea. The best example I can give, and the one most at odds with 5e, is food and water. Tracking your food and water supply — and the weight associated with carrying all that — was just not fun. A lot of bookkeeping, but really just annoying. Thing is, if you don’t track it, and just decide you have enough supplies, it kind of defeats the purpose of the world. And not tracking stuff like rations is kind of the way 5e works. 
Ditto breaking equipment, it’s a tough needle to thread between giving characters enough that they can use their abilities, but also making it scarce enough to keep with the theme of the world. 

 I wonder if a gizmo tracking it would make it any better? Like a slider that you run up and down at the end of each day. Kind of interesting that TOR, which puts massively more emphasis on journeys than 5e...actually drops the idea of tracking provisions. Instead, losing provisions is a one-event that causes problems, then gets dropped beyond the immediate consequences. The 5e campaign I'm running is about to come to where we'd decided to bother tracking rations etc...I have no clue how to not make it a drag.

 Honestly, it wasn't even especially difficult even back in 2e days. You could just make tic marks on a blank part of the character sheet, then erase them as you used them, add them as you found more food. The problem was remembering to do it all the time. It just got tedious. The DM started to feel like an annoying schoolteacher "Now, everyone, did you remember to mark off your food for today? And water? Don't forget water. OK, Now, who's dying of thirst? anyone?"  (This, or course, is a purely anecdotal experience. Others may have found a better solution.)

There's other larger, more systemic issues. Like how there's no divine magic, and very, very little magic at all. You'd have to ban a number of classes and subclasses, and the races which get spells would need to be banned or modified. Maybe you do that with subraces like elf (Dark Sun), so that wouldn't be too hard. Also, character death is comparatively rare in this edition, where it was meant to be common in Dark Sun, which wouldn't fly with lots of people. In the original Dark Sun, players were encouraged to start at 3rd level (which was unheard of at the time) and bring two backup characters, because 1 backup wouldn't be enough, that's how lethal it was. Now, there's lots of people who play with no possibility of character death. (I don't mean that as a value judgement, play how you like, it's just a very different, and incompatible style.) And the biggest hurdle would possibly be psionics, which I almost didn't want to mention, because whenever it comes up it kind of takes over the thread. But Dark Sun wouldn't be Dark Sun if there were no psionics. And so far, WotC's attempts at it haven't really caught on.

I remember when my 2E group decided to try Dark Sun.  None of us actually liked it and we went back to Planescape the next session.

Quote from Kaynadin >>

 5e requires water and ration tracking in the rules as well.   If a group ignores them to eliminate that pillar of exploration difficulty to make for an easier game that's up to them (and many do).

That's essentially the point though, no? When your Forgotten Realms group gets fed up with scrounging and foraging and rationing, and nixes it as soon as someone finally learns Goodberry or Create Food and Water, that's the system functioning as intended. But those same spells in Dark Sun, if they were allowed to function as written, would make you  practically a god or at least some kind of lord within the setting. And I haven't even touched on how they would need to ban all arcane and probably most divine casters as player options and invent psionics rules to replace them. It's pretty far removed from the baseline expectations of other D&D settings past the lowest levels.

For the record I think it can be done - 5e is mutable like that - but figuring out a way to thread the needle between the inevitably angry grognards and the modern audience and satisfy both would take a lot of time that I think they'd spend better elsewhere. There's a lot more I'd like to see in the game ahead of iterating on DS.

Backgrounds would have to be completely reworked, basically all the classes besides Barbarian, Fighter, Rogue, and Monk would probably be banned, there'd have to be some serious limitations on character races... Yeah, lots of work.