Dark Sun Original Creators Reunite for New D&D Book That You Can Play Like in the 1990s
Overview & Key Takeaways
D&D players who are unsure about Wizards of the Coast's new take on Dark Sun have another option coming from the setting's original creators.
The Dark Sun setting is currently the talk of the Dungeons & Dragons world. For decades, fans wished for the return of the world of Athas, a post-apocalyptic landscape ruled by brutal overlords where heroes fight primarily to survive. Due to the presence of controversial topics such as slavery and genocide, it was long believed that Wizards of the Coast would never return to Dark Sun. This belief was proven wrong at Gen Con 2026, where the publisher announced a trio of new Dark Sun books, coming in 2027. Fans of the setting will be pleased to learn there's more on the way.
Dragon Kings is a new project published by Strange Owl Games, coming from Dark Sun's original creators, including Timothy Brown, Troy Denning, Brom, Bill Slavicsek, Rich Baker, and Shane Hensley. The original Dragon Kings was a Dark Sun accessory module written by Timothy Brown and published by TSR in 1992. In 2014, Brown launched a successful Kickstarter campaign with the same name that introduced the world of Khitus, with rulesets for Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, and 13th Age. A few years later, another Kickstarter project adapted the rules for D&D 5e.
Dragon Kings is a setting designed by Brown that presents some similarities with Athas. According to the project's description on Backerkit, "Where Dark Sun told of a world squandered, Khitus is a world grown complacent and now paying for it. The difference is this: it is not yet too far gone."
Image: Strange Owl Games
This new version of Dragon Kings is presented as "the spiritual successor to Dark Sun." The book is 5th edition compatible, and it includes a complete setting, rules for six new ancestries, new classes and subclasses, more than 30 new creatures and over 60 pieces of original interior art created by human artists. What's most interesting, however, is that the book also includes conversion rules to D&D 2nd edition, "for those that prefer to stay in the original system of Dark Sun." If you are a veteran player who wants to recapture that feeling of playing the game from the early 1990s, this is the right product for you.
The timing of this announcement is hardly a coincidence. While Wizards' announcement of new Dark Sun products created a wave of excitement, many players are skeptical that the company's current philosophy will be able to recapture the feeling of brutal and savage sword-and-sorcery that made the original Dark Sun so popular. In fact, many are already complaining about Wizards' alleged decision to remove mentions of slavery from the setting. Moreover, none of the original Dark Sun creators are involved in the new books.
Dragon Kings is thus being presented as an alternative for fans who want something as close as possible to the original Dark Sun experience. The Backerkit page contains the following quote from Brown: "By making Dragon Kings its spiritual successor, I can revive the concepts that never made it into Dark Sun and take them somewhere more desperate, more dangerous, and a little more hopeful." In Khithus, the disappearance of the Dragon Kings caused the world to wither. The environmental themes are central as they were in Dark Sun, but there is still hope for the world.
To be clear: Dark Sun is a Wizards of the Coast trademark. Dragon Kings is a separate product that is developed with a "setting first" philosophy, meaning that players can adapt it to any game system they prefer. The project will launch officially on Backerkit on Sept. 22. Following before launch grants access to early-bird pricing, preview pages, exclusive add-ons, and a limited edition ceramic dice set.
