I often have random ideas come to me while I’m in that hazy realm between wakefulness and sleep. What happens less often is the recovery of ideas I had entirely forgotten about. I have a few game setting ideas that I’ve tentatively re-tasked to be a setting for a novel in the future, but I have one that I had entirely forgotten about.

Back when I still had amicable feelings towards D&D 3.X, I had this idea for a d20 game setting that I hoped to have be evocative of Barsoom from the John Carter of Mars books. I had in mind some non-Tolkien-esque (and really, truly, non-human) races, psionics as the primary source of the occult instead of magic, airships, swashing of buckles. I ended up bagging the idea. I’m not sure if it was my growing hate for 3.X or that it was a touch too close to Dark Sun for my tastes. I poached a few visual elements I thought were nifty for other games, but otherwise let the idea sort of fade away.

Likely because I picked up the 4e Players Handbook 3 yesterday, I remembered this old game idea. I hauled myself out of bed and jotted the idea down in my notepad so I wouldn’t forget it again. I thought I might try and use it as a novel setting in one form or another.

Of course, this morning I get on the Internets and find that one of the things in the tubes is this post by Rob Donoghue talking about his reaction to PHB3. I don’t know that I agree that trying to dump all three PHBs into a single setting would make a “muddy mess.” (The description I would use is “awesome.”) Even so, his suggestion to try and imagine a setting with only 8 classes again nudged me back towards that idea. It’s a great creative exercise in general, especially if you do weird shit like set the bar at “no Martial classes.” But it again points me towards this idea again. Rogue, Ranger, Fighter, Warlord, Psion, Battlemind, Monk and Ardent. That’s it. Nothing else. Probably re-skin a couple races to fit my original vision.

Not sure if this is something I actually want to run or not. Hell, I don’t even have a cute name for it. But it’s now back to nesting in the back of my head.