Khoras is a fictional fantasy world of wizards and knights, castles and dragons. It is a creative endeavor... a mixture of writing and art, fueled by imagination. Khoras can be used as a campaign setting for role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, GURPS, Lord of the Rings, Rune Quest and others.
If you've come this far, chances are you already know. But just in case... a campaign setting is NOT a role playing game in and of itself. It is not a play-by-email game, or an online video game.
Khoras is, simply put, a world! A fictional world intended to be used as a tool for helping add depth to the role playing experience. In a role playing game such as Dungeons and Dragons, players assume the identities of heroic fantasy characters: brave warriors, clever wizards, and the like, all working together towards a common goal. The World of Khoras campaign setting is designed for use with good old-fashioned dice-and-paper role playing games. It can be the world these characters live in and explore, and help every game come to life!
Most campaign settings are published in book format. The World of Khoras, however, is an exclusively online entity.
Khoras went online in May, 1997. Over the years, Khoras has grown into one of the best developed campaign worlds in role playing and has been the campaign setting of choice for dozens of gaming groups in many countries.
Khoras is systemless. It focuses on details of the world, rich cultures, fascinating locales and vivid characters. Artificial number systems are not important.. It's one of the many things that makes Khoras unique. No role playing game is perfect. Everyone has their favorite. Most of us look for a game that is realistic, simple, fast-paced and that works for every situation without need for further modification. And not everyone plays d20. We want this web site to be accessible and useful to everyone, no matter which particular game they prefer.
Every role-playing game is essentially the same thing... a system of rules designed to simulate reality. If you try to describe a human warrior in 5 different role playing games, you will have 5 different sets of stats describing various things like strength, speed, weapon skill, damage done in combat, etc. Let's say he's a strong man... In one game he might have a strength of 16 on a scale from 3 to 18. In another game he might have a strength of 85 on a scale from 0 to 100. But in the end, you're talking about the same man, the same strong arms. The numbers should be secondary to that. What matters most to us is intention of character, and how that character relates to his or her own world.
Therefore, in the World of Khoras, everything is described in real language. It leaves the Game Master and players free to fill in the numbers using their own favorite game system. It enables us as creators to abandon number-crunching and "min-maxing" in favor of painting a picture, creating the impression of a unique, highly-detailed world that makes one want to leap through the computer monitor and explore!
Size and depth of detail. Of all the fantasy campaign settings available on the web, Khoras is the largest and most thoroughly detailed we've seen. Khoras currently weighs in at over 2 million words of original content, over 1,000 HTML pages, almost 1,500 graphics and over 15,000 hyperlinks. And, of course, it's still growing. Khoras is a living, breathing online presence that is continually expanded with monthly updates.
We have a brand new Community Section along the top navigation bar to address just that. Check out our new Forum to post messages, share campaign notes and get in contact with other players who have trod the roads of Khoras.
I'm a Game Master who could use some help. Do you offer any "adventure modules" I could take my players through?
Once again, check out our new Community Section. The "Tools for the DM" section contains all manner of free adventure hooks to help stir your imagination, showcasing the many possibilities for your gaming group in Khoras. There's even a long-range multi-session campaign, "Quest of the Avisarr", completely detailed out for you.
Yes. Maps for all three Khoras continents and the entire world are available. They measure 11" x 17", are full color and can be yours for $5.00 USD. (to cover printing and shipping costs). If you'd like to inquire about the maps, email us for full details.
The entire site is built, uploaded and maintained using Microsoft FrontPage 2002. The graphics programs we use are Adobe Photoshop 7.0, , Adobe Acrobat, Bryce 4 and Hash's Animation :Master.
The maps were done completely in Adobe Photoshop. www.adobe.com. The short answer is that I scanned in a hard drawn copy of the original map and then added layer upon layer of color in Photoshop. Each element (mountains, rivers, hills, desert) was a separate layer. For a more detailed explanation of how the maps were created using Photoshop, refer to How The Maps Were Created.
This page last updated Monday, October 08, 2007. Copyright 1990-2008 David M. Roomes.