D&D General Mystara's Grand Dutchy of Karameikos is filled with lore ready to be stolen!

[Madnick]

Having finished a mountain of work to complete the walkthrough of one of the best adventures for dungeons and dragons Night Below I needed a small break and there is no better place to lose one's self than a campaign setting that was lurking at the most dusty corners of my library.

Mystara is in my opinion had some of the best campaign setting material ever published. 14 Gazetteers with amazing art and even better lore that one can steal for their games. Locations, hooks, plots and interesting stories can be found in every other page.

I tried to pick my favorite ones from the first Gazetteer the Grand Dutchy of Karameikos before I dive into another huge adventure module to break it down. So Mystara's Grand Dutchy of Karameikos can be found here

 

[DarkCrisis]

Yeah the Gazetters are good stuff

 

[Staffan]

One of the cool things about Karameikos was the Shearing tradition. Basically, as a rite of passage upon reaching adulthood Traladarans are formally cast out of their families and sent off to make a living independently for a few years before rejoining their kin. Essentially, that's a common answer to the question "So, why are you out adventuring and not at home on the farm making babies?"

 

[Madnick]

I love it as well, its one of those little things that make Karameikos soooo good. The book is filled with little things like that make it awesome, and easy to take and use in any game you might play.

 

[guachi]

Huge amount of stuff in 64 pages. I fell in love on first read. And an awesome foldout map didn't hurt.

Current supplement writers should take note. Aaron Alston's supplement writing won't win awards for its prose but he's fantastic at putting piles of interesting, useful information in a small package.

Like the shearing ceremony mentioned. It's clearly there as a reason to adventure and provide adventure hooks but it also makes sense from a cultural standpoint. It's something you can imagine people actually doing.