Keith Gibbs is a Swedish-American writer and game designer living in the the Åland Islands.
He has been playing, running, and designing table top role playing games since the early 90s, having started with AD&D 2nd edition and BECMI D&D. In the early 2000s, he briefly stepped back from the hobby only to rejoin with the growing OSR movement in the early 2010s. Since then, his tastes remain eclectic, appreciating true old editions, adaptations of old school styles, and unique and memorable indie TTRPGs.
Although a software engineer by trade, his academic studies include a Masters degree in Theological Studies, concentrating on mysticism, esotericism, magic and alchemy through the Early Modern period. Although he started an extended hiatus from academia over 20 years ago, he still continues to read and research this strange period of European history.
Back in 2021, when his wife was in the hospital with a difficult pregnancy with their twins, he started occupying his idle time with assembling his favorite house rules and hacks, but this snowballed into a more ambitious project of designing a complete reimagining of a “traditional” class-based fantasy RPG. Gathering in other ideas with his house rules, incorporating fragments from old homebrew settings of past campaigns, he constructed The Meidlands, looking not only to freshen up the TTRPG with something new and different: not another D&D, not another minimalist OSR game. Something fluid to play, optimized for engagement and meaningful choice, and rich with character.
He hopes to launch the full version of The Meidlands in mid-2027, with a playtest starting in Fall 2026.
He lives in a house on the edge of the woods and a short stroll from the sea with his wife, four kids, and Boston Terrier.