Name Change

I've been pondering what a good name for the setting is. Flintlock Fantasy covers the genre, but isn't as evocative as the names of the traditional settings of D&D-past have been. Dark Sun. Spelljammer. Dragonlance. Planescape. Even Forgotten Realms.

So I wracked my mind coming up with a cool name that covers the concept. Something with gunpowder or cannons. In combination with fantasy or magic. And then it hit me. 

The Guns of Avalon. 

It implies cannons, gunpowder, warfare. And the Avalon-part implies the magic and mysticism of the Arthurian mythos. As it happens, the Pendragon rpg was a massive inspiration for this campaign in ways that will become apparant. And so - Guns of Avalon it is.

Now I need to place Avalon in my setting. As it happens, I have just the niche for it...

Mapbashing

 I've been struggling with my world map. In my mind, the map looked like a blown up and modernized version of Greyhawk's Flanaess, with two cradles of civilization east and west and a large body of water in the middle. I've been conceptualizing the campaign as "Three Musketeers except the age is the Napoleonic Wars and the theater is around the North Sea". I have a strong affinity for the North Sea and its bordering countries. Yet the tropes I want to emphasize - continental war, massive flintlock-armed forces, grand tactical operations - implied a landlocked setting.

The Napoleonic Wars were essentially a conflict between three empires, two of them landlocked (Russia and Austria), for control of a continent. I realized I had been conceptualizing this fantasy map the wrong way. Instead of putting a body of water at the center, I should put the landscape that armies cross at the forefront.

Empires or civilizations essentially cluster along major rivers or other bodies of water. The Roman Empire cradled the Mediterranean Sea. The ancient Egyptians settled on the Nile. So my fantasy civilizations should cluster around rivers or other waters also. Agreed, the North Sea does just that, but it incentivizes naval warfare whereas I am looking for continental conflicts.

So, inspired by a recent post on Spriggan's Den, I took to mapbashing. For the heart of the Celestial Empire I took the Danube, the second-longes river in Europe and central to a great empire of early modernity. For the Borgondian revolutionaries I took the Rhine basin, as it empties into the North Sea and I strongly identify the Borgondians with the Low Countries. And for the Kurgen hordes I turned to a combination of Russia and Scandinavia. And I mashed them up.

This is a work in progress, but already I can see the Hordes of Uzh marching south on the eastern shores of the Winter Sea while Orcish raiders harry the shores of Borgondia. Following the Graven River south to its source brings you to the Andunorean Watershed, and through Seraph's Gate to Aurora, the capital of the Celestial Empire with the Esther River at its heart. Imperial armies ready for battle as they strive to defend their holdings in the Black Spine Mountains.