Mark's Campaign

In the mid 1980's, I joined a role playing game that I had never heard of before. The game master, or GM, would eventually become a very good friend of mine, Dan Jacobson. This game was based on the superhero genre. I had been playing different incarnations of D&D since 1979, but this was something completely different, with a whole new gaming system. The main focus of the game centered on the combat rules and very individualized characters with superpowers. I had read many comic books throughout the years and was very familiar with the superhero 'style', however, I attribute my instant passion for this game to Dan, and the very detailed, complex, thought-provoking scenarios he presented us with on an almost weekly basis. I was also lucky to play with a group of exceptionally intelligent, funny and imaginative friends as well. Dan's campaign was well established by the time I joined, and he had defined his complex world very completely. In his Champions world, he liberally used characters, both hero and villain, from the Marvel Comics universe. But most of his players would agree that it was his own creations that would be the most evil, most diabolical... and the most interesting. Anyone who has played in this campaign will know exactly what it feels like when a certain villain named Anotomi happened to show up during play. Anatomi was a purely evil creation of Dan's - one with powers that Dan would enjoy describing in gory detail - to the horror and entertainment of us all.

This campaign would come to be known as the Terra I campaign, and lasted on and off until the early 1990's when college, and eventually "real life" took over most of our time. One of the brilliant traditions that Dan incorporated into his campaign were a chronicling of each adventure in a comic book tone. These became known as the "Issues", and Dan typed each one up for us (on a typewriter, no less) and kept them in a 3-ring binder so we could always go back and relive or past glories (and failures). Some of us introduced Dan to the concept of a computer, and so eventually we had a record of his Issues other than the paper copies.