1 How long has the club been in existence?

1 A bit more than 3 years. As long as that's beer, we haven't done too much. It took us a couple months to get the six members we needed to become an RPGA Network club. Only 2 of the original members are still members.

2 How was it founded and why?

2 It was more or less a spontaneous decision. I had wanted to join Dragonslayers Unlimited (yes, Dragonslayers Unlimited), but I didn't have too much spare money right then. I decided to start my own club, the Champions of the Golden Dragon, with a low membership fee. The first thing I did was call Bill White Jr., and he became the second member. Then, a guy from Philadelphia named Joe West (what happened to him anyway?) joined, and most of the ideas that currently circulating around in the club is things to do came from this original group, though some of the newer members are thinking up a lot of ideas as well.

3 How do you join - are there dues, etc.?

3 Joining is rather simple. There aren't really any requirements, just that you pay the membership dues (one member instead sent us mailing labels). The dues are $7 for RPGA members and $8 for non-RPGA members for l year (we won't start counting the year till the first newszine is printed). To renew costs $5, whether the member is in the RPGA or not.

4 Since your club is mainly handled via the mail, how do members meet, and what is the relationship between members and the club?

4 Most members meet through Lands of Chaos. Almost all of the members play Lands of Chaos, and they meet whenever their characters bump into each other because players in the Lands of Chaos are allowed to write to each other to coordinate what their characters are doing. Currently, the club functions mainly as a "place" people in it can find other people with similar interests and find people who are running PBM games that they might want to participate in. Once the newszine is finally set up, there'll be more of an exchange of ideas than there is now. I intend to set up some sort of annual club event that's similar to a convention, only through the mail (maybe e-mail). I tried that before, but it did not work out very well. One thing that I would like to do is set up a list of who plays what RPGs (for both members of the club and other people) and sell this list to anyone who wants it so that people can find other gamers interested in the same things as they are. Perhaps this list could be some sort of computer matching service.

5 What kind of PBM's does the club run?

5 Technically, the only game the club actually runs is Lands of Chaos, and AD&D 2nd Edition campaign. There are several club members that are running there own games (mostly AD&D) that other club members play in. Most of them are more less being run for the club, though some are older than the club. Some club members also play in a game called Guilds of Honor, which is run by a company called Alternate Entertainment. Or at least, I think they're still running it. I don't play in it myself anymore, but I assume someone would have told me if it stopped going. I am going to write to some other PBM organizations when I have the time and see if they can give club members some sort of discount in their games. The main development as far as games go is that I'm working on a PBM wargame that will be run by the club, though it will be a while before I get it going because I want to make it at least partially computer-moderated. It will be open to anyone, at the cost of $0.50 per turn (slightly higher than the price of postage). The profits will go to the club to help pay for the newszine and anything else we decide to start later on.

6 Can any one join the games or are they strictly for members only?

6 Most people who run PBM games will let anyone play who wants to. As noted above, the PBM wargame I'm going to start will be open to anyone. I'll let non-members play Lands of Chaos, but I will charge them $0.50 per turn unless there's some sort of circumstance that I decide not to. This is mostly to pay for postage and to keep too many people from playing in the Lands of Chaos. I'm extremely busy, and I'm generally behind in the Lands of Chaos already.

7 What direction do you see gaming headed in the near future, and how do you think it will affect the club?

7. One major change is the advent of Skills & Powers, and similar books in AD&D 2nd Edition. Because AD&D 2nd Edition is by far the most popular RPG, many gamers will start making more diverse characters, even in other RPGs. Not everyone will use the Skills & Powers system, but more and more people will use it as time passes. AD&D may evolve to be even more like GURPS, an RPG that's main asset is that it can be played with any type of character you want. The RPGA Network's Living campaigns (like Living City) show some of what may happen. People have grown tired of playing the same old medieval Europe RPGs, and they will start playing in a wider variety of different types of games (like Living Jungle). The Champions of the Golden Dragon probably won't be affected by this too much; it'll change the games we play, but it won't change that people want to play these games PBM. This will probably be good for the industry as a whole because it may bring in people who are interested in playing in worlds that don't resemble medieval Europe and who don't want to have their characters restricted to a certain number of classes. This is starting to trickle down into RPG video games as well.

Probably something that would make more of a difference to PBM is the Internet. As more and more people start using the Internet, many of them will start playing games over it instead of through the mail. Although the growth of the Internet is slowing, there is still growth. I am thinking about beginning to let players send their turns through e-mail because several have already sent me their e-mail addresses. However, I am not yet connected to the Internet myself, so I've put it off for the time being. All in all, I think the Internet is good for every industry, although there are problems with how it is being run. The problems will eventually sort themselves out.

8 I've heard a little talk about a possible newszine to be printed by Champions of the Golden Dragon. Tell us about that.

8 Well, we've been trying to print a newszine (called Hoard) for a long, long time. We kept on getting held up by something or other every time we were almost ready to print. Most of the articles are written by a few people, so when a few of them quit, that slowed down the newszine. We can't just go and print articles by someone who is no longer in the club. Then, the computer we were using to print the newszine stopped working. When it was finally repaired a month later, we had to find where we left the articles. Things like this kept happening, but that's in the past. Now I have my own computer that can print out the newszine adequately. However, the person who had the articles, seems to have misplaced about half of them (yes, again). At present, I'm trying to get people who wrote articles to send me copies of them. I've also started writing some more articles of my own' but I can't think as fast as I can types. We should have the newszine finally printed and sent out by the end of March (I hope).

9 If the latter, what is needed to get it going, and how do you expect to achieve that - outside help, new members, what?

9 The real question is what is needed to keep it going. We're going to need more of the club members to submit things to the newszine. We can't really offer any sort of pay because most of the club's money will be spent on newszine postage and other smaller expenses. We could offer to extend the writer's membership, but then we'd never get any money from renewals. One thing that the newszine is lacking is cover art; we have NONE! The art has to be black-and-white (to save money on making photocopies). The problem isn't that no one volunteers to submit artwork, it's that I've never actually received any. If I don't get any art, I'll just print the newszine without.

10 Can you give us a brief run down of Lands of Chaos?

10 It's hard to be brief with something that I've spent most of my life creating and am now starting to actually do something with. I have most of the Lands of Chaos circulating inside my head somewhere, and I now and again remember to write it down.

Lands of Chaos is an AD&D 2nd Edition PBM campaign. It's based in the world of Nefir, a world in which ancient civilizations once flourished, but are now the stuff of legends. The bulk of the known world consists of 8 major nations, with the Earldom of Valan and the Empire of Mordaine being the most important. Valan is the "good" country, where the PCs start out. Valan is the the country that leads the fight for freedom against the evil empire of Mordaine. Mordaine is fighting against the entire free world... and winning. It is filled with orcs, humans, dwarfs elves, and creatures that are best left to the imagination. They have powerful weapons crafted by mighty smiths far beneath the ground. Mordaine has become an endless desert from the constant war and from the gods of evil fighting cataclysmic battles.

The legends of the land of Mythale is always lurking just outside of reach, and are much of the impetus to the characters in the campaign, though each one has his or her own individual goals. If this land exists, it is atop the Mythale Plateau, an unclimbable wall of earth rising a thousand feet above the surrounding land. According to legend, the Mythale Knights were the powerful protectors of Nefir that fought off the forces of evil since the world began. Supposedly, they once ruled all of Nefir in the name of their god, Vishon. In time, they grew weak for unknown reasons, and evil started to grow.

At present, most PCs are still at first level and are yet unable to cause huge changes that affect the entire world. Most of the PCs are currently fighting enemy invaders in Gerlock, the capitol city of Valan. Gerlock is a huge city, standing in an easily-defendable area surrounded by the southern end of the Mythale Plateau. It is split in half by a great wall that separates the good side of town and the bad. On the good side of town, the Summer Festival was going on when it was interrupted by the enemy invaders (thought to be from Mordaine, though how they got there, no one knows). On the bad side of town, the gangs fight to eliminate each other and gain complete control of the bad side, oblivious to the humanoids smashing the gates of Castle Gerlock. Slinor, the former mayor, stands among them somewhere, after being thrown out of office for his many crimes. None know what diabolical plot he is hatching.

Other PCs are fighting slavers in the nearby mountains. They use orcs, winged apes, and evil humans to trade slaves to whoever buys them (the PCs don't know yet). Many of the slaves are used in the mountains to mine the metals there, which are then sold on the open market. Whoever controls this slave chain must be very powerful indeed.

This campaign focuses mostly on role-playing, though the fights that happen are usually huge. Much of the PCs time is spent trying to work around the delicate balance of political power between Valan, the gangs, and the other forces at work. The campaign is mostly city-based, but there are several wilderness and dungeon adventures. One of the high points of the campaign is that players can communicate with each other to decide what their characters are doing. This allows players to work together to stop some villain or find some treasure. In the Lands of Chaos, all NPCs are always doing something. This causes the adventures to blend together and the different NPCs to do things, even when the PCs are involved in something else.

Steve Fletcher
510-C West Harbison Rd.
Pittsburgh, PA 15205

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