Just a quick note

I'm back from my extended vacation. Although I'm young to be in this position by today's hedonistic standards, the reality is that by simply doing things a relatively old-fashioned way by getting married in my early 20s, having kids fairly quickly, and then having kids who did the same, I'm a second-time grandfather now while still in my 40s (admittedly, not for much longer, though.) Sadly for us, although happily for him, my oldest son lives halfway across the country out in the West, where I always wanted to live but during my career, I have so far not managed to be able to do so. My little grandkids are pretty awesome, so you can see why I haven't been updating this last two weeks while I spent the majority of my time with them. But I don't want to talk too much about personal things like that when the purpose of this blog is to talk about my RPG setting. 

Having been out in the West, and in the last little bit I've spent a significant time in South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Montana and Colorado, missing only the significant states of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas (although I grew up in the latter and lived there until I was in my mid to late 20s, so I probably have that covered. You'll note I'm excluding the Left Coast states from consideration as in scope for me.) I've found that my setting needs to reflect that part of the world. Fantasy is so often Eurocentric, and that makes perfect sense that it is so. The majority of the market for fantasy has been white males, who have a European Medieval heritage and therefore an interest in fantasy that reflects (to a greater or lesser degree) their own heritage, about which they feel nostalgia, and not the heritage of some alien peoples from some alien continent or lands. I've somewhat narrowed this focus, or rather, I've homed in on a subset; my attachment is less to the ancient homelands of my ancient ancestors, but rather to the newer homeland of my more recent ancestors here in the Promised Land. I'll defer references for now, but suffice it for now for me to say that the American West is what I consider my homeland, and any fantasy that isn't set in a fantastica analog of it, at least to some degree, couldn't possibly be one that I feel connected to enough to actually create myself. Sure, sure... I'm not saying that I have cowboys and homesteaders of the American West in fantasy analog, because I do still prefer fantasy that's somewhat Medieval in its culture, or at least the superficial cues of its culture. I'd say rather that the land itself is the American West, the peoples are superficially Medieval Saxons of the Robin Hood and Ivanhoe variety, but plenty of American frontier attitudes and standards are applied to them nonetheless, in a more subtle fashion.

Anyway, I've said all that before; mostly this is just a check in. I'm back, and once I get caught up enough to actually generate some new content, I will.