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).

 

[overgeeked]

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.

Me, too. It’s not quite the fantasy I had as a kid playing D&D, but it’s close. I always wanted to play the monsters. They’re so much more interesting and cool than the boring PC races.

 

[overgeeked]

There are so many third party products that never would have stood a chance if Blizzard actually released a Diablo 5E book. There's tons of stuff out there that's basically Diablo with the names filed off.

Maybe they'll do it in time for Diablo IV, as they're greatly fleshing out the world for that game, after fleshing out its background and metaphysics for Diablo III.

Maybe that’s part of the plan. Build up Warchief and use the contacts with Blizzard to produce Blizzard IP tabletop role-playing games.

 

[overgeeked]

Sure, I’m being a little reductive, but the fact that there are posters here who’ve specifically said it’s an instant back because of Metzen, and that there are comments in the Kickstarter campaign asking for more coins and such—and that the campaign went with those coins as stretch goals and early bird rewards—supports my point. I’m not saying the final product will be bad, but Warchief knows who its audience is. And their approach is working! Good for them, honestly. But I think it’s fair to point out that this is a very specific kind of campaign, that leans almost entirely on past successes in a very different medium, and some super gimmicky collectible doodads. It’s a real business venture, not a vanity project or cash grab. But I’m within my rights to point out the lack of substance presented in the campaign, and the amount of Hey Guys Remember Video Games (and also ... coins).

It’s not like most of 5E isn’t already boutique gaming for bougie upper-middle class people with more money than time. Beadle & Grimm’s anyone.

And I’m pretty sure “I’m within my rights” is the internet version of “it’s what my character would do”.

 

[Reynard]

It’s not like most of 5E isn’t already boutique gaming for bougie upper-middle class people with more money than time. Beadle & Grimm’s anyone.

And I’m pretty sure “I’m within my rights” is the internet version of “it’s what my character would do”.

"Most of 5e" is not Beadle and Grimm's. Tabletop RPGs are still the cheapest entertainment per dollar you can buy and it's weird that you think it is an upper middle class thing when it always has been a lower middle and working class thing (and white,but that's thankfully changing). It's such a strange accusation to leverage at D&D that i have to wonder where you are coming from or if that wasn't just a bit of trolling I fell for.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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?)

Largely agree. When I was very young, like 10-12 (or probably younger if I'd had D&D then), I'd have been very excited by a salamander-person or similar - indeed like a dude who was friends with animals would also have been v.exciting, but by my actual teens it'd have needed to be something a bit "cooler". And then by my mid-20s I'd have been over that and totally down with playing a silly salamander-person again.

So that's why I was saying the races look actual kid or actual adult, not teen-ish.

It’s not like most of 5E isn’t already boutique gaming for bougie upper-middle class people with more money than time. Beadle & Grimm’s anyone.

Most of my long-time party would feel personally attacked by how extremely accurate this was I suspect. I think I'm the only one who still has more time than money (sadly, I'd rather have the opposite issue at this age). So yup.

when it always has been a lower middle and working class thing

Has it though?

In the UK and Israel it certainly isn't and wasn't in the late '80s or '90s either. In the US I've known upper-middle class and above people who play since the 1980s, and D&D and the like seem to have been popular at "elite" universities and boarding schools and the like in the US since at least the late 1990s.

It's true that the originators were mostly lower middle class and middle middle class though.

Complicating the matter is that in the 1970s and 1980s in the US, working class people with steady jobs and certainly lower-middle class people had buying power equivalent to most upper-middle-class people now, because of factors like wage stagnation. There's also the issue that Americans habitually identify as the lowest social class they've ever had the remotest claim to being, no matter how implausible. Hence all the "working class" actors (this also happens in the UK, but people are much more class-conscious here so it's harder to get away with).

So I suspect "always has been" is not true here. Started out as might arguably true, again with the caveat that a "working class" person with a steady job in the US in say, 1980 might have been living better than a middle-middle class Brit of the same period (in terms of lifestyle, what they could buy, how much they could save, and so on).

 

[overgeeked]

"Most of 5e" is not Beadle and Grimm's. Tabletop RPGs are still the cheapest entertainment per dollar you can buy and it's weird that you think it is an upper middle class thing when it always has been a lower middle and working class thing (and white,but that's thankfully changing). It's such a strange accusation to leverage at D&D that i have to wonder where you are coming from or if that wasn't just a bit of trolling I fell for.

No, it isn’t. That’s just the most glaring example. Cheapest per dollar? Haven’t heard that before. Just because you can do math tricks with the price of the books doesn’t mean someone who can’t afford the required buy in suddenly can. RPGs are not a cheap hobby and we need to stop pretending it is.

 

[Reynard]

No, it isn’t. That’s just the most glaring example. Cheapest per dollar? Haven’t heard that before. Just because you can do math tricks with the price of the books doesn’t mean someone who can’t afford the required buy in suddenly can. RPGs are not a cheap hobby and we need to stop pretending it is.

No hobby is "cheap" if you are talking about being a collector of the thing. What I said it was that it was an inexpensive form of entertainment. Free even, in many cases, but even if you are the DM your initial investment is somewhere around $100 for literally unlimited play forever, and that is if you must have physical copies of the 3 main books.

Sure, if you define being involved in the hobby as having to buy every book and tons of dice and all the extra maps and cards and whatever, it can be expensive. But none of that stuff is necessary, and lots and lots of people play D&D with small or no financial output.

 

[SkidAce]

No, it isn’t. That’s just the most glaring example. Cheapest per dollar? Haven’t heard that before. Just because you can do math tricks with the price of the books doesn’t mean someone who can’t afford the required buy in suddenly can. RPGs are not a cheap hobby and we need to stop pretending it is.

SRD is free.

Lots of groups in my early years only had one copy of the core three they we passed around.

Etc, etc.

 

[overgeeked]

No hobby is "cheap" if you are talking about being a collector of the thing. What I said it was that it was an inexpensive form of entertainment. Free even, in many cases, but even if you are the DM your initial investment is somewhere around $100 for literally unlimited play forever, and that is if you must have physical copies of the 3 main books.

But buying the books doesn’t get you unlimited play forever. It gets you three books you might get to use someday. If you meet all these other random criteria. Netflix is cheaper. And it gives you actual unlimited play.

Sure, if you define being involved in the hobby as having to buy every book and tons of dice and all the extra maps and cards and whatever, it can be expensive. But none of that stuff is necessary, and lots and lots of people play D&D with small or no financial output.

There’s lots of people playing from the free basic rules? News to me. Otherwise, what you mean is they’re either pirating books or using someone else’s copies at the table. Both of which kinda prove my point. If it were a cheap, working class hobby, anyone could afford it. Clearly a lot of people interested in the hobby can’t.

 

[Reynard]

But buying the books doesn’t get you unlimited play forever. It gets you three books you might get to use someday. If you meet all these other random criteria. Netflix is cheaper. And it gives you actual unlimited play.

There’s lots of people playing from the free basic rules? News to me. Otherwise, what you mean is they’re either pirating books or using someone else’s copies at the table. Both of which kinda prove my point. If it were a cheap, working class hobby, anyone could afford it. Clearly a lot of people interested in the hobby can’t.

I have no idea what point you are trying to make. I mean, a PHB is cheaper than a year of Netflix by quite a lot, and people still borrow other peoples' Netflix logins. People are notoriously cheap, especially when it comes to entertainment (which is one of the reasons that the arts are so devalued in our society, but that's a different argument).

But it is a simple, demonstrable fact that as far as entertainment goes, D&D is very inexpensive and can be totally free. People buy stuff for it because they want to, not because they have to.