Are you bored of the humdrum D&D races or Pathfinder ancestries available in the core books and first-party supplements? Had it with elves, so over dwarves, bored to tears by dragonborn and halflings? You might want to check out the new BattleZoo Ancestries: Year of Mysteries from Roll For Combat, which is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter. The campaign promises a year-long subscription that will deliver a highly detailed new playable species for D&D and Pathfinder every month in 2026 - plus one extra, just as a treat.
The first two races will arrive in January, with an ethereal Will-'o-Wisp and a mysterious bonus species. After that, there are Mushie mushroom folk, cozy House Spirits, Serpentfolk (self-explanatory, really), Sea Serpents (which need way more explanation, frankly), Kushtaka shapeshifting otterkin, folkloric Imp tricksters, and more. The supplements come with rules for both the 2014 and 2024 versions of Dungeons and Dragons 5e, and Pathfinder 2e.
No physical product is available in the Kickstarter, but there are a lot of digital options. For a start, you can pledge to receive the subscription either as PDFs or as modules for the Foundry Virtual Tabletop for $59, or get both formats for $99. However you pledge, you get 650 digital tokens to use in VTTs, and animated tokens if you get the PDF and the modules. There's a $149 'Seeker of Mysteries' tier which comes with additional digital assets and 100 animated battle maps, for true digital fiends.
Each of the species supplements is supposed to tally up to around 7,500 words, for an 18-20 page PDF. If that's what gets delivered, across all thirteen supplements there should be as much content as in a 248 page book. Each supplement includes "in-depth lore", a description of the character's society, the traits and rules to build the character in game, and at least four new backgrounds (and origin feats) for the D&D 2024 rules.
Roll for Combat is pretty well established, and with no physical product, the promise of delivering something new every month seems quite achievable. Will receiving a book's-worth of new playable species spread out over a year be better than waiting and getting them all at once? Or would you rather pick and choose individual supplements, even if it means paying a higher price? We'd love to hear what you think in the Wargamer Discord community.