Well, the space opera isn't really planned at all.
I started work on Adventures in ZEITGEIST in November 2019, but then in the summer of 2020 Russ decided to gather a diverse stable of writers to create Level Up, and that idea got a lot more interest than ZEITGEIST ever did. So we finished AiZ, but EN Publishing has ultimately decided to focus more on content that is easier for people to use in their own homebrew settings.
Still, I did make a pitch for some new ZEITGEIST adventures. I knew a second adventure path was a non-starter because later adventures never sell as much as earlier ones, so budgeting them is rough. My idea was one adventure per nation, increasing in levels, with an option to use the same characters in each, but intentionally designed to be stand-alone plots.
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1. The first one we already published,
Death of the Author, a mansion murder mystery on the border of Drakr and the Malice Lands.
2. The second is written, but I think won't be published unless I get Russ's permission to release it on my own,
Steel Wind, a Casablanca-esque adventure with spycraft, demons, and flying machines in a Crisillyiri city at risk of military occupation.
(When I playtested this with my friends, everyone picked a subclass from Adventures in ZEITGEIST, and it was the titanist ranger of the Hollow Widow who solved most of the mysteries by talking to spiders. They're everywhere, and so are great witnesses of secret meetings.)
3.
Three Keys, a treasure hunt in the ruins of an old Elfaivaran city that was overrun and abandoned centuries ago, and where now three groups vie to recover relics that could create three very different futures for their nation. It digs into a dark chapter of the nation's history, but offers a hope for a better future by finding a way to heal from trauma.
(I ran a short campaign with my friends that let me brainstorm ideas for what this would look like, but nothing's written down. It was sort of a city-as-open-air-dungeon premise, with different factions you could get help from. Probably the most 'gamist' idea of the set.)
4.
Aviso, a Beran naval picaresque inspired by Teddy Roosevelt sending America's 'Great White Fleet' to circumnavigate the world and show off, with a heavy dash of Gulliver's Travels-style satire. The party are along as sailors, press, spies, or bodyguards for a dignitary on the navy’s dispatch boat, sent ahead to scout and relay messages.
(I've done zero planning for this.)
5.
Brief Remarks on the Occasion of the Launch of an Aerial Warship, where the PCs help an aged Stover Delft deal with various small crises around Flint so he can focus on writing a speech for the launch of the flying dreadnought
RAS Burning Sky. The PCs thwart potential threats of sabotage, espionage, and fey politics, assist Delft in settling a petty vendetta, and then help him decide what speech to deliver, which shapes public sentiment.
(A couple weeks ago I ran a heist for a group of EN5ider writers, and if I ever do write this adventure, the heist would be one chapter of it. We only were doing a one-shot, though, and so the PCs, um, declined to be heroic. Ha. But the broad idea was to have a series of vignettes, each of which would link two of the districts of Flint to showcase the tensions in the city.)
6.
Remembrance. This is my
Inception/Christopher-Nolan-style-mindf-ck. Telling much about it would be a spoiler, other than that character creation would require each PC to choose from a list of memories that they have to integrate into their character's past.
(I ran this to help Steampunkette enjoy one of the classes she designed for her Paranormal Power book.
DriveThruRPG And I realized my plans for psychic combat were probably too high-concept. First drafts of mindf-cks, though, always require a lot of work to really land well, I think.)
7.
Concert of the Spheres, the one where the PCs travel between the planets. I went back and forth between whether it should be a Star Wars action adventure, or more of a high-concept Star Trek movie, using the worlds as microcosms to analyze a social question in our own world. But also with a steampunk spaceship battle.
And when I'm feeling less complicated, I want to write a megadungeon that involves remnants of the Demonocracy and one of the Ancient ziggurats that leads to Amrou.
