Update: September 2025

So I've been on a miniature wargames kick. Since my last blog update, I've delved into One Page Rules and The Doomed. I had a month-long delusion that I could make my own minis game, which I might post about later. 

I think my wargame obsession is mostly over. The magical post-apocalyptic setting of the wargame project reminded me of my other magical post-apocalyptic setting, an RPG project called Dragons vs Robots. I resolved to focus on that, and put aside the minis game for the time being. 

Predictably, my ADHD riddled brain latched onto my Fate Fantasy project instead. I still might post about DvR at some point, but it's fantasy for the time being. That project has been wavering between being a specific setting and a more general fantasy toolkit. 

So it occurred to me that I could do both. Present the bare-bones setting as a jumping-off point for making your own world. Start with the player characters, and build outward from there. Here's the starting point:

The Golden Dragon is the tavern where all the adventurers hang out between jobs. 

Very familiar stuff for role players. But look at how much world building is in that one sentence! You've got "adventurer" as a job title, and they are common enough that the adventurer's tavern is a phenomenon. There's an implication of a community of adventurers. 

All the beloved tropes and tired cliches of D&D adjacent fantasy are like this. So familiar that we don't see the hidden depths. 

The document I'm working on now is called the springboard. It works a bit like Fate's five-phase character creation, but with a wider scope. You're not just building your character, but the whole world. 

 More to come.