Warcraft, co-creator of StarCraft Chris Metzen announces new D&D campaign

Chris Metzen and Mike Gilmartin are former Blizzard Entertainment executives who helped bring the worlds of Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft to life. In 2020, after Metzen ended a 22-year stint at Blizzard, they announced a new company called Warchief Gaming. Now they are ready to announce the company’s first project.

Along with lead developer Ryan Collins, a former game designer in Hearthstone, they are transforming Metzen’s homebrew Dungeons & Dragons campaign – which started with their childhood friends in the 1980s – into a version compatible with the modern 5th edition of D&D. The Warchief configuration is called Auroboros: Coils of the Serpent. The first reference book, entitled Worldbook: Lawbrand, will come to life through crowdfunding.

The modern incarnation of D&D takes place in the world of Faerûn, also known as Forgotten Realms. It is a world of high fantasy, full of wild wilderness areas and also bustling cities. Auroboros takes place in a world called Drastnia and is, in contrast, much more urban.

“Lawbrand is a confederation of urbanized commercial cities,” said Metzen in an interview with Polygon. “There are eight or nine of these commercial cities, and all of them are kind of driven by this big new trade. It is almost like an industrial revolution. “

Key art for these commercial cities shows bustling cities densely packed with houses and factories. The lights shine along delicate bridges as huge merchant ships sail through the bays and descend deep rivers between the mountains. In one piece, you can see the working class walking home after a long day at the factory.

“All races essentially live together in these big cities,” said Metzen. “The ogre’s neighborhood is here, the dwarves live here, the humans are here. We are all working in the same factories, our children go to the same schools, there is a comprehensive church that kind of oversees everything and creates consistency and order in this new society. “

But lurking at the bottom of it all is powerful magic fueled by mystical tattoos.

“The Auroboros themselves […] it’s like a prime creative force, ”said Metzen. “The more you use it, the more you get into that power that is beyond your real class skills. It begins to cause madness and death. It’s like a classic rock star – that Jim Morrison overdrive. “

Where regular 5th edition D&D campaigns can get bogged down in low-level fights, the Warchief scenario will give players incredible powers right from the start. Using this raw power, at least one character in the group will be able to do incredible things. They could turn cities to stone, freeze entire oceans or level mountains with the flick of their wrist. It will be up to the group’s Dungeon Master (DM) to roll with these blows.

Image: Warchief Gaming

But it will also be the role of the other characters at the table to deal with side effects – and help prevent a player from escaping with the narrative.

“We are including rehearsals in the book, trying to anticipate some of the problems that can arise between players,” said Metzen. “’Why does Johnny get all the attention as the character marked by the snake? About me? I want a compelling narrative. ‘So, we are going through all these scenarios where the Master can find himself dealing with these types of situations and providing guidance on how to deal with the rest of the group. “

Metzen said that more than anything else, he and his team are enjoying taking their home environment and turning it into something for the rest of the world to enjoy. But why not create a system of rules to accompany it? Why choose to use modern D&D – or at least the parts of it that are open source and available to the public – as the basic building blocks?

“This whole idea came from me and my friends building this world for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons,” said Metzen. “Throughout my life it looked like a church. D&D is sacred ground. It is where we learn to imagine together. […] Building this for the 5e seemed perfectly natural. “

The campaign for Worldbook: Lawbrand starts on April 20th. You can sign up for the Kickstarter mailing list.