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Author Topic: Modern Dark Sun (for fifth edition, one d&d or whatever they want to call it)  (Read 3113 times)

Kerstmanneke82

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Just imagine.

The year is 2024, sixth edition is on the horizon, if that is still a thing. They've done Eberron, Planescape, Spelljammer... and they want to send 5th edition off with... Dark Sun.

Now keep in mind, ever since Athasspace turned into Doomspace and the Hadozee emergency, chances are indeed very slim it'll ever come out. But what if it did, what do you think it'll look like?

Fire away!

Darkwind

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I actually read somewhere they are rebooting Dark Sun in 23 or 24, I forget. It will be an army of sensitivity writers, cultural coordinators, DIE consultants, and various blue-haired problem glass wearing hamplanet SJWs endlessly debating each other.

At the end, it will be a watered down, milquetoast, pussified product that probably bears close to no relation to the gritty grim dark type setting that Dark Sun was suppose to be. It isn't possible for it to be otherwise because NPCs cannot break their programming under any circumstance, they short circuit first. Nuance, subtlety, and situational context are beyond their capability so it will be hot garbage.

Jam The MF

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We need an OSR hack of the original Dark Sun, titled "Black Sun".  Change all the names slightly, to avoid lawsuits.
Let the Dice, Decide the Outcome.  Accept the Results.

VisionStorm

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I actually read somewhere they are rebooting Dark Sun in 23 or 24, I forget. It will be an army of sensitivity writers, cultural coordinators, DIE consultants, and various blue-haired problem glass wearing hamplanet SJWs endlessly debating each other.

At the end, it will be a watered down, milquetoast, pussified product that probably bears close to no relation to the gritty grim dark type setting that Dark Sun was suppose to be. It isn't possible for it to be otherwise because NPCs cannot break their programming under any circumstance, they short circuit first. Nuance, subtlety, and situational context are beyond their capability so it will be hot garbage.

Pretty much.

They will get rid of slavery, Muls will no longer be dumb, because Int modifiers are racist, and they will try to shoehorn even more races than they already did back in 4e, only now they'll try to shoehorn a bunch of irrelevant classes and subclasses as well, cuz everything in the core books has to make it into every setting and nothing can be setting-specific (unlike the OG Dark Sun). It'll be a silly Tumblrina wearing a Dark Sun shaped skin suit a couple sizes too small.

Kinda makes me glad it'll never happen. Planescape will have to suffer instead.

PencilBoy99

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There's a OSE very cool fan made version. It's on the Facebook Dark Sun site I think.

GeekyBugle

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There's a OSE very cool fan made version. It's on the Facebook Dark Sun site I think.

It's also on reddit in case you don't have a facebook account. Not sure if it's against the rules to share the link here.
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jeff37923

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Just imagine.

The year is 2024, sixth edition is on the horizon, if that is still a thing. They've done Eberron, Planescape, Spelljammer... and they want to send 5th edition off with... Dark Sun.

Now keep in mind, ever since Athasspace turned into Doomspace and the Hadozee emergency, chances are indeed very slim it'll ever come out. But what if it did, what do you think it'll look like?

Fire away!

Like shit.

4e Dark Sun was crap and 5e Dark Sun would be more of the same.
"Meh."

Ratman_tf

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Just imagine.

The year is 2024, sixth edition is on the horizon, if that is still a thing. They've done Eberron, Planescape, Spelljammer... and they want to send 5th edition off with... Dark Sun.

Now keep in mind, ever since Athasspace turned into Doomspace and the Hadozee emergency, chances are indeed very slim it'll ever come out. But what if it did, what do you think it'll look like?

Fire away!

Like shit.

4e Dark Sun was crap and 5e Dark Sun would be more of the same.

I rather liked 4th ed Dark Sun. I actually got to GM it. I can't say I'm a fan of 4th edition, but most of the kinks had been worked out by the time Dark Sun came out. It was mostly faithful to the original setting, with a few tweaks. And they smartly set it just after Kalaks' death, instead of the monstrosity of the "updated" setting with all the Cerulean Storm nonsense.
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Jam The MF

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Just imagine.

The year is 2024, sixth edition is on the horizon, if that is still a thing. They've done Eberron, Planescape, Spelljammer... and they want to send 5th edition off with... Dark Sun.

Now keep in mind, ever since Athasspace turned into Doomspace and the Hadozee emergency, chances are indeed very slim it'll ever come out. But what if it did, what do you think it'll look like?

Fire away!

Like shit.

4e Dark Sun was crap and 5e Dark Sun would be more of the same.

I rather liked 4th ed Dark Sun. I actually got to GM it. I can't say I'm a fan of 4th edition, but most of the kinks had been worked out by the time Dark Sun came out. It was mostly faithful to the original setting, with a few tweaks. And they smartly set it just after Kalaks' death, instead of the monstrosity of the "updated" setting with all the Cerulean Storm nonsense.


I have the 4E Dark Sun Creature Catalog.  There are a few crazy monsters in there.  It paints the picture of a setting that is working against you, all the time.  No easy street to rest upon.  Just a need to focus upon survival.
Let the Dice, Decide the Outcome.  Accept the Results.

VisionStorm

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Just imagine.

The year is 2024, sixth edition is on the horizon, if that is still a thing. They've done Eberron, Planescape, Spelljammer... and they want to send 5th edition off with... Dark Sun.

Now keep in mind, ever since Athasspace turned into Doomspace and the Hadozee emergency, chances are indeed very slim it'll ever come out. But what if it did, what do you think it'll look like?

Fire away!

Like shit.

4e Dark Sun was crap and 5e Dark Sun would be more of the same.

I rather liked 4th ed Dark Sun. I actually got to GM it. I can't say I'm a fan of 4th edition, but most of the kinks had been worked out by the time Dark Sun came out. It was mostly faithful to the original setting, with a few tweaks. And they smartly set it just after Kalaks' death, instead of the monstrosity of the "updated" setting with all the Cerulean Storm nonsense.

I never played 4e, and have only given a glance at a PDF of the book, but they shoehorned Dragonborn, Eladrin and Tieflings—none of which are really appropriate or relevant to the setting—and expected you to use standard stats for dwarves, elves, half-elves and halfling, rather than provide setting-specific ones, when all of those races are supposed to be significantly changed in Dark Sun. They only include stats for Muls and Thri-kreen, which had no penalties to Intelligence, and Muls got a bonus to Wisdom for some reason.

Then they also included notes for shoehorning other D&D races as well, giving tacit encouragement to allow the whole kitchen sink in, when Dark Sun explicitly had a race purging Cleansing War as part of its backstory, where human champions tried to wipe out every other race (and succeeded with Goblins, Pixies, Gnomes and Orcs, at the very least), meaning that it shouldn't just include every traditional D&D race. The ones in the original material were the ones that survived the Cleansing Wars and managed to thrive.

Also, Dark Sun is not even connected to the Outer Planes, so stuff like Tieflings or demonic creatures make no sense. Genasi at least are more plausible, because Athas is deeply connected to the Elemental Planes, but there was no mention of fairy stuff in the original, and I suspect that the world's connection to the Feywild (which didn't even exist back in the setting's original release) would be as tenuous as its connection to any planes other than the Elemental Planes, which are the only planes the world has a strong connection to. Which means that Eladrin make no sense in it either.

If they already strayed so far in 4e, I can only imagine how bad it would be in 5e.

VisionStorm

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Re: Modern Dark Sun (for fifth edition, one d&d or whatever they want to call it)
« Reply #10 on: September 22, 2022, 11:27:47 AM »
DP
« Last Edit: September 22, 2022, 11:29:56 AM by VisionStorm »

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Modern Dark Sun (for fifth edition, one d&d or whatever they want to call it)
« Reply #11 on: September 22, 2022, 11:38:00 AM »
We need an OSR hack of the original Dark Sun, titled "Black Sun".  Change all the names slightly, to avoid lawsuits.
Even changing the names isn't necessarily going to avoid potential lawsuits if the setting is similar enough. Dark Sun has a lot of original aspects that would be suspicious if used together: arcane magic blighting the landscape, the prevalence of psionics (and divine magic), the dearth of metals like bronze or iron reshaping commerce, the city-states ruled by dragon-kings who ascended to their state a la Chinese dragons, etc.

I know A Princess of Mars and other planetary romance/sword & planet tales were a huge influence on Dark Sun, so it might make more sense to market the OSR hack as a sword & planet setting.

To add to your original, I also wish there were OSR equivalents of the other unique settings. A DungeonPunk setting, a fantasy Sliders setting, a fantasy space travel setting...

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Modern Dark Sun (for fifth edition, one d&d or whatever they want to call it)
« Reply #12 on: September 22, 2022, 12:20:47 PM »
deleted
« Last Edit: September 23, 2022, 10:40:27 AM by BoxCrayonTales »

Batjon

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Re: Modern Dark Sun (for fifth edition, one d&d or whatever they want to call it)
« Reply #13 on: September 22, 2022, 12:34:07 PM »
Woke Dark Sun is NOT Dark Sun and has NO appeal for me.

Redshirt451

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Re: Modern Dark Sun (for fifth edition, one d&d or whatever they want to call it)
« Reply #14 on: September 22, 2022, 01:03:18 PM »
There's actually a fan made 3.5 version of the setting, if that's of interest to anyone. https://athas.org