K-Pop Demon Hunters D&D Kickstarter pulls inspiration from unexpected places

Welcome to Idols of the Neon Dark

Like many dads with young daughters these days, Dan Thut spends a lot of car rides skipping through the best songs from Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters, along with plenty of other K-Pop hits.

Having played Dungeons & Dragons for nearly four decades, Thut has been fielding questions from his daughters (the oldest is almost 7 years old) for quite some time now about the game. What is daddy doing? Can I play with these little toys (miniatures)? Daddy when can we play Dungeons & Dragons?

“My kids know that ‘Daddy plays Dungeons & Dragons,’ and they want to play with me,” Thut told Polygon in a video interview. “That creates this tension: How do you bring them into the hobby in a way that feels native to them, not just a watered-down version of my nostalgia?”

The solution was to leverage elements of the franchises, games, movies, and shows his daughters already enjoyed in an effort to try and build a unique, kid-friendly setting. That evolved into “Idols of the Neon Dark: A 5E+ K-Pop Fantasy Adventure” described as “a neon-fantasy 5E D&D adventure where K-Pop idol-warriors fight demons with rhythm, style, and heart.”

Thut listed the project on Kickstarter on Dec. 12 as “upcoming,” without a dedicated launch date. “This is about testing the idea,” he said. “Do people want K-Pop D&D at all?” At the time of writing, of all upcoming projects on Kickstarter, Idols of the Neon Dark was listed in the top five most popular with hundreds of followers already.

As a longtime D&D player, Thut said he gravitates towards bards and other support-type characters, but he carries great passion for “moments where mechanics reward collaboration.” Sometimes a strategic Bardic Inspiration dice roll means the difference between defeating a foe and someone in the party going down. Or maybe a bard casts heat metal on a powerful enemy’s armor to subdue them just enough for the Barbarian to succeed with a devastating attack. The best moments in D&D are about more than just relentlessly attacking enemies until they fall. It’s about the party leveraging unique skillsets to work in harmony.

“I love moments where mechanics reward collaboration, where you do something that helps someone else do something cool, and suddenly the table gets this big cinematic moment,” Thut said, adding that he’s spent a few years developing a TTRPG system where roleplay and mechanics reinforce each other, offering rewards when players collaborate successfully, something he says he wishes D&D did better.

D&D isn’t necessarily a hyper-violent, mature, gore-filled affair. It really depends on the table. But wielding magic and blades against monsters is pretty inherent to the experience. You kill 'em ‘till they’re dead. What if the game instead emphasized cooperation and harmony, both literally and figuratively, with plenty of music mixed in for good measure?

At face value, yes, Idols of the Neon Dark can let kids and adults alike live out their dream of playing a version of Rumi, Mira, and Zoey from HUNTR/X in D&D. The module is a 120+ page sourcebook that introduces a Demon Hunter class with three subclasses all designed to work in unison. In the accompanying narrative adventure, players assume the role of K-Pop idols by day and demon hunters by night in the cavern-city of Lumenica, which is full of neon-colored runes and sigils driving back the darkness.

“The Demon Hunter class is designed so that the subclasses can support one another,” Thut said. “If players roleplay into harmony — literally working together in ways to support the narrative — they unlock mechanical benefits. The subclasses each lean into martial, ranged, or the arcane, but they’re all built around collaboration.”

Rather than fixate exclusively on K-Pop Demon Hunters, Idols of the Neon Dark draws from the broader K-Pop scene that helped cement the Netflix film as one of this decade’s cultural touchstones.

“K-Pop is the cultural world my kids live in right now,” Thut said. “They love the music, the choreography, the costumes, and they’re fascinated by how intentional and coordinated everything is.”

Most of the episodic shows Thut’s daughters watch these days center on young women facing emotional or social challenges who often use a mix of magic and music to solve their problems. “And there’s this rhythm of daytime social roleplay and nighttime confrontation with danger,” he said. As a D&D experience, the Idols of the Neon Dark adventure seeks to replicate this rhythm.

The module also offers “Gore On/Off” options, so anyone can experience a more classic D&D adventure, and there’s also room for a more family-friendly approach for “young idols and their parents.” A surprising source of inspiration for that, Thut said, has been the hours he’s spent with his daughters in the last year playing the My Little Pony tabletop RPG, Tales of Equestria.

While most adults might dismiss it as a game for kids, Thut explained that Tales of Equestria delivers a deceptively tight and intentional narrative system in line with his vision for a more collaborative alternative to D&D. It emphasizes cooperation over optimization and emotional problem-solving with low-friction mechanics. Failure rarely leads to defeat in the traditional sense (“Stamina” replaces Hit Points). For Thut, that was proof that a tabletop RPG could remain engaging while shifting its focus toward shared problem-solving.

That thinking carries over into Idols of the Neon Dark in both tone and structure. The adventure is a gateway experience for newcomer parents and kids, but it’s also flexible enough to drop into an existing D&D world. For Thut, launching a Kickstarter like this is less about chasing a trend and more about planting a flag and seeing who shows up. He plans to release subclasses, monsters, and other mechanics publicly as development continues, letting potential backers see exactly how the project is taking shape. “This is about testing the idea,” he said. “If people like where it’s going, they’ll come along for the ride.”

Whether Idols of the Neon Dark ultimately becomes a breakout hit or a niche curiosity, its ambition feels distinctly of this moment, one where tabletop games are increasingly shaped by parents, younger players, and pop culture beyond traditional high fantasy. For Thut, though, the goal is simpler.

“If this becomes the way parents introduce their kids to D&D,” he said, “and those kids grow up remembering that they got to be heroes together, that’s the win.”

Thut hasn’t ironed out a firm launch date just yet, but hopes to launch Idols of the Neon Dark in early 2026.