Dark Sun

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (2nd edition) TSR 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 (though Cook would write the first two adventure modules: Freedom and Road to Urik). The majority of project members were new to TSR, though not necessarily to the industry (Winter having worked at GDW). 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 final release was Psionic Artifacts of Athas (1996) 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. Athas.org 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 (2005) and Terrors of the Dead Lands (2005), which was based on TSR's unpublished Secrets of the Deadlands. 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 (1991). 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. 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 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. ==Reception==

A reviewer for the British magazine Arcane commented: "There's plenty of atmosphere in Dark Sun and, despite the seeming uniformity of the geography, a great deal of imagination has gone into detailing its various regions". The reviewer also observed: "Life on Athas is particularly tough and short. Never mind the monsters; failing to take enough water on a desert crossing can be fatal". The reviewer concluded that "if blood in the sand is the bag you're into, you'll find plenty to enjoy under the Dark Sun". Writing in Dragon magazine, Rick Swan gave the initial release 4.5 stars out of five. He warned that it would take "a skilled DM to handle the subtleties of the setting, not to mention the psionics rules and the fine points of the new races and character classes, but it is worth the effort. The Dark Sun setting is that good". EN World gave the setting a B+ rating saying that the source book was readable, and introduced innovative new mechanics to the game. The reviewer was critical of the source book, feeling it to be "incomplete" in both content and art work in comparison to the Forgotten Realms source books released two years prior. Looking back at the setting, Chris Wilson writing for Time describes the world as a good candidate for television adaptation, "a richly imagined world" with "traces of Dune mixed with Jedi-like powers and a healthy side of murderous human-sized praying mantises". John Baichtal of Wired described Athas as "the swords and sorcery equivalent of Mad Max: a desert world where water, steel and kindness are in short supply, where magic destroys the environment and the kings and queens are exclusively evil. Elves are untrustworthy merchants and halflings are cannibals. New PC races include muls (half-dwarves) and thri-kreen (insect men) add to the setting's uniqueness. It's a riot!" In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath noted, "Dark Sun is perhaps TSR's most obviously political product. Coming as it did in 1991, a year after activists brought the 20th anniversary of Earth Day to the international stage with a multi-million-dollar awareness campaign, it is difficult not to read the campaign setting as a grim warning ... 30 years later, Dark Sun still feels relevant as a cautionary fable about unchecked power and a disregard for the environment." ==The world==

The campaign setting of Dark Sun is played on the fictional planet Athas. The Blue Age The ''Wanderer's Journal'' begins with the Edenic Blue Age when Athas was once covered with a vast body of life-giving water under a blue sun. Halflings ruled Athas during this time, building a powerful civilization. They were nature-masters and life-shapers, able to produce anything they needed by manipulating the principles of nature itself. The age came to an end by accident. At the point the source material lays out for play the beginning of the Age of Heroes when the sorcerer-king's hold on the Tyr Region has recently been challenged with the assassination of Kalak of Tyr in a slave rebellion led by Rikus, Agis, Neeva, Tithian, and Sadira. Over the course of the adventure modules and the novels the metaplot advances radically, changing the Tyr Region with Rikus, Agis, Neeva, Tithian, and Sadira (from the novels), or the player characters at the center of the changes. The setting picked up three hundred years after the second edition and the events of the Prism Pentad. The guide outlined some of the important events that had taken place since then, and largely focused on the city-states and the fate of the remaining sorcerer-kings. The city-state of Raam is on the verge of collapse after the death of its sorcerer-queen. The psionic dragon-lich Dregoth, who resurrected himself after being slain by the other Sorcerer-Kings for attempting to become a dragon like Borys, sweeps in and transforms most of the riotous inhabitants into undead. He now rules the city-state where the living walk side by side with undead zombies and skeletons. In Draj, Azetuk the adopted son of the deceased Sorcerer-King Tectuktitlay was installed largely as a figurehead by Tectuktitlay templars, but manages to learn enough to transform himself into a true sorcerer-king. He takes control of Draj and begins to demand regular blood sacrifices in his temples. Balic has also fallen into chaos after the disappearance and reappearance of their sorcerer-king Andropinis. Fourth edition changes The fourth edition setting presents a much abridged and somewhat different backstory that alludes to the original metaplot but doesn't explicitly reference it. Little is known in-game about the history of Athas and what is known is largely myth, legend, and/or the propaganda of the sorcerer-kings. The fourth edition metaplot describes three ages: the Green Age, the Red Age, and the Desert Age or the Age of the Sorcerer-Kings. As with the original metaplot, the Green Age is earliest visible sign of civilization but suggests that rare tales tell of an earlier age, possibly the Blue Age. The end of the Green Age is described similarly to the original metaplot. The Green Age gave way to the more recent Red Age, a time of profound war and strife that left the world a blasted, desolate waste. Game play begins during the Desert Age, similarly to 2nd edition, with the world a barren wasteland and its few remaining habitable places being lorded over by the sorcerer-kings. Sorcerer-king Kalak of Tyr has been assassinated and the liberation of Tyr has sparked a glimmer of hope and renewal in the Tyr Region. Many of Dark Sun's AD&D contemporaries are accessible via planar travel or spelljamming, but Athas, with very few exceptions, is entirely cut off from the rest of the universe. While it retains its connections to the Inner Planes, access to the Transitive Planes and Outer Planes is nearly impossible. The reason for the cosmological isolation is never fully explained. The cosmology for the original setting consists of the prime material plane and two other transitive planes: the Gray and the Black. The Black is roughly equivalent to the Plane of Shadows and contains a mysterious realm of absolute nothingness called the Hollow that serves as a prison for Rajaat. The Gray is roughly equivalent to the Ethereal Plane in that it surrounds Athas, forming a massive buffer between the prime material plane and the Astral Plane and so cutting it off from Outer Planes. The Gray in this edition is the realm of the dead where undead creatures and necromancers draw their power. There are also significant setting distinctions between arcane spellcasters, divine spellcasters, and psionicists that often do not exist in other fantasy worlds. Arcane spell casters are largely reviled, while divine magic is accepted though it sometimes presents an ideological challenge to the sorcerer-king's rule. Psionics are broadly accepted and celebrated, with virtually all living things possessing some psionic talent. Defilers and Preservers: The Wizards of Athas included information and rules for how 20th level wizards can transform into 21st level dragons, or avangions for good-aligned characters, both of which also have psionic powers. Avangion have been ranked among the strongest creatures in the game by Scott Baird from Screen Rant. As classes changed in subsequent editions these were also reconciled with the setting. Available classes are not defined in the 4th edition campaign setting. Besides paladins Game designer Rick Swan felt that while "clerics got the shaft in the original Dark Sun set", the supplement Earth, Air, Fire, and Water "transforms the stodgy Dark Sun cleric into the setting's most intriguing character". With the 4th edition setting the elemental cleric became a background rather than a class in and of itself. Defiling exploits the environment, draining the life from the surrounding area and turning it into a sterile wasteland. The Dark Sun Campaign Setting, Expanded and Revised published in 1995 included psionic rules as part of the core boxed set, which were intended to replace The Complete Psionics Handbook rules. The 3rd and 4th editions of D&D would make psionics more common as an option in any D&D world, and would split the original psionicist character class into a number of different psionics-using classes. ==Editions==

2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons The majority of resources for the setting were released between its first appearance in 1991 and 1996, when TSR stopped supporting the game line. The line included the original boxed set with rulebook authored by Timothy Brown and Troy Denning. Dragon Kings, released in 1992, featured rules for epic level character advancement for Dark Sun. The basic source material was later expanded and revised by Bill Slavicsek in 1995 to include the developments of the setting since the initial 1991 release. Additional source books further detailed the setting. These included in-depth looks at certain aspects of the setting including certain classes, such as gladiators, clerics, and psions; the races native to Athas, such as elves or thri-kreen; and more detailed setting information, such as the city-state of Tyr, the Veiled Alliance, and the different slave tribes. 3rd edition Dark Sun was not supported with a published rulebook for third edition, but compatible rules for the 3.5 edition appeared in several places; the Sandstorm supplement included rules for general desert conditions. In 2004, Paizo published several articles in Dragon magazine and Dungeon magazine that brought Dark Sun in line with the third edition rules. Athas.org published unrelated source materials in 2007 for Dark Sun under the open game license. Both rules were official versions approved and sanctioned by Wizards of the Coast that provided two different possible versions of the setting. Paizo's Dark Sun A special feature in Dragon magazine #319 (May 2004) and a parallel feature in Dungeon magazine #110 provide an alternative interpretation of the setting for the 3.5 edition (the rules for defiler wizards appear in Dragon #315, and additional monsters in Dungeon #111). Two of the authors of the Paizo materials, Chris Flipse and Jon Sederquist, are on the Athas.org "overcouncil", and are responsible for much of the development of the Athas.org rules. In place of the higher dice for ability scores, the abilities of all of the player character races have been improved. Each (including humans) has an additional bonus to one or more ability scores, an innate psionic power, and often other bonuses. Every race has a level adjustment, meaning that a PC of the race counts as a PC of higher level than he actually is for purposes of balance. 4th edition Lead up and promotion In 2009, Wizards of the Coast announced the return of Dark Sun as the 2010 campaign setting, in addition a two source books and an adventure for the new campaign setting. The setting was a "reimagining" of the 2nd edition setting, returning to the time immediately after Tyr became a free state. Some of the characters, races, and setting details from the previous editions were changed or removed. The fourth Penny Arcade/PvP series of Wizards of the Coast's D&D podcast, running for two weeks in May and June 2010, was devoted to a Dark Sun campaign using pre-generated Dark Sun characters. Throughout July and August, excerpts were published as free content on the D&D Insider web site. The first two excerpts covered basic information on the setting, which is similar to that of previous versions. A series of articles continued to provide glimpses into the setting prior to the release in August. In addition to the first adventure at D&DXP, there were several other adventures provided before the full release: • The Dark Sun adventure entitled Bloodsand Arena was held on June 19 for Free RPG Day. • The second season of D&D Encounters (featuring weekly one-to-two-hour adventures at gaming stores) was based in Dark Sun and provided players with 15 weeks of Dark Sun encounters. • Gen Con and PAX Prime held the "Glory and Blood" Dark Sun Arenas, featuring seven separate arena encounters held in each city-state. Each arena was of varying difficulty and players gathered glory. Winning six of seven adventures resulted in sufficient glory for a cloth map of the Tyr region, not currently available through other means. • The Lost Cistern of Aravek for fourth-level pregenerated PCs was provided on August 21 for the Worldwide D&D Gameday. Release The Dark Sun books were released on August 17, 2010: • • • In addition, the Dungeon Tiles set released on June 15 was Dark Sun themed: • The 4th edition Dark Sun books greatly change the setting, and the 4th edition races were added as well, including Tieflings, Dragonborn, and Eladrin. Mechanical differences abound, but reflect the 4th edition rules. For example, in 2nd edition, defilers were a separate wizard class. In 4th edition there are many arcane classes, so defiling became an at-will power applicable when using daily arcane powers. Elemental priests became a new Shaman build, the Animist Shaman. Elemental worship is tied to the Primal power source, because the Divine power source (which includes clerics and paladins) is unavailable to player characters by default. Ashes of Athas Campaign In January 2011 at the D&D Experience Convention, Wizards of the Coast and Baldman Games launched an organized play campaign set in Dark Sun. The campaign used the 4th edition rules and time frame. PCs played the role of Veiled Alliance members fighting against a secret organization named The True. Later adventures took players from Altaruk and Tyr across the Tablelands (Urik, Gulg, Nibenay, and many wilderness locations) to confront an ancient primordial awakening in the Sea of Silt. Chapters consisting of three linked adventures each were released at the D&DXP, Origins, and Gen Con gaming conventions. A total of seven chapters (21 rounds of four-hour play) were released, providing a single continuous story taking player characters from 3rd through 9th level (11th level at completion). Though the campaign concluded in January 2013 at Winter Fantasy, adventures can be requested from Baldman Games. 5th Edition Dark Sun and Athas have been mentioned by developers of the fifth edition of the game. At Gary Con in 2018, Mike Mearls mentioned that there was talk about bringing back the Mystic class, a psionic class featured in a play test article released in Unearthed Arcana. Mearls noted that, at the time, Wizards of the Coast decided not to release the Mystic on its own because the class would not be needed "until we do Dark Sun". Dark Sun was also mentioned in a revised version of the psionics rules released in an Unearthed Arcana article. == Media ==

Numerous novels have been based in the Dark Sun setting. Notable authors writing in the world of Athas are Troy Denning, Simon Hawke, and Lynn Abbey. IDW Publishing released a five-issue comic limited series, Dark Sun (2011) by writer Alex Irvine and artist Peter Bergting, based on the campaign setting called ''Ianto's Tomb''. Three video games are also set in the Dark Sun world: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (1993), Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager (1994), and the MMORPG Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands (1996). ==References==