Shanarel is a vast, vibrant, and charming high fantasy world for 5E and other tabletop RPGs. With 21 peoples, 45 cultures, and 118 countries, it is bursting with imagination – a whole continent of wonders and stories waiting to be explored.
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Shanarel – High Fantasy Setting for 5E · 122 following
"Shanarel is untidy, bewildering, overwhelming – and damn entertaining! Shanarel is High Fantasy with all the imagination and ideas you can possibly squeeze into it, and it never holds back. So of course we need 45 playable cultures – let’s not be silly."
Benjamin Strack Zimmermann, Author and Co-Owner of Vortex Verlag
In Shanarel, the strange is ordinary and the impossible feels just within reach. Across its immense continent, you will discover unique cultures, quirky inhabitants, everyday magic, and moments of quiet beauty between dangerous journeys and fierce battles.
Shanarel is less grim than many fantasy settings, but no less adventurous. It is a world where hope, humour, and compassion have a place alongside conflict and danger: A world you might actually want to live in, and one you will want to keep exploring.
Shanarel Map by Mark Smylie
If you're a GM who loves building on a rich foundation – you get an entire continent with 21 peoples, 45 cultures, 118 countries and tons of information about how the inhabitants of Shanarel live, work, celebrate, and understand their world. Ready to play.
If you want a world with actual personality – you get warmth, wit, and meaningful choices alongside the danger, giving your table more to care about than simply defeating the next enemy.
If you want your character to feel like part of the world – you get more than a set of traits. You get peoples with customs, faiths, histories, and everyday lives – giving your character roots and a place where they truly belong.
If you collect settings for the joy of discovering them – you get lavish illustrations, entertaining writing, and charming details that make Shanarel a pleasure to explore, even before the dice hit the table.
If you're new to running games – you get a starter adventure for levels 1–2 built into the core books, plus a concise rules section that tells you exactly what works differently here, so you're not guessing.
Shanarel is fully compatible with 5E and flexible enough to adapt to other tabletop RPG systems.
Use it as a complete campaign setting, bring one of its regions into your existing world, or draw on its cultures, peoples, creatures, rules, and adventures individually.
Shanarel will be available in English and German. Shanarel wird auf Englisch und Deutsch erhältlich sein.
Zuwys in Döq-Simel by Mauro Alocci
Shanarel began with a loss - and with the decision to come together again. When an old friend and fellow roleplayer died, Benjamin, his brother Michel, and their friends returned to the table in his memory: to celebrate their friendship and tell new stories together.
Benjamin created Shanarel around one guiding question: Could this be a place he might actually want to live in? Not a world without danger, but one where companionship, curiosity, and hope matter.
Years of play brought Shanarel to life.
Now it is becoming a collection of lavishly illustrated books, carrying the past forward by making room for stories of your own.
Book One: Shanarel – The Game
The game-facing book brings characters, rules, and your first adventure together in one place.
The Cultures of Shanarel: Create characters who belong to the world, with playable peoples, cultural backgrounds, and everything that gives them roots in Shanarel.
Rules: Find guidance for character creation, additional subclasses, and the rules for everything that works a little differently here.
"The Good Old Days": Begin your journey with a complete starter adventure for levels 1–2.
Book Two: Shanarel – The World
The world guide takes you beyond the rules and deep into the life, history, and geography of the continent.
All About Shanarel: Discover how this world lives and works – from culture, languages, and religions to magic, history, economies, nature, architecture, relationships, and much more.
A Journey Through the World: Travel across Shanarel country by country, supported by two continent maps and eight detailed regional maps.
Book Three:Adventures Across Shanarel
One substantial volume containing two adventures of approximately 100 pages each. Together, they take your group into distinctive regions of Shanarel, each with its own places, people, conflicts, dangers, and stories – ready to become part of your campaign.
Textile Dyers in Lum-Youn by Volodymyr Bondar
Every page of Shanarel was made by a real person – writers, translators, illustrators, and designers, each bringing their own voice to the world. Nothing in our books is AI-generated. When you back Shanarel, you're funding the people whose names are on it.
German authors: Benjamin Strack-Zimmermann, Tim Struck, Eevi Demirtel
German proofreading: Florian Opitz
English translation: Andreas Wichter, Eevi Demirtel
English proofreading: Neil Kingham
Cartography: Mark Smylie
Illustration: Ameera Sheikh, Arantza Sestao, Gwenevere Singley, Mark Smylie, Mauro Alocci, Simone Tammetta, Volodymyr Bondar, Thea Gedé, Francisco Vegas, Anna Jäger-Hauser, Roena Rosenberger, Justine Barthel
Layout and design: Thorsten Janes
Marketing and campaign management: Melina Sedó
Social Media & ad consultant: Daniela Todorova
Malar Ship by Gwenevere Singley / Beer Garden by Mark Smylie / Pastry Shop in Pisomelier by Arantza Sestao
Shanarel launches in March 2027.
Follow the campaign now for updates as the world comes to life, and first access to early-bird pricing on launch day.
When you back Shanarel, you do more than bring a new setting to your table – you help a world imagined, written, and illustrated by people become real.
Latest from the Creator
Vortex Verlag
about 1 month ago
Welcome to Shanarel – A New Date, a Gift, and a Faerie Picnic
Hello, travellers – and welcome to Shanarel!
First of all, thank you for following our campaign. Whether you discovered Shanarel only recently or have been waiting at the roadside for some time, we are delighted to have you here.
For our first update, we have some important news, a small gift, and a wonderful new illustration to share with you.
Shanarel Will Launch in September 2027
We have decided to move the launch of our crowdfunding campaign from March to September 7, 2027.
The reason is simple: Shanarel is going to be enormous.
We are creating three substantial books, each published in both English and German, and filled with a great many illustrations and detailed maps. The layout work alone is expected to take around a year.
We could launch earlier, but that could result in rushed work before the campaign or a longer wait for the finished books. We do not want to compromise on quality or let our backers wait much more than a year after the campaign ends before they can finally hold Shanarel in their hands. All of our projects so far were printed in under a year, and we'd like to keep it that way.
In the meantime, there will be plenty to discover. We will use these updates to introduce you to Shanarel’s peoples, cultures, countries, creatures, artwork, and many peculiar corners. First texts will come as soon as we have a first English translation of Ben's German text. We don't want to use AI to create preliminary translations – they would not do justice to Ben's exquisite style.
A Gift for Our Early Followers
Everyone who joined us in the first months and has missed the gift, can download our exclusive Shanarel screen wallpapers for free. Consider them a small window into the world while you wait for the road ahead to open. Followers can find the wallpapers in the followers-only section. If you have not yet signed up, we invite you to do so now – you'll then get the link upon registering.
A Picnic Not Quite in This World
We would also like to show you a wonderful new illustration by Runa Rosenberger, whose work you may already know from the cover of Serenissima Obscura.
The picture introduces four of Shanarel’s six playable faerie cultures: a Nor, a Holf, a Clywynn, and a Djunan. They are enjoying a picnic in the Near Faerie World – a place that is never quite as far from Shanarel as sensible travellers might hope.
The creature in the foreground is a Koll. Kolls are commonly kept as pets by the Clywynn, although whether they are well-behaved picnic companions is another question entirely.
We love everything about this illustration. It captures Shanarel perfectly: beautiful, strange, full of personality, and filled with details that reveal something about the people who inhabit it.
Benjamin Strack-Zimmermann, the creator of Shanarel, had this to say:
“I love how perfectly the clothes fit these different faerie cultures. The Nor has a warrior mask for his face- Nor have metal masks as faces – so naturally he wears sensible clothing. The Holf may once have worn something sensible, but Holf clothing becomes stranger and more gothic over the course of a few days, so they really have no choice in the matter.The Clywynn probably considers her outfit entirely sensible. This is exactly what a Clywynn would wear for a casual occasion – and she may even feel slightly underdressed. And the Djunan does not care in the slightest. She does, however, know that members of other cultures generally prefer not to go entirely nude, so perhaps some kind of bra might be appropriate?It’s simply wonderful.”
And that, perhaps, is Shanarel in miniature: four faeries, four completely different ideas of suitable picnic attire, one curious Koll – and an entire world waiting just beyond the trees.
Thank you again for joining us. We are tremendously excited to share more of Shanarel with you over the coming months.
