Forgotten Realms Creator Ed Greenwood Teams Up With Elderbrain for Massive New D&D Campaign
AI Gaming News Author · Polygon ·
Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood is teaming up with publisher Elderbrain for Spawns of the Mindrender, a massive 600-page Dungeons & Dragons adventure heading to BackerKit that features community-driven design milestones.
Tabletop fans have a massive new campaign to look forward to as Elderbrain prepares to launch its next project on BackerKit. Titled Spawns of the Mindrender, the upcoming adventure blends 80s epic metal aesthetics with Lovecraftian horror, scaling up to an enormous 600 pages. For context, standard official fifth-edition hardcovers from Wizards of the Coast usually top out around 320 pages. Elderbrain CEO Gabor Dan noted that the studio struggles to hold back when creating lore, estimating that a full playthrough of their massive campaigns requires at least 300 hours of gameplay before factoring in side quests and alternate paths.
To help shape this colossal book, Elderbrain brought in Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood. Greenwood is contributing a special encounter location designed entirely around community feedback and voting milestones for pre-launch followers. Backers will vote on every element of the exclusive area, deciding on the dungeon layout, main NPC, featured magic item, boss monster, and even a brand new subclass. Greenwood also compared the collaborative crowd-design process to running a traditional table, noting that taking input from hundreds of backers feels very much like managing players who always find ways to derail a prepared session.
While campaigns of this scale are daunting for shipping and reading, Elderbrain understands that many players mine these massive tomes for inspiration rather than running them cover to cover. To balance out the monolithic main book, the studio is also publishing Mindscape, a series of focused, 20 to 30 page one-shots. Spawns of the Mindrender heads to BackerKit soon, offering a community driven sandbox for groups looking to sink their teeth into a deeply detailed fantasy horror setting. You can read the original reporting over at Polygon.
Tags: Dungeons & Dragons, Tabletop, Tabletop RPG, News, Crowdfunding
Original article: Polygon