Looking Ahead: 2012

So, now the follow-up to the 2011 retrospective. What am I planning to do in 2012, both blog-wise and project-wise?

Well, naturally, I've got Liber Zero to work on. I'm still putting it off until I get a chance to see what Delving Deeper is all about, but I am making some arrangements that may make it easier to work on LZ and actually get stuff done. Plus, I have some ideas I want to present; some I'll present pretty soon. I'm also testing some LZ stuff in the weekly game here; I can already tell you that the revamped Situation Roll works great. If I get a chance to test any of the weirder innovations, especially class and race stuff, they'll wind up in the companion project, Liber Blanc. Another possibility: should I rewrite the improv stuff, put it into a PDF, and call it The Last-Minute GM?

I want to get back into weekly maps in 2012. I'm not sure I can do geomorphs again, since I feel like I've drained that well dry. But I'm not having particular luck with completing an entire level a week, either. I think maybe what I can do is map "hub" rooms that mesh with the megadungeon format tricks I've talked about before. Essentially, these are fully-stocked geomorphs with a list of associated encounters or treasures to be placed in surrounding rooms you would map out yourself. You could use standard geomorphs for the surrounding area, or random generation; you could map it out beforehand or wing it during play.

I also want to do more monsters, especially the "vice squad" that I started working on once before. In my original conception, there were potentially 42 monsters, but I only wrote up three, that I can recall. That's practically its own little monster manual, all monsters linked by a unifying theme. We'll see what happens.

The '50s atomic age horror RPG (Alternative V) and its rocket patrol spin-off (Populuxe Planet Patrol) are also on my list of stuff I want to work more on this year. Given how much else I have to do this year, I may not get as far on that, but I want to get it started.

Blog-wise, I need to finish some changes I started. I added stand-alone pages for Maps, Links, and LMGM material. The Maps page needs to be updated, and the other two need a serious clean-up. In particular, I need to create an index to posts in a series; the Links page could include Clerics Without Spells and its spin-offs, and the Infernal Neighbors posts; the LMGM page is missing lots of more recent material, like the improvised town posts. In addition, I can probably add some other pages bundling together some topics. I just need to reserve some pages for Liber Zero, Liber Blanc, and maybe Other Games.

I created two tags in the past year: "obsolete" and "todo". The first was for old material that I've re-written; the idea is that the obsolete tag lets people know there's another, better version of the rules. The other tag was a reminder of things I planned to expand later. Unfortunately, I didn't apply these tags as vigorously as I need to, and I'm behind on a number of little things I planned to do. Where's the last Infernal Neighbors post?  When am I going to turn dungeon shorthand into something usable?

Also, I'd like to prune the "houserules" tag so that it represents actual house rules I'm using in my current game, as opposed to suggestions that could be used as house rules.

Summary: Lots to do, lots of plans to make my blog more useful and interesting.