According to the Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons, Wizards of the Coast has no plans to publish a new version of Dark Sun for 5E.

As a long time fan of Dark Sun, I am grateful.

I’m content with Dark Sun remaining an old dusty setting.

I am highly confident that WotC would publish something they label Dark Sun but wouldn’t be Dark Sun.

WotC has made a point of taking the sword-and-sorcery elements out of D&D. It has stripped out the little bit of horror that was in Ravenloft and published Spelljammer without rules for ship to ship combat. No doubt, Dark Sun would have had all the things that make it a grim but heroic setting removed. Given their previous failures, I am quite happy WotC is leaving it alone.

A new “official” version of the setting would be as dried up and lifeless as an oasis after a magical duel between a pair of defilers.

Dark Sun is not generic fantasy.

When TSR started thinking about creating a new setting, the design team had a meeting. (start at 16:00 for the details) In that meeting, they decided that they wanted to do something drastically different. They brainstormed a list of ideas and concepts to intentionally subvert the classic D&D setting conventions. Troy Denning and Tim Brown were given the task of building a setting based on the ideas and constraints provided by their colleagues. Mary Kirchoff joined them to make sure the tied in novels maintained continuity with the game products.

The result was a setting that was very different than anything ever published for D&D. They fully integrated psionics into the setting along with new psionic monsters. They created new character classes and character races that were specific to the setting. The magic system used the standard D&D concept but with a big twist. The villains and monsters are terrifying and also unique to the setting. The setting is built assuming that characters can achieve a very high level. Monsters and adversaries appropriate to those levels were worked into Dark Sun in a logical and coherent way.

Another very smart choice was to have a single artist do all illustrations for at least the first year of the product cycle. They repeated this practice with Planescape. Gerald Brom was the only artist who worked on the product for the first year of publication. The aesthetic of Dark Sun started with a painting Brom had done as a side project for himself. It was sitting in his work space and the design team happened to see it. They decided they wanted it to be the look of the setting. The character Neeva was written into the books because she appeared in a painting. Troy Denning was inspired to create a character to fit the image. Brom was included in the design process as they developed the presentation of the products. The aesthetic is otherworldly, post-apocalyptic and like nothing made for D&D before or since.

It’s dark. On purpose.

This is a land of blood and dust, where tribes of feral elves sweep out of the salt plains to plunder lonely caravans, mysterious singing winds call men to slow suffocation in a Sea of Silt, and legions of slaves clash over a few bushels of moldering grain. The dragon despoils entire cities, while selfish kings squander their armies raising gaudy palaces and garish tombs.

This is my home, Athas. It is an arid and bleak place, a wasteland with a handful of austere cities clinging precariously to a few scattered oases. It is a brutal and savage land, beset by political strife and monstrous abominations, where life is grim and short.

The Wanderer’s Journal: Dark Sun Box Set

Dark Sun is not for everyone. It contains mature themes. It’s dark. It’s gritty. Characters die, a lot.

The world of Athas faces severe scarcity of water, food, and iron. The setting is a desert where everything you need to survive is hard to get. Resource management is very much a part of this setting.

Spell casters make everything worse. On Athas, environmental destruction was caused by wizards known as Defilers. Magic is fueled by drawing life energy from plants and animals, people included. Wizards who recklessly drain the life around them are called Defilers. A powerful Defiler can leave an incomprehensible path of destruction. The sorcerer kings and queens are the highest level Defilers on Athas and they have high level psionics.

A wizard can chose to draw less life energy for their spells and avoid completely killing the plants and animals the wizard is drawing on. Their spells are weaker. Such wizards are called Preservers. In a moment of great need, a Preserver can chose to Defile. This is a dilemma that Preservers face constantly. Eventually, a situation will emerge where your choice is to Defile or die.

Slavery is everywhere. No species or class is spared the indignity. Freemen can find themselves wearing shackles in a brief moment of misfortune. A common way to start a Dark Sun campaign is with the player characters as slaves.

Nobody trusts anybody. The assumption is that whoever you meet in Dark Sun is a spy for a sorcerer king’s templars, a slaver, a thief, or wants to eat you. At the very least, everyone assumes that you are looking out for your own selfish interests. The necessities of life are hard to get and most everyone is always on the edge of not having enough in a place where that can kill you.

In the introductory adventure included in the box set the player characters must travel to a nearby oases, only to find out that it has been intentionally poisoned. Most of the sentient species the player characters encounter, attack, lie, or attempt to take advantage of them. If the party succeeds in the objective of the adventure, they rescue a thri-kreen druid who then kills and eats an elf NPC.

The elf had it coming.

This adventure establishes what is “normal” on Athas. This normality is a brutal equation caused by the sorcerer kings. They created the centuries long catastrophe that everyone is trying to survive.

Dilemma is the bleeding heart of excellence in RPGs.

The messed up situation on Athas is what creates the emotionally powerful dilemmas the players face.

A dilemma is a situation where the character has to chose between options that all have negative consequences. It is that choice which reveals the moral fiber (or lack of it) of the characters. Dark Sun is all about ugly dilemmas.

The elves of Athas have become insular nomadic raiders and traders living in the desert.

The halflings of Forest Ridge are cannibals.

Thri-kreen have a reputation for a love of elf flesh.

Secret societies use all means possible to fight against the sorcerer kings.

The Sorcerer Kings themselves give an annual levy of 1,000 slaves to The Dragon. The Dragon is more powerful than most gods in AD&D and it has it’s own secret fears and motivations.

Why do these characters steal, murder, eat the flesh, or consume the life energy of other sentient beings to power their magic? They have a dilemma; Do this or die.

This dilemma with the highest stakes creates situations for great gaming.

What are you willing to do to survive in an unforgiving land?

Is heroism possible when survival is doubtful?

If the player characters chose to fight against tyranny on Athas, this is true heroism. The Superficial Hero is not what you find in Dark Sun. The heroes of Athas are true heroes fighting evil because they have to make compromises and personal sacrifices.

Dilemmas make for great stories and for great games.

It’s like will never be made again.

Dark Sun was created under very unique circumstances. The designers were told to create a setting, given a set of constraints and pile of ideas. Management then got out of the way and let them do their work.

The designers had a long lead time so they could explore some ideas that didn’t work out and develop others to maturity. It was an effort led by the people who loved the game and the thing they were creating. Instead of being told what make, the Dark Sun team was allowed to create something strange and sublime.

Dark Sun is special and I don’t expect you’ll ever see anything as well executed from anyone but a third party publisher and maybe not even then. Dark Sun is the bar by which I measure campaign settings.

Don’t take my word for it.

If this has piqued your interest, and you are looking for inspiration or a new setting to run, you should check it out. I recommend the original box set and the Prism Pentad novels which are available on Kindle.

As much as I dislike giving money to WotC, you can find the Dark Sun products on DM’s Guild in PDF and POD. The original printings, like everything else from the TSR era of D&D, have become quite expensive on the secondary market. DM’s Guild is the least expensive legal route to the original material. I’m not a huge fan of the adventures for Dark Sun. Most are very linear and railroads in some cases.

There is a lot of supplemental material for Dark Sun both official and fan made that make for a great sandbox game. There are many great fan sites, podcasts, and channels on YouTube dedicated to the setting. The material the fans have produced is as good as, if not better than the “official” products.

I love the setting and it has stuck with me since for 30 years as some of the best gaming I’ve ever experienced. If you want to see an example of masterful campaign creation that includes high level play, unique and interesting world building coupled with mechanics that match the world instead of a world that matches the mechanics, then Dark Sun is worth your time.