Shadows Surrounding wins the Urban Arcana setting competition

At Gen Con, the gold best-selling Everyday Heroes publisher Evil Genius announced the winner of their Urban Arcana setting. And a name change.

Urban Arcana was (and is) a d20 Modern adventure from Wizards of the Coast, which blended high fantasy into contemporary life. Evil Genius announced an Urban Arcana reboot in March with a settings competition. The reboot was announced as a refresh for Evil Genius with their Everyday Heroes rules. The competition, which would pay the winner, would develop a setting.

Shadows Surrounding was one of the three finalists, and it was a close vote between it, Suba Rosa and Terra Arcana.

Evil Genius, which has over 100 events at Gen Con, confirmed Shadows Surrounding as a winner today and now refers to Urban Arcana as Everyday Arcana.

Everyday Arcana will launch at Gen Con 2024 with several books. There will be the following;

• The Everyday Arcana Player’s Guide
• The Everyday Arcana GM’s Guide
• The Everyday Arcana Bestiary
• Shadows Surrounding World of Adventure

Shadows Surrounding: the winning campaign setting is a world like ours, but there is a hidden society of magical practitioners and creatures that hide themselves. In 2014 that secret was revealed, and magic practitioners have been coming out of hiding and as a result, magic is a growing force, including in the social realm. Contest winners are Sam Wamack, Rebecca Paulsen-Wamack, Casey Maas, and Brenna Davis.

Everyday Arcana is being helmed by BJ Hensley, the founder of Playground Adventures and former VP of Lone Wolf Development and veteran of Green Ronin, Kobold Press, PEG, Pazi, Renegade Games and Wizards of the Coast.

In a statement from Evil Genius, Chris Ramsley revealed more on Shadows Surrounding;

This will be our default world, with examples throughout the text referencing it, adventures published for it, and a whole lot of lore supporting it. But there will also be plenty of advice, options, and examples for creating your own worlds! We want you to be able to play any sort of urban fantasy you like by picking and choosing the pieces you like, and deciding for yourself how they all fit together.

To this end, we’re planning to have hero options that allow you to be magical in a wide variety of ways, and that let GMs zero in on the types of magic they want to use in their own worlds. Magic can be learned, practiced, inherited, or accidentally acquired. Smart Heroes can use plans to retroactively prepare the perfect spell, Wise and Charming Heroes can cast spells through focus points and influence dice, and there will be plenty of spellcasters like the ones we’re all familiar with from more traditional fantasy games.

Evil Genius did not comment on the name change from Urban Arcana to Everyday Arcana, but Geek Native will ask.