World of Styria
WHAT IF THE WORLD REMEMBERED YOUR CAMPAIGN?World of Styria was built through decades of actual tabletop play. Once a year, one or two home tables may become credited, published history in a future Styria release.The world remembers. Now it can remember you too.Join the Expedition and get the complete Isle Beyond the Mist adventure free.
GET ISLE BEYOND THE MIST FREEJoin the Expedition and I'll send you the complete Isle Beyond the Mist adventure free.This offer is available to the first 50 Expedition members. Current members receive the adventure too.You'll also receive the Baxter Tetrix Interview, a high-resolution original creator map of Tremanar, new free releases, setting previews, stories from the Styria table, development updates, and Kickstarter news.
Visual disclosure: Current Explorer Edition: no generative-AI visual artwork. Creator-made Wonderdraft cartography. The definitive edition is planned with commissioned human artwork and professional cartography.
What is the World of Styria?
World of Styria is a living fantasy setting shaped through decades of tabletop play. It is a world of ancient empires, impossible cities, forgotten histories, dangerous gods, and creatures whose legends are sometimes safer than the truth.But “living” means more than an evolving timeline. Once a year, World of Styria will open a limited submission window for home campaigns. One or two tables may see something they created through actual play become credited, published Styria history in a future release.Styria has legends. It does not have protagonists. Now become one.
What's Coming
Styria Player’s Primer: Explorer EditionAvailable now as a free digital download.The Complete Player’s PrimerA complete pre-Kickstarter edition containing player-facing setting lore, cultures, faiths, character options, maps, and Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster rules.Founding 20 members receive this edition free. Details about the definitive edition will be announced with the planned Kickstarter.
What Dragons Keep
The first novel in The Ascension Cycle, an epic fantasy about an ancient dragon, a dangerous company of adventurers, and the forces that will reshape Styria. The manuscript is currently being submitted to literary agents.
Ready-to-Play Styria Characters
Five level-1 pregenerated characters for Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster, ready to use with the Styria Player’s Primer: Explorer Edition.
The download includes the complete five-character party plus individual two-page character sheets.
Free to download and use at your table.
PLAYER’S PRIMER:
EXPLORER EDITION
The Explorer Edition is a free 40-page introduction to World of Styria for Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster. It gives you the setting’s core history, peoples, faiths, places, and enough context to start exploring the world at your table.
WHAT’S INSIDE
Inside the Explorer Edition:
• A quick introduction to Styria and its history• The major peoples and cultures of the setting• Faiths, gods, and the forces shaping the world• Key regions and places to begin exploring• Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster character options and setting material• A look at the larger Definitive Player’s Primer now being prepared for Kickstarter
SAMPLE PAGES
READY TO EXPLORE STYRIA?
Explorer is free. Take it, read it, and see if Styria is somewhere you want to spend some time.If you want more, join the Expedition and I’ll send you the complete Isle Beyond the Mist adventure free while this offer lasts.
GM GUIDE DEVELOPMENT PREVIEWTANLIN HALSHINAI
Canon NPC • Pathfinder Second Edition RemasterYou’ve confirmed your email, so here he is.Tanlin Halshinai is a Creature 16 Mythic Dawn Elf samurai and majordomo of House Winter. He is one of the complete canon NPCs already written for the World of Styria Game Master’s Guide.The Game Master’s Guide has not entered production yet. The manuscript is materially complete, and it is planned as the next World of Styria book if the Player’s Primer Kickstarter funds successfully. Final editing, art, layout, and presentation are subject to change.
STORIES FROM THE TABLEStyria existed at actual gaming tables for decades before I ever thought about publishing it. A lot of its history was created by players doing clever, ridiculous, heroic, or occasionally deeply questionable things while I sat behind the screen trying to keep up.These are some of the stories we still tell.
MY FIRST WAR CRIME, WITH A BALLISTAThis was one of the first games I ever ran with Lucas as a player. He was about twelve, and the other player was thirteen.They were defending the walls of a town from some kind of invasion. I honestly don’t remember what was attacking them anymore. Lucas had been posted up with what I called a mini-ballista. Basically a big mounted crossbow on a swivel. I was running a game for a couple of kids, I wasn’t going to stop everything for a lecture on comparative siege weaponry.One of the invaders managed to get up onto the wall, so Lucas spun the mini-ballista around and fired at it.Natural 20.The way I handled crits back then, if you kept critting, you kept rolling. Lucas proceeded to roll something like three natural 20s in a row.At that point I just kept increasing the damage multiplier.He ended up doing around 80 points of damage to something that had maybe 25 hit points. This was a low-level game.So I described what happened. Gruesome enough to account for what he had just done, but not beyond what a twelve-year-old needed to hear.Lucas sat there for a second and then announced, boldly:“I think I just committed my first war crime, with a ballista!!!”
FLYING SO HIGH ON A MAGIC WING OF SWEETNESSThe party had just accidentally carried the prime aspect of evil somewhere he was specifically barred from going, which was already sub-optimal.One of the players had secretly summoned his likeness earlier and tried to negotiate with him. The Devil being the Devil, he managed to turn that conversation into a very open-ended agreement. The end result was that this player had unknowingly carried one of the biggest bad guys in the setting right into a place he otherwise could not enter.Baxter found out and there was a pretty huge argument. This was happening on Baxter’s ship, and eventually the other character made a physical move on him. So Baxter cut off one of his wings and then Sparta-kicked him off the side of the ship.I described him falling away from the ship spinning like one of those maple seed pods doing the little whirly-gig thing.Christian, who plays Baxter, immediately reached over, grabbed his actual guitar out of its case, plucked a few chords, and started making up a song on the spot. The only part I remember perfectly is “Flying so high on a magic wing of sweetness...” and then he just kept going, full guitar accompaniment, completely improvised.The game stopped for probably ten minutes because nobody could stop laughing long enough to continue.
I THOUGHT MY HEAD HAD MORE HIT POINTSThe party was exploring a dungeon and eventually came to a point where the only way forward was through an open doorway covered by a beaded curtain. The mage checked it out and detected dangerous magic on the curtain.Luthor, the fighter, was not impressed. He had a lot of hit points. His reasoning was basically that whatever happened, he could probably take it, so he was just going to stick his head through and have a quick look around.It was a disintegration curtain.He failed his save.The rest of the party reacted with various versions of staring at him, shaking their heads, and wondering why the fighter had just deliberately stuck the one part of his body he really needed through the obviously magical death curtain. Fortunately, Luthor had a card from the Deck of Many Things that let him avoid any situation once, so instead of becoming a headless lesson in listening to the wizard, he burned the card and survived.Afterward, with everyone still giving him grief about it, Luthor defended himself with:“I thought my head had more hit points.”
DOES IT SMELL LIKE FEAR?I was running the old-school Tomb of Horrors, and the party had found one of the false treasure areas. They could see this enormous gold couch that was worth something like 50,000 gold pieces, and of course they wanted it.The problem was the hallway leading to it. They asked me if there was anything odd about the hallway. That was the entire investigation. No Detect Magic. No rolls. Nobody poked anything with a ten-foot pole. They just asked me if anything seemed strange.I was trying to be a nice guy GM, so I told them there was a faint smell of fear coming from the hallway.Apparently everyone decided that sounded fine.They all marched straight into it.The hallway had a cloud of fear effect on it, and every single one of them failed the save. The whole party immediately turned around and ran. One player failed so badly that he dropped his gear and made it almost all the way back to the dungeon entrance before the fear finally wore off.That campaign was about twenty years ago, and people who played in it will still randomly ask:“Does it smell like fear?”They don't even have to be playing a game when they ask.