Felicia Day Is Bringing The Guild Back…For A Ren Faire

Felicia Day wasn’t just a common sight in every 2000s genre show, she was also an online media pioneer at the same time. The Guild, barely younger than YouTube, was her satirical take on MMOs and the people who play them. It ran for seventy episodes over six seasons, sold tons of merchandise, and paved the way for similar creations to achieve even greater fame. Day founded Geek & Sundry, which first carried Critical Role in 2015, which led to….everything.

Despite all this, Day confesses she feels…underappreciated. The outfit she wore as Codex is in the Smithsonian, and she tells a story about going there, standing next to it and waiting for someone to squeal. Apparently she just waited there for a long time and no one ever noticed. To be honest, Day, even though your viewership was in the millions, the odds are low the average museum visitor would be in the cultural zone that’s familiar with The Guild. The fact that no one noticed Felicia Day was in the room PERIOD means she was surrounded by Facebook grannies and Bachelor viewers.

She’s had offers to “revive” her series with major studios, but she’s turned them all down, because they usually want to change something. Day wants to hold total creative control over The Guild forever, and if it ever comes back, it will be on her terms…and if that means the same shoestring budget as the original, well, it worked before. A Kickstarter has launched today for The Guild: Ren Faire’d, a new feature-length adventure for Codex and her old crew.

Why a reunion at a ren faire? Because Day doesn’t play MMOs anymore. She says these days she’s more into farming sims like Stardew Valley, but reuniting the cast at a ren faire made sense: they are “a beloved corner of geek culture that has rarely taken center stage on film” — something that once described MMO culture.

But the Kickstarter isn’t just about the movie. It’s intended to fund a whole swath of new The Guild-branded ventures, such as:

• Swords & Sweethearts, a dating-sim card game created by Ryan Copple and developed in partnership with Scrungo Games, the licensing division from the team behind Cyanide & Happiness and Joking Hazard
• A collected The Guild graphic novel omnibus from Image Comics with original cover by Leila Del Duca
• A 120-page The Guild tabletop roleplaying game written by Vince Caso and developed in partnership with Hit Point Press, along with art from Dan Gartman and Pauliina Hannuniemi
• Custom 7-piece dice set with nods to the each main cast members
• A collectible “Poopcorn” popcorn bucket inspired by the film’s ren faire setting designed by Ryan Lesser at Wild Power Games
• A cast signed movie poster illustrated by Adam Allsuch Boardman
• A signed and bound version of Felicia’s personal production script, with all the marks and doodles
• A campaign-exclusive T-shirt designed by Sam Prentice Jones, blind-box enamel pin collection by David DePasquale, and sticker set by the original Guild character artist Erik McKenney
• A three-disc, 20th anniversary Blu-ray of the original with new content
• Additional digital rewards, collectibles, add-ons, and campaign-exclusive experiences

Any or perhaps all of these can be yours if you pledge during the campaign period. It’s already busted its lofty goal of $1.5 million within its first few hours, and is climbing every second.