An Arthurian Campaign Setting

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After the many woes with which many referees are familiar, I started working on a different kind of campaign setting.

Creating ream after ream of place-names, NPCs, demographics, and adventures that would never be used - that felt completely fabricated and inauthentic after pouring out hours of work. Creating races and monsters and magic and kingdoms and peoples that felt eternally bland and uninteresting compared to the real world despite their fantastic elements. Chasing the ever elusive rabbit of creating a world that appears to be an organic emergency, not a construct. Just creating a map that didn't look like an ink-blot test.

All of those things nearly drove me insane until I realized the obvious:

Nothing is more interesting than the real world.

 Designing a setting based on the real world removes all of the tedious busy-work of setting creation, and allows one to focus on the fun: magic and swords and kings and chivalry and faeries and devils. Thus, my Arthurian setting.

Why Arthur in Albion? I think it is cool. I like how the British Isles are shaped and I like the story, simple as that.

Every kingdom, barony, city, town, and village has a real name. A name with etymological history. The NPCs have survived the test of time and are filled with archetypal meaning. The corpse of Arthur's legend is ripe with adventure and vague enough to allow creativity. Players will feel that fantastic reality, the truth of the fiction.

This blog will be my creative dumping grounds. You will see monsters, items, spells, factions, nobility, villages, ruins, NPCs, and everything else that this setting needs. Castle generators, random encounter tables, and useful lore.

Hopefully, all of this will lead to the publication of a setting book, but we'll see.

In the meantime, rip-off everything I share; tell me why you like it and why you don't. In the end, we might end up with something pretty good.

Here's a little teaser made with HexKit.

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