While Wizards of the Coast is returning to several classic campaign settings, they’re a bit more reticent on bringing back one popular setting. Earlier this week, Dungeons & Dragons executive director Kyle Brink spoke with the “Bob the WorldBuilder” YouTube channel, continuing a series of appearances to rehabilitate D&D’s image in the wake of the OGL controversy. During the interview, Bob asked about the prospect of a Dark Sun revival, a dark post-apocalyptic setting that focused on scarce resources and moral ambiguity.
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“I’ll be frank here, the Dark Sun setting is problematic in a lot of ways,” Brink said. “And that’s the main reason we haven’t come back to it. We know it’s got a huge fan following and we have standards today that make it extraordinarily hard to be true to the source material and also meet our ethical and inclusion standards… We know there’s love out there for it and god we would love to make those people happy, and also we gotta be responsible.”
Brink’s answer probably isn’t a surprise to many who follow Dungeons & Dragons, especially as the game tries to move past certain problematic content found in past editions. While Dark Sun was a popular setting in both 2nd Edition and 4th Edition, its post-apocalyptic tone, use of certain fantasy archetypes and stereotypes, and its heavy use of slavery as a symbol of oppression would likely need to be updated due to evolving views on how oppressive systems are depicted in games.
However, there are at least a few current D&D creators who are interested in attempting modernize Dark Sun in a way that stays true to its current themes. For instance, Ajit George, one of the design leads for last year’s Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, expressed his interest in tackling a Dark Sun revival that would approach the setting as a sort of dark counterpart to the more uplifting themes of the Radiant Citadel adventures.
Even the creators of Dark Sun have acknowledged that updates would be needed to update the setting. In a recent interview with ComicBook.com, Dark Sun co-creator Troy Denning said that “I think if they reissued Dark Sun and asked me to do it… I would want to take a very careful look at and make sure that the stereotypes were not being used negatively and that we were avoiding stereotypes as much as possible. I’m proud of everything I did in Dark Sun, but that’s not to say that I couldn’t do it better now.”
