So as some of you may recall, about 4 or 5 years back D&D put out the call for a setting design challenge, the ultimate product of which was Eberron. Much like everyone else on the planet, I threw my hat into that particular ring. I didn't have much of an expectation of success.

And yeah, despite their warnings to the contrary ("Just focus on one idea!" they said), I and the other folks at Evil Hat got together, brainstormed, and kicked out a good half dozen ideas and took our turns writing them up and submitting them all.

Little Kings was one such submission, and you can take a look at it here:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfkdwrth_339hsccg4

It still has my heart, but I can see the stress-fractures of the intervening years when I look back upon it. rob_donoghue said something pretty astute (I know -- shocker!) the other day about these submissions of ours, which he recently uncovered. He said, and I paraphrase, "Man, looking back on these, I totally see the awesome we had in these concepts. But I also see how what we came up with were good ideas, but not ideas that were tailored for Dungeons and Dragons."

And he's pretty much right. As much as I love the idea of Little Kings, it had a couple problems with it. On the one hand, its notion of empires in conflict probably smacked a little too much of been there done that didn't sell too well Birthright -- not that I would have considered that a problem, with Birthright being one of my favorites from the D&D setting engine. But on the other hand, it was just a little too much about the social issues and intrigues and politics inherent in the setting concept, rather than the monster mashy stompy fighting opportunities.

Jim Butcher once said to me, "Man, you guys think way too much when you game." And as far as Little Kings went, that's definitely what I think I was doing, there. My idea started back in the empire, in the relationships between small and large men, rather than out among the dungeons and the dragons.

All of which is a long roundabout way to say that five years later I woke up this morning with much of an entirely new submission for that now-defunct contest springing fully formed from my head. Now if only I can work out how to send it back to myself five years ago...