2026 really is the year of Legends of Avantris. The goofy giants of D&D actual play now have 2.81 million YouTube subscribers, just a hair’s breadth away from the powerhouse that is Critical Role. The team’s first crowdfunded project, The Crooked Moon, swept this year’s Ennie’s, with six awards for the sourcebook and its accessories. And we have to address the technicolor spaceship in the room – Neon Odyssey, the $16 million Kickstarter that smashed all records for TTRPG crowdfunding this summer.
Avantris’ Mikey Gilder tells me he’s both “thrilled” and “humbled” by all this success. Gilder (who many readers will know better as Chuckles the Clown, Gricko Grimgrin, Gary Goodberry, and many other monikers) is CCO of Avantris Entertainment, as well as Creative Director for both The Crooked Moon and Neon Odyssey. He’s intimately familiar with the creative and commercial decisions that made these books successful, and I was keen to pick his brain about why Avantris has taken D&D by storm.
Gilder refers to both sourcebooks as a “shared victory”. Avantris’ many Ennies (including Product of the Year and Best Publisher) were awarded for production values as much as design. “The Alchemy team did an unbelievable job with digital integration”, he tells me. “Xavier Collette did an unbelievable job on the cover, and Leonard Schellauf, who was the artist for The Crooked Moon tarot deck, knocked it out of the park every time.”
Similarly, Neon Odyssey was “the result of, once again, literally hundreds of people coming together to bring their talent, passion, and drive to this shared vision”. For Avantris, D&D is more than a set of rules; it’s a multimedia commune. Animators, actors, and artists push the medium forward as much as designers and Dungeon Masters.
Gilder says the success of Avantris’ art and accessories stems from a desire for “immersion”. “Dressing up and playing D&D really helps you get into character!” “To play a roleplaying game, you just need pencils and paper – or now, you can just use your phone – so it’s always obviously optional”, he says. “But accessories do help with immersion. It’s cafeteria-style – you can take what you want and leave the rest.”
Perhaps that desire for immersive play – the kind we see actual players enjoy – goes part-way to explaining a runaway success like Neon Odyssey. Avantris’ next D&D supplement is a vibrant scifi reskin of the core system. It translates fantasy DnD classes on a galactic scale, and it throws in a whole new, mechanics-supported setting to boot. It also offers card decks, VTT support, custom dice, miniatures, poster maps, playmats, pins, plushies, and more. If Avantris fans want tangible evidence of their imagination game, they don’t need to shop far.
These products present a premium way to play D&D, and Avantris’ Kickstarters prove people are willing to pay for it. One study shows the average Neon Odyssey pledge cost $328.60. While pledge prices ranged from $30 to $999, that top tier alone makes up 34% of Neon Odyssey’s total funding – and it had over double the backers that the minimum pledge did.
An official Dungeons and Dragons book costs $50 (or $30 if you want digital-only). Avantris’ crowdfunding numbers are lightyears away from the game’s standard revenue model.
Gilder believes the price fans are willing to pay for their games is on the rise. “Something we learned from The Crooked Moon was that, when you’re crowdfunding, if someone is extremely interested in your thesis, they want to look for ways to spend money”, he says. “As a consumer, I’m the same way.” “If it’s a board game, I want the ultimate edition. I want the premium components – I want to dive in and get the accessories to help with the immersion.”
“I think that, when it comes to what people are spending their hard-earned dollars on, people are more willing to invest in things that bring them joy”, he adds, “especially as times are becoming more uncertain”.
The emphasis on joy, too, is something Gilder thinks was instrumental to the campaign’s success. Clad in bright colors, Neon Odyssey offers a nostalgia-driven hopepunk take on D&D.
“We had always wanted to create a galaxy of optimism, color, music, and nostalgia, a love letter to the things that bring us together, that made us happy when we were young, and the things that will hopefully make us happy in the future”, he tells me. “With the way the world is, I think people are craving hope, and they seem to have resonated with our encapsulation of that vision.”
That ethos, combined with a willingness to provide premium, drove Neon Odyssey to new heights. Gilder makes it clear, however, that accessibility was also a top priority. “While people are willing to spend more, I believe you need to make sure there’s still an option for that person who just wants one PDF and nothing else”, he says.
“We’re learning there’s a huge variety of people getting into tabletop at every level of investment, but there shouldn’t be a big barrier to entry.” “Using a PDF and our imaginations should always be an option, and you should make that experience incredible – and be just as dedicated to those backers as you are to the ones that get the all-in box.”
Perhaps this is another latent lesson from actual play. After all, there’s no doubt it presents an easy gateway for games like D&D. Gilder himself first got immersed in the hobby by watching Critical Role. As he puts it: “you don’t have to get overwhelmed by the rules”. “You can just watch how it’s played and get excited about the worlds, the characters, and the interactions – and then dive into the crunch of the rules and learn how to play yourself.”
Success or no, Gilder still believes Avantris has more lessons to learn. “We made so many mistakes in the Crooked Moon”, he tells me, “every mistake that we possibly could have made, and it was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears”. (I tell him if The Crooked Moon was a mistake, with six Ennies and $4 million in funding, I can scarcely imagine what a success looks like).
“But those very painful lessons are well-learned lessons”, he continues. “Right now, we’re really focused on making Neon Odyssey as great as we possibly can.”
As for future projects: “we have a lot of different options and ideas, which is an exciting place to be, but nothing’s locked in, so the world is our oyster.” “You’re a learner as long as you’re alive, and so we’re always improving, always trying to better ourselves – and we’re excited to see what happens next.”
Want to talk more about Dungeons and Dragons or Legends of Avantris? We’re always happy to chat in the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
