Phase 2 -- Stat Blocks

I now have a pretty comprehensive spreadsheet compiling the names, places, factions, etc., from non-5e D&D campaigns of today and yesteryear. These campaigns include:

• Alien 
• Cyberwars (with all of its prequels, sequels, and spinoffs)
• Dark Enigma
• Doctor Who
• Earth Commanders
• The Ladder
• The Other World
• Project Descartes
• Tales of the Ternion
• Torchlight
• The Vanguard Saga

Putting the spreadsheet together was the main objective of this phase of my project. However, in order to create a true multiverse where characters from various campaigns can cross over and interact with each other, the characters all need compatible game stats. The list above reflects a wide range of rules systems, from the Alien RPG (Alien) to TinyD6 (Dark Enigma) to 4e D&D (Torchlight). As I noted in a previous post, I've opted for the Cypher System as the common platform for the Front Porch multiverse. As such, my last step for Phase 2 is to assign a Cypher System level and stat block to all the characters in the spreadsheet. The core rulebook is a huge help, but I also picked up a copy of the Cypher System Bestiary, which looks like it will give me enough examples to balance characters from such wildly different genres.

Milestones

I ran my first campaign -- Earth Commanders, a superhero game using the Champions rules -- back in the summer of 1988. Although I don't have the specific start date, it was sometime after school ended, so maybe right about this time of year. Today's as good a day as any to celebrate thirty-five years of gamemastering Front Porch campaigns. I'm grateful to all the players who've joined me on this journey and shared their boundless imaginations to bring these games to life. Here's to 35 more years (at least!) of roleplaying fun!

There are a couple more milestones in 2023 that are also well worth mentioning. It's a big year for the Druid Cycle setting. Although, technically, I created this world in 1991 for the Fate of the Grand Duchy campaign (marking the first appearance of Tim W's Lwcus, one of the most important Front Porch characters of all time!), that storyline took place in the early history of the Druid Cycle world. The first campaign set in the "current" time period started in 1993 -- thirty years ago! -- with the rise of Jason's paladin Sir Roberts and Scott's cleric Stalker. If we skip ahead five more years, to 1998, we come to another milestone: the introduction of Tim W's wizard Cathbad and Kevin's cleric Senchan, who both helped shape the course of world events. A big shout-out to Scott and Jason on the thirtieth anniversary of their iconic characters, and likewise to Tim and Kevin on the twenty-fifth anniversary of theirs!

It's fitting, then, that 2023 is the year I brought my kids into the Druid Cycle setting. Why did I wait so long? Well, when the boys started playing D&D six years ago, I used my Shattered Realm setting for something a bit smaller and less complex than the Druid Cycle world, and they grew to love their characters so much that we just kept going in that world. Now I feel the time is right to get them into the big leagues, so to speak. Their first introduction to my largest campaign setting came a couple of months ago when we started an online campaign with their older cousins in Chicago. However, I have something special up my sleeve just for Matthew and Nathaniel: a second game in this world that will be a true sequel to the original 1993 Druid Cycle campaign. As the late lamented Sir Roberts might say, "Bring it on!"

A Year Already?

I used to keep detailed game session notes back in high school -- probably still accessible on the hard drive of our old Tandy 1000SX in my father's basement! -- but I got away from the practice as an adult and always regretted it. I resolved to start drafting session notes again when the boys and I started Tales of the Ternion, a superhero campaign that was, essentially, a sequel to my first-ever campaign, Earth Commanders. I was just looking through some records and noticed that Tales began exactly one year ago today. Wow, a whole year! I'm surprised it's been that long. 

I'm really proud of Tales, and would rank it among my top ten or even top five campaigns of all time. It was character-driven, dealt with a lot of weighty and topical issues, and featured some really nifty plot twists -- all while stitching together the most important threads from our modern-setting campaigns of the '80s and '90s, bringing them fully into the Front Porch multiverse. We'll be returning to the setting of Tales in a few months with a follow-up campaign, for which I'll be using all that 3D-printed terrain I've been painting...

Multiverse Mayhem

Don't ask me when we're going to find the time to run it, but I've been cooking up a new campaign for the boys that will link together many of the modern-setting storylines from across the Front Porch multiverse. Starting out as a direct sequel to Earth Commanders -- the first-ever Front Porch campaign from way back in 1988 -- and pulling in key characters and/or themes from The Other World, Cyberwars, and many more, this yet-to-be-titled story will give Matthew and Nathaniel a good foundation in our extensive catalog of non-fantasy campaigns. It's also an opportunity for me to untangle needless complexities and create a clearer narrative throughline from our earliest modern-setting campaign (The Ladder, set in 1895) through the various Cyberwars games of the late twenty-first century. More details to follow as this campaign takes shape, but I'm excited to get into some design work again!

Spreadsheet Sold Separately

Matthew got up late last night to go to the bathroom and found me in the living room reading the latest edition of the superhero RPG Champions. 

"Tell me about Champions when you finish reading it," he said. I could barely stifle a laugh. It's going to be a while before we have that conversation. Holy hell! This game is complicated. 

I have a newfound admiration for my twelve-year-old self. How had I managed to keep all these esoteric rules in my head? How had I created countless Champions heroes and villains without Excel and formulas to crunch the numbers? 

Game design has come a long way over the past several decades. I know a few grognards who still yearn for the days when games had rules to cover every possible situation and the quality of a system was directly proportional to the size of its rulebook, but I've come to appreciate the elegance and adaptability of games that have light, flexible core rules with the ability to layer in complexity through exception-based mechanics. 

I'll finish reading Champions Complete -- I owe it to my younger self to get through the rulebook, at the very least -- but if I ever do run a follow-up to the Earth Commanders campaign or play any sort of superhero RPG with the boys, I think I'll keep my eye out for another system.

Full Circle

Matt and I have been exchanging emails about superhero RPGs, and it got me thinking about my first true RPG love, Champions. Long before the Druid Cycle world, long before the siren song of AD&D lured me into TSR's clutches, I was a dyed-in-the-wool Champions fanatic. In fact, the original Front Porch campaign -- one of only two that was actually conducted on my parents' front porch -- was Earth Commanders, which employed the delightfully fiddly Champions system to tell a tale of cosmic superheroes based (where else?) in Montreal.

Earth Commanders got me hooked on gamemastering, but my favorite Champions memory is unrelated to Front Porch stuff. Decades before taking part in the D&D Fifth Edition playtest, I was a twelve-year-old kid who somehow managed to get access to playtest materials for Champions and related HERO System products. I used to dial up a BBS (remember those?) based in Texas, and, as my parents fretted their long-distance bill with every bit that trickled through my 1200 baud modem, I downloaded drafts of HERO System books and read them with a kind of awed reverence. One day, I mustered the courage to email a fan letter to prolific game designer Aaron Allston -- a fixture on that BBS -- and he sent me a very nice note in response. (Sadly, Allston passed away a number of years ago.)

I think it's high time to share Champions with my own kids, so I've ordered a copy of the most recent edition of the game. With our Alien RPG campaign starting up again soon and our ongoing Shattered Realm stories to continue, I have no idea when we would actually play this game, but it certainly will be fun to share all my old stories with the boys.

Spectaculars

I just learned about an interesting Kickstarter game called Spectaculars, created by longtime D&D designer Rodney Thompson -- with assistance from a bunch of other folks who worked on D&D products at one point or another. Spectaculars is a superhero roleplaying game in which the players build the setting as they play. As someone who enjoys the world-building aspects of RPGs, I think it's a cool idea. I'm not sure I'll plunk down the $65 needed to get a copy of the boxed set, but I still have 12 more days to decide. And if I do end up backing, I suspect a reboot of Earth Commanders -- the original Front Porch campaign from 1988 -- would be the next logical step.

Countdown to 30

The first Front Porch campaign -- the superhero smackdown antics of Earth Commanders -- started just about 29 years ago in the summer of 1988. Next summer, then, will mark 30 years of Front Porch gaming action. For the 25th anniversary I did a series of posts on the subject (see the label "Countdown to 25"), so I might as well do the same for the 30th. 2018 will be doubly significant because it also marks the 25th anniversary of the Druid Cycle campaign setting.

The Front Porch...on TV!

The front porch is now on TV! Well, sort of...

Click here for a local news clip featuring my good friend Jeremy (a star of our late '80s Earth Commanders and Fantasy Quest campaigns), my father, and some footage of a very wintry front porch.

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set

For my first look back at awesome adventures from each edition of D&D, I'm going with the 1983 "red box" edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (I also have the 1981 edition with Keep on the Borderlands -- another gift from my Aunt Nedra) in lieu of an official First Edition adventure module. I own several First Edition books, but I didn't start playing D&D until around 1985 -- here I'll give another shout-out to Kevin and his brother Brian, who introduced me to the game -- and played Basic exclusively until Second Edition AD&D came out in 1989.

Opening that beautiful red box for the first time is a moment seared into my memory. I had played D&D a few times with Kevin, Brian, and their gaming group, but the red box was my first experience reading the rules and creating characters on my own. No game product I've ever seen -- save perhaps for the much later Pathfinder Beginner Box -- has provided so engaging an introduction to both the mechanical and narrative aspects of roleplaying games. The Basic Set begins with a solo adventure in which your hero meets and befriends a beautiful cleric named Aleena, who soon dies at the hands of the evil wizard Bargle. That was powerful stuff for a little kid. The solo adventure is followed by a full-party dungeon crawl in the ruins of castle Mistamere, wherein the heroes are tasked with tracking down and capturing Bargle. I played through that one as a solo adventure and also ran it for Scott and other lads in the early days of the Front Porch (as part of the Fantasy Quest campaign -- our first foray into D&D after a steady diet of superhero RPG action in Earth Commanders). Flipping through that bright red adventure booklet today, I get the distinct urge to resume my decades-old hunt for that elusive wizard...

Quintessence War

In 2015, the multiverse goes to war.

Top Superhero RPGs

The first-ever Front Porch campaign was not fantasy, but a superhero game. Earth Commanders debuted in 1988 and it still holds a special place in my heart, as does Champions, the game system we used for that campaign. I was reminded of Earth Commanders when I read an article on Comic Book Resources that takes a look at the best superhero roleplaying games of all time. (Matt should be pleased to note that Mutants & Masterminds comes in at #6.) Next week the author will count down his top five -- and Champions had better be #1!

When Last We Left...

After a lengthy and exhausting business trip, I'm now back in action and continuing work on the multiverse project that will either be the prelude to the Harbingers campaign or simply an amusing tale to celebrate twenty-five years of Porch games. The title of the story is "When Last We Left Our Intrepid Heroes," and I've divided it up into seven sections, with each section corresponding to a set of campaigns from our long history.

• Prologue: The Cyberwars / Ragnarok family of campaigns.
• Chapter 1: The Torchlight campaign setting.
• Chapter 2: The Druid Cycle campaign setting.
• Chapter 3: Shattered Realm and all the other fantasy campaigns from over the years.
• Chapter 4: 1930s and World War II campaigns.
• Chapter 5: The Other World, Earth Commanders, and the other modern-era campaigns, taking place in the Tales of the Ternion setting of Demeter.
• Epilogue: A return to the Cyberwars / Ragnarok campaigns.

So that's the basic outline. If you've played in a Front Porch campaign, you're very likely to see your character(s) mentioned in the story, or even show up in person! I've used Timothy's archives, as well as my own resources, to piece together as much of our history as possible. The finished product is still a couple of weeks away, but I'm excited about how it's coming along!

New Superhero Campaign?

Almost a quarter century ago, Earth Commanders became the first FPGG campaign. Scott's fun but short-lived Champions campaign followed a decade later. I'm wondering if the time is right for another shot at a superhero campaign. What do you all think? I'd get started on a new campaign today if I thought people would be interested in playing. Leave a comment or email me separately if you think you'd like to participate.

Even More Superheroics

Fully ten years after Earth Commanders started in 1988, the Front Porch players returned to the superhero genre for the second (and, as of this writing, last) time. We were still using the Champions rules system, but this time, Scott was the gamemaster. His campaign was distinctive in a number of ways, primarily in that it was set a few decades in the future (the typical time period of the superhero genre is "now") and it was set entirely in Europe.

Although the game only lasted for a handful of sessions, I'll never forget the trio of heroes. First there was Cyberblade, a tough-as-nails cyborg whose suped-up body contained a vast array of weapons (ironic side-note: despite his name, not a single one of his weapons was a blade!). There was also Havoc, a mind control expert whose abilities were so overwhelming (Champions lent itself to power gaming for those, such as yours truly, who knew the real ins and outs of the character creation system) that Scott had to start issuing anti-mind-control helmets to all the villains. Finally, we had Heatwave, formerly a security guard at a nuclear power plant who obtained his superpowers when he (what else?) became trapped in the reactor. Heatwave could fly and project energy bolts and all that good stuff, but his basic problem was that he "leaked" radiation. As such, it was easy for the villains to follow the heroes' movements just by tracking Heatwave's radiation emissions. While on the lam from these nefarious forces, this mighty team was reduced to staying in cheap hotels, where Cyberblade and Havoc forced poor Heatwave to sleep in the bathtub, lest they expose themselves to dangerous doses of his natural radiation.

It was quite a quirkly little campaign, and I wish it had lasted longer.

The Story...and the Battle!

In my last post, I reminisced about Earth Commanders, the first Front Porch campaign. Today I'll talk about the game sessions. (Keep in mind that we were only about twelve years old at the time!)

Adventures consisted almost exclusively of "the story" and "the battle." The story was a brief narrative scene, usually set in the Earth Commanders headquarters in Montreal. The team would learn about a threat somewhere in the world, and they'd have the opportunity to ask questions and make basic plans. That was it for plot. And character development was virtually unheard of. Who were these guys when they took their masks off? Did they ever take their masks off?

The story may have been thin, but the combat was ridiculously fun. The Earth Commanders heroes dished out savage beat-downs to every supervillain in the Champions universe, and gave a second helping to any foe foolish enough to come back for more. Over time, though, the battles became a bit too routine. There's only so many times you can stomp Ankylosaur and Mechanon and Dr. Destroyer before you start looking for something...more.

What we discovered was that we wanted was more of "the story." That's when we turned to Dungeons & Dragons (the original "red box" product) and started a new campaign called Fantasy Quest. That was the last campaign actually to be conducted on my parents' front porch, but, as I'll explain in a future post, it laid the groundwork for all future FPGG campaigns.

Our First Campaign

The Avengers opens this weekend (I already have my ticket for the midnight showing on Thursday night!), so my posts this week are going to have a bit of a superhero theme. I'll start by saying a few words about the first-ever Front Porch campaign, a superhero game that used the excellent Champions system.

Earth Commanders, which debuted in 1988 and ran for more than two years, was the story of an international superhero team (no doubt inspired by DC's Justice League) headquartered in a centuries-old cathedral in Montreal. The main non-player character was a powerful but psychologically unstable telepath called Jester. He was joined by a large cast of player characters -- I estimate about ten in all, but we typically had between three and five show up on my parents' front porch for any given adventure. The two most active player characters were Scott's Nightstalker (a stealthy slicer-and-dicer) and Jeremy's Panther (a burly bruiser). Together they cut a swath of destruction across the superpowered criminal underworld.

Next time we'll take a look at those early Porch adventures and see just how primitive they were...