I haven't played Dungoens and Dragons for about 25 years, but as you may have read below, I've become interested in the hobby again. I've been reading about the newer series of post 3.5 D and D style games, and about the OGL which allows for using rules systems without major copyright violations, so ...
I'm thinking of developing my own Role-playing Game. Lately, I've also been reading the original Conan stories written by Robert E. Howard back in the 1930's, and it has sparked an interest in the "sword and sorcery" genre, which seems to be undergoing it's own resurgence in the RPG world (see Barbarians of Lemuria, Broadsword, In A Wicked Age, Conan d20, Jaws of the Six Serpents, etc). Players seem to be sick of the magic-heavy, "high-fantasy" worlds of Tolkien, Vance, and even George Lucas, where it seems like everybody and their cousin is a high-level elfin prince running around effortlessly hurling lightning bolts into helpless hordes of orcs and goblins, or merely waving their hand, and dozens of robot-guards drop into harmless clumps of metal.
Whatever happened to those days of gritty adventure, when sweaty men garbed only in loincloth and perhaps a chainmail vest, notched and bloodied broadsword (NOT longsword!) in calloused hand trod down the dank stone hallway seeking only treasure (to buy wine and wenches) and a good fight with a band of goblins?
Magic? What about the magic? In these adventures, magic was rare, powerful and often as dangerous to the user as it's target. To gather such powers was a monumental task, taking years of research, gathering ancient tomes, artifacts and offering bloody sacrifices to the powers beyond. These were black arts, not heady studies by naive young scholars who wanted to learn illusionary tricks for children's birthday parties. And our heroes of these stories very rarely if ever used magic (Elric is a big exception).
Back to the game ... I plan on keeping it in the "rules-lite" category for now. Probably starting with Microlite20, and adding and subtracting those elements which I believe will add the "sword and sorcery" flavor.
Or instead of a full game, maybe I want to create a new setting for Barbarians of Lemuria. Instead of Lemuria or Hyboria, perhaps we are in the Fourth Age of Man from Tolkien, albient a more savage and gritty realization of that world... that would certainly simplify things, and I'm not sure I'm really up to the monumental task of writing the rules for an entire game structure. Yeah, that makes more sense - a game setting that can easily be adapted to d20, M20, BoL, Mini-Six, TFT, etc.
Hmmm ... so much to do.
