Fantasy

Roughly medieval, give or take a century

The default tech level lands somewhere between a feudal village and a late-medieval port city. Think:

• Steel and leather. Swords, spears, axes, bows, crossbows. Plate for the rich, gambeson for the rest.
• Beasts of burden. Horses, mules, oxen, the occasional camel — and the occasional unwise mount choice.
• Light by fire. Candles, torches, lanterns, hearths. After sundown, the world is darker and braver than ours.
• Hand-made and hand-mended. Smiths, fletchers, tailors, scribes. Mass production is centuries away.
• Distance is measured in days. A letter to the capital takes a week; news from the next kingdom takes a month; rumours travel faster than either.

Gunpowder is a GM option. The default lean is muscle and steel — bow, blade, and bear-spear. If your GM wants it, a few crude firearms can creep in: a hand cannon, a brace of clumsy pistols, the occasional matchlock. Whether the setting has even heard of saltpetre is the GM's call. Anything past early flintlocks is out of scope for now.

No telegraphs, no railways, no electricity, no telephones. If your character can call for help, it's either by horn, by horse, or by something stranger.

From Atlantis to Camelot — a wide tent

"Roughly medieval" doesn't pin you to one map or one century. The same tech bracket fits an enormous range of settings — anything the medieval imagination could dream up or remember dreaming up. A few of the obvious ones:

• Mythical pre-history. Atlantis before the wave took it. The Hyborian Age of Conan — bronze and barbarians and tower-mages. Lost worlds your GM dreamt up last Tuesday.
• The Norse north. Long-ships in cold bays, gods who still walk, trolls in the fells, and the line between raid and ruin blurring with every passing winter.
• Arthurian Britain. Camelot, the Round Table, knights questing through a half-Christian, half-fey countryside. The Grail glimmers somewhere — or doesn't.
• Middle-earth and its kin. Tolkien-flavoured high fantasy: elves and dwarves, ancient kingdoms in decline, dark towers in the east, hobbits getting somewhere uncomfortable.
• Real history, fantasy frame. The Hundred Years' War with a witch in every other village and a wyrm in the Pyrenees. The Crusades with djinn at the gates. The Reconquista with werewolves on both sides.
• Default medieval Europe. Castles, monasteries, market towns — and witches in the woods, warlocks in the towers, dragons in the high passes. The classic.
• Anywhere else. Feudal Japan, the Silk Road, the Sahel kingdoms, the Aztec Triple Alliance — the engine doesn't care about the map, only the dial.

Some of these lean ancient (bronze and chariots), some lean late-medieval (full plate and crossbows). The system stretches comfortably across that span — pick the slice your GM is running and dress the weapons and armour to match.

What the medieval mind believed in, you can encounter

Here's the genuinely fun part. Anything a medieval villager would have whispered about by the fire is on the menu. The world is not empty between settlements.

• The shape-changers. Werewolves at the full moon, were-bears guarding sacred groves, swan-maidens trapped in their feathered cloaks.
• The hungry dead. Vampires that throne in ruined manors, restless ghosts haunting battlefields, draugr clinging to barrow gold.
• The great wyrms. Dragons of every flavour — wise, ancient, greedy, sometimes all three at once.
• The fair folk. Fae courts, hill-side trooping, changelings left in cradles, bargains you should not have made.
• The lower powers. Demons, devils, imps — and the cultists, hedge-witches, and desperate scholars who deal with them.
• The higher powers. Gods who sometimes answer. Saints whose relics work. Spirits of place who remember every wrong.
• The strange folk on the edges. Giants and trolls in the hills, kobolds in the mines, goblins in the deep woods, fish-men in the cold bays.

Not every campaign uses everything on that list. Most use a slice. Some use only one. That's a conversation for your first session with the GM.

Where the magic comes from

RpgMeister handles the supernatural through power flavours, each leaning on a different stat and a different worldview. A genre lists which flavours its characters may claim.

• Magic — the studied art. Wizards, witches, hedge-mages, sorcerers learning the true names of things. Built on Intelligence. Fantasy.
• Mental — the inner power. Seers, mystics, mesmerists, the rare individual whose mind reaches further than their body. Built on Willpower. Fantasy.
• Priestly — the borrowed light. Clerics, druids, oracles — those who channel a god or a saint. Built on Willpower. Fantasy.
• Shamanic — spirit-granted ceremony. Dust & Destiny genre. See Western.

Mechanics: Powers. Dice: Dice rolls.

Dial it up, dial it down

The same rules support very different vibes. Your GM picks the dial:

• Low-magic, gritty. A werewolf in town is a once-a-year crisis. Wizards are rumours. Plate armour costs a village. Steel is precious; trust is moreso.
• High-magic, epic. Spell-flinging mercenaries on every payroll. Dragons run mountain banks. The local cathedral resurrects the rich on Wednesdays.
• Fairy-tale, light-hearted. Talking foxes, helpful house-spirits, riddling crones at the bridge. The dice still bite, but the mood stays warm.
• Horror at the edges. Mostly medieval mundane — until you push the wrong door. What's behind it is older than the village, and it remembers you.

None of these need rule changes. They need agreement. Talk about the dial early.

Welcome to the world of swords, spells, and shadowed forests
The map ends where the rumours begin. Roll well.