Richard Garriott, a.k.a. Lord British, has been a household name for role players and PC RPG fans for over 30 years. He first came onto the scene in 1980 with the PC game Ultima, an RPG inspired by Lord British‘s love of Dungeons and Dragons. Over the next 19 years, Ultima spawned a trio of trilogies and the proto MMORPG Ultima Online that defined the genre and captured this writer’s imagination for several years. Seriously, if Blizzard Entertainment is the king of MMORPGs, then Lord British is the genre’s god. And in 2014, the god is coming home.

Lord British has announced a new RPG project called Shroud of the Avatar:Forsaken Virtues, and if you head over to Kickstarter, you can get in on this project on the ground floor. The project promises to bring RPGs back to their roots and features some of what Lord British deems are some of the cornerstones of an “Ultimate RPG”:

• Fully interactive virtual world – If it looks usable, it should do something.

• Deep original fiction – Ethical parables, cultural histories, fully developed alternate language text.

• Physical game components will be available: Cloth map, fictional manuals, trinkets.

• Multiplayer Online Game – which can also be played solo player / offline.

Backers of the project are promised some pretty sweet stuff; Of course you have to drop some serious dough to get the coolest toys this project has to offer. The good news is that all backers starting from the $30 First Responder package not only get a digital download of the game, but also get access to the alpha and beta stages of the development. But enough from me: I’ll let Lord British tell you the rest.

If you’re interested you can head on over to the Kickstarter and pledge some dough. The project already has 12,232 backers and has raised almost $800,000 already. I’ve put in for the Founder package myself!