Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

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.

 
None of these points stand up to a basic inquiry.  Backgrounds needing to be reworked? That is obviously not a problem - earlier editions had far more complex character customisation systems and Dark Sun worked fine in those editions.  Classes need to be banned?  Earlier editions had all those classes—and more—and it was never an issue.  Races need to be limited?  That is literally how every single setting works—a DM is free to limit the races to, say, keep Simic Hybrids out of Forgotten Realms.

With all these points either being disproven by their being non-issues in prior editions or with their being a basic facet of this game, I do not think one of these has any semblance validity as a reason not to reprint the setting. 

Whenever anyone produces anything beyond the original content, they make it worse. So please don't. Maybe republish, unchanged except updated to 5e, but otherwise, just please don't. I don't know why it is the way it is, but employee's of RPG companies cannot. They often get it right the first time - Eberron, Dark Sun, Planescape, Ravenloft - but then anything further is invariably junk. The only original setting that was completely useless right from the get-go - that I can think of - is Dragonlance.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

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

 I don't see any 5e content on there at all. They have plenty of 3.5 and 4e stuff, but I see a total of one product made after 2011, and it's a 3.5 adventure.

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

 
Classes need to be banned?  Earlier editions had all those classes—and more—and it was never an issue.

Can you elaborate on this? I recall Dark Sun banning PC Clerics and Paladins even in 4e. And while wizards and the like are technically allowed, even preservers are expected to hide what they're doing regularly or force the DM into a persecution/angry mob minigame.

Quote from XEvilEmpireX >>

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.

 Yeah, I think its a bit of a misunderstanding to say the they're avoiding topics like slavery because those elements are still very common in dnd adventures and were not erata'd away like allot of people claimed.  The reality is slavery and cannibalism  aren't the problem but issues arise when they are depicted in a way that resembles an 1800's colonial adventure novel. Many people just can't believe or get immersed in those stories any more now they know the reality of the events they were based off. 

I know some DND writers have said they are avoiding dark sun because of these kinds of issues but there are also some writers who have said they's be happy to take on the project to rewrite it and address the problems.  The question there is whether there is an appetite for a Dark Sun that is changed to have more realistic versions of things like cannibalism and slavery because I think  allot of the people who like Dark Sun do so because of it's simplistic grim dark where everything is just a bit terrible.  I see a few people on message boards and forums who say they don't want dark sun remade because they don't want any changes to it.  As a result I don't think a dark sun remake is likely to be very popular

I can see a new continent inside an existing world.

Someplace the gods can not easily contact their clerics so a limit on divine casters would be a part of the theme. You could also place a heavy limit of arcane casters by outlawing arcane magic on the threat of death. Spell level limits for all the casters would be perfectly acceptable.

Elves could be desert nomads, Almost a new subspecies. The same for all the other races your willing to include in the new continent.

Psionics need not be included but your perfectly allowed to add it in. Personally I would drop the sorcerer if I included psionics.

As for slavery. I understand how some get all bent up over it, no problem. But it is a fact of life even in our world even today. You could use it as an evil to fight against for your good guys. Or just leave it out altogether.

Without large trees suitable for construction, large sea going ships would be extremely hard to come by, so any escape from the new continent could be close to impossible.

In the end it doesn't need to be a whole new world, just another part of an old one.
This tends to go back to one of my old ideas. You do not need whole need worlds just make the one your on larger. Traveling to other planes should be extremely hard and pretty much just left to the gods. New worlds should be for huge game changes or theme specific campaigns.
I have always wanted to see an extremely low low low magic, firearms friendly, steampunk, Lovecraft style world. Drop all leveled spells and magic items. Remove all abilities over tear one. Add in the insanity and fear problems and things could get pretty wild with a good story and settings.

Quote from TheGnome5786 >>

 

In the end it doesn't need to be a whole new world, just another part of an old one.

I have potentially great news for you, Ravenloft has you covered. Check out Hazlan, it's essentially miniature Athas. Post-magic-apocalypse-desert, check; people are forced into a meager and savage existence where they ration basic food and water, check; gods are distant/unreliable (because Ravenloft), check;  magic use is distrusted because it makes things worse, check; sorcerer-kings have carved the world up into rival fiefdoms, check. You can get pretty close to a Dark Sun-feeling game there with only a few tweaks.

This tends to go back to one of my old ideas. You do not need whole need worlds just make the one your on larger. Traveling to other planes should be extremely hard and pretty much just left to the gods. New worlds should be for huge game changes or theme specific campaigns.
I have always wanted to see an extremely low low low magic, firearms friendly, steampunk, Lovecraft style world. Drop all leveled spells and magic items. Remove all abilities over tear one. Add in the insanity and fear problems and things could get pretty wild with a good story and settings.

For this I'd recommend you Call of Cthulu 

If I remember correctly, because magic was pretty much off limits Dark Sun was a primary setting for Psionics. To really do it again you would need a functioning psionics system and what we have at present doesn’t qualify.

Played it.

 Its not bad and a lot can be ported over into D&D for those who do not want a whole new game.

Quote from Wi1dBi11 >>

If I remember correctly, because magic was pretty much off limits Dark Sun was a primary setting for Psionics. To really do it again you would need a functioning psionics system and what we have at present doesn’t qualify.

 But it would be a great place for those who have worked out a system or want to test out a new system to adventure in.

Quote from Wi1dBi11 >>

If I remember correctly, because magic was pretty much off limits Dark Sun was a primary setting for Psionics. To really do it again you would need a functioning psionics system and what we have at present doesn’t qualify.

 
The 4e Dark Sun (which was quite successful) didn't make any real impositions on magic. They just added defiling as a means of making magic more powerful. But I do agree, psionics is integral to the setting. The last time WotC tried a full psionics system, it was so unpopular that the devs probably still lose sleep over it. I don't imagine they're in the mood to give it another go, especially since there's no consensus on what a better system would look like.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

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.

The statement is true, but is also a doing a bit of a dance. Way back when WotC launched 3e, they designated several fan sites as the "Official [some old setting] Fan Site" (with one for most every major campaign setting, excluding Greyhawk and FR). At the time, I was co-owner (and then sole owner) of Planewalker.com, the Official Planescape Fan Site.

It was a roundabout way to get fans of those settings onboard with the edition change by giving them a place to work together on conversions under an "official" banner so WotC didn't have to split their resources updating the settings themselves - especially after seeing how TSR's massive fracturing into too many setting product lines helped kill it.

Jim Butler (now head of Paizo) was in charge of the program and would sometimes get the sites previews of upcoming products, a few free copies to give away as prizes, etc. but for the most part, it was pretty hands off. Then Jim was, I think, laid off or moved over to the scanning old products to sell on RPGNow (now DriveThruRPG), and then was fully laid off, so started his own company with Bastion Press, etc. etc. and either way, WotC basically forgot the program ever existed. I can't speak for the other Official Setting Fan Sites, but at least for the several years I ran Planewalker.com after that, I never heard from WotC again.

So the sites were designated Official Fan Sites for a particular setting over 20 years ago, and then WotC never technically revoked that. Some didn't really kept going (like Planewalker had some awful server issues a couple/few times after I left and never really recovered), but some are still going strong. So, I don't want to take away from the incredible effort they are putting into keeping these settings alive, but just wanted to give historical context that, yes, it is an official designation (I *thinnnnk* we even had to sign paperwork, but it was a long time ago), but it's also an official designation that was imparted 20 years ago, and WotC just kind of moved on and left us to our own devices since then.

At least in MY experience as one of the participants in the program. Maybe those still going strong have been contacted by WotC in recent years, but my impression is that is not the case. FWIW.

Yeah the 1-3e psionics was complicated and had some flaws. I played it and, with a couple of flaw adjusting homebrews it worked fine. I’ve used it as a base for my own homebrew psionics rules as those old characters are now powerful NPCs in my world.

I always thought that as psionics progressed through the editions it just became way to complicated with way to many abilities.

Thanks for the knowledge!

I'm all for a Dark Sun campaign setting revamp.

Quote from TheGnome5786 >>

I always thought that as psionics progressed through the editions it just became way to complicated with way to many abilities.

THis underlies one of the problems with psionics, lol.

To some folks, there are "too many abilities" and to others there are "not enough abilities".  Then, for other folks, Psionics is a "magic replacement" and so (as is currently) can just become a form of magic, while for other people it should be a very separate kind of thing, with its own rules and such.

A lot of why it is so hard to make a good system stems from a lot of this -- and then you have the whole "two people staring at each other is not good drama in a game" thing, lol.

All of those viewpoints have a valid rationale, as well. FOr example, in terms of most fiction, you either have magic or you have psionics. Most stories do not have both -- hell, Star Wars is a perfect example of this, since the way those abilities of the Force are used is akin to magic, and talked about like it, but they are still mostly psionic powers, if you think of them as distinct things.

Then you have something like Julian May's Saga of the Pliocene Exile, which even though it is about time travel to a pre-human past, aliens, and future galactic rebellions against an alien democracy with a twist, is still chock full of a complex system of psionics. Or BR Kingsolver's very much "Lost Girl" influenced succubus stories.

None of which take place in a D&D like world setting. The closest comparative I know of there is Kurtz's Deryni stuff, but again, it is very much "not magic" in the world. And that system is nothing like the three previous ones I talk about, all of which are distinct in and of themselves.

The Force seems to have a smaller subset, whereas May's kit is vague and well defined, and then Kingsolver's stuff is much more deeply structured.

Then we look at the sources that were used early on in the game's development (all of them predating the ones I used), and you get a completely different way of looking at how the powers work and function that is somewhat why there is a conflict even within the D&D systems. Those older systems lacked the depth of May's system and rendered her discrete capabilities into even shallower categories of powers (basically burn the brain or stop from being burned). Saberhagen was good about that.

And all of that is why Dark Sun's system was so compelling to many -- it wriggled through all of that and stayed true to the setting, because what good is a creative faculty that could solve the water problem if it steps around a major setting basis? I know people who hated the setting but loved a lot of the rules and tools, nd folks who loved the setting but hated the rules, lol.

It all depends on your personal interest in psionics, and because there hasn't been a world shaking bit of fiction in our reality about them that has truly fixed them as a baseline, designers have had a hell of time trying to create something that could satisfy all those variable ideas.

Gygax himself hated the idea of Psionics in D&D, and he also felt that classes should be designed to be specific to the setting. That isn't the case today, but the new pressures are slowing that creative urge among the stewards of this side of WotC's portfolio (though apparently MTG is going great guns).

(And yes, this is why I am not throwing my psionics system out here, lol)

Yet there is no real reason if you treat Psionics as a distinct concept -- separate from magic -- that it couldn't work within D&D.

Quote from AEDorsay >> 

All of those viewpoints have a valid rationale, as well. FOr example, in terms of most fiction, you either have magic or you have psionics. Most stories do not have both -- hell, Star Wars is a perfect example of this, since the way those abilities of the Force are used is akin to magic, and talked about like it, but they are still mostly psionic powers, if you think of them as distinct things.

 

I think psionics and magic can work together in a coherent way.

In story telling the functioning of the world often serves the themes or the narrative of the story.   It tends to only be a good idea story wise to add multiple magic systems if the point of the story is a conflict of what that magic represents.  Dark sun as a setting does have a little bit of that with the defiler and the preserver magic, you can even fit psionics in there as well if you were to construct the system as taking from other, giving to others and isolating ones self.  That could be very compelling in a story but whether that makes for a good game or not is a different question. For example I don't think defiler magic is actually good for a player in a team game because story wise its about being selfish and destructive to those around you.  That said there are  other ways to get this to work for example with the mind, body, spirit triple you could assign one to each of the 3 then using dark suns theme of magic being destructive say each one destroys one of the three, defilers destroy the spirit consuming life energy and becoming undead or twisted demons, preserves sacrifice the body becoming enfeebled and weak, psions sacrifice the mind risking going mad, sacrificing memories ect.. 

There's also the other direction where magic is inconsequential to the story.  In that case its a good idea to use an established system people understand because you probably won't be exploring magic much.  In this kind of setting you can have a mess of different magic systems as long as they feel familiar and don't dive into them too deeply. This is how many games actually work because games with choice of classes don't want to be completely absorbed by the mechanics of just a few of those classes. The dark Sun setting is maybe too tied up in a magic themed story to pull this off because it would be hard to run a world devastated by magic and not have magic be the thematically important. That said a hardcore setting could be made that does this 

Quote from Rathkryn >>

Let's think about Forgotten Realms and the Drow within. The Lolthian Drows are still the evil, racist, sexist creatures they've always been. There's just been added non-Lolthian Drow which are just essentially the same as the Moon Elves. If all we're going to do is make every D&D world essentially the same then why bother to have more than one D&D world? 

The Dark Sun setting was designed to be an extremely harsh, post-apocalyptic setting where excessive magic use has destroyed the environment. The peoples of the planet have adapted accordingly. As a "Survival of the Fittest" world it just doesn't fit with the sensibilities of the portion of the player base that can't/won't separate fictional racism/speciesism from that of the real world. So leave it to the people who want to play in that world and let the WotC people work on adding more content to Ebberon, Exandria, Forgotten Realms, Ravnica or even the Domains of Dread like Ravenloft.

Ah, yes, nothing like the argument "bring racism into D&D" to really make it sell well to the same people who made it succeed because they were taking racism out of the game.

You don't need racism to create conflict -- that's just being lazy. Also, overdone. 

Better to use classism! All those folks who think making money is the only measure of success, and the high degree of gluttony and hoarding going on aong the wealthy elites is far more interesting and all too tempting for PCs to fall into the trap of becoming the thing they ostensibly oppose.

And if the racism is other only thing you liked about the setting -- to the point where you think of it as a feature instead of a bug, well...

There's lots of folks who agree and made their own versions of it out there.

WotC said they aren't putting racism back in the game (well, not anymore than still exists), and that they are taking it out.  End of Story. Even if they did put it out again, it wouldn't have the racism feature. That's a dead horse.