It might not sound like anything exciting, 

I’m guilty of watching certain YouTube videos out of spite more than anything. It might sound terrible, but it was all for a good cause. No, I wasn’t watching Ginny or anyone who does D&D 5E coverage. I was watching a lot of very angry, extremely negative gamer nerds.

I was ready to rage on a particular person when I asked the question I always ask in these situations. Why doesn’t he just talk about the things he enjoys? Why not just talk about gaming instead of breaking down what everyone else is doing? Wouldn’t it be more productive to speak positively about the hobby?


Yes, that sounds a bit mushy to me, too.

I generally steer clear of Toxic Positivity. I wouldn’t suggest that, either. However, negativity is still more toxic than anything else. Moderation in all things, I suppose. Works for Cheetos, too.

That got me thinking about the things I enjoy about TTRPGs. There’s a mountain of things I love about gaming. I love gaming almost as much as I love my wife. (*I said “almost.”) It just happens that I’m not thrilled with the business end of it as I indicated the other day.

I had this really cool superhero dream the other night.

I’ll hum a few bars of this really cool dream. My character in the dream, who was akin to Iron Spider (I think) was moving into the Avengers Tower. Mr. Stark had promised sweeping renovations to welcome us new members and had even invited the Justice League of America to come check it out. (I love the mixed Universes.) Except when I showed up the entire top half of the building was gone and being moved to attach to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Okay, it looked super cool in the dream. The upper half of the tower was literally designed to lift off and fly between locations as desired by Mr. Stark. Pretty cool, huh? Then the plot got interesting.

It started out as some low end villains attacking a shopping mall with a night club attached. I was sent along Cyborg, Thor, and Vision (no complaints from me.) We ended up in an intense battle with Doc Oc, Green Goblin, and some kind of sorceress. (Not sure who she was supposed to be.)  

After the battle, we went back to the Tower and hung out with the JL of A. Then Iron Man called some different team members out to what seemed like a minor issue at first. The more time went by, the more people were dispatched to the struggle and eventually it became some kind of world-threatening event. Alas, my alarm went off and that’s where I had to leave it. (I didn’t want to go.)

The dream inspired me to want to go back to my superhero roots again.


Pretty sweet dream, though. When I woke up I really wanted to run ICONS and/or Marvel Multiverse. My Marvel 616 team looks a lot like mostly Young Justice characters. (Superboy, Ms. Martian, Zatanna, Wally West Flash, and Nightwing-sorta.) The Nightwing character is more like a Year Zero Batman just starting out. I’m trying to keep their power level down to Rank 3. It’s challenging.

I can do it with ICONS a lot easier because it’s set in my own sort of Amalgam Universe. I know all the characters by heart. I’ve lived in that universe when I wasn’t playing any games. I spent hours simply writing backstories, continuities, adventures, villains and even coming up with histories for comics that quite obviously never existed. [*See Team Justice Omniverse Special 1-6 –JC.)

I remember why I started (back) on my TTRPG journey as a result. I love crafting NPCs, villains, foul plots, cool super bases, and hero teams. Two-fisted four-color comics action makes my whole day. I love running those games. I want to craft adventures based on that again. Those were the days. I might even get some more solo supers RPG in one of these days soon.

I stand by some of my statements that I made back on 9/13.

Here’s the link in case you want to go back and see me in rage monkey mode. I still think the TTRPG industry is a rusting, broken mess in places, especially when we talk about trying to write for another company or even another Open Game License. I’m still not sure if I want to go back to using it as a side gig to bring in some extra money to reinvest in the hobby. I’m still hopping mad at a couple of companies, most of their staff, and I won’t be buying their products again any time soon.

However, I don’t have to worry about it when it comes to supers gaming. There are so many supers games on the market that I could start developing adventures for. I’m never going to worry about Marvel Multiverse because I don’t think they’ll ever have an OGL of their own. That, and Forbeck kinda falls into that category of industry veteran.

ICONS, on the other hand, is all that and a bag of chips. They have an OGL of sorts in place. Ad Infinitum is a joy to be around with a really warm, friendly community. The game is awesome to work with and I’ve always thought very highly of it. Did I mention I have an entire multiverse with this system?

It’s true that Steve Kenson has been a designer/editor for a long time. I truly believe that he is one of the great ones in the hobby. Even if I wasn’t working off of ICONS as a base game, I’d actually feel comfortable pitching ideas to Mr. Kenson over on Patreon. I follow him on social media and he seems like a really upstanding guy.

Going back to fantasy gaming is like returning from a vacation.

Sometimes I don’t want to go home after a nice vacation, but it’s also great to get back into the old familiar groove of everyday life. I think Dungeon Crawl Classics, Old School Essentials, and Shadowdark are still in my plans. Some of the bigger companies much less so.

DCC might eventually get around to a late pledge for Denizens and I hear Grimtooth’s Traps are soon to be making rounds again. OSE is my favorite trip down memory lane and great for pickup games. Those two probably won’t be for any sort of profit. I might still put material for those games up on here as future portfolio building materials or something.

Shadowdark, on the other hand, is kind of everyone’s darling at the moment. I’m going to drop the second half of that review one of these days. I’m still comfortable publishing for Shadowdark between the incredibly kind Open License agreement with the Arcane Library and the fact that I know Kelsey Dionne is really amazing. There’s someone I would gladly accept even the harshest criticism from, and we’d still be cool. I have ideas for classes, spells, monsters, magic items, and a sandbox adventure for Shadowdark.

I’m also still planning to do cool stuff for Monster of the Week and then some.

It might not be published. I’m still kinda leery of doing any MotW for profit. However, I love writing for The Des Moines Remote Viewing Society and Des Moines After Dark here on the blog. October is coming up fast and horror games are so much fun anyway. I’d also like to work on some Call of Cthulhu crossovers into MotW. There’s also my obsession with SCP to consider.

Will I ever try to publish anything for MotW formally? Probably not. I’ll drop more here on the blog. If/when I ever get out to a real convention again, I’d like to take the magic there with me, too. It’s a fun game and the system is very easy to pick up if you’re a veteran gamer. I have a lot of fun with the horror tropes, regardless of system.

And the rest…

I’m still planning to do some Power Rangers RPG stuff solo and for fanfic purposes. I doubt I’ll ever get to work at Renegade and there will likely never be an OGL for it. It’s still fun to play around with GI Joe, Transformers, and Power Rangers even if it’s not for profit.

I’m also still in the formative stages of my own sci-fi mecha TTRPG. I have campaigns on the back burner for multiple games, multiple systems, and outlines for more in my brain. I can talk about games all day. I have more ideas than I’ll ever have time to fully express. The Mecha Hack still calls my name at times, as does ICRPG. Maybe not for profit, but it’d sure be nice to get the ideas out there.

I haven’t even mentioned Cypher System in any of this. I’ll probably never do anything for profit with Cypher even though I really like the game. It’s got an okay system license, but I know there’s no hope in Hell of ever working directly with Sean Reynolds, Monte Cook, Bruce Cordell or other TTRPG alumni from back in ye olden days of gaming.

I’m not just into TTRPGs to make money.

It’s my number one favorite hobby for life no matter what. I’ve known that ever since I opened up the D6 Star Wars RPG for the first time. TTRPGs take us to another place and time that never existed for a few hours, involve us in movie or TV show type plots, and allow us to express our creativity in a comfortable way. Even as a solo gamer, I can spend hours on lots of games and never, ever get bored.

Yes, I still have my mighty bucket list of things I want to accomplish in this industry. I wasn’t kidding about my vision board. Many of these avenues have yet to be explored by me. I just want to try and keep it all upbeat no matter what I end up doing. Sure, negativity sells, but after a certain point it just becomes irritatingly hot air.

Thank you for being here. I love you, #TTPRGFamily. I appreciate your  support over the last few days. Let’s keep going, okay?