Secret Project X taking shape, Part 1

Since the Christmas holidays I have been putting a lot of time and effort into this new idea of mine. A new secret project x.

The core of the idea dates back a long time ago, back to my high school days at the Collège de Montréal, back when our lunch and our recess periods had only one goal: gaming.

Back in those days I was a terrible GM. I was a terrible player. Our plots were thinly veiled redo of movies we had all just seen. Or an excuse to face some random monster found in one of the monster manuals... we had some of the weirdest and most powerful magic items just lying around.

For example, my own character was named Troph el'Abdul. He was a priest of Anubis. One day we entered some temple, killed the undead within, and found Anubis' own sword in there. My young mind raced at the prospect of discovering what it could do. I immediately began thinking of a quest to discover its powers. But that never happened. There never was a short quest or any campaign.

Pat-D, the gm, began saying what it did. My hopeful dreams died there. While I do not remember everything it did, I remember this: once per day I could summon Anubis to save my bacon with a chance equal to my level. Also since it was a sword my 1e cleric could use it. And if I hit an opponent they had to save vs petrification or turn to sand.

And that was just my benny. I gave similar items and ruined games too.

But out of that generally bad set of items came a number of cool elements. As a shared world, the three "more regular" GMs (Pat-D, Marc-P and myself did not do a lot of communal world building. If we needed something we added it to the world and moved on. Only rarely did we go back to a previous location.

For years, I kept my notes on that setting. I touched but never actually played it again in the years since. I cleaned the house and got rid of this material as we moved to Colorado.

"I never looked at it before, why would I need it now?" I thought. At the time I only wrote occasionally. I was heavily involved in Living Greyhawk and well. I had not played it in 15+ years. Although I now lament the loss of many maps and notes, I get to remember them through a rose-filtered lens. All the terrible junk is now gone leaving only the high points.

I still would like to have all that old stuff but I think the main and most important parts survived through the years in my mind. When I began to play around with the material, the map I drew was heavily influenced by the old map of that world. Major cities were placed in a similar location. And some of the names are the same.

To be continued.

JP