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Kevin Melka was TSRs final product lead for the Dark Sun campaign setting, before the line’s cancellation. Nytcrawlr has collected questions from the community for a Q&A with Kevin. The results are below. Followup questions are indented.

Athas.org is thinking about making a special material for weapons called Rajaat’s Blood that is based on the red alloy steel. What are your thoughts on that?

From a game design standpoint anything is possible, this is fantasy afterall. Remember that the being known as Rajaat lived thousands of years ago, and something such as the blood of such a creature would border on unique and extremely limited. As for what it does, I never had a specific design for it so I’ll leave it to this generation’s experts. ;)

Some people like to start their campaigns from the beginning, before Kalak died and such and let their players changed the world from there. Taking this into consideration how do you feel about the article now?

Everyone’s campaign is different. I’ve always been one to follow the initial direction of a campaign, as was the case with DS. I really don’t have an opinion either way outside of what else I’ve stated above.

Have you taken a look at part 1 of Dregoth Ascending yet? How do you feel about it?

Yes, and I think it is a very good conversion. Since it was only a draft when last I wrote a word for it, I would probably have done a few different things with it now 10 years later, but that’s just the designer in me. I always thought about adding more hooks and mini-scenarios for the invasion part, an option for mass combat if PCs wanted to confront the dray’s main force – things like that. Overall, I was very happy to see a portion of it finally make it out to the public. I can’t tell you how many people over the years have asked me to send them a copy of the draft.

What were the plans for the Messenger?

With the creation of the lifeshape items and the whole halfling-original-race plotline, we wanted to expand that a bit more to round out that portion of the world . What the Messenger was proposed (from me) to be was a “spaceship” of sorts for three halfings from the Blue Age who escaped the Brown Tide. After the events in Dregoth Ascending the Messenger would soon after crash into Athas and three powerful halflings were supposed to bring back lost life-magic and knowledge back to Athas in hope of rebuilding the world. I think we also toyed with one of the Halflings being a life-bender. That was the basis of the idea.

So, no space halfling invasion?

Ya know, I have no idea where that whole idea came from. I think long ago I may have mentioned the whole Messenger idea to someone, and from there it sprang into some absurd Spelljamming Halflings Invasion Plan 9 from Outer Space – which in my opinion is a bit ridiculous. Every time I used to see that it gave me a chuckle. :)

How do you feel about the 3rd edition thri-kreen? Did you like the initial art for it in MM2?

I think I glanced at it, so I guess I really don’t have an opinion at the moment. Working in the d20 market you’re limited to only open gaming content, of which thri-kreens are off limits.

Why did you pick Dregoth of all the Sorcerer Monarchs to use?

honestly don’t remember why specifically, but from a campaign standpoint it seems to make sense since technically he is the Borys replacement. I believe the previous Dregoth product was a hit seller as well, so a follow up was a good move from that standpoint. I do remember that large adventures were hot at the time (i.e. Night Below), so put those all together and that is how things turned out.

Aside from this, what is your opinion on mixing Ravenloft with Dark Sun? I always felt that the Black was a good representation of the Domain of Dread. How do you feel about this? Too much of a stretch?

Yeah, I’d say so. The Black was supposed to be this big-bad-dark-dead place you were afraid to travel, not a place to adventure. Based on what Troy had written about it and how Bill used it, I would say that is not the intention.

In Psionic Artifacts you outlined a history for the Orbs of Kalid-Ma that were never further resolved. What was the story there?

Bill Connors (line developer for RL at the time) and I sat down one day to talk about what to do with Kalid-Ma, since he was mentioned in Ravenloft products. In the end we thought that the best way to explain what had been written before was that the sorcerer-king’s essence was trapped in the orbs, and his body was sent to Ravenloft. This allowed me to bring back Kalid-Ma if I wanted in Dark Sun with a new body, and Bill could create some sort of mindless/possessed undead domain lord if he wanted. There was more we wanted to do with this, but then DS was canceled and TSR stopped all product production shortly after.

Do you think WoTC will ever bring Dark Sun back officially?

Personally, I don’t understand why they don’t, but that might be some of my love for the world showing through. I know that in the early years there was some licensing issue with the old TEN-DS online world, but I don’t know what their reason is today. Also, considering the money WoTC wants for licensing and the fact that only they want to be able to produce the core book (that is their current standing on licensing last I heard), only someone with tons of money to throw away has a shot at it. I know several people have inquired over it in recent times, but in the end there is no way to afford it from a business standpoint. As an independent publisher the majority of the money you make on a campaign comes from the main campaign book. Since WoTC insists on producing that end of *any* licensing product (after they learned their lesson with Ravenloft and S&S), no d20 company can really afford such a deal. In my opinion, this is unfortunate. Thankfully, Athas.org has the ability to keep doing Dark Sun, so for that all DS fans owe them a debt of thanks.

Speaking of Athas.org, what do you think of their releases so far? Be brutally honest we love it. :) Are they catching the Athasian flavor as much as the older stuff did?

I was very happy to see Athas.org when it first hit the scene. I had heard at the time from more than a few sources that WoTC has no intention of doing Dark Sun in the near future, so the fact that the fans were willing to do such a project was encouraging. As for how you’re doing, I think everyone is doing a great job. It is difficult from a publishing standpoint in the d20/OGL world to do anything nowadays, so the fact that Athas.org is still doing things years later is quite an accomplishment. Of what Athas.org has done so far, I would say I liked Terrors of Athas the best. Monsters were always one of the fun parts of Athas for me.

There has always been a lot of talk about Lynn Abbey’s novel RaFotDK and how it doesn’t fit in some ways into the Athas gaming world. Do you know anything about that?

Shortly after I started working on Dark Sun I was asked to read over the final proof of Lynn’s book. In truth, I was shocked that there was such a book in the works, since this was the first I had ever heard about it. After reading through it in one night I found several “errors” in regards to DS history as it had been outlined in previous products and novels. Things like the miscalculation of the Athas calendar, the addition of a previously unknown champion, and a few other things I can’t remember at the moment. At the direction of my Creative Director I read through the manuscript and made note of the errors ASAP (I think I finished it in two days), which were then turned over to the book department for review. Despite the haste in which we presented this information, the book department refused to do our corrections. Unfortunately, in the old days the book department didn’t care much for what RPG did unless it was Forgotten Realms, and that was only because Ed did both books and products.
Over the years I’ve heard that Lynn has said she never received any feedback on the novel, and in her defense that was probably the case. From the RPG department’s perspective we were always willing to help out with books to keep things all in line, it was just a question of those in charge allowing RPG to have input with books. It was a very unfortunate set of circumstances back then, one I think really hurt our campaigns. For what it’s worth, I loved Lynn’s book and even incorporated parts of the book into the Timeline of Athas.