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Everything is up in the air with D&D right now. I have seen people swear off D&D for life while others cling to it as if it were the only RPG out there. The OGL has even turned people who have been friends for years against each other. It is sad.

Despite all of this D&D is a love of mine and I will always be willing to play some iteration of the game. Thirty plus years of my life on Role Playing games means more to me than the issues at hand, big though some of those issues are. My kids who have grown to love the game have no connection to the OGL and many players out there are in that same boat.

So today I am going to use that topic to talk about not the future of D&D but the Future with D&D. I used to be a purest when it came to my D&D game. It had to be pure fantasy and nothing else. I did not want guns, or technology or any of that other crap in my game. But after playing for so long, I not only embraced it, but sought it out. One of the games I am in right now is a game run by Nerdarchist Dave. This game is set in the future of our world. We are a motorcycle gang. We have hacked the rules for the soul vehicles from Decent into Avernus, so that the vehicles do not run on soul power. One of the members of our party is a Former Spelljamming Giff. 2 of our party uses guns as their primary weapon, and you know what? In spite of all of this craziness, it is still D&D. We have Barbarians and Rogues doing what they do, the Sorcerer, me, does the spellcasting. No where in play have I felt out of sorts like I thought it might. I honestly had larger disconnects with fourth edition playing regular fantasy, than I do playing this game.

So if you are considering adding some future into your fantasy game. I urge you to give it a try. If it turns out that it is not for you, Scooby-Doo it, go back in time and have all of it be a dream or however you want to fix it. I on the other hand will keep adding things to make my game and my world unique.

Related to that I want to share a conversation I had with Dave today which covers this topic and some other things as well. If you at any point watched Dave’s Vargarian game and wanted to know how it actually ended , well then you are in luck. While sadly with health issues causing the game to stop with only one session left, we figured out what transpired today and I am quite happy with the results. Those who are tied into what I am doing have heard me talking about this new city I am working on. I never placed it exactly on the map, because I did not know where it would fit in our world. Until Today! AS you might know Dave’s game stopped with Rellion and his fellow adventures in a Vargarian War Vessel literally parked outside of Gryphongaff. The city was besieged by the forces of the Vargarians, and the party had gone inside to destroy their leader. And Then Everything Stopped. I feel it has been Years of not knowing, but A thought hit me. My new city, Swampgate, is known as the city or Artifice. There is more technology there than anywhere else in the world. But the major question is why? And today Dave and I put our intellects together and came up with the conclusion to his story and the beginning of Swamp Gate.

As the battle for the future of our world started between the leader of the Vargarians and our party, the war Ship lifted off. As the leader of these Vargarians took damage, its course and control of its minions became haphazard. For several minutes they flew far to the south of this large continent. Breaking hive control of the lesser minions outside of Gryphongaff and easing their fight against the wall. The town certainly appreciated that. As the leader was defeated Falcor and Rellion used their considerable magic, and probably the Antics of their goblin friends to cause a major explosion at the core of this ship, All while Falcor used his magic to teleport us all to safety. (We were 20th level after all) The ship crashed onto the edge of a swamp. An area that no civilized people wanted to settle so all was well.

The ship was Vargarian, which meant it had some semblance of sentience. No longer connected to its hive mind, but still somewhat connected to things near it it began fusing with the land around it. Over the next 50 years some changes were made to the landscape and to the creatures around it. Few would truly know about it, until some enterprising adventurers just happen to come down this way. Led by a dwarven artificer they found the wreckage and knew some of the local history. It did not take long for them to realize the potential for profit and with so much worked metal and the resources caused by the Vargarian tech infusing with the land They set to work. And So Swampgate was born.