Camlann

Welcome to Camlann.

Camlann is a Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting that I wrote in my sophomore year of college. Back then we played for two semesters and called it "Arthur Rex". In some ways, Camlann is a return to what fascinated me about D&D as a kid. I wrote it because I wanted a return to a paranoid dungeon-crawl style of play. I envisioned death to be commonplace, magic to be fascinating and rare, and heroes to be candles in a vast darkness.

The Dark Ages worked well for this, granting me paranoia while encompassing a way of life that was, of course, "Nasty, brutish, and short." Using Arthurian legend culled from every decent source I could find, I worked out an acceptable timeline and did some brisk research of the history. The resulting setting is one that a DM and characters can all appreciate, all the more so if the DM has a wealth of knowledge of Arthurian Britain and the PCs have none.

The style of the campaign, besides its low-fantasy heroism, is a sort of "Punk" atmosphere with lots of in-your-face scenes and characters. The idea is to create tension through uneasiness and use of extremely graphic imagery. This method of storytelling is something I feel that we've inherited from First Edition D&D and somehow forgotten. It is important, at least to me, that climactic scenes be violent, surreal, and noticable.

When I played Camlann, I used themes like Paganism and the Church, Order and Disorder, Civilization and Wilderness, Superstition, and lots of Arthurian themes like Magic, Chivalry, Glory, Honor, etc. Some of the modules themselves made heavy use of these themes but other than those instances the DM should really be able to infuse his campaign with whatever themes he likes.

Modules? Yes. Although the game was largely improvisational (as D&D should and always will be) I wrote at least some modules - enough for the first 5 levels or so. The whole campaign follows a loose story arc, with the PCs doing essentially what they want while being regularly pulled into the static main plotline. The modules aren't necessarily a part of the setting but they are cool, and they represent a large portion of the work I did.

I don't know if I'll ever use all the stuff I wrote for Camlann again. Most of the documents are sitting around in printouts, and I don't see myself scanning them in unless I find an OCR reader somewhere. I sure do love maintaining websites though, maybe I'll just keep up on this one.

Timeline | Items | Races | Classes | Map

john.senner@gmail.com