D&D becomes a true space opera with Neon Odyssey

Avantris Entertainment's Neon Odyssey is already a huge hit on Kickstarter

The most radical thing about Avantris Entertainment’s new Kickstarter campaign isn’t that it’s a sprawling sci-fi Dungeons & Dragons campaign set in space. Everyone keeps trying to put D&D into sci-fi. Neon Odyssey isn’t just selling elves in starships or Cowboy Bebop vibes. It’s selling optimism and nostalgia, along with a pulsing synthwave soundtrack, in what’s ostensibly a neon-drenched hopepunk space opera.

That pitch appears to be working. Very well.

The latest project from the massively popular D&D actual play group behind The Crooked Moon reportedly crashed Kickstarter shortly after launch earlier this month, blasting through its $60,000 funding goal in under 30 minutes. At the time of writing, Neon Odyssey has raised nearly $9.9 million from more than 28,000 backers, with more than two weeks still left in the campaign.

For Avantris co-founder Mikey Gilder, the sheer scale of the response has still been difficult to process.

“We had a very robust pre-launch campaign,” Gilder told Polygon. “We were able to make some projections, but I think even in our most optimistic projections, we did not expect this level of support this quickly.”

The success of Neon Odyssey didn’t begin with a marketing strategy or even the project’s wildly successful animated synthwave trailer. According to Gilder, the original spark came from disappointment — or at least a feeling that existing sci-fi D&D settings weren’t fully delivering on the fantasy the team wanted.

“When Wizards of the Coast released the Spelljammer books, which are awesome, we realized it was trying to basically put D&D and fantasy in space, as opposed to the kind of science fantasy space opera that we wanted to do,” Gilder said.

That distinction became foundational to Neon Odyssey. Rather than simply dropping familiar fantasy archetypes into a galaxy full of laser guns, Avantris rebuilt huge portions of the D&D experience from the ground up. Traditional classes have been reimagined as more overtly sci-fi archetypes. Fighters became Soldiers. Rogues became Scoundrels. Paladins evolved into Enforcers, cosmic lawkeepers powered by personal codes and ideology instead of divine faith. Wizards transformed into “Gridrunners” who manipulate reality by hacking into the setting’s galaxy-spanning digital network.

“A lot of people online say, ‘D&D is not meant for sci-fi. Just create a new system,’” Gilder said. “But we love playing Dungeons & Dragons. Our fans play Dungeons & Dragons. We wanted to create a setting that would pull on space opera, pull on science fantasy, and still have that fun nostalgia, optimism, and hope.”

That optimism became especially important after years spent developing The Crooked Moon, Avantris’ deeply bleak folk-horror setting.

“After spending three-and-a-half, four years in the dourness of folk horror, we were looking for something fun, optimistic, nostalgic, hopeful, and colorful,” Gilder said.

Even the setting’s emotional tone was shaped by the media Avantris grew up loving. Gilder pointed to Star Wars and Cowboy Bebop as major touchstones, not just aesthetically but philosophically. In the game’s cinematic trailer, a purple-skinned mechanic bears a striking resemblance to Jet Black from Cowboy Bebop. There’s even a long-eared elf that oozes cool like Spike Spiegel, same haircut and all.

Gilder described Star Wars as a perfect expression of mythic heroism and cinematic adventure, while Cowboy Bebop introduced a more grounded melancholy that helped shape the emotional core of Neon Odyssey.

“A big part of nostalgia is this wonder that we feel and this love that we feel for the past,” Gilder said. “But there’s also the melancholy and wistfulness of times gone by.”

That blend of sincerity, style, and emotional accessibility may also explain why the project has resonated so strongly beyond traditional sci-fi fans. Gilder said that Neon Odyssey was designed for people who normally prefer fantasy settings over harder science fiction.

“Speaking as someone who’s been more of a fantasy [fan] — stuff like Warcraft or Lord of the Rings — this is a setting that we created so that we would be excited to play in it and inhabit,” he said.

The result is something that feels less like a hard sci-fi conversion and more like a playable memory of the media that shaped an entire generation of nerd culture: anime bounty hunters, synthwave albums, Saturday morning cartoons, pulpy dogfights, and brightly lit arcades glowing somewhere beyond the stars.

Neon Odyssey’s Kickstarter campaign will end on June 3 at 11:50 p.m. EST.