I am a certified Forte fanboy.

I've collected every issue. I've written fanfic about the characters. I've paid for artists at conventions to do renderings of the characters. I know all the major plotlines. I know even the minor characters. I know all manner of inconsequential Forte trivia, and can sit down with other fans and have lengthy discussions on Forte, its characters, its themes, you name it. Now if that doesn't define the fanboy as we know it, I don't know what does.

Of course, we're not talking about a comic here. We're talking about a Champions campaign.

One that I was in, as a matter of fact, which adds a twist, as you usually don't find the comic or TV show's biggest nerds to be one of the co-writers or one of the actors. Yes, I was a part of Forte. And yes, I am still its biggest fan.

And the guy that just won't let it die.

The Forte campaign started in November of 1987. A guy named K.C. Ryan, having moved to Sacramento for a job after graduating Notre Dame, decided a nice way to meet people in his new town might be to start up a Champions game. It was something he did and enjoyed in college, and he had this whole campaign universe already set up, so why not open its doors again? In the summer of 1986, he put up an ad in a local shop that dealt in games of all types. A recent high school graduate named Tim Watts was shopping for a chess set, and happened to see the ad posted up on the register. He took down the number and called his best friend since the 5th grade--and fellow high school Champs player--Mike O'Connell, and suggested they give this guy a call, and maybe get into a "real" Champions game for once. They met at K.C.'s place, and after some more players were added (including an Air Force guy named Jeff Baumgardner and a high school senior named Kevin Jones), K.C.'s first Sacramento campaign--the Paragons campaign--began.

The game went for a few months before ending, and a new game started, set in the same universe, and with some of the same players (including Tim, Mike, Jeff and Kevin). But the MidKnights campaign was destined for disaster, thanks to the addition of new players that weren't meshing with the old. That game ended and, for a while, everyone went their separate ways.

A few months later, Tim and K.C. ran into each other at a local comic convention. They started discussing how much fun their gaming experience had been at the start, and the idea of trying a new game. This time, the players would be carefully selected, however, to avoid the pitfalls of the last occasion. Tim called Mike. K.C. called Jeff. And the four of them, on November 5th, 1987, met at K.C.'s new condo in Roseville, California, took off their shoes (as you were required to at K.C.'s place to protect his carpet), headed to the upstairs of the split-level abode, sat down at K.C.'s oval wooden dining room table, and started playing a new game, with new characters.

And from there began a Champions game that ran weekly from 1987 to 1995, spawned a mountain of character art and fiction, found readers nationwide through the Clobberin' Times Champions APA that followed its exploits, was home to over thirty heroes from thirteen players, and lives on still today in convention games, new fiction and web adventures, and even in a sequel campaign.

Tim created the gruff and smartass martial artist Phantasm. Jeff created a sorceress from another dimension named Phantashia. Mike (we all understand by this point that I'm Mike, right?) created Dr. Jackal, a big furry hard-partying muscle man. And on the fourth run of the game, K.C. decided to mix things up a bit, and brought in (gasp!) a girl as a new player...a friend of his that had never played Champions before. Her name was Kaye Dunham, and she created a weather-controlling heroine named the Mist. And those four characters became the founding foursome of a hero group, based in Seattle, and in K.C.'s ongoing campaign universe, that would take the name Forte.

Tim, Kaye, K.C. and Jeff at the Forte gaming table

This was not your typical roleplaying game, for a number of reasons. The first, I think, was the setting itself. Most people who've experienced roleplaying games know what the typical game session looks like. You've got four to eight white males in their late teens or early twenties, sitting around a sloppy room (usually a room in a small one-bedroom apartment with Terminator 2 posters on the walls), with music cranking in the background, all shouting to be heard over each other, spilling Doritos all over the already stained carpet and sucking down gallons of Mountain Dew while the gamemaster tries to keep them interested in and focused on his wafer-thin plot that usually involves lots of big fights. And a dragon.

Forte was different right off in that K.C. had a real home. A nice one. He kept it nice (I refer back to the shoe thing). It was a grown-up's home. This set, I think, more of a grown-up mood than what I was used to (moving pizza boxes to find my character sheet at my friend Ken's apartment while people watched MTV in the background when it wasn't their turn to punch something). And it was a more grown-up group. Tim and I were now second year college guys, and we were the young ones. K.C., Kaye and Jeff were all older than us, and all had careers going (not Burger King jobs...again, like your prototypical late 80s Sacramento gamer). All this just made for an atypical, more mature, more "upscale" gaming experience.

The original Forte foursome...Mist, Dr. Jackal, Phantasm and Phantashia

And then there was the game itself. K.C. Ryan is anything but the prototypical GM. Most GMs out there get their adventure ideas from the latest issue of X-Men, or from the most recent Alien film. K.C.'s adventures would very often spawn from an article he read in, say, National Geographic. K.C. was a reader, very educated, very aware of the world around him (not just pop culture knowledge). His runs weren't just fun or interesting...they were downright educational. When he used a scientific principle for, say, an item that was stolen by bad guys, he actually explained the scientific principle. Or if you found an artifact from an ancient Mayan culture, he had researched and knew about that culture. This didn't just serve to make the game more enlightening, but it made it more real.

And he also understands the very basic idea that most GMs in Champions miss--that Champions is supposed to emulate comics. And to K.C., that meant GOOD comics. And that meant he, sage of the silver age he is, didn't just throw out villains to fight every week, but built actual stories--often multi-part stories, with subplots, some that would begin and then come back months (or years) later, and interesting, living, breathing supporting characters. You didn't just know you had a police contact you could go to. You knew that contact's name. You knew if he was married or not. You knew his personality, his background, and you'd get to see him go through subplots and character development of his own along the way. That, again, is what makes good comics, and in turn, what makes good Champions. And that served, again, to breathe life into this campaign and make it its own seemingly real world.

He started doing something in the game that he hadn't in the previous two campaigns, and this also served to set this game apart and give it its longevity. Record keeping. This isn't done a lot in games because most games, frankly, don't run that long. It's an old tale--hey, everybody, come over to my place and make characters! A GM has an idea for a game and can't wait to run it. He whips up his handful of villains. His buddies come over and roll up or create characters, usually while passing the rulebook around over a bag of chips and some bean dip. Characters are thrown together--usually characters centered on their powers, with maybe a background or personality in mind (maybe, but not always)--and the game starts. The game may run once, maybe twice, maybe even for a month or two. But it doesn't last. The GM gets a new campaign idea, people get bored with their thrown-together characters, whatever.

The original Forte gang...Kaye, Tim, Mike, K.C. and Jeff

But K.C. planned this thing out with the long-term in mind. Fortunately for him, he already had an established campaign world with the history already there and a binder full of villains to start with. But he didn't rest on that...he constantly made new villains, new characters, new stories. And he kept records. By this, I mean that after every adventure--at some point before the next week's run--he wrote up the "game update"...a summary of what happened the week before. Aside from the summary of events and peoples involved, it showed the date of that run, and that date that it was in the game reality. I don't think he realized at the time just how important this kind of documentation was. At the end of the 328 runs of the Forte campaign, there remained a body of work that recorded it all...a historical document chronicling the whole game. The immediate benefit during the game was not having players show up and ask, "What happened last week again?" We each got our own copy of the typed up report (this is what I mentioned earlier about me "collecting every issue"), and could read it before the game started again to get up to speed, or to catch those details that we might have missed while, say, we were in the john. The long-term benefit was being able to look back and look up information important to the current story. To go with these updates, K.C. also regularly updated the "Forte Index", a bound and printed listing he gave to us all that named every character, big or small, in the game, along with organizations or important places, and what issues he/she/it/they appeared in. So, for example, you could be about to fight Mighty Mermaid Man some night. You want to remember what happened last time you fought him . You could just turn to "M" in the index, find the issue, pull out that update, and read what happened. Say your character got married in the game, and you forgot when your anniversary was. You could look up that issue, and at the top of the page would be the campaign date. This become more than just informational in this game the longer it went on. This established a definite, documented timeline. A timeline that would become very important as the game went on for years...and the story of the game kept on going even after.

Artist Aaron "A.T." Thompson's famous Forte hot tub shot of original Forte

I mentioned players just throwing together a character on the spur of the moment. Hey, for some people, that's part of the fun. For some, making characters is more fun than gaming itself. But hastily thrown-together characters are not conducive to good long-term gaming. This is another place where Forte was different from the start, and where the players, not just the GM, contributed. All of us took time creating our characters for this game. I don't think any of us imagined how long Forte would last, but I think we figured it would be for longer than a few runs, at least. So we put some work into it. We didn't just create powers and crank out character sheets. We wrote backgrounds for these characters. We gave them personalities. Motivations. They were actually pretty complicated people. Speaking as someone who's done a fair share of GMing myself, I know that the more people put into their characters, the more excited the GM gets about them, and the more the GM has to work with. Their personal stories can become major story arcs in the game itself. And as a player, I know that the more time and work a player puts into his or her character, the more he or she is invested in the game. When you've got both the players AND the GM fully invested in the game and its success? That's when the magic happens.

So we started with four of us, and with K.C. as GM, and things started rolling. Immediately, the game was very satisfying. And fun. It was definitely more light-hearted in the early days. You saw some drama, but no real tragedy. The characters all mostly got along (except for that Phantasm/Phantashia sparring thing, but that was one of the memorable parts of the first year), and we worked our way through K.C.'s stories and plots with vigor and pleasure, realizing, soon, that this thing was really starting to take off. This started being the highlight of the week for all of us. We'd show up at K.C.'s after work and/or school, usually around 6:30 pm, relax and chat for a little while and talk a little about our days or weeks, pour some sodas, and then pull out the characters sheets. The curtain went up, the lights went out (before you start thinking we were very scary people, I should point out that I'm speaking metaphorically), and the night's adventure would begin.

After that first year, things started to take a turn. Not a bad turn. But change began. The first change was the addition of a "new" player. Not a new one, really, but a returning one. Kevin Jones had gotten out of the Army (NICE stress fracture, pal), and was back in Sacramento, and wanted to get back into Champions again. There's a reason why, when a show goes for a couple of seasons, it's a good idea to introduce a new character. Why? Because it mixes things up. Kevin, if nothing else, is a mixer. And I think I can attribute the changes that took place in the campaign directly to his arrival. Forte was not to be the same thereafter.

The second incarnation of Forte. (Back Row): Shrike and Cincoflex. (Front Row): Knightsabre, Dr. Jackal and Vanguard

Kevin showed up and created a character named Knightsabre. This came at an important time of game transition. We'd all been playing the same characters for more than a year, and people were thinking about trying new ones to for a change of pace. This happens in comics, makes sense in Champions. I elected to hold on to Dr. Jackal, making a conscious choice to use him to keep a foothold on the overall continuity and a link back to the beginning. Tim made a new character named Shrike, who ended up being (unknown to Phantasm) Phantasm's son from the future, thrown back to the past (our present). Kaye brought in a new and decidedly unique Brazilian heroine named Cincoflex (complete with accent, no less). And Jeff stepped in with some new guy named Vanguard...a very mysterious (yet colorful) hero that would become the character Jeff will always be known for (and as).

So there were new heroes with new personalities. New relationships formed. Some, very CLOSE relationships. Kevin decided (we're just friends, honest...) that Knightsabre would be attracted to Dr. Jackal. This opened a whole can of worms in the game, things that had never been addressed in any of the Sacramento games before. The original foursome all dated NPCs, not each other. But now there was this, and Cincoflex and Shrike started up a romance about the same time. New layers were added to the game, for sure. Not the least of which was K.C. throwing a dramatic twist in where Dr. Jackal and Knightsabre both had similar power origins (both descended from Scions...long story), and the act of their "coupling" because of this was driving Dr. Jackal insane and mutating him into something more bestial. In the end, Knightsabre had to choose to give up her powers for them to be able to stay together. And so she did, and that character was retired, because of the need to make that choice, and Kevin stepped up with his new character, Synergy. Sounds simple, but a great gaming moment...actually having to make your character make that choice...and you as the player having to make that choice knowing you lose the character. Kevin would take chances and make choices like that, which pushed the rest of us to take risks and try new things, too.

That period is what's referred to as the "romance" era of Forte, when things were sometimes dramatic, but mostly safe and happy. That was all about to change. K.C. had just started what was to be a long-term plot centered around a group of master criminals, joined together, called "Intercrime". Even he had no idea how big the story was about to become. In a particularly harsh fight on the streets of Reno, involving some villains connected to this group, Synergy went down. Unfortunately, the way Kevin built the character, all his defense was in his force field, and when he ran out of endurance and then went unconscious for a moment, it went down completely. It was then when one of the villains fired...a tough, tough electrical villain with power levels beyond what we were used to in K.C.'s game. And Synergy died. You have to understand K.C.'s games and Forte in particular to get the weight of this. Characters just don't die. It's unheard of. Well, Synergy just had, and while K.C. felt very bad about it at that moment, Kevin was fine with it. Why? It was dramatic. It was unprecedented. It raised the stakes. It was damned good drama.

And it didn't stop there. Very soon after, we were in another big fight connected to Intercrime (with Kevin's third character, Thresher, having just joined up), and again, it was nasty and dangerous. This time we were fighting in a burning building, and Dr. Jackal and Shrike were both unconscious when a powerful villain collapsed the whole building on them. Dr. Jackal was very tough. Shrike was not. It was obvious there was no way for him to survive it. K.C., realizing this, again felt guilty, and even tried to back out of it for Tim's sake, suggesting someone could come along and rescue him, but Tim--inspired by Kevin, I'm sure--said no, that that wouldn't be right, that he had died, and that's what happened. The death of Synergy had been one thing. But he'd been a newcomer to the team. Shrike had been around for a while. Shrike was the son of Phantasm. Shrike was the love of Cincoflex. This was magnificently tragic. His body was taken to the hospital (where Dr. Jackal was having to be resuscitated himself ) with a weeping, devastated Cincoflex in the ambulance with him. Kaye's character choice? Cincoflex, in her grief, lost her mind. Kaye suddenly started playing her crazy, and unstable (her first act being to steal his body from the hospital and take it back to their apartment and put it in the cleared-out refrigerator). And she played her that way...for a YEAR. THAT's called roleplaying. Suddenly, Intercrime wasn't just a story. It was a defining, major moment for the team, for the campaign. Now it was personal. Tim may have lost Shrike, but that perfectly opened the door for the dramatic return of Phantasm, after Dr. Jackal called him and said they needed him back...to go after these people, to take them down, to make them pay for what they'd done. And I decided that Dr. Jackal couldn't bring himself to tell his friend Phantasm that one of the dead heroes had been his own son (one that hadn't even been born yet...but would be. Only to one day be sent back in time and die in the past all over again?). So Tim had to play it like he had no idea (but he would find out along the way). The whole tone of the game and the characters changed, became darker. Intercrime became a year-long globe-spanning story, one with more tragedy, more death (Thresher would die at Intercrime's hand, too, but as Kevin was leaving for the Marines and leaving the game, this was the only one of the deaths planned out by the GM), more startling revelations (in the end, the driving force behind Intercrime was Phantasm's own brother, who was a brief Forte character named Dash that Tim had tried out before switching to Shrike). By the end, the team was redefined, established as a world-class group, and all the characters had been through irreversible changes. Oh, and in the middle of it? Knightsabre had twins (while in South America after being kidnapped, no less). Dr. Jackal became a father.

Post-Intercrime Forte, made up of Hammer, Dr. Jackal, Vanguard and Cincoflex

In good games, the GM listens to his players, and lets the player occasionally dictate the story. This was the case in a side story Kaye had created for the retired Mist. This is another important point of the Forte game. Characters retire, but they never really go away. Oh, you may not see them. But we all knew what our characters were doing, and they would still show up on occasion. During her Cincoflex run, Kaye would still bring back Mist for the occasional appearance. In this case, Kaye was writing a story for Sydney Todd (Mist) where she was chosen by a self-important extra-dimensional cadre of sorcerers called the Omicron to carry a child...a very special, very important child. She was chosen for a number of reasons...and the father was also chosen. See, this child's spirit was already in existence, and had to be placed in a human child. They chose her, and chose the sorcerer supreme, Stephen Strange (in case I didn't mention, K.C.'s campaign world incorporates not only his own heroes and villains, but elements from D.C. and Marvel, as well as other sources (such as "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.")) to impregnate her and be the child's father. This was a very unique (and very Kaye) story, and started just as fiction. But soon it became part of the game, and became part of the next great dramatic Forte milestone..."D'Arque Bloodlines".

This was actually a story that Kaye, K.C. and I worked on together...as I recall, during on gaming night when Kaye and I were the only two players who could make it. The elements we all worked out together, but the main story was, of course, K.C.'s (hey, had to be SOME surprises for us). The special child that was implanted into Sydney Todd was actually the son of the Forte villain Lucifer D'Arque, a mystical and dark S.O.B. that had been involved in and killed during Intercrime. But he knew his own death was coming, and planned a way back...a way to come back more powerful than he'd ever been. That Dr. Jackal and Knightsabre were descended from Scions (gods) was established. Their children, then, were inheritors to godhood and had potential for great power. D'Arque, though his mystic means, kidnapped a third, unknown daughter from Knightsabre's womb. He had this child raised in a torturous, hellish dimension where time ran faster, and when she was of age, he came and "rescued" her and took her as his lover. Through his dark powers, joined with her divine bloodline, a child would be born of them with great power and the keys to godhood and immortality. D'Arque planned that this child would be born specifically for him to inhabit, after his death, through a dark ritual, and his soul would return to the living, all-powerful.

But learning of his plan, the Omnicron stole the child at the moment of conception, and transferred it, instead, to Sydney Todd. The attempts of D'Arque (in Hell at this time, by the way) to find the child, using his beloved, the Forte villain Hellequin (who no one knew was actually Dr. Jackal's daughter), became the focus of this groundbreaking Forte story, one with new drama--thanks to manipulations by Hellequin against Forte behind the scenes--that included Dr. Jackal's illicit affair with the still-insane Cincoflex (in his defense, she did have a gun...long story, and an old campaign joke), his split with Knightsabre over it (for a time), Cincoflex's suicide attempt, and the kidnapping of Mist's child, Caleb, all leading to a dramatic showdown reuniting all (living) members of Forte at the very site of the team's incarnation (an observatory from Forte #1) with Hellequin. Revelations abounded, the fight to rescue Sydney and baby--and stop the resurrection and ascension of D'Arque--was deadly and frantic, and but minutes after Dr. Jackal found out Hellequin was the daughter he never knew existed, the same villain was killed by Tim's newest character, Hammer, to save the life of Sydney and Caleb. Everyone rushed from the burning, collapsing observatory where the team had first began...and the last one out was Dr. Jackal, walking out of the flames carrying the broken, lifeless body of his own lost child.

Or, you know, we could have had a campaign with adventures like, "Okay, you see Dr. Deathmonger robbing a bank..."

A new player, Randy Auer, joins the team with his character Anvil (front). And Dr. Jackal has left, replaced with Mike's new character Twostep (back left)

Forte was about drama. It was about story. It was about character. It was epic. Coming to that game every week was like waiting for that next episode of that show you love so much to come on. You just can't WAIT to see what's going to happen next. We all worked at it. K.C. didn't have to carry that burden all alone. He had to make these stories, but he had players that made his work worthwhile, and gave him many springboards to create news arcs and tales. It never got stale. Never got old. K.C. never let it. The minute things started getting too safe, too routine? Suddenly, an alien race invades the Earth. This was the famous Saoshyant invasion, another turning point in the game. He didn't just have some aliens show up and fight the heroes and go away. He set off a global E.M. pulse that wiped out all technology...everywhere. He left his own campaign world back in the dark ages. And after the defeat of this race and the near-destruction of the Earth? The aftermath of the invasion and the pulse didn't magically go away. From that point on, our characters lived in a world that was constantly rebuilding and recovering, where technology was coming back very slowly. To have the balls to pull the plug on your game world like that is to have both faith in your GMing abilities and faith in your players. K.C. had both.

And there were new players to come, as some had to say good-bye. Tim was the first to leave the game, but it wasn't long before Kaye had to as well. With Kevin already gone, this left me and Jeff, and it's kind of hard to run a hero team with two characters (that sort of makes it a duo, not a team). Jeff had mentioned a guy he knew as a possible candidate for Forte membership. I clearly remember that night K.C. called me to discuss this. We had had it so good for so long, with a chemistry that worked so well. I was afraid that changing things...changing people...would be the death of Forte, and I let him know that I'd rather see the game just end (as terribly as I'd miss it) than to just keep it going for the sake of keeping it going and having it turn into just another Champions game. I was reluctant. But we decided to give Jeff's friend a try. His name was Randy Auer, and he showed up with a character named Anvil. As for how he worked out? It's over 10 years later, and he's still a good friend of mine. And he was in the campaign until its very last issue...even after I had already left.

Randy was just what we needed, someone who, too, was a fanatic for character and story. As a player, he questioned everything. The things other players/characters might just accept as the norm and roll with? Not him. He always did the unexpected, like trying to talk villains down (and sometimes succeeding) instead of just fighting them, or sometimes even making a deal and letting them go. He and Jeff and I became the "three musketeers" era of the campaign, when we were just a trio for a while. I'd finally retired Dr. Jackal by then and had brought in my character Twostep, and he, Anvil and Vanguard lent themselves to stories of action and high adventure, including the great "Kromatis Victorious" storyline that delved into Vanguard's origins and sent the trio racing, hunted, across Europe.

More change would come. Soon another friend of Randy and Jeff's joined up, and the group was a foursome again. Jim Kletzing was another natural to the game, bringing another unique playing style to the mix and enriching the game, and the roleplaying, further. He played the characters of Armature and Tomarssuk (a mystical polar bear that can take the shape of man, which, despite how it sounds, turned into one of my favorite gaming characters I've ever seen, and absolutely hilarious roleplaying from Jim). Randy later added the tragic girl named Chill, and Jeff started up his third and final character in campaign, Telesis, a telekinetic girl on the run with her baby, fleeing an abusive marriage to a dangerous mobster. Who later turned out to be the brother of my character, Twostep. That, in itself, is a long story.

New Forte players would come along, including Adam, Jim and Randy

One that finally came out when I suddenly had to leave the game. I'd played in Forte once a week from 1987 to 1993, but now, I was leaving the state, moving to Arizona to follow true love (and in retrospect, I probably should have just stuck with the game...). I'd designed Twostep with a complicated, and secret, origin. Forte knew him as a super-powered SHIELD agent named Nathaniel Pharaoh. In fact, that was not his real name. He'd been born James Caleb Bane, a son in the infamous Bane crime family in Texas. He'd turned on his family in his late teens, and was going to testify against them, when the convoy taking him between safehouses was attacked and bombed. He was presumed dead. When the case all went bad, the powers that be (UNCLE and SHIELD) decided to let the world keep thinking he was dead. Given a new face during his reconstructive surgery for his wounds, he was invited to join SHIELD. Where, along the way, he gained super-powers through experiments with a rogue SHIELD scientist, gained them in a way very illegal by the U.N. charter that governs SHIELD.

Not long before I was to leave the game, something happened. I, as Twostep, was fighting some gang members. Frankly, I just rolled the dice way too good. In yet another Forte accident turned dramatic, I killed two of them. When it suddenly turned out I'd be leaving the game, this became a part of Twostep's exit, and the resolution of his story. The other experiments by this scientist has all turned bad....had all gone crazy and gone villain. Now it looked like the same was happening to Twostep...he'd "lost control" during the fight, causing the deaths of the gang members. A warrant was out for his arrest. Instead of turning himself in, Twostep fled. And the other players had to deal with this, which was great. They didn't know anything about his past or origin. He contacted them and spilled it all, asking for their help to find this scientist to reverse the process. They did so, and his powers were removed. But now, while wanting to answer for his crimes, Twostep told his teammates there was one thing he had to do first. Something he'd been running from too long. He had to go back and take down his family, once and for all. He would then turn himself in as Twostep. Anvil and Armature agreed to let him go and lied (to both authorities and other Forte heroes) about not seeing him or knowing where he was. Twostep then vanished. That was my last night in the Forte game. I'd been there for 221 issues, and for five years. My part in the game was now over.

Well...mostly.

I was off in Arizona, and the game went on back in Sacramento. K.C. would mail me the game updates (and later e-mail them to me as we caught up to emerging technology) and I'd get to enjoy the stories from afar. There were more new players in that last couple of years. Adam Johnson came in with the energy-blading Lightsedge. Andrea Roscoe joined the game with the overly aggressive native American heroine Moondancer. Jim Monday introduced Tripwire, the Russian strongman, and Logan Waterman stepped in with the martial master Secundus. Some old faces returned while I was away. Kaye was back in the game for a while, and started with a new character, the teleporting ex-villain Nightshift. And old friend of most of us, Aaron Storck, who had guest-starred in the game when visiting from San Diego as the hero-for-hire named Grav, moved to Sacramento and joined for a while as the out-of-retirement silver age hero Electro Man. And another friend of our group, Ben Bellot--who ended up married to Kaye--joined along with Kaye, bringing the character Hologram in. Things somehow managed along without me (can't imagine how), and K.C. went on creating great stories for a new group of players. I did, however, fly back in town for the big anniversary. Forte hit #300, and most of the former players returned to K.C.'s place for a big game session to celebrate the milestone.

At the Forte 300 event. (Back row): Aaron, Andrea, Randy, Mike, Kaye and Ben. (Front row): Jim K., K.C. and Kevin

I missed the Forte game world, and was sad that I never got to fully complete the overall Twostep story. At the time, I was part of the print edition of the Clobberin' Times, and I decided to use that as an outlet to explore to what happened to Nathaniel Pharaoh after he left Forte. As we'd always seen Forte as a comic (part of a comic company we dubbed "K.C. Comics"), I decided that Twostep had gotten his own spinoff comic...one that I called "Pharaoh". So I wrote these stories in the 'Times, the tale of a now powerless, haunted man who infiltrates his own criminal family (with a new face, so he's not recognized) to gather evidence against them and take them down. It was mostly self-contained, but occasional Forte stuff would creep in, like me using Anvil a couple of times. In fact, after the Forte 300 game was over, I ran a quick "side game" for Randy, playing out the moment when Pharaoh first returned to Seattle, a changed, darker man (missing a couple of fingers), enraged that Forte had let Telesis and her baby die (which, he found out, was all a staged hoax by Forte to help her escape her husband). Later, in the Pharaoh stories, I had to "borrow" Telesis, as her origin was tied to Pharaoh's, in a story that Randy and I plotted and wrote together called "The Jennifer Sanction" (sequel to "The Jennifer Chase", the five-part story arc in the Forte campaign that wrapped up the Telesis character after Jeff had left). All this I made a part of the Forte ongoing timeline. And Pharaoh, I'd have to say, was the first real beginnings of what I call the Forte Expanded Universe.

The campaign itself finally ended in 1995, just two months shy of its eight-year anniversary. I wrote a letter to the latter-day players, and sent it to K.C. to copy and give to them before that final run began. It congratulated them, talked about the end of an era, thanked them for carrying on for the rest of us, etc. The game could have just kept on going forever, it seemed, but K.C. had to follow a new job to a new state, and there's not much that can be done with a game after that. Forte #328 was the final issue of the campaign that had meant so much to everyone involved, and set the standard for what we all thought Champions should and could be.

It was over, but NOT completely. See, there's this annual tradition that started in 1990. That was when some of us who were members of the Clobberin' Times decided to start getting together every summer at the San Diego Comic-Con. Aside from being a fun way to spend a week, and a chance to hook up and see everyone, it afforded the opportunity for a little gaming. The game tradition began with what was called the "Clobberin' On Infinite Earths" game...where each person would play their best-known character from whatever campaign they were in, and they would all be drawn together in a big cross-dimensional adventure to (what else?) save the universe(s). After the Forte game ended, that was the only chance for the Forte characters to get together again. And that was a fun time to answer questions about what your character had been up to, and what they were doing currently in their life. Granted, these only happened once a year instead of once a week, but still, it was a way to keep the Forte timeline going.

I began to run Con games, and to run Forte games (sometimes it was mostly Forte people that showed, so it was just a Forte game). This was my chance to take over the Forte universe, to tell everyone what there characters were up to (if they didn't know themselves). Aside from Pharaoh, I had some other additions to the Forte timeline. I'd written a story called "D'Arque Dominion" that wrapped up the Lucifer D'Arque saga, and reunited Dr. Jackal with his lost third daughter...this one from an alternate Earth. Running the game, I was able to insert this story and its events into Forte continuity. That, along with other elements, like the new Paragons team that Kevin and I had created for fun. Not able to just let this world I knew so well just go away, and wanting to know what happened to all the characters in it, I would keep adding to it. I built a web page called "Forte.com" (didn't get that actual domain) that I set up as though it was built by Vanguard for the Forte characters, a way to access the team database. I'd add stories and events there. For example, when Jeff let us know at a Con game that Vanguard had proposed to Telestar (his long-time romance in the game...not to be confused with Telesis, mind you), I knew we'd have to run the wedding of Vanguard as a Con game the following year. But in the meantime, I wrote up a description, written by Dr. Jackal for the team database, of Vanguard's bachelor party. Who was there, what happened, etc. And I wrote an e-mail from Dr. Jackal to Mist and posted it there, one that was mainly a chance to express what was happening in his life, but also for me to talk about what was up with some of the other characters. Little by little, I was making sure that Forte went on.

Twostep, Cincoflex, Anvil, Hammer and Vanguard taking care of business

All this was part of the Forte Expanded Universe...or, the post-campaign continuity. I'm a big Star Wars fan (not a fanboy, like I am with Forte, but at least a fan). One of the best things to happen for Star Wars fans was the introduction of the Star Wars Expanded Universe...all the novels that took place after the movies. Granted, some of them were pretty bad and I was unable to finish them, but they eventually got good...especially the New Jedi Order series. Let's face it...if people love these characters in Star Wars so much, it makes sense that they'd love to find out what's happening with these characters in the next five, ten, twenty years of their lives. The NJO books, the most recent events in the SW timeline, take place twenty-five years after Return of the Jedi. Since then, Han and Leia have married and had kids, and their kids have grown up into teenagers and are Jedi themselves, and characters all their own. And not characters that were just introduced all of a sudden. Fans reading all these SW books in order over the years have gotten to watch them grow up.

I mentioned record-keeping in this game, and the dates kept careful track of. Children were born to Forte heroes, most born during the campaign itself. I started a list a long time back, keeping track of the birthdates of as many characters as possible...just to keep track of how old they're getting. I listed on there the birthdates of the kids, too. Looking at that list recently, I was shocked to realize that Dr. Jackal's twin babies, that had been born as I sat there at the gaming table, were going to be turning fifteen this year. Fifteen years old. The first thing that made me realize was that I've gotten really old. The second was how fortunate I am. How many gamers are able to say that they played a character so long that that character fell in love, married, and had children during the game, and are still playing that character (even if annually) as his children become teenagers. In real time. Wow. The third was that I, as a fan (and a fanboy) of Forte, want to learn about the people that these kids are turning into. There are so many stories waiting to be told with them! And with Dr. Jackal, and how he and Knightsabre are dealing with raising teenagers. And how Mist is dealing with raising a mystical "promised one" who himself is now 14, and how she's doing running an UNCLE branch in San Francisco. And how Phantasm is dealing with raising his son Shrike (also 14 this year), knowing that his boy, in the future, came back in time and died, and having to wonder if it's going to happen again. And what Vanguard's life is like in New York, married to a member of the all-girl group Angel Flight (a group that Chill joined after the campaign ended) and hanging out with them, and waiting for his kids to be born. And how Anvil's marriage to Erin O'Day is going, the long-term Forte NPC private eye that he fell in love with during the game.

My desire to answer these questions is at the heart of the Forte Expanded Universe...and the reason why I'll always make sure the Forte timeline keeps on running, one way or the other. My partner in this has been Aaron Storck, the player of Electro Man. He and I ended up roommates for a few years, and since we were both living in San Diego and therefore hosting the big annual gathering, we also became co-GMs of the Con games. Together, we've sort of taken it upon ourselves to carry the torch, to keep it all alive and breathing for everyone. We spent just way too much time sitting in our apartment, smoking cigars and talking about all this (between basketball games and episodes of Firefly...), scheming, plotting and planning. Con games became not quite enough. With the age of the web page upon us, we had an outlet to post up and share information with others from the game. Be it fiction, or write-ups on Expanded Universe details like Aaron's creation of Armor Security in L.A., a rebirth of a concept from the old Forte game that's been given new life and a strong new place in the Forte universe.

A Forte cartoon drawn by gamemaster K.C. Ryan

The biggest boon to the Expanded Universe, however, has been Forte 2000. I just had this idea one day, and I shared it, via e-mail, with my fellow founding Forte players...Tim, Kaye and Jeff. I asked them to imagine that we all ended up back in the same city again, and that K.C. was starting up his game again. It was still Forte, still in Seattle, but a whole new group of heroes. This all came from me wondering what Seattle was going through, so used to having a hero team all those years, and suddenly not having one any more. Would a new team step up to take up the call? I imagined this new team as a new K.C. campaign. And I asked my fellow founders to, just for fun, make up the character that they'd play if all this was the case. Tim gave me Rainier. Kaye gave me Tinker. Jeff created Max.

As it turns out, they all made GREAT characters. Too great to waste. This is the point where it became official...I had taken over K.C.'s game. Adding in my own character of Seahawk, I inserted this team into Forte continuity. I wrote their origin. I built a web page with all the information on the new team and its characters, and started writing fiction for them. And not long after, and opportunity came up for an actual live game. Ben and Kaye were living in L.A., only a couple of hours away from Aaron and I. And Kevin, back in Sacramento, occasionally flew down to hang out and visit with us. We couldn't have a weekly game like in the Forte days, but every once in a while, it looked like we'd be able to pull it off. So, just like Forte, it was decided that the team started with four, but new characters were added over time. The team's origin happened in 2000. The new campaign would begin in 2002. For two years, Seahawk, Tinker, Rainier and Max had adventures (which I started writing fiction about), but now, they were going to share the spotlight with some new faces. Aaron created Dyna Girl, the daughter of his original Forte character, Electro Man. Ben created Moonspider. Kevin created the speedster called Vortex. And because it just made sense to insert her in the team (since she was now hanging around Seattle with powers, and because it was handy for me, as a GM, to have a teleporter on the team that could transport the whole group around), I added in Dr. Jackal's alternate Earth, slightly older daughter (time difference between the two worlds...work with me) who now called herself Nightsable. One weekend when Kevin was in town visiting us, we hopped in Aaron's car, drove to Orange County, and, at Ben and Kaye's home, began the sequel campaign to Forte.

Sadly, more moving happened, so we were only able to manage two lives runs and one online game, but it was enough to get the ball rolling. Now the Forte 2000 site is filling up with material, with new stories being added by me, Aaron and Kaye, fleshing out the events in the team's history. Aaron's Dyna Girl origin has tied her heavily to Armor Security, and he's taken that team as his own and made a great, fun team to further flesh out the Expanded Universe. And he's currently working on a British team. I'm also at work on the Paragons page, detailing that team, and another Forte world group to be announced soon. Plus, with the Clobberin' Times Online now up and running (and therefore my excuse), I'm writing new Forte character fiction, such as in my "Forte '05" page, with new pages to come. And in the months and years that follow, I plan to finally put the whole Forte timeline together on a web page, and also put as much of the old Forte material as possible (the updates, the art, the old fiction) online to share with as many people as want to see it.

Forte members in San Diego in 2002. (Back row): Adam, Jeff, Tim, Jim. (Middle): Kaye, Randy, Aaron, K.C., Ben. (Front): Mike

I do this all because I love Forte. I love everything about it. Without ever being a comic, it's become what I believe to be one of the best comics ever written. I care about all these heroes (as one does in a great comic), and I want to keep finding out what's happening to them. I want all the work accomplished by my fellow Forte creators--my friends--to live on, to keep evolving. And Forte is alive to me. It's that detailed, rich world that K.C. created for all of us to share in, almost twenty years ago, and it's still a part of me. Of all of us.

So I will write my stories. I will run my Con games. I will, hopefully soon, run new Forte adventures for the Sacramento guys (Randy, Adam, Jim) now that I'm back in town. I'll keep plotting and scheming with Aaron. I'll keep putting up new web pages. And I'll make sure that the legend of Forte, as long as I have a say in the matter, will never die.

All because I love Forte.

And because I'm a Forte fanboy.