Dark Sun
Dark Sun is an original Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting set in the fictional, post-apocalyptic desert world of Athas. Dark Sun featured an innovative metaplot, influential art work, dark themes, and a genre-bending take on traditional fantasy role-playing. The product line began with the original Dark Sun Boxed Set released for D&D's 2nd edition in 1991, originally ran until 1996, and was one of TSR's most successful releases.
Dark Sun deviated from the feudalistic backdrops of its Tolkienesque pseudo-medieval contemporaries, such as Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms, in favor of a composite of dark fantasy, planetary romance, and the Dying Earth subgenre. Dark Suns designers presented a savage, magic-ravaged desert world where resources are scarce and survival is a daily struggle. The traditional fantasy races and character classes were altered or omitted to better suit the setting's darker themes. Dark Sun differs further in that the game has no deities, arcane magic is reviled for causing the planet's current ecological fragility, and psionics are extremely common. The artwork of Brom established a trend of game products produced under the direction of a single artist. The setting was also the first TSR setting to come with an established metaplot out of the box.
Dark Suns popularity endured long after the setting was no longer supported, with a lively online community developing around it. Only third-party material was produced for the third edition D&D rules, but a new official edition of Dark Sun was released in 2010 for the fourth edition.
Dark Sun has been mentioned by developers, most notably Mike Mearls, and appeared in psionics playtest materials for Dungeons & Dragons for the fifth edition of the game. Despite player interest, game publisher Wizards of the Coast has chosen not to reissue the setting due to ingrained controversial content such as slavery, genocide and racial savagery.
Development
''Advanced Dungeons & Dragons'' (2nd edition)
released the second edition of Battlesystem, its mass-combat ruleset, in 1989. In 1990 the company began pre-production on a new campaign setting that would use this ruleset, the working title of which was "War World". The team envisioned a post-apocalyptic world full of exotic monsters and no hallmark fantasy creatures whatsoever. TSR worried about this concept, wondering how to market a product that lacked any familiar elements. Eventually, elves, dwarves, and dragons returned but in warped variations of their standard AD&D counterparts. The designers credited this reversion as a pivotal change that launched the project in a new direction.Contributors to this project at its beginnings included Rich Baker, Gerald Brom, Tim Brown, Troy Denning, Mary Kirchoff, James Lowder, and Steve Winter. With the exception of Denning and Kirchoff, design veterans such as David "Zeb" Cook declined to join the conceptual team. The majority of project members were new to TSR, though not necessarily to the industry.
Steve Winter suggested the idea of a desert landscape. His inspiration drew partly from Den by Richard Corben and the fiction of Clark Ashton Smith. The Dark Sun setting drew much of its makeup from artist Brom's imagery: "I pretty much designed the look and feel of the Dark Sun campaign. I was doing paintings before they were even writing about the setting. I'd do a painting or a sketch, and the designers wrote those characters and ideas into the story. I was very involved in the development process".
Game designer Rick Swan described the setting: "Using the desert as a metaphor for struggle and despair, this presents a truly alien setting, bizarre even by AD&D game standards. From dragons to spell-casting, from character classes to gold pieces, this ties familiar AD&D conventions into knots". He said that Athas "shares the post-apocalyptic desolation of FGU's Aftermath game, GDW's Twilight 2000 game, and other after-the-holocaust RPGs".
The original Dark Sun Boxed Set released in 1991 presented the base setting details wherein the Tyr Region is on the verge of revolution against the sorcerer-kings. A five-book fiction series, the Prism Pentad, written by Denning and edited by Lowder, was released beginning in 1991, in coordination with the boxed set. Set a decade after the first boxed set, the Expanded And Revised boxed set released in 1995 updated the setting to reconcile the events and characters introduced since the initial 1991 release, and gave more details on the world outside the Tyr Region.
Following the setting's release, poor sales for Battlesystem soon stopped its further inclusion in Dark Sun products. The tie-in with the Complete Psionics Handbook proved more successful—all characters and creatures were psionic to a greater or lesser degree—but designers regretted the extra time involved in attaching these rules to practically every living thing in the campaign world.
The Dark Sun game line ended abruptly in late 1996. When TSR released its product schedule in Dragon #236 no Dark Sun products were included. The final release was Psionic Artifacts of Athas though two books, Dregoth Ascending and Secrets of the Dead Lands were rumored to have been near completion to the point that early versions were reportedly given to some GMs at the 1997 Gen Con Game Fair before the line ended. Prior to the line's cancellation, designer Kevin Melka claimed that another halfling product, a book on the dwarves, and a book on the Order were part of his official proposals for 1997. An invasion of the Kreen Empire was also being considered, according to Melka, along with the mystery of the Messenger and a product on the Silt Sea.
''Dungeons & Dragons'' (3rd edition)
Dark Sun was not officially supported by the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons, but Paizo Publishing and the fans at Athas.org kept the setting alive through the use of the Open Game License issued by Wizards of the Coast. David Noonan created an updated version of the setting for Paizo in 2004 that was published in Dragon magazine and Dungeon magazine that presented rules for 3rd edition. This version took place three hundred years after the last published setting details and sought to return the setting's metaplot to something closer to the original boxed set. This version also provided rules and setting details for the new third edition player character races such as elans and maenads.presented another update to the setting for 3.5 in 2008. It was a rules-only conversion that provided everything needed to play in the Dark Sun world through the non-epic levels. The Athas.org version also condensed the metaplot information and presented a much broader view, allowing players an opportunity to create campaigns in virtually any era of Athas, even as far back as the Blue Age. Athas.org was also given permission to convert and release two unpublished second edition sourcebooks, Dregoth Ascending and Terrors of the Dead Lands, which was based on TSR's unpublished Secrets of the Deadlands.
''Dungeons & Dragons'' (4th edition)
In 2010, Wizards of the Coast released Dark Sun for the fourth edition of D&D. The setting was chosen because designer James Wyatt felt that the setting's grittier, action oriented feel was a good fit for the fourth edition rules and because the setting demonstrated that Dungeons and Dragons games could go beyond the tropes and themes of standard medieval fantasy.This version was heralded as a return of the feel of the original 1991 boxed set taking the setting back before the events of the Prism Pentad. The metaplot's timeline is set back to just after the original Dark Sun's first adventure, Freedom. The sorcerer-king Kalak is dead and Tyr is a free city-state but the future of Athas beyond that is up to the players. Game designer Richard Baker said the design team wanted the game to begin when Athas had the most possibilities for adventure and offer a version of the setting where the Prism Pentad storyline would be possible but not mandatory.
The fourth edition setting strayed far less from the core rules than its AD&D counterpart. Rich Baker reported that the design team wanted the campaign setting to mesh closely with the new core rules and source material, such as the Player's Handbook, than previous editions had. Effort was made, however, to ensure that these more generic elements stayed true to the unique feel of the setting.
The most notable fourth edition change expanded character building by introducing themes. Themes were a third way to define a player character identity through archetypes or careers allowing them to more clearly describe their place or role within the world. Some variant classes central to the previous editions, such as gladiators, templars, and elemental priests, were introduced as themes. Themes proved very popular and were widely adopted in other settings. The scale of Athas was reduced slightly but the geography was largely unchanged.
The edition change created other notable differences including templars as warlocks, the dray becoming dragonborn, the introduction of new core races such as tieflings and eladrin, and the exclusion of races from previous editions: elans, maenads, pterrans, and aarakocra. The new fourth edition races were given Athasian twists in a similar manner to the original fantasy races.
Possibly the most significant change to the setting was the alteration to its cosmology. In previous editions, Athas had a setting specific cosmology that was isolated from the rest of the D&D universe, making it nearly impossible to access via other planes or spacelanes. Fourth edition instead presented Athas squarely within the standard D&D cosmology, though it was still difficult to access or exit.