Laura and Tracy Hickman are known for fantasy worlds and D&D settings like Ravenloft and Dragonlance. The couple’s latest project, which has Joe Manganiello as a creative consultant, is the 5e setting of Skyraiders of Abarax.
The campaign funds the books and augmented reality integration through a mobile app known as the Living Tome. The $60,000 needed to fund the project has been found easily with about three weeks to run and nearly $220,00 in pledges already made. You can see the latest tally or join in from the Kickstarter page.
The Living Tome means scanning images and codes in the game manuals, the maps and even the dice mat that can come with it. It opens up contextual lore, like information about places on the maps and even access soundtracks and ambience.
More than that, the AR aspects of the Living Tome trigger events and quests. Different players can have additional insights on locations, as their character might know.
If successful and popular, this would be a new angle in traditional tabletop RPGs and would nudge us further into subscription territory.
Descended from dangerous exiles, criminals and dissidents, the eclectic peoples of Abarax look across the deadly seas to the empty horizons. Aeroships once sailed from distant lands bringing more prisoners and supplies from those far shares. With them came news like rain on a parched soil of the fabled lands from which they descended. More than that, they brought the promise of hope and a home they more felt than knew.
But the Aeroships have long since ceased sailing the skies from across the sea. Hope was replaced by fear and wild speculation. Immediate need came to outweigh duty to distant nations that had abandoned them. The jailors became desperately afraid of their own survival in the harsh climate of their island prison. The jailors themselves disagreed as to the proper course which eventually erupted into armed conflict. IN the end, they opened the barred doors and emptied their dungeons, in a frantic bid to recruit to their cause the very prisoners they had so long oppressed.
All tiers Skyraiders of Abarax backers, beyond the $5 needed to buy into the pledge manager, come with the Living Tome.
A pledge of $30 results in the reward of the PDF editions of the Skymaster’s Almanac (the GM’s guide) and the Skyraider’s Handbook (player’s handbook). The AR integrated Living Tome app for iOS and Android is also delivered.
$50 adds the standard hardcover of one of those two books to the digital base.
At $100, both standard editions of the hardcover are added to that same digital base.
It takes a step up to $180 to get into the collector’s set, with the signed and numbered collector’s edition.
An even higher tier, at $250, which has had over 70 backers adds in posters, a GM screen, dice, dice bag, dice tin, maps and your name in the credits.
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