Dungeons & Dragons 5e is barely out; you can download D&D Basic or buy the Starter Set. You would think that without the licensing rules for the game that third party publishers can’t yet write products either.
Necromancer Games, though, is back from a torpor to produce D&D 5e books and have raised nearly all of their $15,000 Kickstarter in a single day to do just that.
Necromancer Games is an imprint of Frog God Games and is offering books that feel like 1st edition supplements while using 5th edition rules. D&D 5e did consult “OSR” supporters like the ‘RPGPundit’ and so the tag “1st edition feel” will be seen as a compliment by that side of the community.
Necromancer Games are offering three books in the project; Fifth Edition Foes with 200 monsters, Quests of Doom (between 180 and 260 pages) and the Book of Lost Spells (some 250 pages). Pledge levels unlock different quantities of the books.
The authors on the project are impressive; Bill Webb (Rappan Athuk), Matt Finch (Sword & Wizardry), J. Collura (Caverns of Thracia), Michael Curtis (The Dungeon Alphabet), Casey Christofferson (The Tome of Horrors), Steve Winter (Tyranny of Dragons), James M. Ward (Gamma World), Skip Williams (Axe of the Dragon Lords) and Ed Greenwood (The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting).
The line-up looks good if you’re into your “1st edition feel” style of D&D – and based on these Kickstarter cash figures; many people are.
Of course, all of this gets very messy very quickly if the license from Wizards of the Coast gets in the way of the plans. I don’t think it’s wrong of Frog God Games or Necromancer Games to expect a license but they’re taking a risk here. Wizards of the Coast, for example, could prohibit any mention of editions as part of D&D marketing. They could throw a number of curve balls in.
Necromancer Games admit this. They note;
The terms of the licensing aren’t nailed down either.
This means we’re creating a product that has some unknown variables, and it means that you’re backing it more as a patron than as a pre-order customer. We’re going to deliver these books, but it’s going to be an evolving process.
(Via EN World.)
