"Welcome to the Party, Pal!"

Always the important first step of any new zine...making it past the first issue! I did it! Woo! Hey, that's a lot better than some of the other people who joined the 'Times over the years...

Happy to be back, happy that it's SUMMERTIME, happy that we actually got the online Clobberin' Times started and it's rolling right along. And I'm especially happy to have this excuse to be neck deep back in Forte again. I missed this stuff!

This Time Around

I been busy, so there's some new stuff to be had. Let's get into talking about the contents.

First off, I've added a whole new page to the ForteUniverse.com family--The Forte Expanded Universe Page (or "Forte EU"). This is a page that begged to be made. There are SO many facets to Forte continuity. You've got your campaign stuff, the actual events that happened in the game itself. You've got your Forte 2000, and that's got its own page. You've got some fiction, and there's a page for that as well. But there's been other stuff that doesn't quite fit into the other pages. Stuff like the Con games where pages of Forte history have been written, stuff like the bluebooking we used to do back in the day as players in Forte, and other writings that expanded on things (like Kaye's "Journals of Stephen Strange"). Also, there are other parts to the Forte Universe that aren't Forte...like other teams, such at the Paragons, or Armor Security, or the Four Aces; groups that are part of the overall Forte story that need to be shared.

So, to that end, I created the "EU" page. First and foremost, I wanted to have a place to put all the Con game writeups from all the Clobberin' Cons over the years. As most of this stuff made it into the 'Times along the way, some of this will be reruns to some of you, but hopefully fun to look at again. I started off this issue with "Clobberin' On Infinite Earths IX: The Jericho Effect", the game that Aaron and I ran in 1998 that ended up being my favorite of the COIE games. There were just so many people that showed up, playing all their best-known characters, and we got to create this huge epic of a story that joined four campaign worlds from the 'Times together, and resolved a lot of lingering plotlines in all of them. It's a hell of a fun read. The write-up of the game is on this page, along with the intro that I originally wrote in the 'Times, as well as starting team pages for MAGIC, The Questors, and Crusade (I hope to have full and proper pages for them all in the future). And I also scanned in some of the art that came from that game, too.

And for the first offering in the post-campaign "EU" material, I'm re-presenting "D'Arque Dominion", which was, again, originally presented in the print version of the 'Times. It's the origin of Nightsable, who would eventually become a part of Forte 2000, and one last big adventure for the original Forte founders, and the final resolution to the long-standing Forte conflict with the evil Lucifer D'Arque, one of K.C.'s greatest villains in the game. I just really liked this story a lot, and I hope you enjoy it...either again, or for the first time.

But enough of the reruns (though it's summertime, so an appropriate time for them). Let's get to some new stuff!

One of the new Forte Universe projects I'm most excited about is something called "Forge", something that involves some former Forte members, and an idea sprung by me and Aaron (the name "Forge" came from him) and grown with the participation of Kaye and Randy "Anvil" Auer. It was born when Aaron and I were driving around Seattle during my trip there, talking Forte stuff and geeking out. One of those things that started as one conversation and turned into another...and "Forge" was born. Appropriately, in Seattle, Forte's home town (though, ironically, the "Forge" stuff will be taking place in San Francisco).

I won't get too into it, because I'd like the story to speak for itself, but I started writing the origin story and present you with the first chapter of it this issue on the Forte '05 page. Please do check out "Forge: Things Change, Chapter 1: Alamo by the Bay", and let me know what you think. And stay tuned for the next three chapters that finish the origin and lead up to the Forge page at ForteUniverse.com, and to an exciting new beginning for some familiar Forte characters, and a bold new era in Forte history.

And there's more Forte 2000!

Got a new update to the site this time, with some neat new stuff. My contributions are thus:

Forte 2000 #143: "Breakouts and Wakeups". You might recall that Forte 2000 #142 was the actual con game that took place summer before last. Well, sadly, that was the last live game of the Forte sequel campaign (so far...), but the story goes on! I've now started the "virtual" issues (they're fiction, written in game update format), continuing on the story, writing them as though I was running the game for the players...trying to write their characters as I think they'd play them. When I started running the live game (#140), I was planting the seeds for a big story arc that was to lead up to #150. That story, "The Dawn of Anubis", is now beginning. This issue picks up where the Con game ended, and gets back to the mysterious sarcophagus the team liberated in #140. Only now, we found out what's inside...

Forte 2000 #144: Dawn of Anubis Prelude - "The Coming of Horus". This issue picks up where the last one dramatically ended, and we get a lot of backstory on the big Anubis storyline and find out what's really going on. Plus we meet Horus, someone's who's going to become a major part of the team's lives...especially Tinker's. And there's some fun combat in this one, too, that involves a favorite old original Forte villain of K.C.'s from back in the day.

Forte 2000 #145: "Once More...The Deviators!". Okay, when I say once more...we haven't ACTUALLY met these villains before. This story harkens back to Forte 2000 #63...which hasn't even been written yet. But hey, you've got to start filling in the timeline, right? I mean, SOME stuff had to happen between the January 2000 origin and the October 2002 "second wave". So, for the luv'a retcon...they're back! MASSIVE combat issue, if you've been itching for a big beatdown. Plus, a good chunk of secret I.D. stuff for everyone, just to keep the character arcs going. I wanted to build in some time into one of these issues, so this one takes place over a week of time.

"Pastels" is a piece of Rainier fiction I wrote. There were three reasons for this short piece. One, there hasn't been enough written about Rainier...he needs some fiction of his own to develop the character more. Two, I needed to establish this probably unhealthy romance between him and former Forte heroine Moondancer that I've had in mind for some time. Her "return" is in Forte 2000 #143, so I had to let readers in on at least some of the history between them. So I started off with this one, a look into one of their happy moments. There are the other kind, too, and I've got to write those as well (not a storybook romance, this pairing). And three...well, I wanted to address "the assumption". Tim gave me the basic character design and origin behind Rainier when he created him, then let me run with it, and I filled in the details. The result was the Rainier character page. And a couple of the other players involved read it and, well, had some questions about Davis Alexander. Which got me thinking that other people in his life might have the same questions. Anyway, "Pastels" finally addresses that. Hope you find the story amusing.

And we have a Gallery page now! I've been wanting to build one of those for the site for a while, a place to put new Forte 2000 art. We're still working on the art part, but to start things out, I thought it'd be fun to make some Forte 2000 wallpapers people could download. I made a couple--the "Forte 2000 Identities" one showing the secret ID's of the team members, and the alternate "Menace Remix" (foreshadowing for a really nasty Forte 2000 villain I'm working on). And I sent them to Aaron, much much more of a Photoshop jock than I am, and challenged him to come with some F2K wallpapers of his own. Uh, to put it in the words of that animated mouse from the Voltron episode of Robot Chicken: "DAAAAaaaaamnnn!" Aaron hit it out of the park. He made wallpapers for each of the F2K characters, and they all kick ASS! The only one currently missing is Vortex, because I ordered a new piece of Storn artwork for Aaron to use that's not done yet. But all but that one are up on the new Gallery page for you to check out, so please do so.

The Forte Project: Onward!

I've also been busy on some stuff that you're not going to be seeing for a long time, probably...but that's the "joy" of long-term projects. I mentioned before about "The Forte Project", which is my attempt to collect everything Forte--game updates, fiction, art, character sheets, bluebooking, everything--and get it all online. It's a big ass project. But you have to start somewhere, and you have to do it a little at a time and watch it grow.

Since the last issue of the 'Times, I've finally gotten back to it after a long hiatus. And there's progress! The first thing I had to do was get every Forte update (adventure report) in typed format. See, the first 50 or so of them were handwritten by K.C. and copied off for all of us (keep in mind this was the late 80s, and word processors were still a pretty new concept for most). I got back to that, and now have all of those typed. This is important, because the next phase of the project is to get all the issues into Word files. This is going to involve lots of OCR scanning as I don't have the original text files of K.C.'s to work with. Then those will be converted to web pages. But at least I finally got the typing done, which is a relief, and that means I have at least 50 issues already in Word format now. Now I only have to scan 277 of them (ugh...).

Another important part of the project, and the eventual web page, is the final and complete "Forte Index". K.C. came up with this idea somewhere during the game, probably as a tool for him as a GM. He started an index that listed every character that appeared in Forte--hero, villain or other, right down to bankers and cops as long as they had proper names that got used in the update--and which issue numbers they appeared in. He'd periodically print and bind new updated versions of the Index for all of us. The last one I got went up to issue #255. There was one out there that went up to #300, but I never got one. And no one else, after the campaign ended, seemed able to find theirs. Finally, Randy, Jim and Adam came down to visit me in San Diego, and brought me not only the Forte updates I'd been missing from the latter runs I hadn't been there for, but that 1-300 index as well. Which I somehow managed to lose soon after.

Regardless, Forte never had a "final" index, one that covered all 328 issues, and I've been meaning to complete it. It just ended up being more work since I only had the 1-255 index to start with. But I have now completed the final Forte Index (go me!), which is a very important research tool for people writing post-campaign fiction and running post-campaign games. It's all about the continuity with Forte, so you gotta keep it straight! For example, I had this whole story planned out with this villain of K.C.'s named "Dirge", one that I was working on with Aaron and Kaye. Then, as I was creating the index, I got to the second-to-last Forte issue ever and found out he had died in that issue. Oops! Scrap THAT story. Had I had a final Forte Index to start with, I wouldn't have had to waste my time.

So eventually what's going to happen is that you, a curious Forte reader, will be able to sign on to ForteUniverse.com and decide you want to learn about, say, a villain named "The Blue Breakdancer" you heard about. You'll be able to go to the online Forte Index, go to that villain, alphabetically, and see what issues he was in. Then you'll be able to click on any of those issue numbers right from the Index, and you'll be taken to that issue writeup to read all about him. While this is a tool mainly being built with Forte players in mind, my hope is that once we have all the updates online and available for people to read, others will become fans of the game's history (the updates, as I've been reminded lately, are a hell of a fun read) and want to learn more. So, everybody wins. Next step...starting the LONG process of getting all the updates online. But hey...baby steps...

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

We'll see where my mood takes me, but I'm hoping to complete the Forge origin story, get some more Forte 2000 issues written up (as I'm dying to get to the senses-shattering conclusion in #150!), finish a couple of fiction pieces I'm working on for Forte and Forte 2000, and get back to my Paragons page and finally get that complete. Ooh, but I'd better start early, because just before the deadline, I'll be spending a week in San Diego for Clobberin' Con XVI! So I'm sure I'll have a Con report (just like the old days!) in there for y'all as well...and probably with some pictures, too. Until then...I'll see you all on the board!

Michael O'Connell

Voted Most Likely to Never Let It Go

F O R T E - 2 0 0 0

The end is near.