About The Project
The Streets of Avalon is a tabletop roleplaying project focused on city play, hard choices, and stories that grow from the ground up. It is not just a setting or a rulebook. It is an ongoing exploration of what happens when a city is treated as a living thing that remembers what players do to it.
Avalon is a place of light and shadow. Lanterns hold back a real darkness. Neighborhoods develop reputations. The people in power make plays, lose ground, and respond to pressure. The city does not wait for heroes. It reacts.
This project exists to support games about urban survival, investigation, smaller stories, and how choices have consequences rather than power fantasy or world-saving epics.
About the Streets of Avalon RPG
Streets of Avalon is a setting and game built around:
- Street-level fantasy and urban danger.
- Investigations, heists, and dangerous places.
- A city where the powers that be take action even when the PCs aren’t and many choices ripple outward to impact the city.
- Tools that help GMs run city adventures
- Stories where the city changes and remembers
The project includes setting material, mechanics, scenarios, podcasts, blog posts, and community conversations about the game and setting. Everything is built to be used at the table first.
The Original Streets of Avalon
The original Streets of Avalon book is a city setting built for 5th Edition play. It focused on a massive gothic city filled with districts, factions, rumors, and adventure hooks. That version proved that Avalon resonated with players and GMs who wanted grounded city stories with teeth.
Over time, the limits of that structure became clear. The city wanted more flexibility. The stories wanted more pressure and consequence. The mechanics wanted to support investigation, heists, the time between scenarios, and more flexibility in play.
The New Version
This current version of Streets of Avalon is a reimagining and expansion of the original idea.
Rather than treating Avalon as a static setting, the new version treats it as an evolving system. The focus has shifted toward:
- Player-facing mechanics
- Tags and narrative pressure instead of heavy stat blocks
- Prep tools for scenarios, NPCs, and neighborhoods
- Downtime and long-term consequences
- A city that responds visibly to player action
This version is its own game, built to be a mix of old school and story game meshed together to provide the best low fantasy urban noir experience we could make.
Our Story
Streets of Avalon was born out of years of running urban campaigns that never quite behaved the way traditional fantasy systems expected them to. Cities created different problems. Players cared more about people than plots. The most memorable moments came from choices that carried consequences session after session.
The project grew through home games, convention play, podcasts, and community discussion. Each version of Avalon has been shaped by what worked at the table and what did not. Nothing here exists because it looked good on paper. It exists because it survived play.
This is why The Streets of Avalon continues to evolve. The project is not chasing a finished state. It is building a toolkit and a setting that can grow alongside the people using it. In the end we hope to hear and see what you folks bring to Avalon that we didn’t imagine.
Streets of Avalon is built by two people and their friends who’ve playtested the various versions of the game we’ve played over the years.
Brett invented the city and has been running and playing games in Avalon for over 20 years.
Chris created this version of the game and has been playing and running games in the shadow of the clock tower for a decade now.
Brett and Chris are both some flavor of designer, writer, and creator with a strong belief in being quality game masters. They’ve both talked about the subject extensively on hundreds of podcast episodes and they care deeply about how games actually feel at the table.
We believe good RPG design should:
- Support the GM by giving them flexibility in rulings instead of pining them to static outcomes
- Give players meaningful choices
- Embrace consequence rather than avoid it
- Leave room for the table to make the world their own
Ongoing Development
Streets of Avalon is an active project. New tools, revisions, and resources are constantly being developed through playtesting and community feedback. The website, playtest materials, podcast, and blog are all part of the same ongoing conversation.
If you are here, you are already part of that process. Thank you and tell us about your Avalon or Urban Fantasy games
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