Unfinished

Pondering Abandoned Projects

This newsletter is, if I’m being honest, equal parts progress report and public self-motivation device. It exists largely as a vehicle for talking about the big creative undertakings that have been monopolizing my time lately: Secrets of sha-Arthan, the second edition of Thousand Suns, and the forthcoming Grognardia anthologies. On top of that, there’s also Dream-Quest, my Lovecraftian fantasy roleplaying game, though I’ve been documenting that one elsewhere (and if you have even a passing interest in that, I heartily encourage you to take a look).

My hope is that by forcing myself to commit to a weekly schedule of updates on these projects, I’ll increase the odds of actually finishing them. Experience suggests I need the accountability. After all, I have a well-documented history of letting my enthusiasm outpace my follow-through. Longtime readers of Grognardia will no doubt recall the graveyard of projects I once announced with gusto and then abandoned with a whimper. It’s not my proudest habit, but it is an honest one.

So I understand if you’re skeptical. Frankly, I’d be skeptical too. Four projects at once is ambitious, even foolhardy, given my track record. Of course, part of the fun (and terror) of creativity is setting yourself challenges that you might not entirely be capable of meeting. If nothing else, you’ll have a front-row seat to see whether I finally stick the landing this time or if I just add a few more headstones to the Grognardia project cemetery.

With that cautionary preamble out of the way, let me turn to two unfinished projects from my past that I am not currently working on but that, by some odd coincidence, I’ve been asked about in the last week. It’s almost as if the universe is trying to send me a message, though what that message might be remains unclear. What is clear is that these two abandoned projects, while not formally connected, share a common lineage. I’m talking about Urheim and the so-called “designer’s edition” of Dwimmermount.

Let’s start with Urheim, since it’s the simpler one to explain. When I returned to blogging in August 2020, I wanted a public project, something I could build out in the open and, ideally, use to draw people back to Grognardia. That project became the megadungeon Urheim, or more properly The Monastery of St. Gaxyg-at-Urheim. Its seed lay in “The Ruined Monastery,” a small OD&D dungeon I created shortly after Gary Gygax’s death in 2008, later published in Fight On! “The Ruined Monastery” was, in many ways, part of Grognardia’s prehistory, as I wrote about just last week.

Because of that, I’d long wanted to give Urheim a more extensive treatment, something truly deserving of the label “megadungeon.” I already had wonderful surface maps of the monastery ruins, drawn by Fr. David Eynon, and they begged for proper development. I was full of ideas and, over the fall of 2020, began sketching them out on the blog. I was excited, not just because the project was inherently fun, but because it also felt like a chance to redeem myself after the disaster of Dwimmermount.

Now, I won’t rehash the entirety of the Dwimmermount debacle here (that’s a story worthy of several posts). Suffice it to say: it was not my finest hour and I take full responsibility. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see how I fumbled that particular ball, chief among my sins, as I admitted earlier, was trying to do too much too fast. For a long time afterward, Dwimmermount haunted me. I had failed to finish something I wasn’t ready to finish and, in doing so, I disappointed a lot of people who had trusted me. That’s not a good feeling and it lingered.

That’s why, for a time, I flirted with the idea of creating a “designer’s edition” of Dwimmermount — a free, revised version that reflected my original hopes and intentions for the dungeon. I thought of doing it almost as an act of penance. I made some headway: I redrew level maps by hand, commissioned new art, and even began writing commentary on the design choices and controversies surrounding the project. It would have been as close to the Dwimmermount I had dreamed of as I could manage.

A bit of “concept art” for its cover, as drawn by Jason Sholtis.

But in the end, I abandoned this project. I realized most people had long since moved on and maybe I should too. Those who still carried a grudge wouldn’t be mollified by a “designer’s edition,” while those who forgave me (and, thankfully, that was the majority) didn’t need me to keep reopening old wounds. The time and effort would have been better spent on new work and so that’s where I turned. That’s why you probably never heard of the project until now.

It’s fair to say that Urheim was, in part, born from that desire to “do better” after Dwimmermount. In some ways, it was Dwimmermount 2.0, incorporating hard-learned lessons while reimagining the larger setting, Telluria, in which both dungeons were set. My vision for Telluria had shifted too: less sword-and-sorcery pulp, more genuinely medieval inspiration. It felt fresh and it energized me.

And yet … Urheim too fell by the wayside. The spark dimmed and newer projects took its place. I still think about both Urheim and the “designer’s edition” from time to time and I sometimes wonder what might have been. Ultimately, though, I think it’s best to let them rest. The past is the past and I already have more than enough to occupy me in the present.

If nothing else, these two projects, unfinished though they may be, taught me a great deal. They taught me humility, they taught me the importance of knowing my limits, and they taught me that letting go can be just as valuable as holding on. And yet, like the ruins scattered across the landscapes of our games, even abandoned projects can be worth revisiting from time to time. You never quite know what treasures might still lie buried there — an idea, a map, a bit of inspiration — that can be carried forward into something new.

For now, though, Urheim and the “designer’s edition” of Dwimmermount will remain what they are: half-remembered ruins on the path behind me, silent reminders of lessons learned. My task is to keep my eyes on the road ahead, but I take some comfort in knowing that even the ruins of my failures might yet hold something worth exploring.