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5E Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent

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5E Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent

Unread postby icycalm » 16 Jul 2021 20:34

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Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/warchief/auroboros

Get a load of this. Chris Metzen, who created "the fictional universes and scripts for Blizzard Entertainment's three major award-winning media franchises: Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft", is making a setting for 5E, and got 1.2 million dollars on Kickstarter (he had only asked for 50k) to publish what is basically a book. It's not even a boxed set like in the days of 2E, it's just a freakin' book. A PDF even, for the lowest pledge tiers.

Anyway, the dude looks legit even though I don't like his work on videogames at all (all three Blizzard settings are crap); just check his Twitter to see how passionate he is about role-playing and wargaming (mostly wargaming tho): https://twitter.com/ChrisMetzen

At any rate, the book seems decent, and the world will be yet another planet for Battlegrounds players to visit via Spelljammer, Planescape or Starfinder. The more of those we have the better.

In this video, Metzen says that he's been playing in this world since the '80s with his group, and they just decided to collect the material, update it for 5E, and publish it:

Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent Announcement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRFlEdw_XIQ

I have to at least give him credit for not trying to peddle to us also a rule system of his own. Besides, he's not even the lead designer. Some really fat guy is. Probably their DM.

Some of the art in the book is very mediocre, but some is pretty good. So all in all, typical of contemporary efforts by Wizards and Paizo. Their map is charming too, though they don't give you the full planet, which again is typical of new setting releases. A setting generally has to become extremely successful for the designers to bother mapping out the entire planet.

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There is a Dark Sun-style rule system to the world where it seems you tattoo the mark of the serpent on yourself to gain crazy powers, but as your power grows so do the chances of you "losing control"—whatever that means in game terms—and so your companions become more mistrustful of you. Not bad stuff at all, kind of like a generic-fantasy version of Dark Sun. They've put some thought into this. And the extra powers you get sound like Pathfinder's Mythic system. Much bigger than Mythic even. Maybe even bigger than Dark Sun powers. And it sounds like you start gaining them from level 1, which is more Mythic than Dark Sun. So it's basically a fusion of the two systems.

Of course, it all boils down to whether they'll publish any adventures for it. Normally I would have said no, but they just made 1.2 million for a PDF you can churn out in a month, so I think they'd be dumb not to put out some more product for this world. I don't expect anything like Paizo's campaigns though. I would expect something smaller, and that's alright. I think this world sounds fantastic for a "Star Trek"-like experience for us. Players arrive there via their spaceship, or some plane gate or whatever, and they have a mid-size adventure featuring the "world serpent" and its powers, maybe one of them is even "corrupted" in the process, who knows; and we just see if they manage to make it out alive or not. If they are high enough level, maybe even they destroy the whole planet, as Metzen alludes to crazy powers gained via the serpent in his video. And we don't care about blowing up this world because it's not Golarion or anything, it's just a "side-world" at the end of the day.

Kickstarter Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFEhU7EeMDo

I put this video on the trailer reel on the frontpage. Remember, Insomnia covers also TTRPGs now.

Their company is called Warchief Gaming and it's brand-new. YT channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWqQL1 ... o6LUeo_0bw

March 2022.
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icycalm
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Joined: 28 Mar 2006 00:08
Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands

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