Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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I sorta share this sentiment.
But I am less interested in the kinds of "generic, Eurocentric, medieval aesthetic, allow everything in the game into it" sorts of settings. I find the common ideas about a lot of 5e to be misinformed or informed by localized, limited experience, and many of the things have either a videogame-inspired sense of "exploit the rules" or lack any real serious creativity.
A good example of this is the whole idea that the classes and species are what define the game. They aren't. If they did, we wouldn't keep getting new ones.
Another is the advice I see far too often of "try a different game for that", especially if someone is trying to do something that might "require a lot of work" or "there's something that does it better already" without ever realizing that "better" is a subjective concept without something specific to support that beyond "who likes it and how well did it sell".
Things like "It is harder to kill a PC is 5e than 1e. The death saves thing makes them immortal." do little more than tell me that the speaker never played 1e, where you would just lie there and bleed out for 10 minutes in-game time. THe obsession with "making every encounter balanced" and "six encounters per day".
In my view, they are using D&D to about one twelfth of its full potential, and a large part of that falls to the success principle -- 5e is stunningly successful. So, keep giving them more of the same. However, they need to mix it up a little, give it a boost in the creativity department.
Show them how it is done, really. I mean, folks talk about Tucker's Kobolds like it was a revelation -- and all it is really is a lesson into how to use monsters effectively repacked. Something that was widely known before 2e even came out.
Would it be as popular as Forgotten Realms? I really don't think so. Forgotten Realms is popular with about a fifth, stretching it to the max, of the player base. Because it was used as the setting of design in 2014, people often feel as if it is the "default" setting for 5e, and when you've never played any others, you wouldn't know that it isn't, and would discount and forget the other examples. The introduction of Greyhawk will shake hat up a bit, but the release of the two books for FR next year will have an impact.
So, I would like to see something extremely different. Something that is not just your basic blah blah fantasy set in a period sometime prior to the 1500's in a fake version of europe. Something that highlights the importance of exploration over other elements, as well, would be nice, but that might be stretching it; I'm not certain folks know what exploration is, let alone how to run a game around it -- knowing that most folks haven't ever read the DMg and analyzed it the way they have the PHB puts a sour taste in my mouth.
I see things like Humblewood and I get some hope in me -- and then I watch folks who enjoy humblewood basically chased off the mainline forums and groups, because to a lot of folks it isn't D&D. There's not even dedicated forums here for it, and in my opinion there should be. There should be for each of the worlds that are active and current.
However I am biased and old, so it ain't like anyone's gonna care what I think, lol. Out of the target demographic...
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
They dropped everything but AD&D and on -- 0e and B/X/BECMI were killed as soon as they secured the rights from Arneson.
The entire Basic line was killed and laid dead the moment Hasbro bought Wizards. They sorta go out of their way to avoid it.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
The problematic aspects would be hard to remove without removing the Sorcerer Kings and Muls and more.
Well... 5e has had Planescape and Spelljammer and Eberron and Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms and Theros and Ravnica and Exandria and Ravenloft. More settings than any since 2e.
I don't think many new players are as narrow minded in the types of game that can be played with 5e.
The thing about settings in D&D is that they mostly exist as the location where you put the adventure, so the real question for any setting is "what adventure type does this enable that isn't convenient in another setting, and is that an adventure type people want to run/play". Dark Sun is essentially for post-apocalyptic wasteland stories (e.g. Mad Max), which isn't an entirely dead genre, but isn't terribly alive either.
Frankly, I think the biggest adventure type hole in the FR is that you can't really run a Lord of the Rings type campaign, because there just isn't a space for a vast Evil Empire. You can run a lesser evil empire, but something like Thay just lacks the credibility of Mordor.
It wouldn’t be an added variant. There’s already rules for carrying capacities and how much things weigh, just no one uses it, because, well, it’s not very fun and people aren’t into the bookkeeping. Honestly, most of us never were, I don’t think. I know I never tracked encumbrance and I’ve been playing since the early 80’s. (Obviously, this is anecdotal and it’s very possible I’m in the minority here.)
What they’d need for a variant is a psionic system that’s more robust than 3 subclasses, but the various attempts they’ve made at that over the past few years haven’t gotten past the UA phase.
Well, maybe. It depends a lot on how core you think psi is to the setting, you can preserve a lot of the themes of Dark Sun without having psi at all.
Yeah, thematically speaking, Dark Sun could work without psi. Except a bunch of ornery fans will hate WotC for not making a fully-functional gamewide psi system (oh wait, they already hate that).
To make it (mechanically) work with "standard 5e" or "standard 5.24e":
Tier 1 can be gritty survival, Tier 2 can be sword-and-sorcery young-conan stuff, Tier 3 can be elite desert shadowrun stuff...and Tier 4 can be "overthrowing the sorcerer kings." All of which work great with a fantasy mad max theme.
It was absolutely a contributing factor in TSR's demise: they created new settings that they didn't support, which caused gamers to stop buying new settings on the belief that they wouldn't be supported, so the new settings were generally losing money. It's kind of like Netflix's approach to new shows.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
The best elevator pitch for Dark Sun I've ever heard was: "It's D&D, but in a post-apocalyptic desert where nobody has swords or water." It could be a great setting as long as we're not too tired to making it the same as it was in the past.
I don't even think the problem is the gross lore stuff that hasn't aged well. The lore should be updated/rebooted; we know the purists are going to complain but they're going to complain no matter what. I'm curious how much of a stink the creative teams behind the old Dark Sun setting material and novels might raise over changes to their precious.
The mechanics are the major challenge, with everything that y'all have identified about psionics, limiting arcane and divine magic, encumbrance, supply rations, etc. But that's not an insurmountable hill.
But the best we can do for now is to keep expressing interest in Dark Sun any time WotC puts out aa survey.
Dark Sun is a prime candidate for Gritty Realism or some variant (taking a long rest requires some special/limited resource; defilers can long rest easily by defiling the land...).
Or there's just that it's not special anymore. Broken and edgy worlds are an oversaturated genre these days, and I think Warhammer Fantasy has taken up a lot of the niche now in TTRPG space. And, again part of it is the simple fact that these days D&D is going for mass market appeal. They want a product that doesn't toss up big red flags when teenagers say they want it and their parents look up reviews on it, and as I previously said, Dark Sun is very much in M/R content territory and therefore not within their main focus.
It's hard to reconcile "this thing was so awesome" with "this thing is trauma-inducing." I'd go so far as to say those two statements are mutually exclusive.
If it ever gets revamped for 5E (or a future edition) it will still be plenty awesome without the gross, toxic bits.
Well, being generic and derivative has never stopped something turning into a D&D setting. I think the bigger problem is that it's not a particularly popular genre right now; if D&D wants to break out of its current High Fantasy default, into something it hasn't already tried (Horror is covered by Ravenloft, Steampunk is more or less covered by Eberron, Epic Fantasy is more a style of play than a setting), I suspect Urban Fantasy has a lot more fans than Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy.
Like I said, the genre is oversaturated.
No, I was pointing out that I had already said in my previous post that broken and edgy worlds are an oversaturated genre/setting, agreeing with the statement that the widespread popularity isn't there.
Both of those are purely subjective. I really don't like the idea of DS and the very way people are "praising" it is only further convincing me that I wouldn't enjoy it. It's not trauma-inducing (for me), Jurassic Park was more trauma-inducing for me. It just sounds to edgy and I play D&D to escape reality and it's dreariness.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
That's valid. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and it doesn't have to be. But as someone who would like to see it adapted for 5E, I'm 100% good with leaving out the gross, toxic parts that would make the setting unwelcoming to people who otherwise would like to play D&D, but in a post-apocalyptic desert where nobody has swords or water. I don't want to drive away people who are good with the grittier, survival-themed tone but whose play experience would be ruined by the unnecessary inclusion of topics like slavery and genocide. There are elements - especially the gross, toxic ones - that are edgy and that edginess sometimes gets confused for making it mature when it really, really doesn't.
Several people in this discussion thread have identified problematic elements with the Dark Sun setting, primarily the slavery and genocide parts in the lore. They're unnecessary and don't foster inclusion around the tabletop. The setting loses none of its appeal by removing them.
Ultimately it's WotC's product, and for 5E so far they've declined to sell a Dark Sun product. If they change that decision and announce a Dark Sun setting for 5E I'll be interested, but I'll be less likely to get it if it keeps the slavery and genocide parts that are going to make my players not want to play in that sandbox.
Here is the reality: Settings are rules agnostic. They are collections of lore, not mechanics, and you can transplant lore into whatever system you choose. Then it is a simple matter of making sure you limit the mechanics of your chosen system (or add to them, such as by using the5e playtest content for Mystic, a psionic class built for a potential 5e Dark Sun revival). If you want to play Dark Sun in 5e, no one is stopping you.
Granted, why anyone would want to play Dark Sun is beyond me - the entire setting is basically what an edgelord teenager would create if they wanted to jam as many edgy cliches into a single setting. But, to each their own, I suppose.
Now, should Wizards bring it back officially? I think it would be nice to have an official world that is a bit darker and more dangerous than other official worlds. But I do not think it should be Dark Sun. If they update the plane to remove the unnecessarily edgy elements, they’ll alienate the existing fans of the game (though, in my personal experience, most Dark Sun fans are the same kind of players that make the rest of us in the hobby look bad). If they keep the original level of teenager edge, they will release a product that makes them look bad and undoes their efforts to distance themselves from the game’s bigoted past.
No real winning with a true Dark Sun revival; they’d be better off making a new world with a similar feel.. or just partnering with the many third-parties who have grimdark worlds (which is what Wizards seems to be doing already).
My point was that they could add a variant that was easier to manage at the table than tracking pounds. Or more dynamic, such as one tied to dice. Something more fun that serves as a minigame and less just marking boxes.
Or, really, Dark Sun could just be the setting where that stuff matters. Where they use the rules that are in the book.
If they were doing the setting there'd be more incentive for a robust psionic system. Although, there are the 3 subclasses AND the feats. And it wouldn't be hard to add more origin feats.
Just like with Theros where characters just started with an extra feat because they were practically gods. In Dark Sun you could pick from a list of feats that include numerous psionic options. Then they just need to add a psionicist wizard and they're golden.