"Welcome to the Party, Pal!"

Spring full-on ROCKS!

I am so giddy lately, for two reasons. The first is the weather. I know, I know…I’m in California, so I don’t know what “weather” is. I accept that. But I’m also a total whiner when it comes to what my body perceives as being cold. I made it through this winter, and finally, the temperatures started to rise. Finally, we’re back in the 60s and 70s. And that has put me in such a tremendous mood. Warmer is gooder! I can enjoy my laptop writing on my patio again, even late at night, without shivering. I had stopped going outside on breaks at work a few months ago when I quit smoking, but now I’m going out once or twice a day just to soak up the sunshine. Awesome.

Thing number two is the early switch to daylight savings! There’s nothing I hate more than leaving the office when it’s dark outside. It just makes me feel like the whole day is over, and I lose my energy for things I want to accomplish at home. And now, all of a sudden, I’m getting home (on those days I leave close to on-time) with the sun still in the sky! Loving it! Both this and the weather are signals that MY season is coming. I’m a slave to summer. Daylight till 9pm, nice hot weather, summer movies, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day…and Comic-Con! I’ve been waiting through a very long winter for this, and the wait’s finally paying off. Life is good. Not even some really, REALLY sore ribs from a fall (no breaks! X-rays confirmed!) can get me down. I am soaking up the springtime and all is grand.

Oh, and in addition to the Aaron weekend in February where the APEX game happened (see below), we had another little gathering here in March. Last March we had a get-together of the old San Diego gang at Russ's place in Boise, something we called "Boyz-E Weekend". We've decided to make these things an annual event, and we threw another together on short notice, right here in Sacramento. In something we dubbed "Man-Sac Weekend" (don't ask), me, Tim, A.T. and our old pal (and former roommie) Rich got to hang with the visiting Aaron, Russ and Tony. This all translated to 1) drinking, 2) cigars, 3) movies, 4) X-Box and 5) more drinking. Awesome time - and I think I've finally gotten my apartment back together again!

Me, A.T., Tony, Rich, Aaron, Russ and Tim

This Time Around

And what have I got for you all this time around? Let’s see…let’s start with the big one. APEX, baby!

I’ve been meaning to make an APEX page for YEARS! For those who remember, this was the game that I ran in Sacramento in the mid-to-late 90s. I had a serious dream team of players, most of them Forte alums. I had Tim, Aaron, Kevin, Randy, and A.T., all guys who excel at character creation and gaming skills. And they created some really great characters for what ended up being my first fully realized gaming world. I’d run a couple of games before, but I put some extra work into building this one from scratch, something uniquely mine, to begin with, but meant to be molded by the characters people made. I loved the APEX world, and the APEX team, a group of supers who showed up to interview for a new Phoenix hero team that was just starting. I got to explore all the fun details of starting a new hero team, from that first day in the base to having a staff to having an agent and dealing with the press… The guys all had a great time with that stuff, and were great with the REALLY complicated stories I tended to throw at them. Sadly, we only managed nine live runs before Aaron and I moved to San Diego and it ended. But Aaron and I then teamed up (as some in the print ‘Times may recall) and started writing the fictional continuing adventures of the team in the C.T. And best yet, we ran a Con game in 1999 that many of our other gaming pals (K.C., Martin, Jeff, Ben, Joel) got to get in on, which was a great chance for me to let some of my other favorite Champs players introduce their own heroes and elements into my world. And what an awesomely fun game that was…a game run during a convention that took place AT a convention (a super-hero convention).

1999 was the last of the APEX material (because the print ‘Times went under soon after), but I’ve been meaning, ever since, to get back to the fictional stuff and get it going on a web page. But as luck would have it, I had a perfect reason pop up to finally do so. Aaron got a birthday gift from his wife, where she sent him to Sac to hang out with his guys. He wanted to do some gaming. Well, the idea hit me – why not let him think I’d be running another Forte 2000 game, but actually surprise him with the first live APEX run in almost a decade? I managed to pull together all the original APEX players but Kevin (who’s in Florida), and even have Jim and Adam make up a couple of guest-star heroes. We hit Adam and Randy’s place on Saturday, sat down around the gaming table, and I started handing out the character sheets. Aaron was expecting his Dyna Girl sheet, and got handed Magistrate instead. Surprise!

In preparation for this game (which was a major blast), I knew I had to get the old players back up to speed with the APEX world and what was happening in it. So I threw together a quick web page with all the APEX updates and some sourcebook material, and I used this as the basis for the actual APEX page I knew I wanted to do for this ‘Times issue. And just this weekend, I finished it up, and now all the APEX material – with a bunch of NEW campaign material – is online, including all the adventures, character profiles, and some amazing new full-color APEX art to kick things off.

If you check out the page, you’ll find there’s a LOT of stuff there. Sorry. Had to get the whole campaign up. I don’t expect everyone to read ALL of it – it’s meant to be checked out over time. Some of you have seen a lot of this material before, when Aaron and I did our “APEX Files” zine for a couple of issues in the ‘Times. I can tell you what the new stuff is since then, if you just prefer to focus on that.

First, APEX #14 is the game that I ran for the guys a couple of months ago. It picks up just a couple of months after APEX #13. The campaign, as you’ll notice, is stuck in 1997. Which actually makes it a lot of fun, making everyone keep the time period in mind (I think that President Clinton is doing a swell job, don’t you? Wouldn’t it be funny if Hillary ran for President one day, too? Ha ha!). I kept the same timeline and subplots going (having to, of course, remind everyone of them). And I totally loved the characters Adam and Jim came up with! As the APEX roster is already full, I wasn’t going to be putting them on the team, but I asked them to each make Sacramento-based heroes, because I’m thinking of MAYBE running a spinoff APEX campaign based in Sac for Randy, Jim, Adam and A.T. So this was a great chance to introduce those characters, ones who may be getting their own comic one of these days. So anyway, that issue would be a good one to read.

I did a “Basics” page to get you up to quick speed on the APEX team and the APEX world, and you can then dive into the Character and Sourcebook pages to get more detail if you like. Some of the Sourcebook pages already appeared in the ‘Times, but I finished my writeups of the last of the major super-teams and some other stuff. The biggest addition is the big ol’ APEX campaign world timeline, something I’ve been working on a lot the past couple of weeks. When you hit the “Timeline” button, it goes to the default “All” page, but I’d advise reading it by decade to break it up a bit, so there are buttons for that. There are all kinds of new detail on the world that’s never been known before, and I really fleshed out the world.

Oh, and I’d also recommend reading the APEX Summer Spectacular issue. It’ll be a nice flashback for those of you who were in that game (thrill to the adventures of Capitan Misterio and Monty the Mole!), and a lot of fun to check out for those who weren’t there. I really enjoyed the hell out of that game, and it paints a great picture of what the APEX world is like.

Oh, but don’t forget the ART! First of all, check out the color artwork from Sean Harrington! I knew I needed to get a brand-new group shot for the page (didn’t have anything in color), so I ordered one from him. Remember what I told you about treating your artists right if you want them to treat YOU right? Sean couldn’t decide on the composition he wanted for the shot (he had two in mind), so he decided to do individual shots of all the characters, then arrange them, Photoshop-style, into his two ideas. He not only ended up sending me both, but also made individual files (with their own backgrounds) of the character shots and sent those to me, too. So for the price of one group shot, I got eight total pieces of art! Wow! Did I mention he’s a swell guy? That really made the character pages look great. That art is also featured in the Gallery, where I also scanned and posted all the original campaign art I could find, most of them done by Ben (woo hoo!) and a few done by A.T. and Tim. Great memories.

So take a look around, try out what you like, and I hope you get a kick out of my personal campaign world. It’s been way overdue to hit the web, and it’s finally here. One more thing off my to-do list. Only about a thousand more to go.

On the Forte said, just some new art on the Forte 2000 Gallery, and those usual additions to the Calendar and Message Board pages on the Forte.com site. Check the gallery additions. First, I got a color sketch card of Tinker done by pro artist Kevin West. Very cool! Unlike a lot of artists, he actually acknowledged that she’s Chinese. I found a gal on eBay named Katarina Marsh who was a lot of fun to work with. She does a lot of teen-looking stuff, so I figured I’d try her out on Forte’s teens, FourStar. Ended up getting all four from her. Very fun. The Passport is especially cool. And finally, I found an AMAZING artist on MySpace named Chris Butler, and ordered up a color Nightsable from him. Great style! I’ll definitely be using him again. So enjoy the art, and enjoy the periodic peek into current Forte continuity with the Calendar and Message Boards.

Next Time...On "The 'F' Word"...

We’ll see where the mood (and the time) takes me next time around. That’ll be in JUNE, baby, when I’ll be in a REAL good mood about the weather, and will be OH so close to a big new Comic-Con in San Diego! Hope everyone’s springtimes are treating them well, and I’ll be back on here again in a pair of months.

Michael O’Connell
A Child of Forte (But APEX's Baby Daddy...)