D&D 5E Auroboros Kickstarter From Warcraft Devs Has Launched

The D&D 5E setting from developers who originally hail from video game studios like Blizzard, and video games like Warcraft and Diablo, has launched on Kickstarter with a bang, as expected. Auroborus: Coils of the Serpent details a realm called Lawbrand, which contains a number of trade cities and factions. Will this one be the 4th in the last month to join the $1M club?

The high-powered team, under the banner of Warchief Gaming, includes Chris Metzen (Blizzard Entertainment, Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Overwatch), Mike Gilmartin (Blizzard, Eidos, Maxis, Atari), and Ryan Collins (Hearthstone, Marvel Heroes, HeroClix).

The setting contains 5 new races and 4 new subclasses, plus details of 8 trade cities. It also features a new game rule called the Mark of the Serpent which lets you do incredibly powerful magical effects at a cost.

Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent

An epic 5E fantasy campaign setting by Chris Metzen.

www.kickstarter.com

For $25 you can pick up the PDF bundle, or $50 for the hardcover. There are higher tiers with GM screens, world maps, slipcases, and more, with expected delivery in one year (March 2022).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It was apparently 5.5 million during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, which was the last time Blizzard released figures.

I hadn't previously seen this analysis that said it hit 12 million during Cataclysm, which is kind of a shock, but good on Blizzard.

In any case, even at its lowest subscriber points, WoW easily qualifies as one of the most popular fantasy franchises of all time.

5.5m is from the last time they released regionally-separated figures, which was a while before the last time they released figures. It hit 10m during WotLK and in like 2012 or something they also noted that 100m unique people had paid to play WoW. So yeah for sure one of the most popular. I suspect D&D has had more people play it over the years, esp. if we count all the people who played a session or two (which is what Blizzard was doing with the 100m effectively), but it's a hell of a lot.

 

[jayoungr]

I expect it to be a highly polished piece of high school worldbuilding. I can tell that by the races alone.

Okay, I'll bite. What about the races strikes you as "high-schoolish"?

I hadn't previously seen this analysis that said it hit 12 million during Cataclysm, which is kind of a shock (it was my least favorite expansion, by far), but good on Blizzard.

I remember reading an article somewhere around the time of Wrath of the Lich King saying that worldwide players of WoW at that time numbered more than the population of Belgium.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

5.5m is from the last time they released regionally-separated figures, which was a while before the last time they released figures. It hit 10m during WotLK and in like 2012 or something they also noted that 100m unique people had paid to play WoW. So yeah for sure one of the most popular. I suspect D&D has had more people play it over the years, esp. if we count all the people who played a session or two (which is what Blizzard was doing with the 100m effectively), but it's a hell of a lot.

I don't think it's the most popular -- it definitely trails D&D and especially Lord of the Rings, and probably a few other franchises. But I suspect, if we crunch the numbers, it'll be somewhere in the top 10, which is a pretty impressive achievement.

(Edit: Thinking about it, Game of Thrones is there as well, if one rolls in the TV viewership, which ought to be included. Oz, Narnia, Wonderland and Peter Pan are likely in the top 10, too, given their age. It's hard to overstate just how popular Oz was at the turn of the 20th century. And, of course, Harry Potter is there as well, especially with movie audiences included.)

 

[Morrus]

I get all that and I still hope folks get what they want, but I am happy to reiterate: it's his high school campaign world. NO ONE'S high school campaign world was any good. I wouldn't pay money for my own high school campaign world with snazzy art. Lipstick on a pig, and all that.

And Star Trek is Gene Roddenberry's childhood fantasies.

I've released products based on material I first came up with 30 years ago. I didn't literally take my 10-year old notebook and publish it. You're being weirdly literal.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I remember reading an article somewhere around the time of Wrath of the Lich King saying that worldwide players of WoW at that time numbered more than the population of Belgium.

This is a family site, sir. We don't use that sort of language here.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Okay, I'll bite. What about the races strikes you as "high-schoolish"?

Yeah I'm wondering about this. The defining races for teenagers all basically involve around various straightforward fantasies - being really strong, being really scary, being really edgy, being really hot. You'd expect "thinly-veiled WWE wrestler monster-man race", "hot chicks only race", "edgy demondude race" (already in D&D of course, don't @ me I play them all the time!), "emo shadow-murderer race" (Shadar-Kai or Drow will do nicely), and so on.

Not Bobby Wolf-friend, Sandy the Desert Dwarf, a stripey goblin, a fishman (is anything less cool?), and goddamn gecko-person. That's way more "I'm 25" or "I'm 10". Xu'keen and Salamar are a bit "I'm 10" name-wise, but... professional writers in their 30s, both for RPGs and for fantasy lit in general, have given us names every bit as dumb as that.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

It's nothing like that, this is something with absolutely no prior buildup to hype it. It's literally people throwing money at a well-known name and some pretty art. I'm not saying that to deprecate the product, I'm sure it will be well done, but yea, this is being sold purely on presentation and name power.

I mean, some would argue those are the only reasons why you should buy official D&D WotC books!

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

It's nothing like that, this is something with absolutely no prior buildup to hype it. It's literally people throwing money at a well-known name and some pretty art. I'm not saying that to deprecate the product, I'm sure it will be well done, but yea, this is being sold purely on presentation and name power.

What do you mean "no buildup"? There was this thread from way back on March 23 to introduce it to the tons of readers here:

D&D 5E - Auroborus: A Mountain-shattering Rock-and-roll D&D World from WoW Developers

What happens when some of the developers of Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch make a D&D setting? You get a 'rock-and-roll' high-powered world called Auroboros! Coming to Kickstarter on April 20th from Warchief Gaming, Auroborus: Coils of the Serpent is set in a land called Lawbrand. Players...

www.enworld.org

And as I mentioned in that thread, WotC plugged the game on both the D&D Twitter and Facebook accounts. So this project had a lot of exposure before the kickstarter launched.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Maybe I'm weird, but playing a salamander-person sounds awesome to me. But definitely not the sort of power fantasy I had in middle or high school.

I had an 18th level magic-user ogre mage -- thanks to a reincarnation spell and some shady dice-rolling -- back then. Oh, and some stuff from White Plume Mountain that I refused to return to its rightful owners. (Did anyone ever return those weapons?)

 

[Morrus]

I mean, some would argue those are the only reasons why you should buy official D&D WotC books!

Yeah. That's an accurate description of WotC's business model! The lead time is about the same, even.