Dark Sun is an original Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) campaign setting set in the fictional, post-apocalyptic desert world of Athas. Dark Sun featured an innovative metaplot, influential artwork, 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 an 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. During the fifth edition, Dark Sun was mentioned by developers and psionics appeared in playtest materials. However, game publisher Wizards of the Coast initially chose not to reissue Dark Sun due to the setting's controversial content such as slavery, genocide and racial depictions. At Gen Con 2026, Wizards of the Coast announced a new official version for Dungeons & Dragons 5.5e, scheduled for release in 2027.
Creative origins 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.Johnson, Harold; Winter, Steve; Adkinson, Peter; Stark, Ed; and Peter Archer. 30 Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons and Dragons. Wizards of the Coast, Inc, 2004, pages 130-138.
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).
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".
Publication history
2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons In 1991, the original Dark Sun Boxed Set, by Timothy B. Brown and Troy Denning, 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 also released beginning in 1991, in coordination with the boxed set. 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 (1991) 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.
Dragon Kings, released in 1992, featured rules for epic level character advancement for Dark Sun. 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. It was designed by Bill Slavicsek.
The Dark Sun game line ended abruptly in late 1996. When TSR released its product schedule in Dragon #236 (December 1996) no Dark Sun products were included. 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.
3rd edition
Dark Sun was not supported with a published rulebook for third edition. However, Paizo Publishing and the fans at Athas.org kept the setting alive through the use of the Open Game License (OGL) issued by Wizards of the Coast. 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 OGL. Both rules were official versions approved and sanctioned by Wizards of the Coast that provided two different possible versions of the setting.
Additionally, the Sandstorm supplement included rules for general desert conditions. Alt URL
Paizo's Dark Sun David Noonan created an updated version of the setting for Paizo 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.
A special feature in Dragon magazine #319 (May 2004) and a parallel feature in Dungeon magazine #110 provided 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, were on the Athas.org "overcouncil", and were 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.
Athas.org
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.
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. A new rules element was the addition of Themes (Athasian Minstrel, Dune Trader, Elemental Priest, etc.). Each PC gained one theme that together with race and class helped define the character. Themes grant an initial power and additional powers could be chosen instead of normally available class powers.
Wizards of the Coast promoted the setting heavily. Rich Baker first communicated various likely changes to the setting via his Wizards of the Coast blog. He also indicated that a preview of Dark Sun would be available as an adventure at the 2010 D&DXP convention. This full adventure previewed new material from the campaign setting.
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 website. 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 and Ashes of Athas campaign On August 17, 2010, Wizards of the Coast released three Dark Sun sourcebooks for the fourth edition of D&D: Dark Sun Campaign Setting,, Marauders of the Dune Sea, and Dark Sun Creature Catalog. Preceding this, a Dark Sun themed Dungeon Tiles set was released in June 2010.