Alright, so last time I recommitted to updating regularly, I managed seven posts. Let's see if I can make it to eight this time before abandoning everything for another nine months!
This time, believe it or not, I'm not even introducing a brand new setting idea.
This post got me thinking a lot about my creative process. In the post HDA describes feeling stuck with his Shadows of Annwn setting, because the strong theme leads to a difficulty in coming up with ideas that fit, and thus it's actually easier to come up with ideas for a looser, less-defined setting like the Pathfinder game he's currently running.
At first I thought that might be true of my own attempts at developing D&d settings as well, but after thinking about it today I realized I actually sort of have the opposite problem. The first setting I ever wrote about, back when I was still just guest-posting on HDA's blog, was pretty thematically strong, and I (mostly accidentally, I think) managed to capture everything I like about pulp fantasy old-school D&D weirdness.
I have creative ADHD, as the two of you who actually read this blog know, so I quickly began to flit from idea to idea - but almost every idea I've ever had could, with a little modification in some cases or almost none in others, easily work in Xish. Everything I would want to do with an old school D&D game is in roughly the same thematic pocket, and all I'm doing when I come up with other settings is taking ideas that should go in that first setting, where I presented those themes best and strongest, and putting them into a diluted, half-assed version.
Not to mention, I actually did a lot of work that first time around. Somehow I managed to sustain myself through: drawing up a world map, with keyed hexes for a few regions and all the major cities and some major feature locations placed; a rough idea of all the political divisions; the first few levels of a megadungeon that actually has a reason to be there; a bunch of random encounter tables for wilderness and dungeon; in-world justifications for why the fuck elves, dwarves and halflings are there; a rough idea of all the major races and NPC players; a bunch of interesting (or at least semi-unique) gods and cults, etc. Maybe that's not a lot from the perspective of someone who's actually productive and focused, but it's a lot for me. Why go through all that shit again with something new?
I've also actually run the fucking thing. Not a lot, but I had a more or less regular weekly campaign going with some friends over Roll20 for a few months. Eventually it sort of morphed into us just doing Tegel Manor (which I plopped down close to the Crater of Termination and which a couple of the PCs from that game currently own), but they explored a good chunk of the first couple levels of the Crater and some of the surrounding wilderness. I got a pretty good hands-on idea of some things that worked and some that didn't.
So I'm going to try to rein myself in and focus on one fucking thing goddamn it, and it's going to be Xish. I've been reading a lot of old hex crawl settings (mostly Wilderlands and the original World of Greyhawk folio) and reading a lot about hex crawling in general on the OSR blogosophere, so I'm going to work on that aspect of things for a bit. Maybe do up a proper map in Hexographer or something. Then I can collect together the scattered notes, keys and tables I have so far, and start expanding on it. I'm not going to commit myself to focusing in on any particular things; I got this far by just iteratively building on stuff that caught my interest at any given time, and that's what I'll keep doing. Maybe a bit more organized.
Anyway, expect some posts on that shit soon, hopefully.
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