The Dark Sun campaign setting is a bit of a watershed moment in the late period of TSR’s history. If Spelljammer (1989) was their first high concept game setting (fantasy roleplaying…but in space!), Dark Sun was the first setting that focused on aesthetics and metaplot before all else.

Dark Sun’s world of Athas is a brutal place. Water is scarce, the land drained of vitality through corrupt magic. Power is consolidated into the hands of a handful of sorcerer-kings, each ruling their own city-state with an iron fist. Slavery is widespread. Contrasting with vanilla D&D, psionics are common, gods are absent and arcane magic is a blight on the environment. Obvious inspirations for the setting include Spartacus, Dune, John Carter of Mars and Mad Max. (It probably goes without saying, but considering the political climate these days, Dark Sun seems to have renewed relevance as a cautionary fable about unchecked power and disregard for the environment)

All this is tied together in a visual sense by the art of Gerald Brom and Tom Baxa, the former bringing an alien (and often sexy) vibe with his cover paintings, the latter contributing a jagged, mutated sensibility with his interior illustrations. Together, they created a look – blasted, red, dry, sweaty, hostile – that defined Dark Sun as much if not more so than the settings designers.

Those designers – Timothy Brown and Troy Denning – aren’t to be overlooked. Dark Sun took TSR’s experiments with metaplot in Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance and brought them to their logical conclusion. This is the first D&D campaign setting to have a metaplot baked into the box set, with adventures taking place within the events and fallout of Troy Denning’s series of novels, rapidly changing the status quo of the region. At the outset, Dark Sun is less of a sandbox and more a series of carefully plotted set pieces.