Auroboros

A reader asked me what I thought of Auroboros. At that point I thought nothing of it, because I hadn't heard of it yet. So I looked it up, and it turns out to be a sourcebook for 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, made by the new company of Chris Metzen of World of Warcraft fame. There will be a Kickstarter for it starting on April 20th. Auroboros will be a campaign setting for D&D, with some added features like new races or spells.

Am I going to back that Kickstarter? Probably not. The one disadvantage that playing D&D on Roll20 has, is that using third party material is really, really hard. And even in pen & paper, a new campaign setting means a lot of work for the DM. That "Worldbook: Lawbrand" from the Kickstarter is clearly several hundred pages long.

Most of my campaigns use the Forgotten Realms as campaign setting. The advantage is that I know the setting well, having played with it for decades. As a generic, high fantasy setting, a great number of different D&D adventures either play there, or can easily be made to fit in there. I consider using a different campaign world only when I want to switch to a different genre: I used the Zeitgeist world for a more steampunk-ish version of D&D, and now Barovia for the gothic horror D&D campaign I'm currently running.

I am also somewhat concerned about the time aspect: With a Kickstarter this year, the first book probably isn't coming out before next year. And then that is just the campaign setting, and we will have to wait some more time before we also get adventures that make use of that setting. By the time the Auroboros product line is complete, WotC might have announced the 6th edition of D&D.