Schmooples' Den! The DA News Discussion Thread

Go buy a Motha and a dragon toys because sadly I don't think Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast is doing much with it now of days,Dark Sun wasn't exactly a big hit when it debuted and when they did a major shake up via novels and game adventures that didn't make a lot of money WotC canceled it. It's magic and mental powers were often hard for people who played other D&D world campaigns and it is also a very bleak and brutal world, also it was pretty isolated from other D&D worlds like Planescape and Ravenloft and it's setting with dragons and the whatever those giant butterflies were called both being unnatural creatures.

It was pretty much an urban setting with much of the world being an unbearable hellscape and travel between city-states being rather boring with next to nothing in adventures outside the gates of a city-state other than heat being the real enemy. There was a massive shake up in the mid-90s that tried to fix a lot of the problems withe it, but by then WotC was cutting down most of D&D worlds that didn't have a lot appeal outside the fanbase and Dark Sun was one that got canceled. in the end Forgotten Realms, Planescape, and Ravenloft were the big three mostly because they had successful video games. I think IDW did do a new comic a few years ago that featured a mul gladiator as the lead as a tryout for another revival, I don't know if it worked out or not.

Dark Sun is a cult classic at best and it tried to be a different kind of setting one that never clicked with a lot of table top RPG fans and even most D&D fans.

What angers me about the change from Qarinus to Ventus (besides the fact that Ventus is the fucking laziest name ever) is that it invalidates what came before in the lorebooks, comics and games. And this change was made because some people were apparently too dumb to understand the difference between Qarinus and Qunari.

On the other hand, it's been firmly established that darkspawn need to capture and transform women into broodmothers to reproduce. If DA4 rolls out and the darkspawn are suddenly reproducing via cloning vats like the Giaks from the Lone Wolf series and it's "always been this way," that's a step too fucking far.

How does that affect their other products? What now becomes of the Broodmother encounter in DAO? What about the Mother from Awakening? Do we take a fucking Sharpie and blot out the parts of the lorebooks that BioWare has abitrarily decided to change? What's even the use in having those books if BioWare doesn't give a shit about their own lore?

I don't know, but I assume it ruins someone's fanfic that the Qun isn't a great "happy fun time for all" religion, seeing as it stands in opposition to the evil Chantry. It's better that we sand off all the edges of this dark fantasy universe so it becomes as inoffensive as possible.

They did update it for 4E. Nothing for 5E yet.

Not really. We actually know very little about the darkspawn or the Blight - that we know some facts doesn't mean that there aren't other discoveries to be made. For example, before Awakening we didn't know that sentient darkspawn the like of the Architect exist, and not before Legacy/Inqusition we knew that there exist darkspawn that can influence Warden minds via Taint. In other words, I expect more surprises.

Nobody is taking a sharpie and blots out lorebooks. Even small changes like Leliana dying in some world-states or Ventus/Quarinus have been acknowledged in-story - it's not like they changed the name, and now everybody pretends that the city's name was NEVER Quarinus. Instead the city was re-named in-universe following a historical event - a thing that also occasionally happens IRL, even with big, known locations. Example? I've only recently discovered that city commonly known here as Saigon actually changed its name to Ho Chi Minh over 40 years ago...

So, I don't expect any new changes to happen without being fairly seamlessly incorporated into the story, save maybe some minor details that can't be helped, or are too small or irrelevant in the grand scheme of things to try and bend them into shape.
Er... again, how does that gel with the whole invasion, betrayal and so far portraying the Qun as ruthless conquerors? Would they rub salt in wounds (also by Weekes on his twitter), especially of people who romanced Qunari!Bull, if they were indeed trying to sand off the edges?

At the same time, I am a bit concerned if it turns out that any sign there are some parts of that society one can consider as not horrendous or salvageable or else would be interpreted as some sort of intentional softening for all the wrong reasons - I think we can agree that we don't want Qunari to be too much of a black-and-white caricature, that they wouldn't even present us with any sort of complex moral challenge on some level?

Again, nothing is set in stone in fiction. It all can be changed, but a creator who takes a flippant attitude towards canon can expect to incur the wrath of their fanbase.

I'm not responding to the rest of your post. The fact that you would even argue with me on this point tells me that you have nothing of value to offer except feeble justifications. You're a blatant apologist when it comes to BioWare's faults and I'm tired of listening.