Legends of Avantris Announces Neon Odyssey, a 5E Space Opera Project

Avantris Entertainment, the publishing arm of Legends of Avantris and the makers of The Crooked Moon, has announced a new space opera-themed D&D project that will launch on Kickstarter later this year. Neon Odyssey is described as a "a neon-soaked science fantasy space opera trilogy for D&D 5E," drawing inspiration from sources like Star Wars and Cowboy Bebop. The Neon Odyssey project includes three books, an Outrunner's Handbook containing player rules and character-building guides, a Cosmic Codex detailing the Stardust Rhapsody campaign setting, and the Overdrive Expansion that contains optional rules for professions, racing and more. All the "classic" D&D character classes are reimagined in the books under new names and containing mechanical upgrades, with 40 subclasses, 30 species, and 300+ alien monsters and enemy vehicles to battle against.

The Kickstarter for Neon Odyssey will launch in May, with Avantris running weekly Neon Odyssey-focused content on their channels from March to June. Avantris's last Kickstarter to fund the Crooked Moon, raised over $4M in 2023.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Sorry, you have to forgive me but when I have watched that picture with that sinthwave/vaporware feeling I remember this song. (I hope this was source of inspiration).


Other song from 80s is "Happy Children" by P.Lion.

* I suspect the "reimagination" of the classes is because if these are too focused into hand-to-hand combat like barbarians or monks then nobody will want to play with these in a campaign with firearms or ray guns.

* Crooked Moond had a playtesting of the PC races. Will we see other for this? Would be this possible in D&D-Beyond?

 

[Waller]

This is the third 5E space opera game recently. Seems the genre is having a resurgence!

We had Voidrunner's Codex (EN Publishing), Dark Matter (Mage Hand Press), and now this.

And WotC released the Exodus RPG, and there's Traveller 5E coming soon.

I think there are other older ones too.

 

[Sossij]

This is the third 5E space opera game recently. Seems the genre is having a resurgence!

We had Voidrunner's Codex (EN Publishing), Dark Matter (Mage Hand Press), and now this.

And WotC released the Exodus RPG, and there's Traveller 5E coming soon.

I think there are other older ones too.

Esper Genesis also comes to mind. I'm sure there's many, many others.

People like space. People like 5E. I guess.

 

[Morrus]

People like space. People like 5E. I guess.

Historically, people don't like space in their RPGs. They like space movies and fantasy games, but not fantasy movies or space games. There are exceptions of course (hi Lord of the Rings!), but generally speaking all the biggest RPGs are generally fantasy and all the biggest movies are not.

 

[Sossij]

Historically, people don't like space in their RPGs. They like space movies and fantasy games, but not fantasy movies or space games. There are exceptions of course (hi Lord of the Rings!), but generally speaking all the biggest RPGs are generally fantasy and all the biggest movies are not.

Yeah, I guess I don't know the statistics, being more of a consumer of my sister's books when I was younger (and since then buying a lot of books and reading them but not playing), and only really recently playing a lot, but it seems like Traveller has a big, storied history (if not necessarily a wide reach, again my view is skewed by always having the books available?) and Starfinder seems to do well.

I'd be interested to see statistics, but I also wouldn't necessarily know where to look.

I would say you don't need a lot of people to sell a product, just a strong niche market you see being underserved.

 

[Cergorach]

Historically, people don't like space in their RPGs. They like space movies and fantasy games, but not fantasy movies or space games. There are exceptions of course (hi Lord of the Rings!), but generally speaking all the biggest RPGs are generally fantasy and all the biggest movies are not.

We have the many, many Star Wars pnp RPG incarnations that were/are pretty popular.

But what Dark Matter and Neon Odyssey have in common is that they aren't so much sci-fi, they are much more space fantasy, even more then Star Wars is. The same goes for Starfinder and the old 3e Dragonstar. It's still not everyone's cup of tea, but generally easier to swallow for many then the more hard sci-fi Traveller.

Something like 40k is also quite popular, and when FFG was publishing it, it was probably quite popular. Still not as popular as WFRP, but 40k is also essentially dark gothic space fantasy...

As for Lord of the Rings, no matter how much I really liked the movie trilogy, I suspect that the old ICE incarnation of the RPG (MERP) might have been one of the more popular implementation. While the current Free League version looks darned good, I still suspect that it performs a lot less well then Alien the RPG...

Besides D&D and Pathfinder, it's all about niches, and one niche might be a bit bigger then the next, it's still nothing much compared to the big ones...

 

[djotaku]

Very interesting. I think there's probably something to be said for the fact that many Science Fantasy TTRPGs seem to adopt this late-80s/early-90s aesthetic. There's definitely some of it on Starfinder; especially with the official Cat Solarian with the crop top, but also in the color scheme, book design, etc. Other than the fact that Gen X, Xenials, and older Millennials are old enough to be the ones running companies now - thoughts on why this aesthetic? (And not a modern one or one based on 1950s Buck Rodgers or 1960s Jetsons or w/e 1970s SF looked like)

(First reply mentioned synthwave - one of the SF actual plays I listen to - The Vast - uses that type of music as intro/outro music)

 

[Sossij]

one based on 1950s Buck Rodgers

Oh, thank you for reminding me of the cool AD&D based Buck Rogers one from back in the day (it even got a computer/Genesis game)!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I loooooove space fantasy! This looks so cool. Like the new She-Ra creators made a reboot of Thundercats and Galaxy Rangers and all those shows all in one universe meets star wars. Rad as hell.