In this campaign you will have the opportunity to pledge for a fully written, vast 5E D&D campaign stretching over four books. Each book comes with an opportunity to purchase full color battle maps to enhance your playing experience.

There are seven pledges, three of which are digital only and four of which are print and PDF.

Last updated: February 05, 2025 03:26

Each book is full of adventure, however, they all form part of the overarching Dark Moon Rises quest. Each of the four books contains a part of the quest to travel to the chapel at Oldstanding and rid yourself of the mark of the dark moon.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 08:44

It is our aim to release the pdfs in July for all pledges, both for digital and physical copies.

Last updated: February 05, 2025 03:26

Yes, we will be running the pledge manager through BackerKit. Invites will be sent to all backers 2-3 weeks after the end of the campaign. This invite will allow you to give us your address, cover postage as well as giving you an opportunity to raise your tier or choose more addons, should you wish.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

Yes! The book is the DM! Basically, the book will describe what is happening to your characters and you will get to choose from a list of options of what to do. There are normally three or four options per big choice, unless a choice is very simple (such as turning left or right).

Last updated: February 05, 2025 03:26

There are two kinds of battle in The Dark Moon Rises. Basic Battles are entirely ‘theatre of the mind’ and usually take place when a battle is very simple (just one or two creatures who fight in melee). Full Battles have a detailed combat map and also information about how the enemy creatures fight. You can either draw these out on your own dry-erase map or buy a map pack and save yourself the trouble.

Last updated: February 05, 2025 03:26

In these battles you decide who is in melee range and who is supporting from the back. Melee fighters attack each other, whilst archers and spellcasters can attack without worrying about blast radius or friendly fire getting in the way. These battles are very forgiving – your burning hands spell will hit all the targets without the risk of hitting your fellow party members, and you can disengage from the front line whenever you wish. However, someone must always be fighting the monsters up close – you can’t all cower at the back!

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

Full Battles offer the classic 5E experience. You draw a copy of the map (or just buy some of ours) and place the enemy creatures and party members on the indicated starting positions. Each monster has a ‘Behaviour’ which tells you what actions it will take in battle. ‘Brute’ monsters just want to rush into combat, whilst ‘Skirmishers’ will be constantly on the move, daring your party to hit them with opportunity attacks as they change targets continually. As a player, you get to choose any actions you wish. Will you climb onto a building to snipe? Grapple a monster to stop it moving? Cast a spell with your own party members in the blast? You have the same combat options as in a regular game.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

No. You can swap out a player character with an NPC if someone is absent and swap them back in again when they return. There are places in the adventure where you can do this formally (such as inns and friendly camps) but you should feel free to do this when you need – it’s your game, after all!

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

Yes, although there is one restriction – your player character cannot fly. You also can’t learn the fly spell or select abilities that enable you to fly. We don’t want you to fly to Mordor … I mean, Oldstanding … in the first session!

Last updated: February 05, 2025 03:26

No – you must have at least one Player Character. NPCs don’t have inventories or keep track of experience points, both of which are important in the game.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

Yes. I’d recommend this only if you are a very experienced 5E player, and have the sort of brain that can cope with all the special powers so many characters would use. If you do this, I suggest that you make some of your PCs as simple as possible (Champion Fighters, Thief Rogues, etc) just so you don’t have to think about all their abilities every round. However, if you’re up for a challenge, then yes – you can control four PCs at the same time if you like.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

The game ends if all Player Characters have been slain. As long as at least one Player Character (not NPC) is still alive, you can carry on. You will get a chance at the start of each book to get replacement NPCs and Player Characters to bring you back up to four party members.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

Yes. You can play with one, two, three or four players. Your party will always have four members. For each missing player you can select an NPC to fill the gap.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

The book will award you with experience points whenever you overcome a challenge such as killing a monster or sneaking past an enemy. The tougher the challenge, the more XP you will get. You can level up when you take a long rest, provided you have enough XP to do so.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

If you are playing with other people, my favourite way is to share out the reading aloud. Have one person start, and then pass the book clockwise around the table each time you make a new choice. Make sure you have some miniatures to represent the monsters and players. Ideally, you’ll want about 12 ‘monsters’ and 4 ‘players’. A few ‘large size’ monsters would also be useful. You could always just use tokens to represent the monsters if you need to. Either use a dry-erase battle mat, or buy one of our map packs so you can get into combat quickly.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

It’s up to you, but I would suggest choosing NPCs that fill out gaps in your party roster. If you have no arcane casters, consider taking Saturnius. No healers? Millah would be useful here. Need a strong front line? Emerelle is a good choice. You don’t have to have a balanced party – but it helps!

Last updated: February 05, 2025 03:30

Yes. You can use this book with any halfway decent online tabletop emulator such as Roll 20 or Foundry. When you buy a map bundle with any DMR book, you also get access to the digital versions of all the maps. Just drop an image onto your online tabletop and stretch it to 16x20 squares, and bingo – you have your fighting area!

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

Maybe. It’s outside the scope of this project, but if it’s successful enough we’ll consider doing a conversion. However, you will get access to all the digital maps whenever you buy a map pack, so you can use these to make a rough and ready version on a VTT of your choice.

Last updated: February 05, 2025 03:41

You can play The Dark Moon Rises solo! Just create a single character and use three NPCs. You’ll have complete access to the entire campaign solo just as you would with four players.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

Not for this campaign. Other book series will have different NPCs. If you are confident with the system you could use NPCs from other books in the series, but you would have to do a little house ruling in order to make them compatible with this adventure. Mind you, that’s what D&D is all about!

Last updated: February 05, 2025 03:41

Subjective … but in my opinion, absolutely gorgeous. Our cover artist’s name is Jamie Noble. He doesn’t use any AI in his art (if you go onto his website, you’ll see many of his pieces in this book in the prototype stages). For the inside we have used the very talented Wills Shorten, who has a really retro style, working entirely in pen and ink. Gwyneth Thomas returns for our much loved character art.

Last updated: February 05, 2025 03:41

You can buy printed versions of the maps as an add on in the Kickstarter, or in certain Pledges. You’ll get digital versions of the maps from each map pack when you buy from our Kickstarter or Backer Kit campaigns. These map packs will include digital images you can use with the various virtual tabletop systems.

If you want to see the quality of these maps, do take a look at the unboxing video on the Kickstarter page. Lots of people are planning to re use our maps in other adventures they run.

Last updated: February 05, 2025 03:41

Jamie Noble. He’s very good. Check out his website here - https://thenobleartist.com/

Last updated: February 05, 2025 03:41

There are a couple of ways you can choose your add-ons. When you select a tier, you can apply add-ons at the same time. If you want to add items later in the campaign, then just select ‘manage your pledge’, ‘change your pledge’, and add any item you wish.

You will also have a chance to increase your pledge and purchase add-ons when we send out our backerkit surveys, so don’t worry about missing out.

Last updated: February 05, 2025 03:41

We are running this campaign for the standard 30 days. This means the campaign will begin on Tuesday March 11th at midday GMT and run until midday GMT on Thursday 13th April 2024.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

We believe that this adventure is ready and the campaign is designed to get it into print and into the hands of players. The more ‘stuff’ we promise to give away during the campaign, the more chance we have of something delaying the eventual fulfilment.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

To post to Europe we will be fulfilling from either the UK or US or we would have found somewhere inside Europe, depending on prices at time of fulfilling. In either situation some countries in Europe charge higher rates than others but these costs fluctuate massively and so it is impossible to fix a price at this time. If we do not manage to get a European fulfilment centre, then we will be sending the items into Europe with the Duties and Taxes unpaid (DDU) and so any extra charges your country makes on the import of these items from outside of Europe will need to be covered by you in order for you to receive your item. Please be aware that by backing this Kickstarter you are agreeing to pay any extra taxes your country may charge you to receive the items sent by us. Refusal to pay the extra charge will result in the package being destroyed or returned to us. In either event you will lose the money you made on the original pledge as we will not be able to send you a second set. This agreement does not affect your statutory rights regarding faulty or missing items, which we will replace in both situations.

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

We would love to get DMR into the hands of as many players as we can but we have to see how much demand there is for the english language version first. We do have plans already in place though :-)

Last updated: February 04, 2025 09:11

No, we would love to, I mean who doesn’t like a good mini, but we are not in that business. There are so many fantastic providers of miniatures for D&D, we would definitely recommend using them.

Last updated: February 06, 2025 04:58

Please feel free to send us an email - [email protected]

Last updated: February 06, 2025 04:58