Dark Sun

Ignore the second boxed set. You know, the one that updates the metaplot, kills all the iconic bad guys, spreads democracy through the world, builds a lush world around this little desert area, and puts a "good kingdom" down for characters to get lazy in?

Yeah, that one.

The one my brother and I started with.

Not this one, the first campaign guide where there is nowhere to run, no good kingdoms to flee to, no safe spaces, no metal, no plants, desert over the entire world as far as the eye can see, no friends, and you start out slaves fighting for your freedom or as gladiators in fighting pits for the enjoyment of the rich.

Even if you get free, you are still in hiding.

We had to go back to this edition and figure out why this world was incredible. The revised box set killed the "cool" of this world, and it seemed like "Forgotten Realms in a Desert." All the great stories and quests were solved, all the cool bad guys were gone, and TSR managed to create the Pathfinder 2e game world decades before Paizo existed.

I kid, but the feeling came back with Lost Omens when they solved all the classic adventure paths. I understand they had to move on and make room for new stories (and the sequels), and there are plenty now, so the point is moot but hilarious to get a world like that. But Paizo is doing the right thing by moving forward and keeping the adventures coming. That is who they are.

But, the new Dark Sun never replaced all the cool stuff they took away. Dark Sun kind of died in the second set. In fact, they made the world worse, soft, more mainstream, less controversial, less survival, less extreme, and less extraordinary. TSR made Dark Sun boring in that second boxed set, which is a huge accomplishment.

Because Dark Sun was incredible.

And I read these books today, and not only are you fighting against the dragon kings, but the game also goes out of its way to fight TSR's marketing and corporate departments spending dozens of pages rewriting AD&D 2e, telling you what is different and not there, changing things, patching rules, telling you how things are other, and dealing with trying to fit AD&D 2nd Edition into the Dark Sun world.

It honestly feels like this would have been a better stand-alone game.

There are sections of the book telling you what monsters are allowed from the different books, and the game feels like an exercise in sorting through the original monster and rules books of AD&D 2E and saying yes or no to other things. One place tells you no giant sea snakes are in Athas, but in my eyes, the giant sea snake in this world would perfectly fit in as a giant silt sea snake.

What I would give for a unified Dark Sun game with a standalone rulebook, with all the "not in this game" AD&D 2e stuff omitted, new art, and a one-book game. If they did a 5E version, I would want it to be standalone.

Be brave, dammit.

You have a chance to create an iconic message game about environmental destruction, something you will be remembered for in history, and you will require the main rulebooks that "give you an out." You will always say, "this doesn't exist, and that works differently."

If the world is destroyed, so are those original rulebooks, and there is no escape.

We felt it. That world is too hard to play, you need to keep remembering what is there and not there, and I have to keep flipping through books to find something right next to something else that is disallowed.

Let's just play with the original game and forget this world. It's too hard.

The original books also tell us there is a way out.

And please, 5E conversion, keep the ban on paladins and also ban the bard of today because no one is supposed to be happy here (Dark Sun's bards are a mix of the bard-assassin class, so I would not use today's definition of the class and abilities). And no fun cartoony races.

I give up; they can't help themselves. Dark Sun 5E will have this vast Burning Man festival bucket-list roleplaying with a happy desert fox race and crazy tattooed cactus people, colored smoke bombs, light shows, neon outfits, music acts, face painting, and giant transforming metal robots; and I will be sitting here screaming, "An environmental apocalypse is not supposed to be fun you idiots!"

But marketing wanted that.

And if they ever expanded the world, I wanted more post-apocalyptic fantasy. I wanted a world ravaged by magic causing environmental disasters everywhere. Areas underwater from massive floods, massive cities underwater, savage sea races, and Waterworld-style floating towns. Areas where entire lands were destroyed by volcanoes and seas of ash, lava flows everywhere, and just a mess of a land ruled by fire. Areas were damaged by an ice age, with glaciers cutting their way through savage continents and the ruins of civilizations everywhere. Droughted plague lands blighted by the dead. Lands plagued by billions of giant locusts and mile-high mud spires with intelligent man-wasps enslaving all in the land.

All of the above is easy in Dungeon Crawl Classics or Savage Worlds.

Dark Sun needs that level of "magic causes ecological apocalypse," and the creative team has to be brave enough to never roll it back out of fear. And they have to have the support of their parent company to take chances. This has all the potential to be an incredible world, but I feel there is such fear of doing this world right; all we will ever see of it is the view through a narrow cardboard paper towel tube of the original game.

This is one of the most incredible worlds destroyed by corporate fear.

They pulled this world so far back for a mainstream audience they destroyed it.

And I don't think this world will ever be done right.