It's ripe for being a dungeon again what with being freshly blown up
It was?
Most of my memories are from the 2e boxed set that I had, but never played in, and sold for beer money in my freshman year of Uni.... before I found my lifelong D&D friends in 3rd year. (alas). GIVE ME THAT MYTH DRANNOR!
It's ripe for being a dungeon again what with being freshly blown up
It was?
Most of my memories are from the 2e boxed set that I had, but never played in, and sold for beer money in my freshman year of Uni.... before I found my lifelong D&D friends in 3rd year. (alas). GIVE ME THAT MYTH DRANNOR!
the elves repopulated it and then when people tried to help them from a netherese invasion they said WE'RE ELVES AND THUS, ASSHOLES, YOU'RE LUCKY WE DONT KILL YOU FOR OFFERING and then netherese city crashed into and blew up the city
everyone gives the drow shit but surface elf nationalists in D&D are just the worst
override367 on
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Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
If they were to introduce the Dark Sun setting, wouldn't they also have to introduce an actual proper attempt at psionics in 5E?
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NipsHe/HimLuxuriating in existential crisis.Registered Userregular
If they were to introduce the Dark Sun setting, wouldn't they also have to introduce an actual proper attempt at psionics in 5E?
From a mechanical standpoint, and believe me this is coming from someone who loves the idea of the older implementations of psionics and thinks the 5e implementations are pretty flaccid:
Why? At least, Why from WoTC's perspective?
Thinking from their perspective, it makes more sense to implement psionics in a way that makes fits into their existing systems as seamlessly as possible. It's just another power type when you boil it down, and so it should be treated as such. Which is what they've done, to whatever degree of success you'll grant them. They've already added a few psionic-powered subclasses, so for Dark Sun they'd just need to fill any gaps that remain.
But this is an old argument that's already been beaten to death. I agree their current implementation is supremely lacking. I've looked into adding 'proper' psionics into my own home campaign in 5e, and there's no lack of 3rd party attempts that feel more like psionics from older editions. They all inevitably suffer from some degree of bloat or bespoke mechanisms, unfortunately, and so my search for something that's intuitive, simple, and seamless continues.
Didn't WotC announce they're bringing back like 2-3 older settings over the next two years?
They've said a lot of things.
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gavindelThe reason all your softwareis brokenRegistered Userregular
There will be one slaver. He will look like the capitalists from 1920's rags, every character you meet will loudly denounce him, the plot will spend more time outlining how to talk back to him than how to handle any of Dark Sun's many outstanding problems, and the book will tell you thirteen times that Slavery is Bad M'kay so that nobody gets confused and thinks slavery is actually good because something problematic occurred in a roleplaying game.
The latter half of the book will be 75 pages of random name tables.
I know Paizo at least said they aren't featuring slavery in any of their adventures anymore.
Going forward, we plan to remove slavery from our game and setting completely. We will not be writing adventures to tell the story of how this happened. We will not be introducing an in-world event to facilitate this change.
Although part of that was because the default setting of Pathfinder had an international slave trade and the Pathfinder equivalent of Adventurer's League, Pathfinder Society, had rules for players to buy slaves until recently, which was noted in a public letter to Paizo from an anonymous freelancer shortly before the above quote was originally written.
Not to bury the lede, until recently, players in these publicly organized games were allowed to buy slaves.
If you’re wondering how that happened, it’s pretty straightforward. Somewhere, in some Pathfinder book, there were rules options that detailed the cost to purchase a slave – a perfectly legal practice in the fictional city of Absalom. Certain Paizo employees decide which books are allowed for Society, and the book with this option was one of the ones allowed. So, any player with access to that rule could then have their character buy another human being, and because there was no rule to disallow it, the gamemaster and other players at the table had no way to stop them.
You see, participating in Society play means that you agree to play by their rules. If you don’t like it, your only recourse by and large is to get up and leave the table. The only alternative is to get everyone to agree that the rule is wrong, and either collectively ignore it, or force Paizo’s hand to get them to change it. A group of players, mostly led by black voices, chose the latter. The official response? If players wanted slavery banned in Organized Play, then there had to be an in-game event that justified the abolition of slavery.
I've no issue with slavery being removed from settings that previously had them, "but it's realistic / fits the world / etc" is the luxury only those players not affected by it have. At the end of the day, it's a game, and some topics are more impactful than entertainment.
I'm honestly mystified by the idea that a player can buy a slave and the other players just have no agency to stop him.
Like, just ignore for aaa second that there are rules for buying slaves, the idea that the rest of the party can't say "We are not spending money on slaves" or "My charaacter would never tolerate that" and insteaad just haas to shrug their shoulders and say "Well dem's the rules" is truly absurd.
I'm honestly mystified by the idea that a player can buy a slave and the other players just have no agency to stop him.
Like, just ignore for aaa second that there are rules for buying slaves, the idea that the rest of the party can't say "We are not spending money on slaves" or "My charaacter would never tolerate that" and insteaad just haas to shrug their shoulders and say "Well dem's the rules" is truly absurd.
I actually read a thread on the Paizo forums from years ago where the topic was "what if members of the party are opposed to slavery and won't tolerate an ally purchasing a slave?" The replies ran the gamut from "the game shouldn't have rules for buying slaves in the first place" to "if one player's character buys a slave and another player tries to free the slave I'd kick the latter player from the game."
What makes this even weirder is apparently one of the factions a PC can be part of in organized Pathfinder Society games is explicitly abolitionist (which is actually a rarity in the setting), but until fairly recently would not be allowed to do anything about a fellow party member buying a slave.
I'm honestly mystified by the idea that a player can buy a slave and the other players just have no agency to stop him.
Like, just ignore for aaa second that there are rules for buying slaves, the idea that the rest of the party can't say "We are not spending money on slaves" or "My charaacter would never tolerate that" and insteaad just haas to shrug their shoulders and say "Well dem's the rules" is truly absurd.
Well, in this case, at least, it's the Adventurer's League thing, which usually has stuff like "Have X gp worth of equipment" and lets you figure out the rest on your own, and so it's probably less like buying slaves at the table and more like showing up with them on your character sheet.
The thing is that the purchasing of slaves (a hireling by any other name afterall) isn't even a thing that bothers me so much as the idea that one player can make a decision like that and the rest of the party doesn't get to have any input into it and just has to go along with it.
Really makes me glad that I took one look at Paizo's treehouse RPG, saw that it was concentrated 3.5 and just noped out of it.
I've no issue with slavery being removed from settings that previously had them, "but it's realistic / fits the world / etc" is the luxury only those players not affected by it have. At the end of the day, it's a game, and some topics are more impactful than entertainment.
dark sun's spellcasters effectively destroy their world in the same way climate change is destroying ours, and extreme poverty effects many billions of people and is a prominent theme as well, players who are selfish in that world leave a trail of misery behind them as they enrich themselves
there should be slavery, drug use, etc in it or the setting shouldn't be done, IMO, because it's kind of hard to disentangle and weird to think the sorcerer kings would draw the line there. You just need one popout box that says "In Adventurer's League, players cannot buy slaves except for specific events such as freeing someone from bondage" or w/e
but as I said before they'll just sidestep the whole thing, if Dark Sun was to be revisited it would be without any of the rough edges and it would just be "generic desert campaign also with psionics"
The thing is that the purchasing of slaves (a hireling by any other name afterall) isn't even a thing that bothers me so much as the idea that one player can make a decision like that and the rest of the party doesn't get to have any input into it and just has to go along with it.
Really makes me glad that I took one look at Paizo's treehouse RPG, saw that it was concentrated 3.5 and just noped out of it.
Yeah it's really fucked up, nothing in the rules stops a player from hiring a band of prostitutes to follow them around and solve every problem with a cavalcade of blowjobs but I feel like an AL DM would be allowed to tell them no
I've no issue with slavery being removed from settings that previously had them, "but it's realistic / fits the world / etc" is the luxury only those players not affected by it have. At the end of the day, it's a game, and some topics are more impactful than entertainment.
dark sun's spellcasters effectively destroy their world in the same way climate change is destroying ours, and extreme poverty effects many billions of people and is a prominent theme as well, players who are selfish in that world leave a trail of misery behind them as they enrich themselves
you literally can't do dark sun in 2022, because to have problematic concepts in a game is seen as 1:1 endorsing them
there should definitely be slavery in it or the setting shouldn't be done, IMO, because it's kind of hard to disentangle and laughable to think the sorcerer kings would draw the line there. You just need one popout box that says "In Adventurer's League, players cannot buy slaves except for specific events such as freeing someone from bondage" or w/e
but as I said before they'll just sidestep the whole thing, if Dark Sun was to be released it would be without any of the rough edges and it would just be "generic desert campaign also with psionics"
Doesn't Warhammer 40K have this problem too? They seem to be doing OK with it, no? I don't know because I don't play or engage in the community at all. I've only read some of the fiction.
I've no issue with slavery being removed from settings that previously had them, "but it's realistic / fits the world / etc" is the luxury only those players not affected by it have. At the end of the day, it's a game, and some topics are more impactful than entertainment.
dark sun's spellcasters effectively destroy their world in the same way climate change is destroying ours, and extreme poverty effects many billions of people and is a prominent theme as well, players who are selfish in that world leave a trail of misery behind them as they enrich themselves
you literally can't do dark sun in 2022, because to have problematic concepts in a game is seen as 1:1 endorsing them
there should definitely be slavery in it or the setting shouldn't be done, IMO, because it's kind of hard to disentangle and laughable to think the sorcerer kings would draw the line there. You just need one popout box that says "In Adventurer's League, players cannot buy slaves except for specific events such as freeing someone from bondage" or w/e
but as I said before they'll just sidestep the whole thing, if Dark Sun was to be released it would be without any of the rough edges and it would just be "generic desert campaign also with psionics"
Doesn't Warhammer 40K have this problem too? They seem to be doing OK with it, no? I don't know because I don't play or engage in the community at all. I've only read some of the fiction.
unlike D&D they don't seem to have gotten as much media criticism, despite 40k being about 500 times more problematic than anything in D&D, to the point that dumbo fascists think it's for them (W40k youtube's top ten has like 3 actual nazis)
GW keeps telling everyone that it's explicitly satire of fascism, and the 40k subreddit is also right wing as hell, prompting the creation of r/sigmarxism so the tiny community of lefty 40kers can talk without someone going "space marines are cool" -> "nazis are cool"
I've no issue with slavery being removed from settings that previously had them, "but it's realistic / fits the world / etc" is the luxury only those players not affected by it have. At the end of the day, it's a game, and some topics are more impactful than entertainment.
dark sun's spellcasters effectively destroy their world in the same way climate change is destroying ours, and extreme poverty effects many billions of people and is a prominent theme as well, players who are selfish in that world leave a trail of misery behind them as they enrich themselves
there should be slavery, drug use, etc in it or the setting shouldn't be done, IMO, because it's kind of hard to disentangle and weird to think the sorcerer kings would draw the line there. You just need one popout box that says "In Adventurer's League, players cannot buy slaves except for specific events such as freeing someone from bondage" or w/e
but as I said before they'll just sidestep the whole thing, if Dark Sun was to be revisited it would be without any of the rough edges and it would just be "generic desert campaign also with psionics"
Slavery is core to dark sun Due to the fact that the dragon of Athas requires each city to tithe slaves that it uses the life force of to keep a world ending cosmic threat locked up.
Removing slavery from this is basically impossible.
I've no issue with slavery being removed from settings that previously had them, "but it's realistic / fits the world / etc" is the luxury only those players not affected by it have. At the end of the day, it's a game, and some topics are more impactful than entertainment.
dark sun's spellcasters effectively destroy their world in the same way climate change is destroying ours, and extreme poverty effects many billions of people and is a prominent theme as well, players who are selfish in that world leave a trail of misery behind them as they enrich themselves
you literally can't do dark sun in 2022, because to have problematic concepts in a game is seen as 1:1 endorsing them
there should definitely be slavery in it or the setting shouldn't be done, IMO, because it's kind of hard to disentangle and laughable to think the sorcerer kings would draw the line there. You just need one popout box that says "In Adventurer's League, players cannot buy slaves except for specific events such as freeing someone from bondage" or w/e
but as I said before they'll just sidestep the whole thing, if Dark Sun was to be released it would be without any of the rough edges and it would just be "generic desert campaign also with psionics"
Doesn't Warhammer 40K have this problem too? They seem to be doing OK with it, no? I don't know because I don't play or engage in the community at all. I've only read some of the fiction.
Warhammer 40k is niether as big, nor as old, nor as resurgent as D&D is, so it's not unexpected that it's not having to deal with the ideological septic tank that the setting is (wherein the ostensible heroes of the setting have codified slavery, eugenics, thought crime and genocide).
The thing is that the purchasing of slaves (a hireling by any other name afterall) isn't even a thing that bothers me so much as the idea that one player can make a decision like that and the rest of the party doesn't get to have any input into it and just has to go along with it.
Really makes me glad that I took one look at Paizo's treehouse RPG, saw that it was concentrated 3.5 and just noped out of it.
Well, let's look at your own example. Are you allowed to refuse to let another PC hire a servant? Are you, as a player, allowed to ban the whole table from spending their own individual loot on hirelings?
Now to take the other extreme, let's call it what it is - property. Do you get a vote in the other tools another player's character spends their own money on?
Slaves are property. That's ... that's literally the horror of it. You're taking a human life and reducing them to property.
It's not, nor should it be, "you can't spend your money on that"
Slavery is core to dark sun Due to the fact that the dragon of Athas requires each city to tithe slaves that it uses the life force of to keep a world ending cosmic threat locked up.
Removing slavery from this is basically impossible.
Considering that the modern day prison system is basically slavery with the serial number filed off, I think they'll make it work.
The thing is that the purchasing of slaves (a hireling by any other name afterall) isn't even a thing that bothers me so much as the idea that one player can make a decision like that and the rest of the party doesn't get to have any input into it and just has to go along with it.
Really makes me glad that I took one look at Paizo's treehouse RPG, saw that it was concentrated 3.5 and just noped out of it.
Well, let's look at your own example. Are you allowed to refuse to let another PC hire a servant? Are you, as a player, allowed to ban the whole table from spending their own individual loot on hirelings?
I have played in games where hirelings were banned yes, because going to the poor part of town and tossing gold around effectively buys you slaves and the DM and table were against it - D&D is pretty explicit that the DM can ban certain things despite the rules allowing it. The rules allow enchantment magic and I have yet to see it be used in the ways Purple Man uses his power in Jessica Jones by the players because it's kinda gross - but if it did I'd just be like "anyway, no, moving on"
Now to take the other extreme, let's call it what it is - property. Do you get a vote in the other tools another player's character spends their own money on?
Slaves are property. That's ... that's literally the horror of it. You're taking a human life and reducing them to property.
It's not, nor should it be, "you can't spend your money on that"
Slavery is core to dark sun Due to the fact that the dragon of Athas requires each city to tithe slaves that it uses the life force of to keep a world ending cosmic threat locked up.
Removing slavery from this is basically impossible.
Considering that the modern day prison system is basically slavery with the serial number filed off, I think they'll make it work.
If WOTC was capable of making that kind of political commentary, I welcome it. There is an entire slave caste but they're just referred to as prisoners, nobody official calls them slaves, and there's a huge popular boner for the guys with clubs that beat people into submission and make them slaves without so much as a show trial
I don't think they'll do any of that, the direction they're going with in D&D is for all published material to be accessible to children, nothing about Dark Sun is suitable for children
Well, let's look at your own example. Are you allowed to refuse to let another PC hire a servant? Are you, as a player, allowed to ban the whole table from spending their own individual loot on hirelings?
Now to take the other extreme, let's call it what it is - property. Do you get a vote in the other tools another player's character spends their own money on?
Slaves are property. That's ... that's literally the horror of it. You're taking a human life and reducing them to property.
It's not, nor should it be, "you can't spend your money on that"
It's "people ain't cargo, mate"
There is a world of difference between hiring a servant of some sort from purchasing a slave to buying a bag of ball Barings.
Also, I am in no way endorsing players purchasing slaves outside of some incredibly morally grey campaigns/settings.
Considering that the modern day prison system is basically slavery with the serial number filed off, I think they'll make it work.
Last I checked the American prison system didn't broadcast pit fights, sell prisoners or offer them up as tribute to an external actor.
Like... If WOTC is going to take this hard and fast stance against slavery being presented as a concept in their settings then the best option would be to simply not adapt dark sun to 5e.
We do offer prisoners up to corporations for their profit, but I get your meaning - I do think there's a potentially pretty spicy political allegory here, but I've always kind of seen Dark Sun's world as just fantasy capitalism and the end state of that
Like... If WOTC is going to take this hard and fast stance against slavery being presented as a concept in their settings then the best option would be to simply not adapt dark sun to 5e.
To clarify, Paizo is the one that stated slavery is not going to be presented in their products anymore. I imagine WotC will be reluctant to do so, either, but they haven't made a statement to that effect.
Really, I'm fine with slavery being in the game as long as it's presented in the proper context of "You are treating people as property" and how that ain't cool.
I kind of regret that I essentially let a player have an enslaved Celestial for a short time in one campaign I ran, although I (naively) didn't anticipate that it would end up that way.
Basically, one PC was entertaining the idea of trying to woo Glasya, daughter of Asmodeus and one of the rulers of the Nine Hells. I had a session where they attended a soiree at her palace, and as part of trying to reinforce "she's a bad guy" I had part of the evening's festivities include the auctioning-off of a lillend (a Chaotic Good Celestial embodiment of creativity and freedom; they're not officially in 5E rules, so I used a Pathfinder mini but used the 5E stats for a Planetar). The PC that wanted to impress Glasya ended up buying the lillend as well as some kind of device to compel obedience, and afterwards used her in a few combat encounters with the promise that he would free her when the party left the Nine Hells (a promise he kept, freeing her first thing upon returning to the Material Plane).
I later had the lillend return for vengeance and to try and punish the PC for being so keen to work with the rulers of the Hells, but now I feel like I either should have done more to have the lillend protest her servitude while it was happening or not have had this happen at all.
Yeah no WOTC will never have drugs or slavery or anything like that in one of their products, hence I'd prefer Dark Souls just stay gone because they would have to remake so much of it, they might as well just start over and make something new
This also means that Planescape is unlikely to be a thing, given that Illithid being slavers is kind of central to a huge part of it
Really, I'm fine with slavery being in the game as long as it's presented in the proper context of "You are treating people as property" and how that ain't cool.
I'm OK with it too, as long as it remains in the purview of the DM and is clearly presented as a BAD GUY thing to do. The BBEG keeps/condones slavery. That's why he's the BBEG and the do gooder adventurers and going to show him what-for!!!
If a player came to my table and wanted a slave in any way shape or form, I'd kibosh that at once. Even if one of them had a homunculus or familiar or the like and treated it like a slave as a joke, I'd nix that too. "Not cool, man. Not funny. Don't do that."
I've no issue with slavery being removed from settings that previously had them, "but it's realistic / fits the world / etc" is the luxury only those players not affected by it have. At the end of the day, it's a game, and some topics are more impactful than entertainment.
dark sun's spellcasters effectively destroy their world in the same way climate change is destroying ours, and extreme poverty effects many billions of people and is a prominent theme as well, players who are selfish in that world leave a trail of misery behind them as they enrich themselves
there should be slavery, drug use, etc in it or the setting shouldn't be done, IMO, because it's kind of hard to disentangle and weird to think the sorcerer kings would draw the line there. You just need one popout box that says "In Adventurer's League, players cannot buy slaves except for specific events such as freeing someone from bondage" or w/e
but as I said before they'll just sidestep the whole thing, if Dark Sun was to be revisited it would be without any of the rough edges and it would just be "generic desert campaign also with psionics"
Slavery is core to dark sun Due to the fact that the dragon of Athas requires each city to tithe slaves that it uses the life force of to keep a world ending cosmic threat locked up.
Removing slavery from this is basically impossible.
Then change that arrangement, or make them something other than slaves, either willing participants or unwilling sacrifices (Cabin in the Woods pretty much uses this exact premise and that's set in the current day, no slaves required).
Calling changing this "basically impossible" strikes me as lacking in imagination and I'm not even a professional writer being paid to think up something cool.
I've no issue with slavery being removed from settings that previously had them, "but it's realistic / fits the world / etc" is the luxury only those players not affected by it have. At the end of the day, it's a game, and some topics are more impactful than entertainment.
dark sun's spellcasters effectively destroy their world in the same way climate change is destroying ours, and extreme poverty effects many billions of people and is a prominent theme as well, players who are selfish in that world leave a trail of misery behind them as they enrich themselves
there should be slavery, drug use, etc in it or the setting shouldn't be done, IMO, because it's kind of hard to disentangle and weird to think the sorcerer kings would draw the line there. You just need one popout box that says "In Adventurer's League, players cannot buy slaves except for specific events such as freeing someone from bondage" or w/e
but as I said before they'll just sidestep the whole thing, if Dark Sun was to be revisited it would be without any of the rough edges and it would just be "generic desert campaign also with psionics"
Slavery is core to dark sun Due to the fact that the dragon of Athas requires each city to tithe slaves that it uses the life force of to keep a world ending cosmic threat locked up.
Removing slavery from this is basically impossible.
Then change that arrangement, or make them something other than slaves, either willing participants or unwilling sacrifices (Cabin in the Woods pretty much uses this exact premise and that's set in the current day, no slaves required).
Calling changing this "basically impossible" strikes me as lacking in imagination and I'm not even a professional writer being paid to think up something cool.
I'm not sure if people being forcibly sacrificed, while in chains, who are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, would appreciate the distinction
Making them willing completely changes the setting, the sorcerer kings have used all of nature up, and now use the people up. People are no different than currency to them and life (including the players' lives) have little value to the powers that run things
Why keep stretching Dark Sun to have it not be that, instead of just doing something other than Dark Sun?
The number of D&D players in our current society who are forcibly sacrificed in chains is vanishingly small. The number of D&D players in our current society who can directly trace their current economic and social situation to slavery is not. This is not a discussion about what acts are Evil Enough to be excluded, otherwise there'd be no killing in D&D, but very few players experience getting blown up by a fireball (and if you experienced a violent crime in the past I would hope your GM would be sensitive to that when crafting adventures). Slavery is problematic for the same reason that rape is problematic, it's directly linked to the lived experience of a significant number of people and as such should be avoided for that reason alone.
The number of D&D players in our current society who are forcibly sacrificed in chains is vanishingly small. The number of D&D players in our current society who can directly trace their current economic and social situation to slavery is not. This is not a discussion about what acts are Evil Enough to be excluded, otherwise there'd be no killing in D&D, but very few players experience getting blown up by a fireball (and if you experienced a violent crime in the past I would hope your GM would be sensitive to that when crafting adventures). Slavery is problematic for the same reason that rape is problematic, it's directly linked to the lived experience of a significant number of people and as such should be avoided for that reason alone.
The number of D&D players in our current society who are forcibly sacrificed in chains is vanishingly small. The number of D&D players in our current society who can directly trace their current economic and social situation to slavery is not. This is not a discussion about what acts are Evil Enough to be excluded, otherwise there'd be no killing in D&D, but very few players experience getting blown up by a fireball (and if you experienced a violent crime in the past I would hope your GM would be sensitive to that when crafting adventures). Slavery is problematic for the same reason that rape is problematic, it's directly linked to the lived experience of a significant number of people and as such should be avoided for that reason alone.
Okay? Cool, then how about we don't do Dark Sun Again?
I understand your point, and I don't need a lecture about Why Slavery Is Bad, I'm asking why try so hard to preserve a setting with slavery being so central? We have an entire universe of fantasy worlds they can publish to
Slavery isn't even the worst thing in the Dark Sun universe (they got eugenics too!), if slavery is a Do Not Pass Go (it's amazing Tomb of Annihilation ever got published) as a theme, then I feel like Dark Sun as a whole should be given up on
The other end of it is that if WOTC launches Dark sun as it is people who don't like it's subject matter aren't obligated to play it or purchase it; I didn't bother with ravnica because I was confused as to why it was launched instead of ebberon, I'd probably skip Greyhawk due to it being so fundamentally boring as a setting and I think I'd rather hit myself in the groin with a tack hammer then go back to the nentir vale.
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Dark Sun would be unrecognizable if they brought it back
It's ripe for being a dungeon again what with being freshly blown up
It was?
Most of my memories are from the 2e boxed set that I had, but never played in, and sold for beer money in my freshman year of Uni.... before I found my lifelong D&D friends in 3rd year. (alas). GIVE ME THAT MYTH DRANNOR!
the elves repopulated it and then when people tried to help them from a netherese invasion they said WE'RE ELVES AND THUS, ASSHOLES, YOU'RE LUCKY WE DONT KILL YOU FOR OFFERING and then netherese city crashed into and blew up the city
everyone gives the drow shit but surface elf nationalists in D&D are just the worst
From a mechanical standpoint, and believe me this is coming from someone who loves the idea of the older implementations of psionics and thinks the 5e implementations are pretty flaccid:
Why? At least, Why from WoTC's perspective?
Thinking from their perspective, it makes more sense to implement psionics in a way that makes fits into their existing systems as seamlessly as possible. It's just another power type when you boil it down, and so it should be treated as such. Which is what they've done, to whatever degree of success you'll grant them. They've already added a few psionic-powered subclasses, so for Dark Sun they'd just need to fill any gaps that remain.
But this is an old argument that's already been beaten to death. I agree their current implementation is supremely lacking. I've looked into adding 'proper' psionics into my own home campaign in 5e, and there's no lack of 3rd party attempts that feel more like psionics from older editions. They all inevitably suffer from some degree of bloat or bespoke mechanisms, unfortunately, and so my search for something that's intuitive, simple, and seamless continues.
They've said a lot of things.
The latter half of the book will be 75 pages of random name tables.
Although part of that was because the default setting of Pathfinder had an international slave trade and the Pathfinder equivalent of Adventurer's League, Pathfinder Society, had rules for players to buy slaves until recently, which was noted in a public letter to Paizo from an anonymous freelancer shortly before the above quote was originally written.
Like, just ignore for aaa second that there are rules for buying slaves, the idea that the rest of the party can't say "We are not spending money on slaves" or "My charaacter would never tolerate that" and insteaad just haas to shrug their shoulders and say "Well dem's the rules" is truly absurd.
I actually read a thread on the Paizo forums from years ago where the topic was "what if members of the party are opposed to slavery and won't tolerate an ally purchasing a slave?" The replies ran the gamut from "the game shouldn't have rules for buying slaves in the first place" to "if one player's character buys a slave and another player tries to free the slave I'd kick the latter player from the game."
What makes this even weirder is apparently one of the factions a PC can be part of in organized Pathfinder Society games is explicitly abolitionist (which is actually a rarity in the setting), but until fairly recently would not be allowed to do anything about a fellow party member buying a slave.
Well, in this case, at least, it's the Adventurer's League thing, which usually has stuff like "Have X gp worth of equipment" and lets you figure out the rest on your own, and so it's probably less like buying slaves at the table and more like showing up with them on your character sheet.
(Which is a separate problem, obviously.)
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Really makes me glad that I took one look at Paizo's treehouse RPG, saw that it was concentrated 3.5 and just noped out of it.
dark sun's spellcasters effectively destroy their world in the same way climate change is destroying ours, and extreme poverty effects many billions of people and is a prominent theme as well, players who are selfish in that world leave a trail of misery behind them as they enrich themselves
there should be slavery, drug use, etc in it or the setting shouldn't be done, IMO, because it's kind of hard to disentangle and weird to think the sorcerer kings would draw the line there. You just need one popout box that says "In Adventurer's League, players cannot buy slaves except for specific events such as freeing someone from bondage" or w/e
but as I said before they'll just sidestep the whole thing, if Dark Sun was to be revisited it would be without any of the rough edges and it would just be "generic desert campaign also with psionics"
Yeah it's really fucked up, nothing in the rules stops a player from hiring a band of prostitutes to follow them around and solve every problem with a cavalcade of blowjobs but I feel like an AL DM would be allowed to tell them no
Doesn't Warhammer 40K have this problem too? They seem to be doing OK with it, no? I don't know because I don't play or engage in the community at all. I've only read some of the fiction.
unlike D&D they don't seem to have gotten as much media criticism, despite 40k being about 500 times more problematic than anything in D&D, to the point that dumbo fascists think it's for them (W40k youtube's top ten has like 3 actual nazis)
GW keeps telling everyone that it's explicitly satire of fascism, and the 40k subreddit is also right wing as hell, prompting the creation of r/sigmarxism so the tiny community of lefty 40kers can talk without someone going "space marines are cool" -> "nazis are cool"
Slavery is core to dark sun Due to the fact that the dragon of Athas requires each city to tithe slaves that it uses the life force of to keep a world ending cosmic threat locked up.
Removing slavery from this is basically impossible.
Warhammer 40k is niether as big, nor as old, nor as resurgent as D&D is, so it's not unexpected that it's not having to deal with the ideological septic tank that the setting is (wherein the ostensible heroes of the setting have codified slavery, eugenics, thought crime and genocide).
Well, let's look at your own example. Are you allowed to refuse to let another PC hire a servant? Are you, as a player, allowed to ban the whole table from spending their own individual loot on hirelings?
Now to take the other extreme, let's call it what it is - property. Do you get a vote in the other tools another player's character spends their own money on?
Slaves are property. That's ... that's literally the horror of it. You're taking a human life and reducing them to property.
It's not, nor should it be, "you can't spend your money on that"
It's "people ain't cargo, mate"
Considering that the modern day prison system is basically slavery with the serial number filed off, I think they'll make it work.
I have played in games where hirelings were banned yes, because going to the poor part of town and tossing gold around effectively buys you slaves and the DM and table were against it - D&D is pretty explicit that the DM can ban certain things despite the rules allowing it. The rules allow enchantment magic and I have yet to see it be used in the ways Purple Man uses his power in Jessica Jones by the players because it's kinda gross - but if it did I'd just be like "anyway, no, moving on"
If WOTC was capable of making that kind of political commentary, I welcome it. There is an entire slave caste but they're just referred to as prisoners, nobody official calls them slaves, and there's a huge popular boner for the guys with clubs that beat people into submission and make them slaves without so much as a show trial
I don't think they'll do any of that, the direction they're going with in D&D is for all published material to be accessible to children, nothing about Dark Sun is suitable for children
There is a world of difference between hiring a servant of some sort from purchasing a slave to buying a bag of ball Barings.
Also, I am in no way endorsing players purchasing slaves outside of some incredibly morally grey campaigns/settings.
Last I checked the American prison system didn't broadcast pit fights, sell prisoners or offer them up as tribute to an external actor.
Like... If WOTC is going to take this hard and fast stance against slavery being presented as a concept in their settings then the best option would be to simply not adapt dark sun to 5e.
To clarify, Paizo is the one that stated slavery is not going to be presented in their products anymore. I imagine WotC will be reluctant to do so, either, but they haven't made a statement to that effect.
Basically, one PC was entertaining the idea of trying to woo Glasya, daughter of Asmodeus and one of the rulers of the Nine Hells. I had a session where they attended a soiree at her palace, and as part of trying to reinforce "she's a bad guy" I had part of the evening's festivities include the auctioning-off of a lillend (a Chaotic Good Celestial embodiment of creativity and freedom; they're not officially in 5E rules, so I used a Pathfinder mini but used the 5E stats for a Planetar). The PC that wanted to impress Glasya ended up buying the lillend as well as some kind of device to compel obedience, and afterwards used her in a few combat encounters with the promise that he would free her when the party left the Nine Hells (a promise he kept, freeing her first thing upon returning to the Material Plane).
I later had the lillend return for vengeance and to try and punish the PC for being so keen to work with the rulers of the Hells, but now I feel like I either should have done more to have the lillend protest her servitude while it was happening or not have had this happen at all.
This also means that Planescape is unlikely to be a thing, given that Illithid being slavers is kind of central to a huge part of it
I'm OK with it too, as long as it remains in the purview of the DM and is clearly presented as a BAD GUY thing to do. The BBEG keeps/condones slavery. That's why he's the BBEG and the do gooder adventurers and going to show him what-for!!!
If a player came to my table and wanted a slave in any way shape or form, I'd kibosh that at once. Even if one of them had a homunculus or familiar or the like and treated it like a slave as a joke, I'd nix that too. "Not cool, man. Not funny. Don't do that."
Calling changing this "basically impossible" strikes me as lacking in imagination and I'm not even a professional writer being paid to think up something cool.
I'm not sure if people being forcibly sacrificed, while in chains, who are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, would appreciate the distinction
Making them willing completely changes the setting, the sorcerer kings have used all of nature up, and now use the people up. People are no different than currency to them and life (including the players' lives) have little value to the powers that run things
Why keep stretching Dark Sun to have it not be that, instead of just doing something other than Dark Sun?
I'm sure theres a way to do it but at that point you've basically removed the underlying structure of the setting.
Then perhaps they should find another game?
Projection is a bad look.
Okay? Cool, then how about we don't do Dark Sun Again?
I understand your point, and I don't need a lecture about Why Slavery Is Bad, I'm asking why try so hard to preserve a setting with slavery being so central? We have an entire universe of fantasy worlds they can publish to
Slavery isn't even the worst thing in the Dark Sun universe (they got eugenics too!), if slavery is a Do Not Pass Go (it's amazing Tomb of Annihilation ever got published) as a theme, then I feel like Dark Sun as a whole should be given up on