Wizards of the Coast Gave In. WOW!

Honestly, I’m still in shock and cautiously optimistic.

I want to wait until the dust settles a bit and take a little time to rest before I get into why I think they capitulated to the fans’ demands. I don’t think it’s all as black and white as some would imagine. Yes, I still have some theories I want to test, but that can wait.

Today we celebrate! Let’s get back to gaming. Let’s get back to writing TTRPGs and talking about them. There is peace across the realm. Rejoice!

My plans for 2023 and this site are changing.

I’m still going ahead with the Des Moines Remote Viewing Society campaign for Monster of the Week. I have developed a new sort of fondness for this game over the past month. I feel like experimenting outside of the fantasy genre might be nice once in a while. DsM RVS will also live on in fiction and possibly an SCP RPG crossover.

SCP is one of my new obsessions. I’ll be putting up a review soon as well as creating a branch office for the SCP Foundation in my Des Moines Remote Viewing Society fiction. The systems might not mesh up, but the game concepts still can. SCP works just as well in Monster of the Week as it does its own game.

Horror gaming aside, I have some new and old TTRPG ideas.

I’m excited to be continuing my space game with giant robots and new frontiers. Still working on a name. I think I might be switching back to an old, familiar base system for some things. I learned some things while attempting to build my own game system. I might be bringing back some ideas from the Big Robots, Cool Starships game I was working on 25-ish years ago.

I had also been working on a Mekton Zeta campaign setting back in the day. I also stumbled upon a classic TTRPG called Marauder 2107 while I was looking for some things in my archives. I might be building a Cypher System game based roughly on a combination of Appleseed and Chrome Shelled Regios anime series. Cypher System gained a lot of my love and respect during the whole OGL crisis.

I may never trust Wizards of the Coast again, but they’re not Renegade Studios.

It’s true WotC and Hasbro are still the big slimy megacorp they always were. Hasbro might own Renegade and several associated Intellectual Properties such as Power Rangers, GI Joe, and Transformers, but I’m ready to ease up a little bit.

I still want to make some GI Joe and Transformers RPG content for free and put it up here on the site. As I stated recently, we waited 30+ years for those two RPGs. I’ll be darned if I’m passing up an opportunity to enjoy them. Essence 20 is still a really good system.

I’m also still bringing back Power Rangers RPG campaign Super Lightning Force. I want to do some sort of Tommy/Jason David Frank tribute. I think it’s going to involve retiring the green or white Ranger costume with honors.

Going back to my superhero gaming roots a bit.

Even though January royally knocked the wind out of my sails in terms of RPGs and wanting to work on them, I am still looking forward to some ICONS RPG action. I am working on creating a campaign similar to the DC Batman Animated Universe. Anyone else miss those cartoons? Imagine a small, newly formed team of superheroes dedicated to stomping out injustices and keeping the city safe from costumed super villains for the first time. Until recently all of my supers games contained the notion of the characters being legacy heroes.

Back to Fantasy RPGs, too.

I’ll still be putting out magic item and creature goodies for old school D&D, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and even Pathfinder 2E . PF2E is going to be the basis for my #Dungeon23 game. I hear it’s getting popular now for some reason… hmm. (*LOL!) As much as I despise what WotC did to the OGL and turning the entire industry upside down for a month, I can’t deny I still LOVE D&D.

That said, I might never touch One D&D again. (*More on that later. I’m done talking about WotC for a few days.) I’ll still run 5E for the kids. I think we, the fans and content creators, are still going to be using 5E for a very long time to come. I’m not going to tempt Law of Attraction by saying more than that.

I’m also digging out one of my quiet favorites, Operation White Box from Small Niche Games. I really enjoyed this when it came out. Now that the OGL crisis has abated, I think I’ll go back to using it. I had been considering a WW2 game using the Cypher System. I like WW2 gaming because there are hundreds of stories to tell. Plus the good guys and bad guys are pretty easy to identify.

It’s good to be back in the saddle writing games again.

I’ll still be talking about happenings in the TTRPG industry from time to time. I think there was a lot of low key bonding going on during the month of January. I know I discovered a half dozen new YouTubers I want to watch as a result. There are still stories to cover and fallout from the licensing talk. #ORCLicense #BlackFlag

I’ll also be coming at you with monthly writing prompts. Fantasy February is still on the way. I’ll also be dropping some free scenarios for various games. I have yet to write a d12 table this month. Gotta fix that. I love any excuse to roll d12s.

I’m also reworking parts of my site. My goal is to make the site easier to read. I’m also changing up logos, banners, etc. I hit a huge milestone yesterday and another big one is coming tomorrow.

Thank you so much for stopping by. We couldn’t have done what we did in January without dedicated, hard working TTRPG family. If you’re reading this, you probably ARE family now. I appreciate you. Happy gaming.