Now what?

Perhaps I should have mentioned that Dark Continent Redux was going to be my last RPG project.  I was working RPG stuff daily for months.  The only thing that got me to the end was knowing that there was one.  I'd love to say that I have infinite wells of creativity to draw on and that RPG's are my life, but I'm done with this stuff for now for lack ideas and motivation.  Not to mention, I don't know how I could top Dark Continent.

Do I have any regrets?  Yes.  Endless Night was supposed to be a much bigger haunted house with a murder mystery and magical portholes to other lands.  However, the Azimuth House was easily the best map (first floor, second floor) I did, and I generally like the adventure as is.  I like the concept of trying to colonize a monster-filled Fantasy Australia, but my Southland setting, I'm a little skeptical of, but I can't put my finger on why.  Stone Grave, on the other hand, which the entire setting was based on, I outright apologize for.  Not only was it not the 10 level mega-dungeon I had envisioned, what I finally ended up with wasn't very good.  Pulp Fantasy Core, for all my enthusiasm, never really got off the ground, which is too bad, since I really wanted to roll up that Buckaroo Banzai character.  

I love the Fantasy Ireland setting.  I'm still not entirely sure if it's a good RPG setting.  I'd at least like to think that the Keeper Hill adventure somewhat redeemed Stone Grave.  Played correctly, it's something like a heist gone wrong with NPC's and Characters at each others' throats.  D&D is such a mish-mash of mythology, it's always tempting to make a setting with a single, coherent one.  Unfortunately, D&D is its own mythology at this point.  You have to take out and ignore so much game material, it's almost not worth it.

There was one thing I sort of left on the table.  I never wanted to make a Monster Manual, but I did want to do a listing of humanoids and demi-humans with a coherent mythology to go with them.  Unfortunately, this goes back to what I just mentioned about mythology.  It might have been nice to go with Fantasy Ireland, but even then, it didn't entirely fit into it.  Further, these creatures are so similar stat-wise, that all you're doing is putting pointless backstory to them.  Then I started thinking about doing full table levels for these creatures, and it suddenly wasn't worth the effort.  All that came out of that was the Otherworld Elf (again, don't use that as a playable Character class) and the Gnome, which were the only classes that are different enough to make them interesting. 

I am proud of some of my game material.  Fantasy Core itself, while highly not perfect, I think goes in the right direction for a fantasy RPG.  It's not far off from 5e, so I feel somewhat vindicated in producing it.  I truly doubt there will be any future revolutionary developments in tabletop RPG's for gamers.  There is, however, a wide-open opportunity for creating an RPG-like party and family game for non-gamers, and that will require revolutionary thinking.

I don't know what brought on Expedition to the Doomed Peaks, but it has my favorite encounter, the completely self-referential One of Each room.  The Jianghu setting, played correctly, would be an awesome challenge for the Players as they would be essentially trying to keep their honor and integrity in a highly partisan environment.  Cyber-Pulp was just a random idea I had that went completely out control in a good way.  The main good thing that came out of Pulp Fantasy Core was that it laid the groundwork for it.  What started as just a simple notion of adapting Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now also went completely off the rails.  Dark Continent turned out way better than I expected.  Lastly, the thing I did with most of the adventures and settings was that I explicitly stated the theme of them, like Mystery in the Southland, Personal Honor in the Jianghu, or Psychological Discomfort in Dark Continent.  If a specific setting or adventure will tell you that up front, and you stick with it while running it, it should be a more rewarding experience for everyone involved.            

I don't plan on doing any more RPG stuff, unless I'm actively playing, which I'm not right now.  I'll likely go with 5e or some other published RPG then.  I'll still be making various sports posts and maybe other stuff.  So this isn't a sign-off for now.

J.