The Free Kingdoms

Hail, traveler! Welcome to the Free Kingdoms! The Free Kingdoms can best be described as a campaign-setting in bullet points. What does that mean? What does it do for you?

...This. It does this:

• Most campaign settings try to be different. The Free Kingdoms does not. It is a modular campaign setting. There is little interdependence and interconnected concepts. Some people don't like this, but this allows you to pick and choose elements from the Free Kingdoms to place in your own games.

• And a modular setting brings with it a modular tone; one campaign in the Free Kingdoms might be a gritty, brutal survival story in the monster-haunted wilderness of Ironwall, while another could be a complex web of drama and intrigue between the noble families of Oster, or a series of magical misadventures in the baroque Free City of Ralindor.

• It is generic fantasy. There are a lot of amazingly unique settings in the world that depart from traditional Tolkien-inspired D&D-type stuff. The Free Kingdoms isn't really one of them. There are a few interesting details and divergent ideas (dwarves are asexual and elves are obsessed with suicide), but this setting is meant to be accessible and compatible to lots of games, and its content is designed to facilitate further details and ideas. Likewise, there are a lot of parallels to real-world concepts and ideas; this isn't intended to be lazy or boring, rather, it's supposed to provide shorthand so that readers can take basic concepts and fill in the gaps.

• A simple, shorthand-driven world allows players to create characters that resemble real people and leads to player-driven adventures. No amount of setting-details or clever world-building can compare to the dynamic impact of players and characters on the world.

• That having been said, this is just a mine of ideas. Campaign settings are meant to facilitate fun by providing a unique quasi-culture of their own. The Free Kingdoms is essentially a list of details designed to inspire players and Dungeon Masters in their own game.