So…I just ran across this on ENWorld: Unconfirmed Dark Sun World Book | EN World D&D & Tabletop RPG News & Reviews
Rather shocked that I find no mention of it here.
I think people just don’t want to get too excited or sad, depending on their outlook on WotC. Regardless, good find.
I for one am excited about the possibility of a new Dark Sun book. While I am a bit afraid that WotC will alter the setting drastically, I also know that when they put the book out it will greatly expand our audience, which is nice and needed if we want to survive as a fandom.
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I’m happy with the two half-world maps of Athas I found online, like back in '99.
Part of the mystique of Dark Sun and the Tyr-Region, was, not knowing what lay beyond and imaging what’s there.
And thank’s to 3e, we found out; surfers; yeah.
The surfing druids of the last sea region were not introduced in 3e. They were part of the 2e “expanded campaign setting”. Just FYI.
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As Robert says, the current outlook of setting books from WotC is largely negative. They don’t have a good track record for any setting book, except maybe Eberron. In fact, almost all of their “well-received” releases are just straight ports from earlier editions of D&D, like CoS and Infinite Staircase.
I personally don’t see WotC touching Dark Sun any time soon. Not this year, probably not next year (unless there is another staff shakeup). My suspicion is that their current hiring spree is for a new edition of D&D, since the 2024 books were a big flop. It would also explain the recent photos of Hickman, Greenwood, and Gygax visiting WotC staff.
So yeah, my advice would be to curb your enthusiasm.
Dark Sun and Curb Your Enthusiasm is the weirdest crossover I can think of right now. 
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yeah, I’m skeptical that current WOTC could do a good job with Dark Sun. And that’s not really a negative opinion of 5e overall, which I generally like - but I don’t think Dark Sun overlaps well with the things current WOTC is good at vs things they are bad at.
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Eeeh, I’m not sure I care. If they make the mechanics work with 5e, we can pick and choose from the fluff.
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Even if the whole affair is a bust - mechanics and lore - its still going to get publicity for Dark Sun, and that can only benefit us as a community (not as much as a really tight set of rules and killer fluff, but its still a win).
And we all just need to be ready for that as a community - explaining the merits (and low points) of previously released content, welcoming nubes who are jazzed about the setting but know nothing about it, and being prepared to release things to support or redirect any new material as appropriate.
Even if 5e Dark Sun is the worst thing WotC has ever done, it’ll be a gift, hard stop (doesn’t mean I won’t complain about poor content though - that’s completely different 
). We’ll just have to make the lemons into lemonade, as it were…
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Those are good points, yeah. Certainly in terms of promotion of the setting it’d be a good thing. I’m just pretty skeptical of how the thematics and feel of the setting will be handled.
(I’m kind of skeptical it will happen, in any case. ENWorld has it listed for June, which isn’t really that far away - why isn’t it announced?)
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FWIW, I am also pretty skeptical that they’ll do it well…
I’m just already strapped in for a fiasco.
I think the problem of “doing Dark Sun well” is only partially political… it’s also partially the shambles the setting was when they stopped supporting it. It didn’t have the kind of design bible that it clearly needed, so you wound up with a very fractured setting.
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Yeah, it would probably be necessary to either make some things consistent, or leave them out.
I think a lot of the issues could just be dodged, however. A 5E Dark Sun would probably be one hardback, so it couldn’t have room to cover everything that was covered in the 2E materials. If the timeline was rolled back to either original box set, or right after Kalak’s death like 4E, a lot of issues could be avoided … especially if they take the route that “nobody really knows the real history, except the SKs, and they’re not going to tell you anything but their own religious spin on it”.
PCs and NPCs don’t need to use the same rules, so various issues with the Dragon metamorphosis vs Champions vs living vortices, etc. can just be dodged. “The sorcerer-kings can grant magic to templars” [probably warlocks, in 5E terms]; “no one really knows why except the SKs themselves, and they’re not going to tell.”
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There is a mechanical issue, though. Dark Sun really relies on psionics and magic being fundamentally different things. I don’t think they’re going to invent a completely new psionics system to represent that.
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IDK, couldn’t they just say that “spells” that use the psionics keyword are treated differently and don’t interact?
They could update old or create new psionic spells, but i don’t think they NEED a whole new mechanical system to support psionics. Though I’m sure various people would WANT them…
Oh, probably they will… It’s more that… in 2e, each “kind” of power did distinctly different things. There weren’t any psionic or divine equivalents of arcane magic’s “big guns”, but there weren’t any arcane equivalents of the really good healing spells, etc. So it made more sense that despite the big problems with arcane magic, people would still pursue it, because there were things you just couldn’t do otherwise (Wish) or things that were dramatically better (“artillery” spells, etc). The Veiled Alliance is easier to present as heroic because you kind of need an arcane counter to the sorcerer-kings and their sponsored defilers. (In a world where other power sources can do the same things, why not just give up on arcane entirely?)
The idea that psionics + magic is a synergistic thing that gives you far greater power (advanced beings) also doesn’t fit as well when psionics and magic are basically the same thing.
But that was an issue in 4e too, so it’s definitely not a deal breaker.
Actually the larger mechanical issue is probably that the whole “literacy is illegal as a way of controlling magic” idea doesn’t really work when there are Bards, Sorcerers, and Warlocks who can use arcane magic without spellbooks.
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Sounds like a project for Athas.org!
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Part of the reason to think they’re moving toward a DS release is a psionics update, so…?
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Well, sure, but that system is still “psionics as spellcasting”, X spells of Y levels per day. It’s not something fundamentally different.
The Psion document even says “In the fifth edition, psychic power is synonymous with magic,” and “In this edition, the Psion is a spellcaster who interfaces with magic and spellcasting similarly to other classes in the game.”
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One thing I have really appreciated with Savage Worlds is the ability to take the basic framework of powers and turn them into all sorts of things… my version has psionics, clerical magic, and wizardly magic as three distinct things, even though they draw from the same list of powers.
The problem with retroactively imposing a design bible is all the stuff left on the floor, that was someone’s favorite stuff.
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