Camelot Cosmos: RELEASED!

The Camelot Cosmos Players Guide is a role-playing setting book designed for use by players of the FATE role-playing system; though it can be easily converted to other systems if required. This book gives all the information players need to create characters and to explore the realms that make up the Camelot Cosmos.

The first section describes the rules system being used, and subsequent sections cover the places, personages and other key features of the setting.

The GM’s guide provides the secret background and more in depth detail about the setting of The Camelot Cosmos including organisations, history, artefacts, persons of import, the realms and a quest/mission generator and guide.

These books detail the Camelot Cosmos, a section of space containing a collection of planets which have been very heavily influenced by the Arthurian legends of King Arthur, Merlin, Uther Pendragon, Lancelot and all the other characters familiar to us from the literature of Sir Thomas Mallory and the romances of the Middle Ages. These legends have, however, been confused with real people and events in the imagined history of the setting so that the understanding of the deeds of King Arthur held by a well-informed reader today may differ markedly from the legend as presented in these pages.

Imagine a world where loyal knights of King Gawain XXIII fight an endless battle against the android soldiers of an undying Morgan le Fay.

Imagine a world where magical Doors transport spies and armies between distant planets in the blink of an eye and where thousands of humans from a lost technological civilisation sleep in cryogenic stasis deep beneath the surface of a green and pleasant land.

Imagine a future that sees our own time as a lost golden age, and that is slowly rebuilding human civilisation after its near extinction.

Imagine a world where monks pick through irradiated shopping centres for the secrets of the ancients, and where skill in the joust can decide a man’s social status.

Imagine Arthurian knights in space, and you have some sense of what the Camelot Cosmos is intended to be.

PDF:

Player’s Guide

GM’s Guide

Print:

Player’s Guide

GM’s Guide

The PDFs will soon be available at E23, IPR and Paizo if those are your preferred outlets.

Camelot Cosmos: An Introductory Excerpt

What is the Camelot Kosmos?

“King Gawain XXIII is a good and wise ruler, for he looks as a King should to the best examples of the past in order to guide his own actions. He knows the deeds of the Round Table better than any man living, I warrant, save the Arch-Bishop himself.”
– General Perudur Sweetwater, Camelot

The second chapter of the Player’s Book details the Camelot Cosmos. A section of space containing a collection of planets which have been very heavily influenced by the Arthurian legends of King Arthur, Merlin, Uther Pendragon, Lancelot and all the characters familiar to us from the literature of Sir Thomas Mallory and the romances of the Middle Ages. These legends have, however, been confused with real people and events in the imagined history of the setting, so that the understanding of the deeds of King Arthur held by a well-informed reader today may differ markedly from the legend as presented in the book.

Imagine a world where the loyal knights of King Gawain XXIII fight an endless battle against the android soldiers of an undying Morgan le Fay.

Imagine a world where magical Doors transport spies and armies between distant planets in the blink of an eye and where thousands of humans from a lost technological civilisation sleep in cryogenic stasis, deep beneath the surface of a green and pleasant land.

Imagine a future that sees our own time as a lost golden age, and that is slowly rebuilding human civilisation after its near extinction.

Imagine a world where monks pick through irradiated shopping centres for the secrets of the ancients, and where skill in the joust can decide a man’s social status.

Imagine Arthurian knights in space, and you have some sense of what the Camelot Kosmos is intended to be.

Within the books you will find descriptions of the various planets which exist within the Camelot Cosmos, together with all the rules necessary to play characters and run adventures in this setting. Players should note, though, that all of the information about the setting is written twice. Once, in the Players Guide, in a way that represents the common understanding of an average person living in the time of the Camelot Cosmos, and once more, in the GM’s Guide, in a way that reflects knowledge of the secrets and truths available only to those ‘in the know’. For a proper enjoyment of the setting, it is recommended that players do not read the GM’s Guide as so much enjoyment can come from the uncovering of secrets.

Camelot Cosmos: Design

In producing the art and design for Daniel Jupp’s ‘Camelot Cosmos’ we decided to go for a Beardsley-esque style, since he was quite famous – in part – for his illustration of Arthurian legend, upon which Camelot Cosmos draws. I wanted a stark, old-school look to the books, even though they’re for a Space Opera game of adventure, warfare, questing and romance and even though they use a (heavily modified) FATE system, which is thoroughly modern. Raven did us proud there and continues to develop and improve as an artist while maintaining her own distinctive style.

While Agents of SWING has come in for some stick over its design choices, I liked the stark, minimalist approach there and I wanted to keep things relatively simple for Camelot Cosmos as well. Of course, ‘simple’ and ‘Art Nouveau’ don’t go together particularly well but I also wanted to reference the ‘lost technology’ theme and was inspired, in great part, by A Canticle for Leibowitz. In a memorable few scenes in that the initial lead character slaves over an illuminated manuscript of a circuit board pattern and this clash of medieval artistry and modern technical design has always stuck with me.

It is quite, quite possible that I over-think things!

The interior won’t have spot illustrations but, rather, will have ‘plates’, prefacing each chapter. This will make it a bit of a ‘text heavy’ book (though I’ll lighten that with the tables and sidebars) but having the art mark the chapter should, in theory, make flipping through the books to find things visually easier in the ‘dead tree’ version.

This is a big work. Daniel has put a lot of work into it and the ‘secret’ background of the world is sufficiently important that this will be our first book that is split into the traditional Players/GMs guide.

For your examination and comment, I include the covers to the two books and a mock up of an interior page.

You should be able to click to see larger versions of the images.