When you get a few gamers together, it's a good bet they won't entirely agree what they want to play. Now sorry if it's gender steriotyping, but The Girls wanted romance, mystecism, and intrigue. The Boys didn't really care about that, and just wanted war. Fortunately everybody wanted adventure, quests, puzzles, and random chivalrous encounters.

Basic Idea
Knights. And squires. And mercenaries. That was what they wanted to play. Lots of tromping about and coming across danger. Very well, an adventuring questing game it shall be! But where and when should it be set?

After a bit of confusion a few questionaires, and some reading, I myself became interested in NOT setting a chivalric campaign in the typical Norman-type high Middle Ages era, instead exploring a bit more of the English early middle ages; the anglo-saxon culture. Everything seemed a lot more straightforward, simple, rustic, and rough. This seemed more the kind of stone-ground, whole wheat flavor I was looking for. There was quite a LOT of non-hereditary stuff; unlike the more exclusionist-seeming Norman society, there weren't as many levels of nobility, and titles weren't guaranteed... interesting political rivalries suggested themselves, to be occurring in the background and giving the characters jobs to do.

The final game world
As if there is such a thing. The official line is that Knight Errant is a game of campaigning young knights, squires, and mercenaries-trying-to-be-knights, set in "an Aengland something like England" of around 800 CE (something like 800 CE).

To satisfy all parties (including myself), I've decided to compact the centuries a little, so that the higher classes of the Aenglish nobility sort of have Norman trappings, while still adhereing to a Saxon culture. In the west, the Cymric kingdoms are still stong - including an independant Cornwall, unlike England's real 9th century. The Picts in the north are still strong, and haven't yet been very intermingled with the Scots from Ireland (and their royals haven't all been assasinated by the Scottish-Pictish prince McAlpin yet). Even the neolithic builders of the henges and circles are still around somewhere, in hiding.

It must be said that Knight Errant only saw two episodes of gaming. They were great fun, but only two players were actually available! After the second night, I realized that I had relied too much on expecting more of the interested players to be actually there. So I'd not guided the formation of the characters and story setup to quite work for those two characters alone. The draon, as it were, was too heavy to get off the ground.

Still, it's an entirely viable game or story world, and I fully expect to get round to playing in it one of these days, maybe with more players or just a different balance of characters. For now, please feel free to look around at the stuff I've found, decided, and developed for Knight Errant. I might as well post this for people's amusement.