That is quite challenging to pull off when everybody is sitting around a table talking to each other.” We can’t give away all of our secrets right now, but imagine things like hidden information.

There are many things that are pretty difficult to do in tabletop. “It is an integral part of the experience, not only for the players but for the GM as well. “I actually don’t like to think of this as a companion app,” Joe Bourrie said. But the more he described it, the less those comparisons made any sense at all. Joe Bourrie is working at this moment on the game’s mysterious “Living Tome System.” To hear him tell it, it should look and feel a little bit like a companion app - something similar to what you’d use to play XCOM: The Board Game or Descent: Legends of the Dark. So, for now at least, Hickman says that the business is effectively in hibernation. So, I know that there are efforts - ongoing efforts - to bring The Void back.” I think that still has a lot of value in the marketplace. As Joe and I worked at The Void, and worked on some amazing product at The Void, and saw the people going in and the way they came out, we used to say that people would go in adults and come out children. “I feel it was just too good a concept to go away. “The Void is not dead,” Tracy Hickman said. But all of those facilities are now closed, and if you visit their website.

Polygon toured their prototype in 2016, before they launched boutique Star Wars- and Ghostbusters-themed experiences around the world. Tracy Hickman and Joe Bourrie met working at The Void, a Utah-based virtual reality startup. “Joe and I are also huge Kickstarter fans,” said Tracy Hickman, who ran his own successful campaign for a board game in 2016. Together, the pair has already brought in more than $340,000 from backers across four projects. Both have experience on Kickstarter - Joe with his Syncoplay-branded retro game display stands, and Kim with 3D-printed dice towers and other tabletop gaming accessories. Kim Bourrie also worked at Electronic Arts, and on Fortnite. Joe Bourrie is a veteran game designer with experience at Electronic Arts and The Void, where he worked on Star Wars- and Ghostbusters-themed virtual reality experiences alongside Tracy Hickman. Working alongside Laura Hickman and Tracy Hickman is another married couple. That’s where Skyraiders’ techies comes in. There is mystery at the center of this new setting, and its designers’ lack of clarity is a feature, not a bug. Why is the sea so treacherous? What is dragon sylph, and how will players get more of it? Who are the ruling parties on Abarax, and how will they impact players at the table? Expect answers to some of those questions to arrive in the lead-up to their crowdfunding campaign. I pressed Laura Hickman and Tracy Hickman for more details. Skyraiders of Abarax will have lots of familiar races from D&D, but they’ll have very different features and capabilities. But it is the dream that sustains them, in terms of leaving this place and finding their way back home.” “All of have stories about their homelands in far distant places,” Tracy Hickman added, “which may or may not have been true. “This island was used not just by one nation, but several,” said Laura Hickman. No one is a native, and all of them were brought to Abarax from distant lands - for many different reasons. But everyone living there today is descended from that original colony. When the colony broke down, its captives were freed, and they either killed off or made alliances with their keepers. The Hickmans compare it to a kind of post-post-apocalyptic Australia, but geographically, it’s a lot smaller. More than 200 years ago, Abarax was a penal colony, but mysterious circumstances freed its prisoners. 12, and Polygon can exclusively reveal some of the first details.Īt the core of the setting is a single massive island called Abarax (pronounced AH-buh-rox). Now the Hickmans have a new project called Skyraiders of Abarax, a unique setting with a ruleset based on 5th edition D&D. That includes Barovia and its iconic ruler, Strahd von Zarovich, and the world of Krynn, the setting for Dragonlance. Husband-and-wife team Tracy Hickman and Laura Hickman have brought some of Dungeons & Dragons’ most beloved worlds to life.

Descent legends of the dark 3d print