Shroud of the Avatar nears Kickstarter goal, will offer DRM-free offline single player

Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, an upcoming RPG from legendary developer Richard Garriott, is less than $100,000 shy of reaching its Kickstarter goal of $1 million. As of the timing of this post, the role-playing game, which looks to revitalize a stale genre, sits comfortably at $901,569 — with 22 days still to go.

Even better news, Garriott has assured that those who purchase the game through Kickstarter will not have to suffer through any form of DRM for the offline single player version.

"We had been holding off on committing to that because we don’t know what our final distribution system (Steam, GOG, etc) is going to be and some of them use DRM," he said. "We may have DRM of some sort on post-KS sales but we’ll commit to keeping KS versions DRM and “phone home” free for the single player version once launched."

Garriott also revealed that the game can be played offline as well, no internet connection required. However, the character you use for the offline version will not be playalb eonline, for obvious exploit/hacking reasons.

For more details, check out the official Kickstarter Page. Shroud of the Avataris currently planned for as a downloadable title for PC, Mac, and Linux, though there are plans to create some sort of tangible items like cloth maps.