#140
GM Notes
by GM Michael O'Connell
Forte 2000 is live.
The thing I couldn’t even imagine happening when I first got the Forte 2000 notion—just as an idea for a group fiction project—finally happened. The first Forte 2000 game ran.
Kevin (formerly Knightsabre, Thresher and Synergy of Forte) flew into town for the weekend for the occasion. Aaron (formerly Electro Man) and I (formerly Dr. Jackal, Twostep) hopped in Aaron’s car with Kevin and headed up to Orange County (a couple of hours drive) to hook up with Kaye and Ben (formerly Mist, Cincoflex and Nightshift (Kaye) and Hologram (Ben)) at their place, where they graciously agreed to host this historic occasion. Special occasions need special moments to mark them. How about a car wreck on the drive up there?
Yeah, we got in a wreck. Traffic screeched to a dead halt all of a sudden on the freeway, and we slid into the rear of the car ahead of us. No one was hurt, but damage was done the Aaron’s Tiburon (ouch!). We found there was a noise and shaking when we tried to drive off. Pulling off the freeway, we stopped and checked things out, and found that his front tires, which had needed replacing anyway, now looked kind of like a mountain lion had attacked them. We found a tire place by the beach and let them put on two new ones while we found a diner and had lunch. Thankfully, the tires were the problem, and we got on our way again.
Finally we got to Ben and Kaye’s place, where we worked on last-minute character stuff for a while. Ben delivered the kids to Grandma’s for the evening, and, after we filled ourselves up on fresh-baked brownies, sausage dip and sodas, the game got underway.
It felt great to be GMing again. The last time I GMed a non-Con game was the APEX game back in Sacramento, and that was over five years ago. There’s been no regular or even semi-regular Champions for me since then…just, like the others at the table, that one chance a year at the Con. Con games are great, don’t get me wrong. But they’re not the same as a regular, episodic campaign. It’s just a whole different feel. And a great one.
What made it even greater was that I was GMing for four of my favorite Champions players in the world. You couldn’t pick a better group. Every one of them understands the game and that it’s so much more than just character sheets and dice. They all understand story and character and drama. And each adds so much to game when they’re in it. This is a gaming dream team, and any GM out there should be envious of me. It makes such a difference when your players are all excellent storytellers themselves. I haven’t just gamed with all of them for years (16 years with Kevin, 15 with Kaye…), but have been involved in writing projects with all of them, too. You get a group like this together, the stories we all create together in our gaming can’t help but be great.
Maybe the best part of this was that it was Forte again. Now, granted…it’s not Forte, not exactly the same, and never will be. Forte was K.C.’s game, and without him as GM, it’s naturally going to be different. But having the chance to create stories in his world is the closest any of us are going to get to being in the game again, so we’re happy to have that much, at least. Just to set the stories in motion again, to revisit the old Seattle and see what’s become of it, to at least endeavor to carry on with the world we all spent so much time living in…it’s pure pleasure.
For me, personally, a very big satisfaction came from seeing the Forte 2000 team—created and presented, up to that night, only on this web page—come to life. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into this site and the story of this new team—as have all those who created characters for it—and having a chance to let it live and breathe and become what it was created to emulate…an actual Champions game…was just fantastic. And very exciting.
The game itself was a blast. Here are some things that stood out for me. Aaron’s Dyna Girl. He put a lot of work into creating the character, and from the minute he started playing her, she just worked. Aaron and Kaye immediately fell into step with this relationship between Dyna and Tinker that felt totally natural…and a lot of fun. Ben coming up with a hero (Moonspider) whose secret I.D. is a lawyer who defends villains? Brilliant! A GM’s dream, and totally fitting with the spirit of Forte. What I hadn’t expected was Tinker and Dyna Girl’s immediate dislike for the lawyer side of his persona. Classic! That made for some really memorable role-playing. And the ideas Kevin came up with for uses of super-speed in the game…loved them. I know he’s been wanting to play a speedster for years now, and I’m so glad he finally got the chance in a game I’m running. His use of his own police knowledge to flesh out the former-cop character of Vortex added a lot to both the character and the game. Know that old saying about “write what you know”? It does make a difference.
And there was role-playing. Man. This is something you often don’t have time for in a Con game, especially ones where you have eight to ten players around the table. Everyone was giving me exactly what I’d come to expect from them. It’s so much fun to see the unexpected happen when this is going on. The lawyer-bashing, as I said before. Also, the maybe/maybe-not attraction thing with Vortex and Nightsable. Didn’t see that coming, and it’s perfect. Fits right in with where things are with the whole Nightsable/Seahawk thing. Seamless. And, of course, there’s that part of GMing that really makes it exciting and satisfying…having your players thinking their way all around the story and going off in unexpected directions. That’s the juice for me, the rush…the thinking on your feet that comes with running any game. And it’s pretty pleasing, too, when you’ve got a group of players that can actually figure out your plot, like when Kaye realized the thing about the dockworkers strike affecting the location of the object in question. To paraphrase a favorite A-Teamer of mine…I love it when a game comes together.
We gamed really late. Kevin, Aaron and I didn’t get back to San Diego until after 3:00 a.m. (or was it 4:00?). Ah, but it was so worth it. I just wish Kevin could make it down regularly, but Sacramento’s a long ways off. But, we’ll see what we can do. There was a great chemistry happening with these four players, and I’d love to see it continue.
So, that’s the first official Forte 2000 game behind us. Got to hurry up and set a date for the next one, because I, for one, am itching to get back to that table again and see where this story, and these characters, go from here.
Thanks again, Ben and Kaye, for being such gracious hosts. Thanks, Kevin, for making the trip down to be a part of it. And thanks, Aaron, for being the transportation that made it happen—and at the cost of some front end damage, too. Hopefully, when we do this next time, we’ll keep the danger and excitement in the game itself, where it belongs.
Forte 2000. It is on.