What is “Forte”? Forte is a super-hero team from a long running Champions role-playing game campaign. The game, run by K.C. Ryan, lasted from 1987 to 1995, making it one of the longest-running and most successful Champions games ever. The team got the name “Forte” as sort of a play on the idea that there were—originally—four members. The game, over its run, had a total of 13 different players, and the team had 25 different heroes on it (at various times). Each of the Forte game’s over 300 “issues” was chronicled in game updates written by K.C., the gamemaster. Stories ranging from the small and personal to the vast and epic made up the history of Forte. Characters lived, fought, died, married, had children, all during the course of the game’s run. The game finally ended when K.C., like many of his players before him, moved away from Sacramento. The campaign ended, but stories of the game world and its characters lived on through occasional fiction or convention games run at the annual gathering at the San Diego Comic-Con, where many of the campaign’s old players meet up each year. Where can I learn more about Forte? Much of the original Forte game took place before the internet era, so much of the campaign information is preserved in hard copy (game updates, art, fiction, etc.), but not online. A site has been started in an attempt to change this. While still in the beginning stages, some information on the team can be found there now, and hopefully, one day, all the information on Forte will there and available online. You can view it now at www.forteuniverse.com. So what’s “Forte 2000”? A thought occurred to me (Michael O’Connell, former Forte player and official campaign historian) one day in ’98 or ’99. What if, by some miracle, all the founding, original players of Forte, and the GM, were all back in the same city again, and all had time to game like we used to? What if K.C. started up the Forte game again, and told us, the original four, to make new Forte characters. What would we make? That was the question I posed to myself , Tim Watts, Jeff Baumgardner and Kaye Bellot. Just for fun. We all came up with characters—Seahawk, Rainier, Max and Tinker, respectively—and I thought they were all too good to just do nothing with. So I started this site mainly as a place to chronicle the fictional exploits of these four characters, as this was starting to turn into a writing project. The idea was to continue the history and campaign world of Forte in modern day, with a new group of characters. The project still retains that idea, but has grown into something more. At the 2002 San Diego Comic-Con, Kaye, Ben, Aaron and I got to talking about the idea of getting together and gaming again, mainly on a monthly basis, as Ben and Kaye are only in L.A., and Aaron and I in San Diego. So in October of 2002, we did just that, with former Forte player Kevin Jones flying into town to join us. The site is now also a place to chronicle the occasional gaming adventures of the team. In short, if Forte was looked at as a comic, one that was cancelled in 1995, “Forte 2000” is the new comic that revives the old series after a long hiatus, with new heroes and new adventures. The legacy lives on. So is the team called “Forte 2000”? No, the team’s still called “Forte”. The term “Forte 2000” is just the title of the “comic” or campaign. The team is often referred to herein as “Forte 2000” to differentiate it from the original team. Does “Forte 2000” take place in the same world as “Forte”? Yes. Forte 2000 is a continuation of Forte history. All that has come before, everything from the original Forte campaign and fiction and convention games, are all part of the backstory of Forte 2000. When does all this Forte 2000 stuff take place in the Forte timeline? As the name suggests, this new team first came together in 2000, and the adventures continue up to present time. Why do the issues on the “Adventures” page skip from Forte 2000 #3 to Forte 2000 #140? Forte 2000 started as fiction. Though the first three issues are written in game update format, they are actually fiction, and no game was ever run for them. When the game was actually run for the first time in 2002 (Forte 2000 #140), the timeline had already been set, and we wanted to game to run in present time. So, it’s assumed there were over two years of adventures with the original Forte 2000 foursome before the game started and new characters were introduced. This gap will be filled in over time with fiction stories. What’s the “Second Wave”? This is a term used to describe the second era of Forte 2000, or when the actual game started. Forte 2000 started with Seahawk, Tinker, Rainier and Max, but of the creators of these characters, only Kaye (Tinker) and I (Seahawk) were actually in the live game…and I run the game. With the addition of Ben, Aaron and Kevin, they each needed their own Forte 2000 characters to play alongside Tinker. Story-wise, this made sense, and mirrored how things went with the original Forte. In the first campaign, the starting four characters were the only ones in the game for over 60 issues, but new ones started to show up as new players came in or existing players wanted to try new characters. Happens this way in comics as well. A natural progression. So, these new characters (Moonspider, Dyna Girl, Vortex and Nightsable) became the “second wave” of Forte 2000. So did the original Forte 2000 characters leave the team? Nope. The team just got bigger. During the actual running of the game, Max, Rainier and Seahawk are there as NPCs (non-player characters), though they’re often “conveniently” absent doing other things to let the new characters (the ones with actual players in the game) run the show. Whose character is Nightsable? The character of Nightsable, the daughter (kind of) of the original Forte’s Dr. Jackal, was created in fiction before the Forte 2000 project came together. In the Forte timeline, she was doing part-time heroing around Seattle. When I was writing the first three issues of Forte 2000, I inserted her into the story as sort of a bridge between the two teams. She just seemed to be perfect to be part of the team, but I already had Seahawk as my character on the team. And, at least for the first couple of years, Forte 2000 was meant to be the founding four, so there was no room for her anyway. But she did hang around with the team, and, as can be found in fiction in the “Adventures” section, got romantically involved with Seahawk. When the “Second Wave” started, I took a look at the team as a whole, and realized the male-to-female ratio was a bit skewed. In short, we really needed another chick. And having her just “hanging around” with the team without actually being on the team didn’t make much sense. And besides…having a couple of Forte legacy heroes (Nightsable and Dyna Girl, both daughters of former Forte heroes) just feels right for a second generation team. So I added her as an official member of the team at that point. So she’s my creation, but is, in actuality, an NPC hero on the team. Where does all that neat color character artwork come from that looks computer-made? The greatest invention for non-artists everywhere provides much of the character design art for the campaign. I can’t draw a straight line. I’ve always had to turn to artist friends like Tim or Ben to draw characters for me in the past, but none of us have the time we used to, most especially not those guys. But now I don’t have to bug them anymore, because I’ve found “Heromachine”. It’s online software anyone can use to build super-characters. It’s ingenious. You can customize everything from costume to masks to boots to hair to facial features, all in full color. GMs without a lick of artistic talent no longer have to try to describe what the villains look like to their players. You can try it out, too, by heading over to http://www.heromachine.com. Hours of fun, even if you’re not running a game. And who's doing the real art? The nifty hero shots you're seeing are done by Ben Bellot and Tim Watts...both former Forte players, and both current Forte 2000 creators...as well as other commissioned artists (who, unlike Ben and Tim, get paid...) like Aaron Sowd, Storn A. Cook, Eryck Webb, Jeff Moy, John Watkins-Chow, Tommy Castillo and "Studio-Hades".
What’s with all the casting actors as characters? This is something that I started doing back in my “Apex” Champions game. You know the old pastime…sitting around with your comic fan pals, trying to cast the Avengers or Legion movie, figuring out which actor plays which character? The idea kind of rolled into the “Apex” game. I found it just helped people connect to the NPCs better, and it helped me run them better. Aaron and I got so used to the practice, it just came natural with Forte 2000. One of the requirements, in fact, of creating a Forte 2000 character is that you have to cast an actor for that character. It also makes writing the fiction much easier…and, I think, more fun to read, too. Who's this Armor Security in the Dyna Girl stories? Armor Security first appeared in the original Forte campaign. They were a super-powered group that worked exclusively for the crafty and dangerous mogul Maxwell Ravenscroft. They eventually left Ravenscroft's employ and went out on their own, creating their own slick hero-for-hire corporation based out of L.A. Originally having something of a rivalry with Forte and looked on with suspicion by Seattle's favorite heroes, Armor has became both allies and friends to Forte. Armor is Aaron Storck's baby, and all the post-Forte happenings with Armor have been his creation (the character Grav, of Armor, was originally a character of Aaron's that he played when he came to Sacramento and guest-starred in the original Forte game). |
