This is the home of Pyram King, writer, tabletop RPG designer, and traveler. Exploring how history, place, and lived experience shape game design.
Here you’ll find essays, design notes, and long-form reflections centered on:
- Legends of Barovia — a gothic expansion and reinterpretation of Curse of Strahd
- Legends of Saltmarsh — a grounded reimagining of Ghosts of Saltmarsh in the World of Greyhawk
- Iron & Myth — a gritty, human-centric TTRPG inspired by medieval Europe
(working title: Medieval 5e) - Game theory, referee craft, and mechanical design
- How real history, travel, and landscape inform myth, play, and storytelling
This site serves as a workshop, journal, and archive, a place where rules, rulings, history, and experience intersect.
About the Work
I’m the author of Legends of Barovia, a widely downloaded expansion of Curse of Strahd, and Legends of Saltmarsh, an expanded take on Ghosts of Saltmarsh set in the World of Greyhawk. Both projects weave lore, politics, factions, and adventure design into living settings where atmosphere, consequence, and player agency matter. The goal is to create worlds that respond to player choices, not static backdrops.
All core content is released as free PDF guides and online references for the community. Supporting members help make that possible and, in return, gain access to additional formats including Digital Asset packs, Foundry Adventure Modules, LegendKeeper and Markdown files, and ongoing expansions. If you find the work useful at your table, consider becoming a member to support its continued development.
My current long-term project is Iron & Myth (working title: Medieval 5e)—a low-fantasy tabletop roleplaying game built around a grounded, gritty medieval world while retaining familiar d20 mechanics. The system draws directly from medieval history, folklore, and fortification design, particularly 11th–14th century Portugal and Spain, and from decades of running games where survival, context, and hard choices matter more than power curves or character builds.
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About Me
I began playing tabletop RPGs in 1982 with Moldvay B/X and Traveller, cutting my teeth on classic TSR modules in the worlds of Greyhawk and Ravenloft and occasionally far stranger places. Those early games were shaped by the zeitgeist of 1980s cinema and literature: Conan, Excalibur, Blade Runner, Alien, The Empire Strikes Back, In the Name of the Rose, along with the works of Moorcock, Leiber, Haldeman, and Asimov.
The characters weren’t chosen heroes, they were survivors. You didn’t play demigods; you played people scraping by on wit, grit, and bad odds. That philosophy still guides my design today.
In 2020, I began publishing adventures and campaign material for D&D and system-agnostic play, eventually producing over 40 adventures for Foundry VTT. Alongside this work, I write about referee craft, game structure, and how historical reality can inspire role-playing games.
Born to foreign-exchange teachers, I became a traveler early. My life has taken me across Southeast Asia, the Trans-Siberian Railway during the late Cold War, Central American uprisings, Pacific volcanic islands, the summit of Kilimanjaro, and served in the Persian Gulf. These experiences, paired with literary influences such as Burton, Lawrence, Hemingway, and Hesse, continue to shape my writing and design with a strong sense of place, uncertainty, and survival.
I currently live in Portugal with my partner, where I write, hike, film, and explore medieval castles, bringing history and myth to the table, one game at a time.