I just wanted to state for the record that the new Dark Sun setting for D&D 5.5e is gross. From the tone of the announcement trailer, and subsequent art/cover releases, it’s violent, gory, and mature. That doesn’t make it cool.

Announced just this week at Gen Con, D&D is bringing back the Dark Sun campaign setting first released 35 years ago in 1991. Dark Sun was a post-apocalyptic ‘Mad Max’-style world where there are no gods, magic is inherently destructive, and life in these wastes is brutal, cruel, and desolate. Already some kind of edgelord-y stuff there.

But in the original setting there was a nugget of something more fun and familiar. The art of Gerald Brom gave everything a bit more of a sense of weirdness, fantasy and…sexiness? (in that 90s sort-of way). It feels like a mix of gritty realism with some sci-fi fantasy layered on.

Just look at some of the art from this ‘fantasy Mos Eisley’ era of Dark Sun:

And compare that to the ‘rivers of blood’, Doom-esque reincarnation in the 2027 art:

Gone are the smooth mega-quads and the pointy fingernails. The desolate wastes seem to be replaced with hellish metropolises and alien destruction. Blood, dismemberment, and heavy metal are all that we are left with. So original.

Honestly I’m not trying to go to bat here for the original Dark Sun setting too hard. The truth is it was problematic in more ways than one, and going back to it in 2026 (as I am coincidentally doing right now with my gaming group) requires some adaptation and recognition of the issues.

That said, at least it had a point of view that felt fresh, and still does today. What we’re being fed now by Hasbro is something else entirely, and feels like it’ll be Dark Sun in name only. I’m good.

Catch me next year playing Star Wars D&D instead.