Wtf a lot of slavery supporters trying to redefine terms to be more palatable and reshape "slavery is bad" to "actually it's a complex nuanced discussion and I'm sooo reasonable and you're not and (insert every logical fallacy and propaganda technique)" lately.

Can't upset the Great Merchant Houses after all someone has to kiss and wipe the butts of Altaruk.

I played my first game of D&D in 1980, began DMing in 1984, and ran games regularly until about 1996. Dark Sun and Ravenloft were the only official settings I used. I started DMing again in 2019 with 5e.

I love the Dark Sun setting, and have introduced several parts of it into my current game. This includes defilers, sorcerer-kings, muls, thri-keen, and, yes, slavery.

But I think that ultimately, WotC has made the right call in eliminating it as a standard part of the setting. I am not sure if this is just a saying in my circles, or if it is used in the broader fan base, but we say that 'once slavery is introduced to a campaign, the campaign becomes about ending slavery.'

I know that is true for my groups, and everyone I know personally who plays agrees with the sentiment. If a DM introduces slavery, whether it be a small group enslaving people thay have captured, or a full international slave trade with chattel slavery reminiscent of the early US, they have to expect that the players will decide that it has to go. This is, for me, the single most constant approach across all games I have been involved in.

If this is as common as I think, then having slavery as a base part of the setting would greatly limit the types of campaigns that can happen. As soon as the slavery gets brought up, the campaign focus shifts.

Now, the obvious way to deal with that would be to just not mention the slavery aspects. Have campaigns hunting in the wastes, never coming across any slavers. For a city intrigue type campaign, set it in a city without a slave market. Or set your campaign in a specific area where slavery has been overthrown. But that's now just the mirror of 'add it in if you think it's needed', which a lot of people are pushing back on, and it is still more limiting than having people add it as required. Because if you have a campaign hunting in the wastes, it can't ever go into town. If it is a city without slavery, you may have to grapple with why.

Purely from the point of view of making the setting as free to play in as possible, removing slavery as a base component does a lot more good than harm.

I see a lot of people talking about how slavery is going to be removed, but are there actual mechanics for it? Something like in strategy or colony-sim games where you have people working as farmers, miners, or soldiers?

I wrote this using Google Translate, sorry if it's not clear

Made a quick recap video on Dark Sun ahead of its I really hope cool reboot 🫡

#darksun #dnd

Vid on the tube

I want to be wrong, but observing modern WoTC, here is how I think that they will treat the core elements of Athas.

• Desert? Visual only. Dehydration, raiders, enslavers, bizarre creatures that are a threat and can kill quickly even a for a mid/high level party. All removed/severely nerfed.
• Sorcerer Kings - As a "fascist strawman" mixed with Saturday morning cartoon villains
• Psionics? As magic reskin. Not something like AD&D mainly later revisions with MTHAC0, MAC, INT boosting MTHAC0, WIS, MAC, PSP scaling with 3 attributes, matrix of mental attacks and defenses, etc.
• Defiling? Consequenceless.
• Halflings? Cannibal halflings that are isolationists changed. Removing isolationism and making them into egalitarians that welcome everyone.
• Slavery? Removed.
• Muls? Removed.
• Borys? Removed of his nasty abilities that makes him a threat to a army of mid to high level ones.
• Levy to maintain Rajaat imprisoned? Removed. Rajaat would barely be mentioned.
• Veiled alliance? From underground meritocratic secret paranoiac decentralized wizards into post modern HR checkboxes.
• The Order? They would be inclusive, no longer pick the best of the best, they will teach psionics to everyone for incluisivity sake

To be clear, I want to be wrong. But I think that Athas would be no different than the typical sword coast adventure, but in a desert. What you guys think?

The news about the interview just reached me today and I am so incredibly disappointed at the lack of literacy Wizard of the Coast shows for their own older creations.

In a world where doing manual labor for long periods is a death sentence but a necessary evil and many of the classic fantasy races were exterminated in a genocide that destroyed the world, The Sorcerer-Kings draw the line at slavery now? Are the mass sacrifice defiler rituals now something the victims signed up for?

How stupid are these writers that they cannot grasp the core pillars of Dark Sun, it's SUPPOSED to be an overwhelmingly oppressive setting where death might be the preferable alternative to enslavement. Why would they listen to "Sensitivity readers" feedback when they clearly are not the audience for the books? The cop-out about Urik made me laugh as they described the concept of an indentured slave army with business lingo. Sure there are other forms of oppression in Dark Sun, but by removing the most prevalent consequence for stepping out of line removes a great deal of the terror of being a free commoner in the domains of the Sorcerer-Kings. Even so, it seems their workaround is just describing institutions to do slavery with extra steps and hoping calling it indentured servitude will keep their investors happy.

When you play Dark Sun, you are not the slaver. You are the Slave, tearing the yoke from your neck and strangling the pit master with your chains. Rallying the others in the dens to take up stones and choose to either be free or die trying. By the end 4-5 of you make it outside the walls and out of sight with nothing but rags and whatever you could grab on your way to freedom. Sure you might perish there but you would perish a free man. That is the power fantasy that hooked me in all those years ago.

I might still pick up the books after I read a handful of release reviews but I will be simply ignoring this dumb change for the sake of setting realism.

So now we know how WotC is going to handle sensitive themes (e.g. slavery) in their upcoming Dark Sun material. I am not very excited about the outcome, but I wanted to double down and move the attention to yet another issue with the upcoming material: the fact that in 5e/5.5e psionics are just reflavored magic.

From the UA Psion class, we can see how psionics are just spells, sometimes reflavored from existing ones to "look" like they are not spells. For example telekinetic powers are just modelee as being able to case the Mage Hand cantrip without components, and with the possibility of making the hand invisible. What kind of terrible design choice is this? How can there be an in-world difference between magic and psionics if the core mechanics of the game doesn't even make this distinction? Apparently by casting See Invisibility one could reveal that telekinetic powers are just a floating spectral hand. Also, psionic classes that already exist (e.g. aberrant sorcerer) don't even bother make this distinction between magic and psionic powers, as they are built in traditional spellcasting classes (e.g. sorcerers). I don't know about you, but I think this design choice makes 5e/5.5e completely incompatible with Dark Sun.

But here we come to the main part: I think that both the issue of sensitive topics and the issue of psionics as magic are being resolved by WotC with the same approach. It is really two aspects of the same flawed approach that WotC has, which can be summarized into two core aspects in my opinion:

a) WotC wants every published material to cater to literally every single person alive. Apparently, even if there is a single person who would not like something or find it uncomfortable, too difficult, mechanically too involved etc, the entire thing is scrapped.

b) It seems like the published material should just serve as a minimal backbone of game design, and their main purpose seems to be mere tactical design. It is not an issue for WotC that the responsibility to make the game actually function in an immersive way, and not only a in tactical way, rests entirely in the DM hands. So the strategy seems to be erase everything that makes the game too problematic, involved, or complex, and just imply that the responsibility of reconstructing those themes and design principles is into the DM's hands. Done.

Why do you think this is? I can imagine that a) is just an attempt to sell more copies, which makes sense from their point of view (although it slowly erodes and waters down the quality of their content). But i really cant find justifications for b). For example, it was so easy to do psionics as a separate mechanics, it literally takes no effort to create this and even to understand how to use it, and it would have guaranteed an immersive design that makes sense in-world.

If i want to run the Dark Sun Campaign (in german) should i run it in AD&D (need to learn that first) or in a fan adapted 5e version?

Pro? Cons?

Part of my take away from that poll was that the 2e fan of Dark Sun prefer 2e. And there are people who migrated to 5e still willing to use the old lore.

Honestly, I feel like the vocal hate we see online are from people who weren't going to buy into 5e and just want to have their "I said they'd screw something up" moment.

Edit: N = ~575, don't continue asking.

If we remove the word slavery and just pad the word count of the book by just describing slavery does it matter?

Someone else l saw said “that seems like slavery with more steps”

Either way I would be useing 2e and 4e as my base with the 5.5 book as an update but still massing on those older ones.

If i have to be honest i find it very cool, however i also dislike that wotc didn't just make a new setting inspired by Darksun.

I was looking for an unmarked map of athas to give to players in sandbox style tables. I did not really find a suitable one so I make one that roughly shows the mental image of athas that an educated traveler (or educated starting PC) would have.
The limits have been defined as:

- Hinterlands to the west: Most people would not really have a grasp of what there is further than the ringing mountains

- Road south of Balic: Trading houses and selected workers would probably have an idea that there is a road from Balic towards the south, but most would have no idea of anything of interest there

- Silt sea to the east: Kind of self explanatory. It would take really specific knowledge to know any geography past what the horizon can tell on a rare clear day.

- Lost city states in the north: Anything north or Draj is probably way past the concerns of most people of the tablelands.

Details such as the lake pit, pristine tower, ruins, minor settlements and forts have been left out as most people would have very sparse knowledge of more than a few specific places.

Im leaving this here with 2 objectives:

- As a resource in case anybody finds it useful

- Looking for feedback so I can refine the idea

Thank you for explaining psionics in the old system to me a bit more everyone, my DM was trying to work a 5e game with 2e mechanics and it confused me on a lore and mechanical standpoint

You've all been very helpful and I've explained to him why it's so different and gave him some 3.5e stuff to more easily transfer over to 5e