Former Blizzard Entertainment executive Chris Metzen helped to bring the worlds of Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft to life. But, in the 1980s he was just an awkward kid playing Dungeons & Dragons with his friends. Now, Metzen and a small team of collaborators at Warchief Gaming are bringing that original D&D campaign to life. The first product in a new line of books is called
Worldbook: Lawbrand, and the crowdfunding campaign has already earned more than $1 million on Kickstarter.
The land of Lawbrand is just one part of a much larger fantasy setting called Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent. It’s a place wildly different from modern D&D settings like the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or Ravenloft. Instead, it’s a land filled with prosperous city states, powerful magic fueled by mystical tattoos, and a prospering counterculture with a music scene all its own. Metzen told us in an interview that it’s “kind of like Dragonlance meets Black Sabbath’s 1973 U.S. road tour,” and the early art proves that out. Imagine tattooed elves in dusty bell bottoms, dwarves in beat-up cowboy hats, all cruising down the highway toward a medieval Burning Man.