INTRODUCTION
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November 5, 1987 – a group of Champions players from Sacramento sit down around a dining room table and begin a new campaign, one about a Seattle-based super-hero team called Forte. August 11, 2007 – a group of Forte players sit down around a dining room table in Seattle to play the 20th anniversary Forte Champions game. Not bad. Not bad at all. Welcome to Forte Forever, the official write-up of the 20th anniversary Forte adventure, the game run by original Forte creator and gamemaster K.C. Ryan during the Forte 20-year reunion weekend in Seattle. Yes, if you look at the dates, you’ll see it’s note QUITE twenty years, but once it was decided that the 20-year mark called for a special celebration—namely, all of us meeting up in Seattle, the city Forte calls home—we realized that summertime was going to be best for people to travel and to work it into their schedules. The folks involved in Forte, all once Sacramento citizens, are now all quite spread around the nation, and we wanted to make it as easy as possible for folks to attend. And with that, seven of us were able to make it. Those folks were the aforementioned GM K.C. Ryan, along with Forte players Adam Johnson (Lightsedge), Jeff Baumgardner (Vanguard), Randy Auer (Anvil), Jim Kletzing (Tomarssuk), Aaron Storck (Dyna Girl) and myself (Dr. Jackal). And that list provides a pretty good cross-section of the history of the Forte game. K.C., Jeff and I were there from the beginning. Randy and Jim represented the middle age of the game, players who joined in after the campaign was well-established, and as older players left, and who quickly made their marks in Forte history. Adam and Aaron came in for the final age of the game, becoming part of the big mosaic that encompassed the 328 runs of the grand tale of Forte. We decided on the trip about two years beforehand, an idea made easier because Aaron was now living in Seattle, and could be our host. And it kind of went without saying that such a weekend could not go by without a Forte game being run, and one run by the GM himself, K.C. And so it came to pass, on the Saturday night of our three-day celebration, after coming back from some city sight-seeing (and checking out some actual locations where fictional Forte moments happened over the years), we all, once again, sat around a table together, took out dice and character sheets, and let K.C. take us back into the world that had become a second home to all of us in the past two decades. The world of Forte. The write-up you’ll be reading—written by K.C. and myself—is the summary of the events that happened during that game. It’s written in the classic “Forte Update” style, the one that K.C. used all those years when he wrote the adventure reports after each Forte gaming session. We wrote it together because K.C. was the one with the details and the plot, while I was the one who was at the game, on my laptop, taking notes as the game went along and recording all the details of what was done, what was said, and who punched who (and how hard). And like all the other updates of other games written, and like all the online fictional tales written since on the Forte Universe sites, it now becomes a part of Forte history…and a major milestone. There are, and have been, a lot of Champions games out there, but only a few can say that they’re still around and going on (though in a different format) twenty years after they began. This is a testament to how special Forte is, and how much it still means to all of us who were fortunate enough to be a part of it. Take note of a couple of things about the write-up before you dive into it. First, note that I’ve placed links in the text for your use. Character names that are linked will take you either to an existing ForteUniverse page with information on that character, or at least to a piece of art for that character if no such page exists (yes…we’re working on it). The links to the new villains created by K.C. for the game to go pages that will give you both a piece of Photoshop art references that K.C. made for each to show us what they looked like, and to a Champions character sheet for each that he put in .xls format. Also, where references to other issues or stories are made, a link will take you to that write-up of it, if a write-up exists at this time on the Forte sites. These are all just bonus material if you want to go a little deeper into the backstory of this tale. Also, I wanted to make a note about the piece of art at the bottom of the write-up. I had this commissioned by a very talented artist named Sean Harrington, who’s a regular Forte art contributor. This was my gift to all the people who were able to make it to the event, a way to commemorate the big game. The characters shown are the characters played by each of the players, with one exception. The black, silhouetted girl in the upper left is Eclipse, who did not appear in the game. I didn’t want to leave K.C. out of the gift, but being the GM, he didn’t have a character in the Forte Forever game. But during the run of the Forte original campaign, K.C. did have his own Forte hero on the team for a time (what’s called a “GMPC”, or a gamemaster’s character. Though gamemasters run the whole game, and therefore all the NPC characters and villains in the game, sometimes a GM will create an actual character for himself to be on the team. This character essentially runs as an NPC, but still allows the GM to be one of the “players” to a limited degree). As I wanted K.C represented in the art as well, his character was included, too. Just saving you any confusion in case you get all the way to the end, look at the art, and wonder who the heck that chick is. Finally, I want to clear something about a couple of dates. The first run of the Forte game, as noted above, was November 5th, 1987. As you’ll see in the story, the “birth day” of Forte is listed as November 4th. This is because, while the game in the “real world” ran on 11/05, the story took place, in the Forte world, on 11/04 and 11/05, so the official first appearance of Forte in Forte history is 11/04/87. Make sense? Just didn’t want anyone to think there was some kind of error or typo going on there. Like many of the Forte extra-special issues (such as big milestones during the game itself, like issue #100, #150, #300, etc.), K.C made this game epic and momentous, and its story delves heavily into Forte history and has some shocks and surprises (including one very dramatic return). I hope that you’ll feel this sense of history as you read through it, and appreciate how much has gone into the game that has led to this. The Forte heroes (a group of them, at least…it would have been nice to have a game with all 34 of the heroes who’ve been members of Forte in it (player had more than one character in the game over the years), but aside from some of those characters no longer being alive, and aside from all the players of those characters not being present, that might have been a LITTLE tough to squeeze into one night of gaming…) once again reunite to save the world, and to save Forte itself. It’s an adventure befitting such a major anniversary, and an amazing time was had by all who were there to be a part of it. A special thanks to go out to those who were unable to attend the weekend—Kevin, Kaye, Ben, Tim, Jim M., Logan and Andrea. There would be no Forte without them, and their contributions to the history that this story celebrates. And thanks, too, to Forte friends like Martin and Joel, who, though never official members of Forte, made their mark on the game with their guest-star Forte world heroes that became a part of the legend, too. Thanks to everyone involved—friends and teammates—for twenty years of adventure, excitement, drama and fun. And the biggest thanks, of course, to K.C., the one who created it all for us, and gave us a world in which to set our imaginations and dreams free, and to unleash the hero within us all. We hope you enjoy the Forte Forever story, and if you want to learn more about Forte, and its heroes and tales, we invite you to check out the other pages of the ForteUniverse site and find out why one hero team is still fighting the good fight, two decades after a single night at a dining room table in Sacramento, California. Forte remains. Forte lives on. For all of us. And now… The end of the beginning. The beginning of the end. Forte Forever. Michael O’Connell |