Old Marmot Musings is a blog dedicated to tabletop roleplaying games, game theory, medieval history, and the art of being a Referee. Here you'll find design philosophy, mechanical deep dives, system reviews, and behind-the-scenes insights from my own games and projects.
I’m Pyram King—author of Legends of Barovia, a widely downloaded expansion of Curse of Strahd, and Legends of Saltmarsh, a reimagining of Saltmarsh and the World of Greyhawk. Both are freely available at pyramking.com, along with other content for Foundry VTT.
You might be wondering, where does “Old Marmot” come from? Well, that’s a question for my lovely girlfriend. Bless her heart… she gave me the nickname, and somehow, it stuck.
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Pyram King
Author • RPG Designer • Historian of the Gritty and Mythic
Pyram King began playing TTRPGs in 1982 with Moldvay B/X and Traveller, cutting his teeth on classic TSR modules in the worlds of Greyhawk, Ravenloft, and deep space. His early games were steeped in the underdog spirit of 1980s cinema—Conan, Flesh & Blood, Excalibur, Blade Runner, Alien, Empire Strikes Back, and In the Name of the Rose—as well as the darker edges of fantasy and sci-fi literature: the Elric saga, Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser, The Forever War. These stories shaped a generation of players who weren’t heroes—they were survivors. In those early games, you played as Ripley or Decker or Navarre, scraping by on grit and cunning, not divine power.
In 2020, Pyram began writing and publishing content for D&D and system-agnostic campaigns, including Legends of Barovia (a gothic expansion of Curse of Strahd) and Legends of Saltmarsh (a reimagining of the Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Greyhawk setting). He’s since developed over 40 adventures for Foundry VTT and is currently building Crónica, a gritty low-fantasy TTRPG set in a mythic version of medieval Iberia, inspired by his ongoing study of 11th–14th century history and fortifications across Portugal and Spain.
Born the son of foreign exchange teachers, Pyram became a world traveler by age ten. His journeys have taken him across the jungles of Southeast Asia, the Trans-Siberian Railway under Mao and the Soviet era, uprisings in Central America, volcanic islands in the Pacific, the summit of Kilimanjaro, and the war-torn coastlines of the Persian Gulf. These formative experiences, paired with literary influences like Burton, Lawrence, Hemingway, and Hesse, continue to shape his writing and design work—infusing it with a sense of place, survival, and the unknown.
He currently resides in Portugal with his partner, where he continues to write, hike, film, and explore medieval castles—bringing history and myth to the table, one game at a time.