Shotguns & Sorcery for 5^th Edition D&D is closing in on its 17^th hour left, with £29,826 of £7,447 and 773 backers. If you’re like me, you know Shotguns & Sorcery from the Cypher System version, and the talents of Matt Forebeck, Robert J Schwalb, and Monte Cook.

If not, well, here you go.

Wands’n’Guns

Shotguns & Sorcery is the brainchild of Matt Forebeck (New-York Times best-selling author, award winning game designer, and writer of such things as D&D, Halo, Minecraft: Dungones, and even Biomutant). It started out life as stories and novels from Matt, then became an RPG with the aid of Monte Cook and the Demon Lord himself: Robert J Schwalb (D&D, Shadow of the Demon Lord, and more).

As Matt says, “It’s a comic book and an art book too.”

Matt describes the infancy of Shotguns & Sorcery here, “It started out as a d20 setting I came up with for D&D 3E back in 2001. While I was working on it, my wife became pregnant with quadruplets <ahem!>, and I had to shelve the project for obvious reasons. (They’re all 19 these days and doing well, thanks!) “

Matt’s doing this Kickstarter to bring the game to a wider audience, and one of the widest in terms of system and appeal is D&D 5^th Edition.

So, with the help of Marty (Matt’s son, and the quad’s oldest brother) Matt has created a 5^th Ed version of the setting. It has new fiction, new classes, new weapons, new magic items and all the things you need to bring Dragon City to life. It’s a big book, 256 pages of fantasy noir fun as they say.

The book comes complete with everything you need:

• Full-color artwork throughout. 
• A overview map of Dragon City. 
• Brand-new Shotguns & Sorcery fiction vignettes. 
• An entirely revamped racial system, including 16 playable races, featuring 2 entirely new ones: mermen and beastmen.
• A brand-new character class, plus rules to make standard 5E classes fully compatible with the setting.  
• 14 new character backgrounds.
• Cults as new organizations within Dragon City     
• Guidelines for handling religion within the setting.
• Every single magic item, monster, and NPC from the original Shotguns and Sorcery RPG and the Monsters & Mean Streets supplement, converted to 5E.
• Revamped gunplay rules, including at least a dozen new guns and weapons.
• Loads of campaign hooks. 
• Additional detail on the geography and history of the Dragon City setting.
• A 5E version of the original adventure Miners & Mobsters. 

What the heck is it?

Shotguns & Sorcery is a heady mix of high fantasy, and Mike Hammer style hardboiled noir. It’s packed with freelancers, and wizards, who skulk through the streets of the game’s setting – Dragon City – and explore the dangerous dungeons. They hang out in glowglobe illuminated speakeasies and swap tall tales of their exploits. The use pistols and wands, as well as other magic items.

Where’s it Set?

We’ll let Matt’s writeup talk you through this one, because honestly, we love it.

“It’s set in Dragon City, a walled metropolis that stands as the last bastion of civilization in a continent overrun by the undead. Five hundred years ago, a zombie apocalypse instigated by a necromancer known as the Ruler of the Dead swept across the land, swallowing everything in its path. The survivors gathered at Dragon Mountain and cut a desperate deal with the monster who gave the place its name: protect us from the undead long enough for us to build a wall around the mountain, and we’ll make you the emperor of the city-state we’ll found inside of it. 

Centuries later, the undead still scratch at the stones of the Great Circle, but inside Dragon City, life continues on under the Dragon Emperor’s watchful eyes. People have problems to solve, ruins to explore, and treasures to find. That’s where the heroes come in. “

There are just 17 hours to go as of the time of this writing, so jump on in to some Dragon City fun with Shotguns & Sorcery here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/forbeck/shotguns-and-sorcery-for-5e