Looking Back: A Five-Year Update on Three Projects
In 2020, I posted an unambitious list of personal goals:
- Book of Valkyries
- Tarniss Campaign Setting
- Princess of the Red Planet adventure
Five years on, it’s time to look at where those projects stand.
Book of Valkyries
Between 2013 and 2020, like many others, I got hooked on Vikings—a gritty, not-terribly-accurate, but highly entertaining show that helped revive popular interest in Norse mythology. It also reignited my own long-standing fascination with old Norse lore.
I’d been wanting to tackle a large personal art project, and the idea took shape: an illustrated book focused on Valkyries, inspired by the classic Knights art book by Julek Heller. While Norse mythology has been explored thoroughly in gaming and art, Valkyries felt like a less-trodden path, rich with potential.
I originally thought this would take a year or two. It hasn’t. The project has grown into something larger and more ambitious, about 50% finished now. You can view much of the work in progress under the “Norse Mythology” label on this blog.
Naturally, this won’t just be an art book. A fully-statted OSR companion volume is in the works as well. In the meantime, I’ve released a smaller, related OSR book: Norse Beasties.
Tarniss
Before I ever played D&D, I was sketching characters, monsters, maps and making up stories. Like many who discovered the game in middle school, D&D became the outlet for a world that had been developing in my imagination for years.
That world is Tarniss—a sprawling, high-weirdness setting that first showed up in flavor text on Dungeoneer cards, then resurfaced in bits and pieces across other projects. It’s my version of kitchen-sink fantasy.
Eventually I rebranded the setting as Hawkmoor, after the capital city, and published a short primer. A major update to that primer is coming soon.
How close is it to being done? Hard to say. Like any living setting, it’s always evolving. But the core campaign book is about 65% complete.
Princess of the Red Planet
Warriors of the Red Planet was a love letter to sword-and-planet fiction, and sometime after its release I got the idea to follow it with a proper adventure, a tribute to A Princess of Mars, the novel that started it all.
The novel itself isn’t long, so it should have been easy. But I got caught up trying to recapture the realism of the original: the grounded prologue in the American Southwest, followed by the leap to fantastical Barsoom. I tried various OSR westerns to capture that opening, none quite worked.
So I did what any unreasonable person would do: I made my own. That led to Gunslinger, an old-school Western RPG that took over two years to finish.
During the pandemic, I ran a lot of games for my kids in a homebrew system that merged BX and 5e elements, something not too far off from what Gunslinger's system is. The backer edition of that game included a preview of On the Arizona Hills, the prequel to Princess of the Red Planet. If Arizona Hills is like Village of Hommlet in size and scope, Red Planet is like Temple of Elemental Evil. The full version is nearly finished.
Altogether, Princess of the Red Planet is a bit over 50% complete and moving steadily forward.
2025 Is the Year
For a host of reasons, creative, personal, and practical, I’m committed to wrapping up these long-running projects. This summer I’ll be devoting myself fully to finishing them and getting them into your hands.
Thanks for reading, and for your continued interest in these projects.
Original post:
https://dungeoneering.blogspot.com/2020/06/2020-vision-map.html
