RPG setting ideas -- Freeport

I have been thinking about several different campaign ideas lately. Reading many forum posts and blog entries has inspired me, especially Jeff's Gameblog and the sensationally-titled I Waste the Buddha with My Crossbow by Dr. Rotwang. The love and the joy of gaming ooze out of their postings. You can tell that they are very enthusiastic about their prep and their gameplay, and they recall the sort of wide-eyed idealistic play that you remember in the early days of RPGs, when everything was new and awesome.

So this post is the first in a series about the ideas that have been churning around in my brain lately. I'm just throwing these out here without much structure.

I knew about Freeport only as one of the first third-party products for d20, when D&D 3.0 was released, but I never looked at any of the items or read any reviews. My introduction to it was one year ago when the True20 conversion of the module "Death in Freeport" was released as a free PDF.

Imagine this inner monologue:

"So, it's a fantasy setting, with elves, and dwarves, and orcs, sure..."

"Oh, but there's pirates, too... and Freeport is a pirate city like Tortuga...that's cool!"

"What? Lovecraftian cults, Mythos monsters and conspiracies too...what the..?"

How did I not know about this for 5 years?!

The setting is due for a re-boot with new books forthcoming. The Pirate's Guide to Freeport is all background material without system-specific stats and should be out any time now. Arrrr, matey!