Dungeons & Dragons made good use of the concept of a multiverse before it became so obnoxious in entertainment. Every game of D&D can take place in a different world; many Dungeon Masters have fun creating their own, but for those who lack the time or inclination, there are plenty of settings to choose from. Ed Greenwood’s Forgotten Realms and Gary Gygax’s Greyhawk are usually considered the “classic” D&D settings, as they deliver on that flavor of fantasy that players expect from the game.
But there are also more unusual choices that take D&D’s high fantasy premise in a whole different direction. Dark Sun is a setting created in 1991 for the second edition of D&D, published by TSR (the game’s original publisher before Wizards of the Coast acquired D&D). The main designers of the original Dark Sun Boxed Set were Troy Denning and Timothy Brown.
The premise was difficult to develop: a world devastated by war in which traditional fantasy species like elves and dwarves did not exist. Their goal was to create something that felt immediately distinct from the Forgotten Realms. I also drew inspiration from other pulp stories, but I wanted an environment that resembled Dune.” Brown recognizes that a third man played a fundamental role in developing what would become Dark Sun: Gerald Brom, a junior artist at TSR.
Brown remembers that every TSR artist had their studio in the company’s offices at Lake Geneva. But this wasn’t the case with Dark Sun. The whole idea of metal scarcity in the setting came from Bron’s work, because he drew all these people with weapons made out of bone and bug pieces, so we thought, ‘Let’s lean into that!’” The project quickly evolved beyond its initial concept.
While the idea of a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by war remained, the designers decided to include the traditional fantasy species after all. And so we did cannibal halflings, psionicist elves, and all those other weird things.” In the established Dark Sun lore, every non-human species has gone through an attempted genocide at the hands of the Champions of Rajaat, 15 powerful (and mostly mad) students of the godlike (and also mad) sorcerer Rajaat. This allowed the designers to establish the post-apocalyptic nature of the world of Athas and introduce changes to established D&D species.
Rajaat created “Defiling Magic,” powered by energy absorbed from the environment. Every spell sucks out life from the world, explaining why Athas is a barren wasteland. The ultimate goal for practitioners of Defiling Magic is to transform into dragons, a process so long and grueling that only one person succeeded.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
