History of m20

I was poking around a bit while waiting for roadside assistance to come unlock my daughter's car so the keys could get picked up out of the passenger seat (long story and not very interesting; don't ask) yesterday, and re-read some of my older blog posts.  I thought one was ripe for some updating, which explained my history (at the time) of using m20.  Let me start with the ordered list that I originally had and then add some new line items at the bottom.

1. I'd been running around house-ruling d20 Modern and D&D 3.5 to be used with my DARK•HERITAGE setting for years.  I'd also played with other systems, but never really settled on anything.  Until...
2. In early 2013 I belatedly discovered the Microlite system (amazingly, by then it had already been around for almost 7 years!)
3. In May of 2013, I created my own adaptation of m20 for use with DARK•HERITAGE.  I also took the two existing Star Wars iterations of m20, combined them into a single one, and added my own elements.  I think this was a great adaptation of the m20 rules to an existing setting that works well with the premise of an old-fashioned game like m20 anyway.  Even if it's just me saying so.
4. These systems underwent periodic revision and fixing of minor elements for some time.  Most of these changes were minor, but they didn't really completely settle down until 2015, at which point both the Star Wars m20 and DARK•HERITAGE m20 were considered complete.
5. Also in 2015, I was confronted with the possibility of needing to pick up where our group had left off; in a campaign that was faltering.  We ended up doing something else (Call of Cthulhu—a campaign that also ended up faltering, as it happens.)  I decided to start the CULT OF UNDEATH project; a thorough pruning and adaptation of Paizo's Carrion Crown adventure path.  For whatever reason, I decided to adapt m20 to do this.  This was the genesis of the m20 CULT OF UNDEATH game; I basically took the DARK•HERITAGE game and replaced the DARK•HERITAGE races with some that more closely resemble standard D&D.  I could, of course, simply have used an existing m20 D&D version, including the original 2006 m20, or maybe the Purest Essence.  But, for whatever reason, I wanted to do my own thing.  
6. In June of 2016, I decided to expand the CULT OF UNDEATH system into a full-blown "My D&D"—i.e., my own take on what I think the D&D system should look like to best emulate my ideal game of it.  This became, of course, FANTASY HACK.
7. By this time, The Force Awakens is already out and of course it's disappointing, although not nearly as much so as The Last Jedi was going to be.  About a quarter into 2016, I started to think that my STAR WARS REVISITED was played out.  I was very happy with the system, but less happy than I hoped to be with the setting, because it was irrevocably tied to an IP that I was more and more unhappy with.  Although this predates CULT OF UNDEATH, I did some early exploration of what it would mean to turn STAR WARS REMIXED into AD ASTRA in April of 2016, that really wasn't a full blown initiative yet, and it wasn't until March of 2017 that I really released AD ASTRA as its own stand-alone game; although by this time, with a setting that was off to a good start.
8. Almost a year ago, I had really started getting excited about developing the CULT OF UNDEATH setting more (under the draft name of TIMISCHBURG), but as I was doing so, I found I was turning repeatedly to ideas that were in DARK•HERITAGE; many of which had actually been cribbed from some other setting I'd developed before being put into DARK•HERITAGE itself.  When it became clear that the two settings were converging, I decided to make it official and bump Dark•Heritage from it's current version 4 to DH5; still a substantially similar setting in many respects, but with a substantially altered geography and more a focus on Medieval familiar pseudo-British nations rather than the pseudo-Renaissance Spanish nations that were more the protagonist race of DH4.
9. With substantial updates to both settings, I had a look at all three rulesets and harmonized and updated all of them a small amount.  This led to other ideas, and the updates were slightly more thorough than I had originally expected.  This especially applied to the two fantasy games.  I added a small section to enable FANTASY HACK in particular to serve as a fantasy Western, mostly because I'd gotten into Red Dead Redemption 2, but also because I'd had the idea of doing so a couple of years ago anyway.  It was just a small add-on appendix anyway.
10. Other than that update, though, I don't really have any additional plans for FANTASY HACK, and DARK•HERITAGE in its current format is basically the same game, except optimized for the setting (all that really means is that the monster lists differ slightly as do the player races spotlighted.  FANTASY HACK therefore is officially a "dead" although still obviously quite playable game, and the DH5 specific version of the rules is really my preferred fantasy game.  I might yet dust off FANTASY HACK sometime for a D&D game, and I've got a few random elements floating around (EBERRON REMIXED, for instance) that could be added to it, but I'd actually prefer not to and as of right now, I'm not planning to.  I have therefore two real games; DARK•HERITAGE which is fantasy and AD ASTRA which is space opera, along with their attendant settings.  Although both are 100% usable as is, I do intend to continue setting development for both; especially DARK•HERITAGE, which after the major structural change is actually less developed now than the space opera, although over the next year or so that will probably change.
11. For the heck of it, here's a picture of spaghetti western era Clint Eastwood interpreted as a fantasy character.  I could see him in the Hill Country as a fairly typical PC.  Sweet.  Onward with more development!

Anyway, stepping back, here's a copy and paste of Microlite's own description of what it is.

What is Microlite20? 

Do you remember when the gaming table was full of pizza and soda, not rulebooks, miniatures and dungeon tiles? Do you yearn for a role-playing game that doesn’t require weight training to carry all the books? Do you want to be able to hold all the rules in your head - or in your back pocket? And do you still want to use all those lovely monsters, adventures and game worlds too? So do we!! 

--  Greywulf 

Microlite20 is a minimalist role-playing game designed to be usable with the majority of the OGL/d20 supplements, rules and adventures with little or no advance preparation. The basic rules for character generation, combat, magic and level advancement take up a single sheet of paper, meaning it is perfect for introducing role-playing to new players, gaming oneshot adventures or tailoring into your own game system. 

History of Microlite20  

Microlite20 was designed by Robin V. Stacey (aka Greywulf) in 2006. The purpose of the rules were to strip the OGL/D20 system down to its bare minimum so that the world’s most popular fantasy system could be played quickly and without thousands of pages of rules, but still be usable with all the adventures, campaign settings, and supplements that had been published for the 3.x edition of the world’s most popular fantasy RPG. 

Amazing, one page of basic rules (coupled with the Fantasy SRD for spells and monsters) really did allow for fast-playing games with just about every adventure and supplement published for the 3.x edition. 

Microlite20 was an immediate hit with players who liked the 3.x edition of the world’s most popular fantasy RPG but did not like the complex and time-consuming (both to GM for and to play out combats) beast it had become. Microlite20 was a rules-light way to play that brought fun back to many game tables. 

The Microlite20 rules were entirely open game content. Only the names “Microlite20” and “Robin V. Stacey” were listed as product identity. Having the entire system open game content sparked a flurry of gamer creativity. Simple variant rules and basic expansions came first – for example, lists of limited spells and monsters so Microlite20 could be played without lugging the huge SRD around. However, customized rule sets and complete games based on Microlite20 soon followed.

As an interesting aside, I've been looking over the big Microlite Compendium, and although there are tons of alternate and variant m20 games included, almost none of them bothered to include anything whatsoever to explain what they are, what they're doing differently, or why you should look at them instead of just basic Microlite20.  Even the ones that included an Introduction just copied and pasted the introductory text to Microlite20.  Sigh.