While serving i gave up a storage unit back in 98...I had approx 95% of everything printed for ad&d 2nd ed...whole looking thru the 5th ed books etc, i noticed a lot of the old words are gone...my 2 favorites were al-qadim and dark sun...are they going to bring them back?...and I see there isn't much for monstrous compendiums...I had all 16 of the ones you had to put in binders...do the new compendiums compare?...
It’s frustrating when you find yourself having to rebuild a collection you already had, I’m going through a similar thing with my collection of Doctor Who novels.
As for those two particular settings Wizards of the Coast seem hesitant to revisit some of the older settings that could be considered problematic to more modern readers, Dark Sun being one of the ones that comes up most often. However if you go to DM’s Guild you can buy pdf copies of most of the older books pretty cheaply
The lore or fluff of al-Qadim can be recycled for 5e, and if you want you can elements from Disney's Aladin TV show. The crunch may be a different thing. Al-Qadim, Maztica and Kara-Tur are Forgotten Realms spin-off and then they are technically unlocked in DM Guild.
Dark Sun is a special case. I can't be introduced like a family-friendly franchise, and if you can find NsfW content with characters of Baldurs Gate 3 with DS somebody could be create a "Saga of Gor" with superpowers. And WotC has to choose a lot of things about possible retcons or to start from zero with a spiritual succesor. For the 5e standars is not enoughly "modular" or flexible to add new crunch. What if players don't agree about new PC species, subclasses or classes? Would you allow shardminds, elans, maenads, dromites and xephs in your DS game? Or a crusader (martial adept class) like a member of the templars? Or a totemist shaman (incarnum soulmelder). The risk of possible controversy could reach the level of an edition war.
Any option? My suggestion is to create a "wildspace next to Athaspace" whose natives could visit or explore the Athasian Tablelands/region of Tyr.
The monsters from Athas can be updated to 5e, and some subclass, or even the defiler magic is possible, but in the best case a DS 5e would need a lot of work for possible redesigns.
To condense a lot of conversations i have had on this topic, because, yes, i miss some of the other worlds too, but i get why that are left out:
There is a lot of "Yikes bro" content that would have to be reworked, and for some settings like Dark-sun, they won't touch it because of some of the heavy subject matter, even if it its to turn the grim world into a "You can fix this, bit by bit, you can make this world a better place" kind of Hope-punk adventure. I could speculate all day on why, but that seems to be the sentiment, that it is a 'hands off that box' situation.
Al-Qadim, which takes place in Zakara, which is part of Toril where Faerun is, might be getting mentions and inclusion in the upcoming Faerun source-book. I believe Arabic and Farsi cultural consultants were mentioned, so they might be cleaning up some of the "yikes bro" content that some say were in Al-Qadim ( i never had it so i can't say what specifics ) and if that goes well, we might be seeing some of those other settings reintroduced into D&D in their respective worlds they are connected to. Or we might not, since Ravenloft as a setting is much bigger than just Barovia, and in Curse of Strahd, it takes place almost exclusively in Barovia, ( unless i missed something, been forever since i ran it. )
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player. The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call To rise up in triumph should we all unite The spark for change is yours to ignite." Kalandra - The State of the World
As mentioned, some of the older settings and setting areas (unique areas within settings) haven't aged well in a world trying to better itself through political correctness, but at the same time, I do think these things can be seen as opportunities by WOTC rather than something to fear. Many of the older settings were based on unique and interesting crosses between historical human cultures and fantasy cultures, and I think that is something to celebrate and explore, not ignore out of fear of offending someone.
Some of my favorites include Maztica, Birthright, Kara-Tur and the already mentioned Dark Sun. Yes, these settings had some real-world "problematic content" and in some cases, adult content. I understand that D&D is for kids, so they are careful about these things, but I was a kid when we explored these worlds and we dealt and dove into this content, and I haven't become demon-worshiping psychopath... yet..
As mentioned, some of the older settings and setting areas (unique areas within settings) haven't aged well in a world trying to better itself through political correctness, but at the same time, I do think these things can be seen as opportunities by WOTC rather than something to fear. Many of the older settings were based on unique and interesting crosses between historical human cultures and fantasy cultures, and I think that is something to celebrate and explore, not ignore out of fear of offending someone.
Some of my favorites include Maztica, Birthright, Kara-Tur and the already mentioned Dark Sun. Yes, these settings had some real-world "problematic content" and in some cases, adult content. I understand that D&D is for kids, so they are careful about these things, but I was a kid when we explored these worlds and we dealt and dove into this content, and I haven't become demon-worshiping psychopath... yet..
Wotc is overthinking it.
It's not Satanic Panic nor are minors the ones bringing up things.
It's people who, once ragebait, dramafarms & people lashing out because they're in pain are filtered out, have legitimate concerns about the effects of metaphors on the untrained mind.
Perhaps try & listen to, for example, people who are from the cultures in question & whom don't simply say they have no problem with it.
Because much of Toril, and many of the less-represented non-Toril settings, have aged poorly in terms of accuracy and/or the people who wrote them.
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DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Additionally, there was an era where TSR went broke because they were trying to manufacture setting after setting, and WotC got over-extended taking over the business, because they were trying to keep all of these going.
It's largely why they've focused on a few key settings (primarily Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Eberron, though it looks like Greyhawk is coming back) and only provided a single setting book slowly over time for other locations. Ravnica/Theros because "cross promotion", Spelljammer is just 'out there', Planescape to tie them all together. So when they're light on putting effort into settings, the "controversial" ones that are seen as targetting a specific culture (Kara Tur for the Mongols, Al-Qadim for the Arabian history, and Dark Sun for the Middle East) are likely last on the queue because they're worried about blowback.
Honestly, while Dark Sun is a fan favourite from the past, it does have a lot of controversial stereotypes and themes that aren't suitable for a family friendly brand like Hasbro. It would be far better for a third party publisher to be given a tacit approval to create something that is a 'spiritual successor' to Dark Sun, without using official elements, and having Hasbro not lawyer them. That way they can have their cake and eat it too.
WotC doesn't need a lot of sourcebooks for each setting. Their intention is their sourcebooks could be useful for all settings.
If we only want an update of monsters and the crunch (defiler magic, feats, items..) and some pages about the geography of the region of Tyr/Athasian tablelands we shouldn't worry too much but my opinion is they are going to start from zero with a spiritual succesor. Maybe WotC has to choose if they are going to add space for future new PC species or classes with special game mechanics like the martial-adepts (crusader, swordsage and warblade) or the incarnum soulmelds (incarnate, soulborn and totemit).
As an addendum to my above comment, it looks like Dark Sun may get some love yet, unless their Apocalypse UA is designed to support 3rd party settings like Drakkenheim.
WotC has been in an incredibly awkward position in recent years stemming from a series of factors but a lot of it comes down to two mutually exclusive positions they want to hold:
They want to poo poo on old content for the various isms that older generations of creators baked into various settings (which is a fair position to take).
They want to keep using old settings, characters and plotlines to sell product instead of creating truly new content for D&D and which isn't a tie in deal with another IP (Ravnica, Theros, Stranger things, Rick and Morty ect.) which is also a fair position.
As a Grognard, I'd honestly be just fine with them going in either one of these two directions; I love me some FR, DL, RL, SJ to be sure but I'd be ok with WotC shelving them in favor of a whole new setting that encapsulated what they thought the game should be in 2024 and moving forward from that point. Whichever choice they make however they need to have the confidence to deal with the backlash that they get for their handling of it and then move forward.
This is also why I absolutely don't want them to bring back Dark Sun; their is simply too much baked into the setting that you'd basically have to strip away everything that made it compelling and interesting.
As a Grognard, I'd honestly be just fine with them going in either one of these two directions; I love me some FR, DL, RL, SJ to be sure but I'd be ok with WotC shelving them in favor of a whole new setting that encapsulated what they thought the game should be in 2024 and moving forward from that point. Whichever choice they make however they need to have the confidence to deal with the backlash that they get for their handling of it and then move forward.
Watching the new announcements about Critical Role campaign 4 and they’re in a weird position that they might end up more D&D than D&D by fulfilling a lot of that desire for newness rather than retreading old ground. The world they’re creating sounds really interesting but the key thing is it’s being largely written by Perkins and Crawford including new 5e compatible subclasses. Matt Mercer and Brennan Lee Mulligan even joked “does it still count as home brew if those two are making it?” If Darrington Press can release a decent campaign guide in the next nine months or so it might offer decent competition to WotC if all they’re doing is reheating left overs
As a Grognard, I'd honestly be just fine with them going in either one of these two directions; I love me some FR, DL, RL, SJ to be sure but I'd be ok with WotC shelving them in favor of a whole new setting that encapsulated what they thought the game should be in 2024 and moving forward from that point. Whichever choice they make however they need to have the confidence to deal with the backlash that they get for their handling of it and then move forward.
Watching the new announcements about Critical Role campaign 4 and they’re in a weird position that they might end up more D&D than D&D by fulfilling a lot of that desire for newness rather than retreading old ground. The world they’re creating sounds really interesting but the key thing is it’s being largely written by Perkins and Crawford including new 5e compatible subclasses. Matt Mercer and Brennan Lee Mulligan even joked “does it still count as home brew if those two are making it?” If Darrington Press can release a decent campaign guide in the next nine months or so it might offer decent competition to WotC if all they’re doing is reheating left overs
*listens in hopes of Partnered Content made from resurrected dead UA with the labels & copyright/IP removed being made*
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DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
1) DrivethruRPG has most of the old TSR stuff available for sale legally as PDFs if you want to rebuild your collection that way. Just search using the "Publisher = Wizards of the Coast" tag. A quick search there showed me over a dozen Al-Qadim books there.
2) As far as bringing back the old settings, I think one challenge is figuring out what their unique selling point is supposed to be and whether that can be achieved in other ways. For example if you want to do an Arabian Nights themed game, rather than bring back the entirety of Al-Qadim, they could create modules that are set in the Calimshan region of the Forgotten Realms instead, or even convert Paizo material from Qadira/Katapesh.
2) As far as bringing back the old settings, I think one challenge is figuring out what their unique selling point is supposed to be and whether that can be achieved in other ways. For example if you want to do an Arabian Nights themed game, rather than bring back the entirety of Al-Qadim, they could create modules that are set in the Calimshan region of the Forgotten Realms instead...
At this point, it is all but certain Dark Sun is coming back - the chances of that were already high when a psionic class received playtesting, and now are pretty darn clear with the current Apocalyptic subclasses referencing Dark Sun terminology directly (ex. sorcerer king pact warlock).
It will be curious to see what happens upon release. I am personally of the mind they do not have to water down Dark Sun all that much. Yes, it deals with some dark themes. Yes, it does have heavy support among a certain negative element of the community because of those themes. I am not sure that is a good reason to change it.
The important thing, when dealing with heavy themes like slavery and other commonly cited “problems” with Dark Sun is not to glorify them. You can easily create a world where you go “here is a world, this world has some nasty things, and the reason it has nasty things is a bunch of bad people you should not glorify as heroes, so why don’t you all get to being heroes.”
I think there are several data points that support a more dark Dark Sun than some players expect - that is not to mean Wizards will not ignore this data, but it does mean that there is reason to believe they might go with a darker setting.
1. They have been publishing some darker third party content recently, while also acknowledging that these products have been financially successful historically. It is clear that they are seeing a financial impetus to platform dark content, and likely wane something they own 100% that can fill that niche.
2. Wizards has published some dark content of their own over in Magic, recently revisiting Phyrexia. They firmly explored themes of forced slavery, body horror, lack of consent, etc. and did not get any content blowback from the community (though there was blowback to some of the execution and pacing of the story, they did not get dinged very hard on the dark themes).
3. Wizards partnered with Games Workshop to release Warhammer products in Magic fairly recently. While most Warhammer fans are perfectly normal, the game does attract problematic players - GW itself has acknowledged they have a Neo-Nazi problem in their community (some of which is self-inflicted; they lost the parody at some point, so the game has gone a bit from mocking the human fascists to glorifying them). Still, this shows Wizards is willing to reach out to the legitimate players who enjoy darker lore, even lore that a small, problematic minority tries to claim for their own.
I will be very curious to see how it ends up, and would love to see official content that is as dark as some of the third party content (but not full of poorly designed subclasses, spells, etc.). Given Wizards’ recent history, I think it can go either way - either watering it down or embracing it - and I think it is probably too early to predict what the final form will look like.
The content was one thing, but I agree that it could be handled well enough. I don't think it could ever be considered "family friendly," but if they allow 3PP to include dismemberment, nudity, and fade-to-black sex (BG3), then I think they can get away with a world where "bad things" are commonplace but clearly marked as "bad things".
I think the bigger problem is the mechanical one. DS has so many elements that essentially rewrite the rules, bringing them back to a time that 5e has very actively moved away from. Resource scarcity, weapon durability, and defiling all would require fleshed out modifications to appease those who like the setting. It is a lot of work, and is not without it's own risks. If they don't do that much, people will rightfully (IMO) say it's not DS. If they do, it narrows the usability scope to (at the extreme) just the one setting.
This, too, I think can be done well, though. If a future DS book contained not only the setting specific rules on how arcane magic works, but more general "gritty realism" rules (fleshing out the survival and exploration pillars) that you can transport to other settings, I think they can get a lot of mileage out of the product.
EDIT: got distracted and didn't finish some thoughts before posting.
I think the bigger problem is the mechanical one. DS has so many elements that essentially rewrite the rules, bringing them back to a time that 5e has very actively moved away from. Resource scarcity, weapon durability, and defiling all would require fleshed out modifications to appease those who like the setting. It is a lot of work, and is not without it's own risks. If they don't do that much, people will rightfully (IMO) say it's not DS. If they do, it narrows the usability scope to (at the extreme) just the one setting.
This, too, I think can be done well, though. If a future DS book contained not only the setting specific rules on how arcane magic works, but more general "gritty realism" rules (fleshing out the survival and exploration pillars) that you can transport to other settings, I think they can get a lot of mileage out of the product.
On this second point, I actually think that might be a reason they are picking DS, not a mark against it. A lot of what makes DS the setting it is is less an overwriting of the rules, and more an expansion thereon. Certain elements, like resource scarcity, already exist, and on things like weapon durability, the rules are silent. They do not have to say “ignore this element of RAW,” but can instead say “build upon RAW in these ways.”
That is something we see pretty commonly in supplemental books. Theros built out a pretty extensive renown system. Ghosts of Saltmarsh added advanced ship rules. Tasha’s added a fair bit about environmental hazards. Many of these systems are designed to be setting-thematic, but the actual rules are setting agnostic - you can take Theros’ system, for example, and apply it to any other pantheon fairly easily.
I honestly think this kind of optional system, that is designed for DS, but could provide official rules usable in other settings, would be a boon for the game. I think a lot of players and DMs struggle to balance these kinds of harsh mechanics on their own, so having something official would be helpful, even if many groups never use it.
I think the bigger problem is the mechanical one. DS has so many elements that essentially rewrite the rules, bringing them back to a time that 5e has very actively moved away from. Resource scarcity, weapon durability, and defiling all would require fleshed out modifications to appease those who like the setting. It is a lot of work, and is not without it's own risks. If they don't do that much, people will rightfully (IMO) say it's not DS. If they do, it narrows the usability scope to (at the extreme) just the one setting.
This, too, I think can be done well, though. If a future DS book contained not only the setting specific rules on how arcane magic works, but more general "gritty realism" rules (fleshing out the survival and exploration pillars) that you can transport to other settings, I think they can get a lot of mileage out of the product.
On this second point, I actually think that might be a reason they are picking DS, not a mark against it. A lot of what makes DS the setting it is is less an overwriting of the rules, and more an expansion thereon. Certain elements, like resource scarcity, already exist, and on things like weapon durability, the rules are silent. They do not have to say “ignore this element of RAW,” but can instead say “build upon RAW in these ways.”
That is something we see pretty commonly in supplemental books. Theros built out a pretty extensive renown system. Ghosts of Saltmarsh added advanced ship rules. Tasha’s added a fair bit about environmental hazards. Many of these systems are designed to be setting-thematic, but the actual rules are setting agnostic - you can take Theros’ system, for example, and apply it to any other pantheon fairly easily.
I honestly think this kind of optional system, that is designed for DS, but could provide official rules usable in other settings, would be a boon for the game. I think a lot of players and DMs struggle to balance these kinds of harsh mechanics on their own, so having something official would be helpful, even if many groups never use it.
For sure. That's what I want to see, and would be thrilled if executed well. I just think the risk is in the balance. There are some things that are truly setting-specific. Lean too heavily on those, leaving little room to expand, and they've got a hyper-niche product. Don't lean heavily enough and you don't have Dark Sun.
WotC has been in an incredibly awkward position in recent years stemming from a series of factors but a lot of it comes down to two mutually exclusive positions they want to hold:
They want to poo poo on old content for the various isms that older generations of creators baked into various settings (which is a fair position to take).
They want to keep using old settings, characters and plotlines to sell product instead of creating truly new content for D&D and which isn't a tie in deal with another IP (Ravnica, Theros, Stranger things, Rick and Morty ect.) which is also a fair position.
As a Grognard, I'd honestly be just fine with them going in either one of these two directions; I love me some FR, DL, RL, SJ to be sure but I'd be ok with WotC shelving them in favor of a whole new setting that encapsulated what they thought the game should be in 2024 and moving forward from that point. Whichever choice they make however they need to have the confidence to deal with the backlash that they get for their handling of it and then move forward.
This is also why I absolutely don't want them to bring back Dark Sun; their is simply too much baked into the setting that you'd basically have to strip away everything that made it compelling and interesting.
Honestly, I wish they'd have just kept the 4e PoL setting that they had. I used to be a fan of forgotten realms, but all of the retcons and re-retcons have been a turn off. I'd rather not know what's going on in Faerun than to see that Mystra got shanked yet again to pay for the sins of older lore. And I get agitated when I see that things I liked get edited, because WotC often does a crap job at lore. Seriously, they are not very good at it. Let's take tieflings for example. In 2e when they came out, you rolled on a table to see what fiendish characteristics you had. Then 4e comes along, and they're like by golly you all have horns and tails now because that's edgy and edgy is cool right? And you're all infernal, no more abysal tieflings. Nevermind that horns and tails were on the list, they forced you to have some characteristics because...someone allowed them to do their own thinking? I don't know. Anyhow, that lasted into 5e and people didn't like it. So what came back in the Sword Coast Adventuerer's Guide? The 2e list of characteristics and you could roll on it because you're a "variant tiefling". It's almost like, maybe, just maybe they should have left it alone instead of trying to be clever. The physical characteristics were not, and never have been problematic, but they thought they could do cool lore, and by golly everyone should get on board that choo-choo whether it was actually wanted or not. I mean, after all, who would actually want their imaginary character artificially limited for no good reason?
And part of me can't even blame them for the some of the retcons. They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't change things when it comes to certain things, partciularly cultural lore. I won't start on the Drow going from <evil is a choice> to <they are inherently evil because we want Drizzt to be unique! (Perkins actually said this in an interview)> and now we're at <wow, saying that an intelligent creature is inherently evil and has no power of choice is, you know, bad, so we're gonna just roll that bit back because we weren't as clever as we thought>. I truly meant to stop myself from talking about the drow, but I was able to help myself about as well as wotc's lore people can help themselves from not screwing with things they shouldn't be messing with.
But yeah. I wish they'd just leave old, beloved settings alone. If you wanna cook WotC, do it. Just cook in a new kitchen. Don't remodel mine. Just don't trash old settings and lore because they're not PC now and you can't write lore that's consistent with them anymore without being crucified. Keep that crap to new settings that don't already have deep player buy-in and investment.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
While serving i gave up a storage unit back in 98...I had approx 95% of everything printed for ad&d 2nd ed...whole looking thru the 5th ed books etc, i noticed a lot of the old words are gone...my 2 favorites were al-qadim and dark sun...are they going to bring them back?...and I see there isn't much for monstrous compendiums...I had all 16 of the ones you had to put in binders...do the new compendiums compare?...
I have something from the Black Sun, I have no idea how I came across it. When you said "old worlds", I thought you might be referring to Blackmoor and/or Greyhawk.
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While serving i gave up a storage unit back in 98...I had approx 95% of everything printed for ad&d 2nd ed...whole looking thru the 5th ed books etc, i noticed a lot of the old words are gone...my 2 favorites were al-qadim and dark sun...are they going to bring them back?...and I see there isn't much for monstrous compendiums...I had all 16 of the ones you had to put in binders...do the new compendiums compare?...
It’s frustrating when you find yourself having to rebuild a collection you already had, I’m going through a similar thing with my collection of Doctor Who novels.
As for those two particular settings Wizards of the Coast seem hesitant to revisit some of the older settings that could be considered problematic to more modern readers, Dark Sun being one of the ones that comes up most often. However if you go to DM’s Guild you can buy pdf copies of most of the older books pretty cheaply
The lore or fluff of al-Qadim can be recycled for 5e, and if you want you can elements from Disney's Aladin TV show. The crunch may be a different thing. Al-Qadim, Maztica and Kara-Tur are Forgotten Realms spin-off and then they are technically unlocked in DM Guild.
Dark Sun is a special case. I can't be introduced like a family-friendly franchise, and if you can find NsfW content with characters of Baldurs Gate 3 with DS somebody could be create a "Saga of Gor" with superpowers. And WotC has to choose a lot of things about possible retcons or to start from zero with a spiritual succesor. For the 5e standars is not enoughly "modular" or flexible to add new crunch. What if players don't agree about new PC species, subclasses or classes? Would you allow shardminds, elans, maenads, dromites and xephs in your DS game? Or a crusader (martial adept class) like a member of the templars? Or a totemist shaman (incarnum soulmelder). The risk of possible controversy could reach the level of an edition war.
Any option? My suggestion is to create a "wildspace next to Athaspace" whose natives could visit or explore the Athasian Tablelands/region of Tyr.
The monsters from Athas can be updated to 5e, and some subclass, or even the defiler magic is possible, but in the best case a DS 5e would need a lot of work for possible redesigns.
To condense a lot of conversations i have had on this topic, because, yes, i miss some of the other worlds too, but i get why that are left out:
There is a lot of "Yikes bro" content that would have to be reworked, and for some settings like Dark-sun, they won't touch it because of some of the heavy subject matter, even if it its to turn the grim world into a "You can fix this, bit by bit, you can make this world a better place" kind of Hope-punk adventure. I could speculate all day on why, but that seems to be the sentiment, that it is a 'hands off that box' situation.
Al-Qadim, which takes place in Zakara, which is part of Toril where Faerun is, might be getting mentions and inclusion in the upcoming Faerun source-book. I believe Arabic and Farsi cultural consultants were mentioned, so they might be cleaning up some of the "yikes bro" content that some say were in Al-Qadim ( i never had it so i can't say what specifics ) and if that goes well, we might be seeing some of those other settings reintroduced into D&D in their respective worlds they are connected to.
Or we might not, since Ravenloft as a setting is much bigger than just Barovia, and in Curse of Strahd, it takes place almost exclusively in Barovia, ( unless i missed something, been forever since i ran it. )
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
As mentioned, some of the older settings and setting areas (unique areas within settings) haven't aged well in a world trying to better itself through political correctness, but at the same time, I do think these things can be seen as opportunities by WOTC rather than something to fear. Many of the older settings were based on unique and interesting crosses between historical human cultures and fantasy cultures, and I think that is something to celebrate and explore, not ignore out of fear of offending someone.
Some of my favorites include Maztica, Birthright, Kara-Tur and the already mentioned Dark Sun. Yes, these settings had some real-world "problematic content" and in some cases, adult content. I understand that D&D is for kids, so they are careful about these things, but I was a kid when we explored these worlds and we dealt and dove into this content, and I haven't become demon-worshiping psychopath... yet..
Wotc is overthinking it.
It's not Satanic Panic nor are minors the ones bringing up things.
It's people who, once ragebait, dramafarms & people lashing out because they're in pain are filtered out, have legitimate concerns about the effects of metaphors on the untrained mind.
Perhaps try & listen to, for example, people who are from the cultures in question & whom don't simply say they have no problem with it.
Because much of Toril, and many of the less-represented non-Toril settings, have aged poorly in terms of accuracy and/or the people who wrote them.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Additionally, there was an era where TSR went broke because they were trying to manufacture setting after setting, and WotC got over-extended taking over the business, because they were trying to keep all of these going.
It's largely why they've focused on a few key settings (primarily Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Eberron, though it looks like Greyhawk is coming back) and only provided a single setting book slowly over time for other locations. Ravnica/Theros because "cross promotion", Spelljammer is just 'out there', Planescape to tie them all together. So when they're light on putting effort into settings, the "controversial" ones that are seen as targetting a specific culture (Kara Tur for the Mongols, Al-Qadim for the Arabian history, and Dark Sun for the Middle East) are likely last on the queue because they're worried about blowback.
Honestly, while Dark Sun is a fan favourite from the past, it does have a lot of controversial stereotypes and themes that aren't suitable for a family friendly brand like Hasbro. It would be far better for a third party publisher to be given a tacit approval to create something that is a 'spiritual successor' to Dark Sun, without using official elements, and having Hasbro not lawyer them. That way they can have their cake and eat it too.
WotC doesn't need a lot of sourcebooks for each setting. Their intention is their sourcebooks could be useful for all settings.
If we only want an update of monsters and the crunch (defiler magic, feats, items..) and some pages about the geography of the region of Tyr/Athasian tablelands we shouldn't worry too much but my opinion is they are going to start from zero with a spiritual succesor. Maybe WotC has to choose if they are going to add space for future new PC species or classes with special game mechanics like the martial-adepts (crusader, swordsage and warblade) or the incarnum soulmelds (incarnate, soulborn and totemit).
As an addendum to my above comment, it looks like Dark Sun may get some love yet, unless their Apocalypse UA is designed to support 3rd party settings like Drakkenheim.
WotC has been in an incredibly awkward position in recent years stemming from a series of factors but a lot of it comes down to two mutually exclusive positions they want to hold:
As a Grognard, I'd honestly be just fine with them going in either one of these two directions; I love me some FR, DL, RL, SJ to be sure but I'd be ok with WotC shelving them in favor of a whole new setting that encapsulated what they thought the game should be in 2024 and moving forward from that point. Whichever choice they make however they need to have the confidence to deal with the backlash that they get for their handling of it and then move forward.
This is also why I absolutely don't want them to bring back Dark Sun; their is simply too much baked into the setting that you'd basically have to strip away everything that made it compelling and interesting.
Watching the new announcements about Critical Role campaign 4 and they’re in a weird position that they might end up more D&D than D&D by fulfilling a lot of that desire for newness rather than retreading old ground. The world they’re creating sounds really interesting but the key thing is it’s being largely written by Perkins and Crawford including new 5e compatible subclasses. Matt Mercer and Brennan Lee Mulligan even joked “does it still count as home brew if those two are making it?” If Darrington Press can release a decent campaign guide in the next nine months or so it might offer decent competition to WotC if all they’re doing is reheating left overs
*listens in hopes of Partnered Content made from resurrected dead UA with the labels & copyright/IP removed being made*
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
1) DrivethruRPG has most of the old TSR stuff available for sale legally as PDFs if you want to rebuild your collection that way. Just search using the "Publisher = Wizards of the Coast" tag. A quick search there showed me over a dozen Al-Qadim books there.
2) As far as bringing back the old settings, I think one challenge is figuring out what their unique selling point is supposed to be and whether that can be achieved in other ways. For example if you want to do an Arabian Nights themed game, rather than bring back the entirety of Al-Qadim, they could create modules that are set in the Calimshan region of the Forgotten Realms instead, or even convert Paizo material from Qadira/Katapesh.
They are doing exactly that
At this point, it is all but certain Dark Sun is coming back - the chances of that were already high when a psionic class received playtesting, and now are pretty darn clear with the current Apocalyptic subclasses referencing Dark Sun terminology directly (ex. sorcerer king pact warlock).
It will be curious to see what happens upon release. I am personally of the mind they do not have to water down Dark Sun all that much. Yes, it deals with some dark themes. Yes, it does have heavy support among a certain negative element of the community because of those themes. I am not sure that is a good reason to change it.
The important thing, when dealing with heavy themes like slavery and other commonly cited “problems” with Dark Sun is not to glorify them. You can easily create a world where you go “here is a world, this world has some nasty things, and the reason it has nasty things is a bunch of bad people you should not glorify as heroes, so why don’t you all get to being heroes.”
I think there are several data points that support a more dark Dark Sun than some players expect - that is not to mean Wizards will not ignore this data, but it does mean that there is reason to believe they might go with a darker setting.
1. They have been publishing some darker third party content recently, while also acknowledging that these products have been financially successful historically. It is clear that they are seeing a financial impetus to platform dark content, and likely wane something they own 100% that can fill that niche.
2. Wizards has published some dark content of their own over in Magic, recently revisiting Phyrexia. They firmly explored themes of forced slavery, body horror, lack of consent, etc. and did not get any content blowback from the community (though there was blowback to some of the execution and pacing of the story, they did not get dinged very hard on the dark themes).
3. Wizards partnered with Games Workshop to release Warhammer products in Magic fairly recently. While most Warhammer fans are perfectly normal, the game does attract problematic players - GW itself has acknowledged they have a Neo-Nazi problem in their community (some of which is self-inflicted; they lost the parody at some point, so the game has gone a bit from mocking the human fascists to glorifying them). Still, this shows Wizards is willing to reach out to the legitimate players who enjoy darker lore, even lore that a small, problematic minority tries to claim for their own.
I will be very curious to see how it ends up, and would love to see official content that is as dark as some of the third party content (but not full of poorly designed subclasses, spells, etc.). Given Wizards’ recent history, I think it can go either way - either watering it down or embracing it - and I think it is probably too early to predict what the final form will look like.
I think the problem with DS was two-fold.
The content was one thing, but I agree that it could be handled well enough. I don't think it could ever be considered "family friendly," but if they allow 3PP to include dismemberment, nudity, and fade-to-black sex (BG3), then I think they can get away with a world where "bad things" are commonplace but clearly marked as "bad things".
I think the bigger problem is the mechanical one. DS has so many elements that essentially rewrite the rules, bringing them back to a time that 5e has very actively moved away from. Resource scarcity, weapon durability, and defiling all would require fleshed out modifications to appease those who like the setting. It is a lot of work, and is not without it's own risks. If they don't do that much, people will rightfully (IMO) say it's not DS. If they do, it narrows the usability scope to (at the extreme) just the one setting.
This, too, I think can be done well, though. If a future DS book contained not only the setting specific rules on how arcane magic works, but more general "gritty realism" rules (fleshing out the survival and exploration pillars) that you can transport to other settings, I think they can get a lot of mileage out of the product.
EDIT: got distracted and didn't finish some thoughts before posting.
On this second point, I actually think that might be a reason they are picking DS, not a mark against it. A lot of what makes DS the setting it is is less an overwriting of the rules, and more an expansion thereon. Certain elements, like resource scarcity, already exist, and on things like weapon durability, the rules are silent. They do not have to say “ignore this element of RAW,” but can instead say “build upon RAW in these ways.”
That is something we see pretty commonly in supplemental books. Theros built out a pretty extensive renown system. Ghosts of Saltmarsh added advanced ship rules. Tasha’s added a fair bit about environmental hazards. Many of these systems are designed to be setting-thematic, but the actual rules are setting agnostic - you can take Theros’ system, for example, and apply it to any other pantheon fairly easily.
I honestly think this kind of optional system, that is designed for DS, but could provide official rules usable in other settings, would be a boon for the game. I think a lot of players and DMs struggle to balance these kinds of harsh mechanics on their own, so having something official would be helpful, even if many groups never use it.
For sure. That's what I want to see, and would be thrilled if executed well. I just think the risk is in the balance. There are some things that are truly setting-specific. Lean too heavily on those, leaving little room to expand, and they've got a hyper-niche product. Don't lean heavily enough and you don't have Dark Sun.
Honestly, I wish they'd have just kept the 4e PoL setting that they had. I used to be a fan of forgotten realms, but all of the retcons and re-retcons have been a turn off. I'd rather not know what's going on in Faerun than to see that Mystra got shanked yet again to pay for the sins of older lore. And I get agitated when I see that things I liked get edited, because WotC often does a crap job at lore. Seriously, they are not very good at it. Let's take tieflings for example. In 2e when they came out, you rolled on a table to see what fiendish characteristics you had. Then 4e comes along, and they're like by golly you all have horns and tails now because that's edgy and edgy is cool right? And you're all infernal, no more abysal tieflings. Nevermind that horns and tails were on the list, they forced you to have some characteristics because...someone allowed them to do their own thinking? I don't know. Anyhow, that lasted into 5e and people didn't like it. So what came back in the Sword Coast Adventuerer's Guide? The 2e list of characteristics and you could roll on it because you're a "variant tiefling". It's almost like, maybe, just maybe they should have left it alone instead of trying to be clever. The physical characteristics were not, and never have been problematic, but they thought they could do cool lore, and by golly everyone should get on board that choo-choo whether it was actually wanted or not. I mean, after all, who would actually want their imaginary character artificially limited for no good reason?
And part of me can't even blame them for the some of the retcons. They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't change things when it comes to certain things, partciularly cultural lore. I won't start on the Drow going from <evil is a choice> to <they are inherently evil because we want Drizzt to be unique! (Perkins actually said this in an interview)> and now we're at <wow, saying that an intelligent creature is inherently evil and has no power of choice is, you know, bad, so we're gonna just roll that bit back because we weren't as clever as we thought>. I truly meant to stop myself from talking about the drow, but I was able to help myself about as well as wotc's lore people can help themselves from not screwing with things they shouldn't be messing with.
But yeah. I wish they'd just leave old, beloved settings alone. If you wanna cook WotC, do it. Just cook in a new kitchen. Don't remodel mine. Just don't trash old settings and lore because they're not PC now and you can't write lore that's consistent with them anymore without being crucified. Keep that crap to new settings that don't already have deep player buy-in and investment.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I have something from the Black Sun, I have no idea how I came across it. When you said "old worlds", I thought you might be referring to Blackmoor and/or Greyhawk.