The D&D Setting WOTC Abandoned...TWICE!
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- Опубліковано 21 лип 2024
- Dark Sun, the 2nd Edition campaign setting, has a complex publication history. Today I touch on that while introducing the world of Athas, and its setting history.
Check out the Grand Compendium here: / dark_sun_grand_compend...
And Athas.org too!
#dnd #darksun #ttrpg #worldbuilding
Every time someone says Dark Sun is problematic I roll my eyes...
Same. all them so called problematics are in all the other settings too but when dark sun does its a problem
I wouldn't say it's problematic in like a social justice or DEI sense. It just isn't good as a main setting. It is a good alternate setting. A main setting. In the view of the creators of the game, per their guidelines for that contest that Eberron won, a main setting should have a feature that "If it is DnD, there is a place for it here." Also I feel like WotC is overly conservative about front loading grimdark content as they are trying to market the game to a broad base.
I’ve never heard anyone say it’s problematic, only people saying that WOTC thinks it is, which probably says more about WOTC’s disconnect with fans than anything else.,.
The Leaders of Darksun sound like Management at Wotc.
The reason they won’t touch it is probably because they CAN’T touch it without gutting it completely. The type of content that WotC won’t put out these days is kinda the CORE of what makes Dark Sun Dark Sun. And if they revived it, it would probably be Dark Sun in name only.
Paizo is just as "cautious" about social issues.
@@carlflaherty2215 All the “Big Guys” of the hobby seem to be craven fools these days.
For my part, I'm DELIGHTED that WotC is leaving Dark Sun alone. I don't want these intersectional cockroaches spewing their pseudo-woke filth anywhere NEAR Athas.
@@Wesley_Youre_a_Rabbitit's what tends to happen when you give too much creedence to moral busybodies (left, right, auth, or lib). They don't like exploring things that make them uncomfortable and god or communism forbid that anyone else explore them either...
Even dragon lance when they returned there ended up having clerics.
90s fantasy was less corporate and more edgy. Kinda a shame
"Mad Max meets Conan" as a friend described it. Loved it when it first came out, but we played the official modules back in the day, which weren't as cool as the setting promised (the modules sidelined the PCs in favor of the characters from the official novels and our GM wasn't experienced/flexible enough to compensate this). Still a cool Setting, though.
I’m happy WotC won’t touch (read ruin) this great setting. I run groups who know how to play in mature settings with dark themes (Symbaroum, Warhammer Old World, Hyperborea, Dark Sun).
The funny thing is that WotC only abandoned it once. The actual creator of D&D called TSR dropped it in 1996, a year before they were acquired by WotC.
Dark Sun. Frank Herbert's Dune series meets John Norman's Gor series
I love dark sun, its a shame that WOTC won't touch it, i feel like the setting and its themes are so relavent to the world today
If it were done like Spelljammer WotC would put out a lousy overpriced book that didn't include rules about psionics.
You should maybe be grateful. If they touch it, they’re probably gonna ruin everything you love about it. They’ve a nice track record of doing that with reviving settings that they didn’t create themselves.
A Woke Dark Sun would be roach crap.
@@angelagranger760 ah yes, the anarchistic ambientalist setting will be ruined by woke corpos, I guess we just have to take control of productive forces away from the marxist corporations so we can run them democratically and fairly
@@angelagranger760I'd rather clear a insect spirit incursion than watch WotC butcher another setting the way they'd """revive""" Dark Sun...
The dark sun video we were waiting for. LET THE MAN COOK!
Ironically, I feel like the Dark Sun setting isn't actually that problematic beyond at worst some vaguely old-fashioned elements, and for the most part it's not really bad, overall I'd argue it's probably more ahead of its time than it is a product of it. Regarding subjects like slavery, police states, and the big looming background of genocide and environmental abuse, those can all be touchy and difficult topics, but I don't think it's problematic to bring them up unless it's with an angle of apologia, which Dark Sun very much doesn't do. Similar to the deal with D&D and demons/devils, they're in the game as the bad guys. Funny enough, Dark Sun actually probably handles Evil characters better than Planescape did, with the closest it gets to a kind portrayal being letting players play as Templars (though it makes sure you know that there are no Good Templars).
I do think you should give players a heads up about what kind pf setting it is before jumping in, though. I think it's perfectly fine for players to simply prefer playing games that don't replicate real-world issues that are more to them than academic subjects in books. One way I put it is that severe storms are cool and fun when you aren't stuck outside in them with no shelter; somebody whose regular life is out in the storm wanting a break from it is fine I think.
It's not that slavery is untouchable, it's that the slavery in Dark Sun is not just the American plantation slave system with a fantasy coat of paint. That's the only slavery anyone's allowed to talk about now.
Exactly!! The setting touches on so many relevant and historically important injustices in an interesting and unique way. Especially with the current climate crisis it’s more relevant than ever. It’s really ahead of its time in a lot of ways tbh.
Honestly, it's 'problematic' because old D&D fans aren't particularly fond of the new 5e books for various niche alternate settings they've already released, and Dark Sun is just more niche. It's about money. They gain more in appealing to bring in new fans to D&D, and if their talent struggles to have the chops to impress old fans, it's 'problematic' to put money into refreshing deeper niche 'old fan' content.
The social 'problematic' stuff really isn't problematic. Not enough people realize that when the voice for a company says "problematic", they are probably talking about cost analysis and sales expectations.
@@Heimdal001 I 100% agree. It’s sad, but the things that make Dark Sun amazing and iconic are also the things that might not appeal to the average casual player, at least at first.
I don't think this setting should be sanitized at all, there's a point where D&D players need to grow up. This is a setting about heroes, and thats what needs to be empathized.
Also, some people want grittier worlds. If kids and easily offended can have their worlds, why can''t the others have theirs.
Wotc wants to water everything down to the point that there is basically just one generic setting that "can be anything".
@@Eemi_SeppalaWelcome to capitalism, gotta have as broad commercial appeal as possible
Makes me wonder how GoT did so well.
@@McHobotheBobo At least you can have options with capitalism. Communism wants no fun, ever.
@amicableenmity9820 Lol, okay child. Did you learn that in "civics" class. I'm sure the capitalists never lie about their enemies or obscure facts in their mass-printed lies 🙄
I do like Dark Sun. The advice in other settings of stealing things you like applies here.
Personally, I think some of its aspects would work just fine in an environment similar to the ancient world. Psionics could replace magic altogether of course, but even without magic or an apocalypse, places that happen to have psionic "god-kings" would still be fearsome potential antagonists.
The idea of outside forces influencing these people, perhaps experimenting on them or teaching them these powers, would be interesting too. I'd actually like to see a variation of the mercane be a sort of provisioner of psionic knowledge on a world where magic simply doesn't exist in arcane, divine, primal, or any other familiar form.
My friend introduced me to Dark Sun 20 years ago. I appreciate the setting more now than then. It would be nice if WOTC was willing to explore dark subject matter in their games.
Yeah. If they were willing to do that, we’d have gotten a much better Guide to Ravenloft than the joke we got.
I'd almost rather play in AD&D again rather than see an "official conversion." The sanitization of the City State of the Invincible Overlord still moves me to tears. I mean, bad things are there to be fought, right?
Nice video! Just wrapping up a homebrew 5e Dark Sun campaign myself. Some issues that I ran into (due to purely my own mistakes) were that it was tough to present a meaningful survival challenge to my players and that they killed my “sorcerer king” a bit too easily in that showdown. Some highlights were a showdown on a melkiot driven sand-crawler, and running the Gaj. I have always loved the description of the Gaj in The Verdant Passage, and it made an amazing challenge for my low-level players.
That compendium alone made this video worth my time. This channel has been very helpful to my short career as a GM.
I would argue that the true reason that the setting gets neglected is that has not much metaplot to offer. I mean either you keep the status quo to have the setting as presented, or you run revolutions to overthrow the sorcery kings, but either way there is not much beyond that a company can tell. I mean look at a similar setting in Arakis from Dune, most people only focus on the few early books and at most until Leto II is dethroned, but even that already had quite a time jump since after Paul's actions there is not much to tell about the setting. Which is also why Darksun was reset in 4th edition, since otherwise there would be nothing to do in the setting worth telling a story.
Of course there is also the issue that 5E has not much psionics that the setting would require, but 4E had quite a few psionic classes and option, so it is no surprise that the setting was revived in that edition.
Not quite sure I agree that there aren't enough stories to tell in athas. Sure, you can go for an overthrow, but a (seemingly) stagnant setting does not necessitate one without adventure to be had! The sheer volume of modules and adventures available, I feel, put paid to that assumption.
Besides, settings without a metaplot seem to be doing fine right now, with Eberron and the Forgotten Realms being very much in the spotlight.
I believe a setting is there to present a world ripe for exploration. Athas is one such world, imo!
@@Grungeon_Master Forgotten Realms has no metaplot? Now I am confused, since that setting has probably the most metaplot of all D&D setting. However, I would agree with you on Eberron, that seems to have a similar issues that people either make boring games by keeping the status quo or my departing form the books by moving forward in their own campaign worlds. So, I will ignore the first setting you mentioned, since at least you are right with Eberron. But speaking of Eberron, that setting too has questionable aspects, like the whole colonialism regarding the southern continent there. So, in that regard your argument of why Darksun is not continued by Eberron would fail too... Maybe it is after all just a matter of psionics?
@@Drudenfusz at least in 5e, the released modules don't build to an overarching conclusion, or grand storyline. The closest we get is the tyranny of dragons, which is barely referenced outside those books.
Either way, yeah, there's plenty of established lore and events in FR. In dark sun, too. Heck, in 4e a common complaint was that there was too much dark sun metaplot!
Anyway. Just my thoughts. May well be wrong about FR.
@@Grungeon_Master FR currently has one, but no one except 2 UA-camrs noticed it. It wasn't really built up and I don't know if anyone is that excited about it, it wasn't really hyped up by the creators themselves. It's the one about the black obelisks that are scattered across the various adventures. But yeah, FR doesn't have much of an overarching plot in the 5e version.
However I don't think that's what people care about for a setting. (This one is mostly a response to the OP) What draws people to a setting is what unique or interesting ideas it brings that make you want to pretend to BE in the setting. People lay in FR because that's the default, people play in Eberron because they WANT to, because they LIKE it. Same with Dark Sun. Avatar the Last Airbender has an overarching plot, but Aang defeating the Firelord isn't why you would play the TTRPG. You'd play it because you like the setting and the magic system.
There's 8 billion humans on this earth, one of them can come up with new stories in the dark sun setting, no matter how bare it might look, trust me.
I cannot tell you how many times I tried to play the DOS PC game as an 8 year old kid, such an amazing and bizarre setting
you needed multiple characters to make a proper darksun campaign having even 1 original pc survive till the end of a arc was rare. had this discussion before and Darksun was for players and dm who don't like fudging dice or having the DM babysit you. also once players figure out that the most valuable goods bandits and bad guys where after was often yourself if you saw a party wipe coming you could just surrender yourself into slavery, so you could keep your pc alive for another campaign (lots of modules start with a break out from captivity).
WOTC should sell the setting to a company that will bring it back.
I don't think there's such a company in existence today. There are FAR too many companies willing to lick the boots of the obnoxiously noisy "progressives".
Great video with a good overview of one of my favorite settings.
It's not "problematic." I'm so tired of that rhetoric. It's gritty and dark and based on some of the very real horrors of our reality. I understand that some people would rather have a lighthearted, problem-free fantasy game. And I like those games. But I also like the other side of the rpg coin. WotC need to stop being cowards and embrace this great setting.
Edit: and that's not to say you didn't do a good job clarifying and justifying your position. As always, know your audience. I agree with the creator of this video entirely.
The Cleansing Wars are not commonly known because reading is banned. So that is a much better way to go.
going around and watching youtubers as I start setting up my channel and preparing to throw my hat in the ring!
IIRC, the Thrikreen came in from outside athis, probably via spelljammer. They cannot leave because of the screwwy local magic, but who would want to leave heaven?
I was fascinated with Dark Sun back in the day, but I never really had an opportunitu to do much with it. And I feel like my main interest was as part of that early 90s "grimdark" zeitgeist.
The setting I would really like to play with again, were I to play D&D again, is Spelljammer. I just love the space fantasy that stands right on top of medieval/Renaissance fantasy, and the inherent wackyness of the setting and aesthetic. Now that I think about it, it has much more of an 80s cartoon "anything goes" feel to it.
"brown tide?" I guess the halflings invented Arby's/Taco Bell.
Dark Sun is a great alternative setting and I love it, it is not an ideal *main* setting. It breaks the core assumptions of DnD. A main setting. In the view of the creators of the game, per their guidelines for that contest that Eberron won, a main setting should have a feature that "If it is DnD, there is a place for it here."
I’m honestly shocked, in a time where survival games are popular and the themes of the setting are more relevant than ever, WOTC hasn’t done an updated version of it. And what I hate is that the claims the setting is problematic or controversial don’t add up. Like I’m pretty left leaning and I try to be socially conscious and I can’t think of too much that’s objectionable. Yeah it’s a dark setting but that’s the point. It doesn’t glorify the darker aspects (like it doesn’t try to say slavery is a necessary evil: one of the major turning points in the setting is one of the city states becoming a free city and life is able to continue), it avoids stereotypes (like think of Vistani in the Ravenloft settings). Like just have a sensitivity reader go through it sure…but I doubt much would be changed.
If I had a guess, it’s because modern DND is pretty meat grinder and survival averse and Dark Sun is a setting which is big on both. Like I listened to a group use the setting for their podcast but they ran it in 5E and since the group was used to running regular 5E games, the DM didn’t ban classes and skills from other settings…so the survival aspect went out the window right away when someone just cast create water, and since they didn’t want to mess with preserver and defiling magic, it effectively turned into a generic post apocalypse sword and sandal adventure.
I fell in love with Dark Sun and am working on converting it to 5e so I can run a game for my friends with it since we all love post apocalyptic fantasy novels, and the way magic works in this world is incredibly interesting. A shame WOTC won't touch it, but maybe thats for the best.
Sorry to see the continued effort by WotC (and Hasbro) to "sanitize" the game we all love. While I don't run the Dark Sun setting, I have certainly harvested some fantastic beasts, items, and ideas from the setting. Thanks for the background and coverage of a bit of a hidden gem.
Fun memories. My first D&D campaign was in Dark Sun.
Try to put attention to audio peaks when you pronounce the "S" maybe taking a bit more distance from the mic will help.i love your content brother keep it up🔥
It's a shame that WOTC won't publish Dark Sun for 5e, but I just wish some 3rd party would publish something and keep it intact.
It’s a great test to see if you want to keep hanging out with the people at your table.
I love my Dark Sun campaign. I lean into all the most messed up aspects of the setting. Did you know Nibenay marries all of his templars. He basically created an army of supersoldier child brides. Also the worlds history of genocide comes up a lot. You always find ruins of attempted genocides or cursed places with angry ghosts from a genocide. And if you think about how Mul's or Half-giants are made, it's pretty gross. It's how you make a truly grimdark world with the most hatable villains in fiction. It does have a pretty positive message about preserving nature. Sort of a dark warning of exploiting Earth's resources.
Read the dark sun series "Prism Pentad." It features the amazing cover art of Brom and is the best fantasy fiction next to lord of the rings in my opinion
I wish I could play Dark Sun in 5e. I saw there was a conversion for 3.5e, but idk if it is any good and I also don't know how to play 3.5e yet.
The 5E conversions over at r/darksun aren't perfect, but they will definitely do the job for most tables with a creative DM.
Maybe I'll run Dark Sun on startplaying.games one day...
well I am used to playing world of darkness and shadowrun games, so Dark sun is up my alley hahah
Great video
I should play this setting it sounds fun.
Is darksun only a background setting? Is it a module? How linear is it?
Pretty sure that there’s quite a few books and modules that’ve been release throughout the years, pretty extensive.
It's a full setting with modules, but some people find that there are aspects to it that don't give full narrative freedom. Not by force, but from lack of opportunity. Still, it was designed as a setting, like Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms.
Im in a bi-weekly Darksun game, love it!
No w explanation I'll probably for more details later or tomorrow
WotC released 4 or 5 Dark Sun books/adventures during 4e's lifecycle. They're all easy to find pdfs for or maybe even physical books on Amazon or ebay. In terms of D&D rereleases, Dark Sun just got a fresh coat of paint. There's a dozen settings that haven't seen reprints since Gary Gygax got the boot and TSR started circling the drain. You might as well complain about it being too long since Eberron, Ravnica, and Ravenloft got reprints. Birthright is so far down the list that Matt Colville gave up on reprints and started writing his own third party books to recreate the mechanics from that setting.
Dark Sun fans keep saying it's too edgy and dark for WotC to touch now, and all I can think is that there's nothing in the entire D&D back catalog that even comes close to Phyrexia, the main bad guys in Magic the Gathering.
Phyrexia are cartoonishly evil, they're essentially just the borg or zombies at a base level. Dark sun uses slavery, forced breeding, cannibalism, racism/xenophobia as all integral parts of the system. While you fight against the system it's implied there is no solution in sight and the thrikeen will take over in the end. There is if I remember correctly no group to route for besides the players everyone is implied to be evil or at least willing to standby for it
Dark sun is one of my favorite DND settings. It feels like mad Max meets Conan the barbarian.
Shadowdark RPG has a Dark Sun setting ;-)
The WOTC kids cant remove the typos of him and he. Darksun is the foundation of the D&D multiverse. Its easy to rewrite btw.
Dark Sun always echoed H.P. Lovecrafts stranger fantasy tales, Clark Ashton Smiths Hyperborea stories, and Robert E Howards. Conan for me. While I do not hit them over the head with things which might be disconcerting because modern insensibilities, I don't hide it either ( Slavery and all the unpleasantries that come from that, Corruption, Dark Power being supreme, I do not hide it from them. Dark Sun is better for it's rather sharp edges and surprisingly my Niece likes it as a setting as it feels different from the standard fair. Like thier are actual risks involved. Face the Fires of Dark Sun and earn your Heroics. Or die and leave a skeleton in the sand
Wizards would rather let an entire edition go by without a desert campaign before they touch Dark Sun, sad.
im just gonna bring the "infermal war machines" introduce de concept of... water gasoline... yea something like that and make a mad max campaign 😎😎
I really sont get why people say Dark Sun is problematic.
The main priblemaric aspect od Dark Sun is that there is slavery, which is treated as a bad thing in the setting and book, players are actively discouraged in participaring in it and endourages to dismantle it.
I love Dark Sun
They claim that dark sun is "problematic" but all those "problematics" are in the other major settings too forgotten realms has it, Greyhawk has it, Dragonlance has it etc etc. Dark sun is just the world we're the villains won.
You forgot about the third option in the intro- indifferent. I've heard of Dark Sun but it's not cup of tea as while I like barbarian fantasy the addition of post-apocalyptic themes makes it too bleak for me. I don't hate it but I can see why WotC would stay away from it.
Cannibalistic kenders ugg
It's a shame Darksun is a geniunely cool setting, we need more post apocalyptic fantasy games
I don't think it's reasonable and understandable at all. None of the "problematic" content is presented in a positive light. The slavers are the bad guys, it's very clear. It's not even that portraying slavery in a game is a problem for a company like wotc, it's the fact that the slavery in the game isn't the transatlantic slave trade / American plantation slavery with a fantasy coat of paint. That is the only historical slave trade that is allowed to be mentioned or acknowledged, and imported into fantasy worlds.
I wish I had the money to buy dark sun from wotc I think I could do right by it .
Abandoning it twice means they picked it up once.
Birthright is the setting they really hate. Not only was it abandoned, they basically gave away the rights to an external forum community.
1:30 I like settings without gods.
19:52 -- Genocide and ethnic cleansing are such unpleasant topics. Instead of dealing with them, let's pretend they never happened! Also, slavery is such an unpleasant word...
I can see why a modern corporation is hesitant to deal with these topics, even in a fantasy-world proxy where the only ethnic cleansing is kobolds and gnomes. But I would say, if you have to white-wash these things for your players, you probably should pick a different setting.
Part of me feels these themes have been neglected lately so we as a society won't see an issue with preforming genocide again in the future. Look what's happening in the middle east.
I like the random cadence & such he puts into words that make you think he's going the end the sentence but doesn't lol
I just came across your channel and I'm digging the content, but my brother you have to ease up a little on enunciating those hard 'S' sounds. You seem to harshly hiss out the sound. Otherwise insightful and well versed👍
I don't know man. I don't think you'll find anyone at a D&D table who actually has had first hand experience with slavery.
And if they have experience with ethnic cleansing, they wouldn't be anywhere, let alone at your table.
I don't understand why we've been teaching people to be overly sensitive. We didn't use to be like this.
At this rate, soon we won't even be able to have villains. Because people killing or subjugating others for personal gain? That's too scary. Unless it's the PCs doing it, of course.
And yes, your PCs do that. Guaranteed. You're all murder hobos, don't try to deny it.
One of our DMs is African American. He doesn't shy away from prejudice in his settings. If you play a tiefling or drow, you WILL be discriminated against. Sometimes he purposefully plays characters who are the outcasts. It actually helps us understand social issues from his perspective more and I think it helps him overcome the hate he has experienced in life.
I have personal experience with ethnic cleansing; my family tree was decimated, and my family was in a successful protective scheme. I don't feel like dealing with tourists who think it's *fun*.
@@PeacefulPorcupine So we can't write stories where we fight against people who do this anymore?
@@Dharengo The usual issue is that some groups DON'T fight against it, they revel in it and consider themselves Good. Then they belittle people like me for saying something.
@@Dharengo Also? YOU can do whatever you want. I? Don't want to deal with my nightmares on my fun time.
Also a reminder to everyone: Athas *is not* cut off from the rest of the multiverse-that is a common misconception because of a single blurb from "Defilers and Preservers" titled "You can't get there from here," wherein it listed that you can't SPELLJAM to Athas, and that planeshifting magics has a high chance of failure (but is still technically possible). That said, The World Serpent Inn actually has a door that connects directly to Athas, psionic planeshifting is always successful, and Sigil connects to Athas without issue.
That's just off the top of my head. I could dig through all of my modules and pull out other examples (I seem to recall the elemental planes connecting as well? And Ravenloft being a potential candidate), but that'd take me a hot minute, and I just really don't feel like it at the moment.
Point is, Athas is *not* in fact, cut off from the rest of the Multiverse, it's not really even *harder* to get to, you just can't 'jam to it, and arcane magic is slightly tricky. That's all.
I'm actually thankful that WotC abandoned this setting, it keeps it preserved from all the woke crap that has infected everything else.
It’s not controversial, it’s controversial to people in LA and New York
5e became too soft and players are too powerful for a more down to earth and dark setting like dark sun.
Don't wash over the ugliness of the cleansing wars and enslavements. You take away from the setting doing so. It's like taking away the madness from Cthulhu, it's integral to the setting.
Imagine expecting players to cope with demanding, challenging and upsetting concepts like adults?! Shameful! Much better to just ban it altogether; lest anyone feelings be hurt by themes central the entire history of the world....
Good.
Theirs nothing wrong with it, those who get offended by it are the problem.
Dark Sun is, perhaps, the only D&D setting that does not allow wokes to alter it without completely destroying it. It is the most “Antifragile” material that exists in the RPG world. That's why I chose it to translate into Portuguese and adapt it for D&D 5e.
Making modern dark sun is definitely possible. Problem is that WotC already burnt their toes on Spelljammer and Curse of Strahd in failing to prevent... basically racist stereotyping. Moreover, they STILL left Mongrelfolk (mongrel is basically a racial slur for mixed race people)
So yeah. I imagine they themselves know that they aren't great at the whole "do not insert bigoted stereotypes made true into the setting"
A company like Paizo with their diverse teams and... some degree of experience in adressing such problems could ig.
All in all, if the setting is to far gone, one could simply remaster it, removing bigotry approval, but keeping it dark fantasy ig?
Pathfinder 2e also has evil wizard nations doing slavery and no one bat an eye, cause of the obvious "that's despiceable actions".
Problem is that it would require a LOT of effort and a diverse team, as well as less blind corporate greed
Why change it?
Dark sun isn't apologetic to the ideas it presents. It presents them as the problems to be overcome. The Slaving, Genocidal, utterly horrific beings are the targets of the player's wrath in 90% of all stories told under the Dark Sun.
My man, you're part of the problem. You, the kind of people who think "mongrel" is a racial slur and then go annoying creatives because you either can't use dictionaries or don't do that on purpose so you can feign outrage, is the reason Dark Sun can't be touched by a corporate entity in any way whatsoever. You are the problem, and the scourge on creativity in this genre.
There is nothing to fix in Dark Sun, like there was nothing to fix in Ravenloft and Spelljammer. Dark Sun is literally a progressive setting that talks about environmental collapse, climate change and slavery being bad. It's still not good enough for you, and nothing ever will, until we have reduced each and every setting into your "diverse" same-y, kid-friendly, corporate-friendly PG-13 piece of garbage that WotC executives will love to sell. Nothing spells "inclusive" like making all the setting the same under the threat of calling anything that goes out of step "bigoted".
Scumbags, the lot of you.
so dark sun is tamer warhammer 40k?
Not necessarily, just smaller scale.
For whatever it's worth. My generation wasn't so soft we needed safe spaces to get over a product of fiction.
The snow flakes of this generation would not be able to handle DarkSun. I remember playing it with all it's slavery, sacrifice, and bigotry glory. And i am not a bigot, not do i condone anything potrayed in DS, and the fact that i always play "the good guys" in campaigns needs to tell people something.
I honestly can't wrap my head around what's gone wrong with young folks these days. This newly pervasive idea that simply reading or hearing about fake atrocities can cause you to be "harmed" for real is just insane to me. I've been reading hard works for fifty years now and not one time have I been damaged, traumatized, or otherwise hurt. Sure, I've been uncomfortable a time or two, and have been driven to introspection with great regularity. But this is the foundation on which imagination and philosophy is built.
The setting isn't a problem. It's not a real thing. If you find yourself "harmed" by content like this, you are the problem. You're not a psychologically healthy adult and you most likely need a therapist instead of a gaming table. If you don't have enough individual resilience to handle a tough story in a fake world, you're no good to your friends and family in the real one.
I feel a need to respond, here, as I feel it could lead to one of those moments of introspection.
I've been running games in a professional capacity for some time, online. In that time, I've encountered a broad swath of people, many with a very different background and situation to myself. Sometimes, the only thing we can relate on is a love for TTRPGs!
That is why I like to deal with issues of this nature head on, and directly. You see, it's not about me. I've also never felt myself scarred or hurt by the media I've consumed, although I'm sure I've been affected in ways unknown to myself. But my players? I simply don't know.
I don't know their personal experiences unless they choose to share them. I am aware that some have had difficult situations in the past.
The cruel fact of our world is that while you or I may not have been personally affected by genocide, or human trafficking, the people around us have been. And even if we had, it would still not give us a universal insight into every person's experience. Post traumatic stress is real, and with situations so recent as the Uyghur people, Armenia, and Rwanda, this stuff happens everywhere and affects millions of people.
Our war heroes come back and sometimes never speak of their heroics. Our friends suddenly clam up when a certain topic comes on the news. It's happening all around you.
No, tabletop games don't need to be sanitised wholesale. No, dark topics don't need to be scrubbed from our vernacular and reference points. No, we don't need to associate real world violence with fantasy violence.
But people aren't all the same. Much like a certain unexpected smell will dredge up a memory long forgotten, an unexpected introduction of certain words, phrases, or elements can do the exact same thing.
I'm not asking you to change your ways. As you've said, being confronted with difficulty has brought positive introspection for you. That's commendable.
But it's also just you.
It's not new to avoid traumatic discussions. So many of our ancestors came back from Ypres and never discussed it again. And nobody forced them to, because although they didn't know the specifics, they knew that it would protect the person they loved.
I care for the people at my table, so I spend a few minutes before a campaign checking in, to ensure they're comfortable. It's like taking a moment to make sure everyone who wants one has got a drink. It's just good etiquette, regardless of if you're not personally thirsty.
Hope that makes some sense of my perspective.
-Tom.
Also, would love it if you avoided telling people they're 'no good to their friends and family' for having a different perspective to you.
-Tom.
I've had years of therapy already. My therapist has concluded that I'm about as healed as I'm going to get on the issue of getting irked by depictions of genocidal child trafficking. I'm quite functional, but I don't want to have that dredged up casually for somebody's giggles, and find people who insult me on that point to be vile, depraved, and Christian.
I think you may have swept under the rug some of the controversial parts of Dark Sun, like Muls being bred to be enslaved. It might have some interesting lore, but at the same time it has a ton of problematic lore and they cannot be dissociated, should Wizards try to print a new edition of Dark Sun they would have most of this video's comment session saying they ruined Dark Sun by sanitizing it. It is an un-winnable battle.
Besides its problematic content, Dark Sun has a heavy survival component to it, in line with old-school settings, and that is not the type of experience that WotC's community look for in 5e, the community is more interested in heroic fantasy than survival horror, most survival horror fans have moved to OSR games. I would bet that Dark Sun did not have stellar sales during its time in 4e. I wish I had number to back up my hypothesis.
In the end, the same crowd that profess their love for Dark Sun are the people making a new edition of it impossible to be released. They want don't want their beloved campaign setting back, they are daring WotC to be "politically incorrect", they miss when D&D was a niche hobby for dudes to play in their basement or kitchen table.
Definitely some fair points here. I couldn't get to everything, that's for sure (both due to summation and what UA-cam is happy with me saying), but I hope I conveyed some of the major problems with the setting.
Personally, I'm not in it for the survivalism or for leaning into the darkest corners, so I suppose I don't quite have that old school mentality.
My belief is that Dark Sun is a fascinating world to explore (if your table can handle the themes maturely and without reinforcing harms).
Personally, I'd rather it not be re-released, as it doesn't really need it. The community resources discussed at the end of the video make anyone capable of running the game in most robust systems, should their table feel comfortable.
I simply find Dark Sun's take on fantasy to be quite engaging, especially with my self-professed obsession with psionics!
I notice that I've not really answered your points, because, in the broad strokes, they make a lot of sense.
Hope you have a good day,
-Tom.
What WotC should do is just release Dark Sun from their clutches and leave it out in the public domain so that all the people who want it to stay un-sanitized can publish their own content and the people who want it cleaned up can publish their own version and WotC is free of the setting and its baggage. Of course they won't because they like to hoard all IP that they have even if they don't use it, but maybe their hold on it will hopefully expire some day and they forget to renew it.
@@Lycaon1765 how many years until that could happen?
GOOD! I don't want ANYONE who thinks like you do getting anywhere NEAR the setting. You have plenty of rainbows and unicorns with the Saturday-morning cartoon treatment to choose from. No need to risk being psychologically damaged by adult content if you're feeling threatened.
@JediNiyte what's wrong with rainbows and unicorns? Lol.
But seriously, it's okay to look at something and say "yeah, that's a bit dicey, maybe we don't want to publish that to a mass market."
Something doesn't have to be "dark", or "gritty" to be fun. Some of us have seen that already. I saw enough of that in my time in the military. You know what I didn't see; rainbow and unicorns. I'd like more of that.
ah! dark sun, i really dont want anything related to it, since, i dont like dark settings, after all i play dnd for escapism, and you cant escape the feeling powerlesness, by going to depression land, that is not how it works, anyways, i at least will take one thing, twisting fantasy races upside down is fun! also psionics! when i finish my current TTRPG project, i will work on psionics!
Its a game. Get over the whining.
i don't like Dark Sun just because i just don't like the setting
nah, Dark Sun is a shit setting, it's sand, only sand and nothing but sand and it's everywhere, even the forest section have more sand than bush and tree combine
The people who introduced me to D&D actually started me off playing Freedom. I went in with an absolutely twisted perspective on how AD&D is supposed to be played.
Because political correctness.