Tampete Foreword – by Mike Marchi
In the beginning, there was darkness. There was no sensation. There were no hopes. There were no dreams. Until one day, a spark burst like a flashbulb, bringing illumination to a tiny corner of the void. Vague shapes began to form. The shapes coalesced, and soon a small, dimly lit place shimmered into view where none had existed before. Whether it was a room, a spot on a map, a planet, or even a dreamscape, the place formed. Moment by moment details began to spring up, filling the place with objects, and artifacts. Shortly after that came sounds and smells – things that made the place seem more tangible. Then came the denizens who would call this place home. Some denizens were little more than window dressing – silent extras who would never go beyond the steady murmur of crowd sounds. Others would receive reasons and motivations – a history, if you will. Theirs were the stories that set off flashbulbs in other corners of the void. Thin, tenuous streamers of light, snaking through the darkness, spreading roots of backstory and details. Suddenly, new denizens sprang up. These had no home or anchor. But they had a story, and motivation. They were more solid, and caused explosions of illumination to burst forth in other corners of the void. The world was forming. Soon it would be ready. Soon it would become reality for another type of denizen – a character driven and controlled by someone else. They would look upon the world with fresh eyes. They would experience the world’s subtleties, and through their words and actions, bring more portions of the void to life.
Deep inside every game master, at the heart of their imagination, is a god-like creator. Every game master builds a world in their head, and populates it with the stuff of legends. Eventually, those worlds become the playground for a unique, shared story-telling activity known as the tabletop roleplaying game. I personally have been a game master since high school when I was introduced to the LBB edition of classic Traveller. Traveller was amazing to me, because it defined a framework, and then left the rest to the imagination. I found similar inspiration in Dark Conspiracy. The GDW games in particular, always seemed to plant the seeds that inspired world building – and world building – or rather the result of it, is exactly what Scott and Alex have given us with Tampete. As someone who has dabbled in the creation of several ‘worlds’, I can attest to the sheer level of effort that had to go into the creation of this tome. The world building never stops. A tiny corner of your brain is always running the world’s subroutine. I’m sure that for every idea you see in these pages, there were probably twice as many that Scott or Alex had flash into their collective consciousness, but evaporated before they could capture them on the page. I mourn their loss, and share their creator’s anguish. As sad as that makes us, let us rejoice in how much has survived.
I have always felt that the best way to build a world is to write stories within it. Even if those stories are brief and don’t involve your main story line (especially if they don’t involve the main story line). For Scott and Alex, I imagine that their superb comic, “Remnants” is one of many anchors that allowed them to flesh out the corner of the world that is Tampete (art from the comic is sprinkled liberally throughout) – and if their story is anything like mine, they owe a great debt of gratitude to the players in their DC campaign who drove them deeper and deeper into the details of their world.
This sourcebook is densely packed with everything you need to inspire adventure in the Tampete metroplex. Maps, history, backstory, plot seeds, NPC’s. Section by section of the city is detailed and accompanied by vignettes, flavor text and illustrations. It reminds me of what the old Demonground editors hoped to accomplish with the DC 2nd edition Sin City series. My hat is off to these guys for seeing this through.