Dark Sun is an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition campaign setting created by Troy Denning, Timothy B. Brown, Mary Kirchoff, and Gerald Brom. The campaign setting and its accessories detail the desert lands of Athas, which were once lush and verdant but were ruined during an ancient conflict by the abuse of powerful magic. It was published in print by TSR from September, 1991, to November, 1996, and was accompanied by a number of novels and novel series, most notably the Prism Pentad. On 14 August, 2009, at the Gen Con game fair in Indianapolis, Wizards of the Coast announced that support for the Dark Sun campaign setting would return under the Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game.

Origins

Perhaps as early as late 1989, Troy Denning, Timothy B. Brown (both of TSR's game department) and Mary Kirchoff (of TSR's book department) began to conceive of the next Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting. Noting that TSR's previously published settings had shared in many common fantasy elements, Denning, Brown and Kirchoff attempted to devise a setting that would shed many of the common assumptions about "standard" D&D fantasy.1 Over a year-long series of weekly lunchtime meetings, Denning, Brown and Kirchoff planned the basis of the setting which would become the Dark Sun campaign setting.2

Publication History

The setting's first publications were the Dark Sun World Campaign Setting boxed set for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition game and the novel The Verdant Passage, both released in Sepetember, 1991.

Notes

1 James Lowder, "Novel Ideas: Athas: The New World on the Block," Dragon Magazine 174 (Oct, 1991), p. 50.

2 Ibidem.