Okay, here's a somewhat expanded and reorganized version of the FAQ, for those who care to check it out, comment, and recommend new questions.
-- Bob
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Warriors and Warriors' WorldQ: What is Warriors' World? A: "Warriors' World" is the name of a very large, very long-lived
Villains and Vigilantes game world which has been home to as many as six different campaigns spanning two different college campuses (Rutgers University and Stevens Institute of Technology, both in New Jersey) since the early 1980s. Warriors' World is namedfor the central superteam in the game, the Warriors. The campaignwas founded by a Rutgers student named Joab (??? get last name fromKat), but continued on without him after he graduated. Thesubsidiary campaigns have included the various branches of Warriors International (including one run using
GURPS Supers,/B>), a private superteam known as Strikeforce, a variation called "U.N.I.T.Force" run using Champions rules.Q: What is Warriors International? What's a Warrior?A: In Doug's home universe, the United Nations (which, because it was perceived as being powerless, was being used by various governments as a dumping ground for dangerous idealists) saw an escalation of strategicweapons and metahuman military forces during the late 1970s and early1980s as a literal threat to the future of the world, and decided to dosomething about it. That "something" was a set of resolutions whichforbade the use of those weapons and forces by member nations, enforced by the U.N.'s own super-police. These police are the Warriors.Originally a private team based in New Jersey, the Warriors had a largeand powerful membership base already in place, and won the contract toact as the U.N.'s enforcers. They have retained the contract for almost20 years now, as of this writing.The various branches of the Warriors are referred to by Greek letters,with the primary (home) branch in England known as Alpha.Q: Who are its members?A: The current roster of Warriors Alpha, as of the most recent gamesession (January 2004) is:- Wetter Hexe, Co-Team Leader, Field Commander
- Dwimanor, Co-Team Leader, Administrator
- Looney Toons, Security Chief
- Kat, Public Relations Officer
- Shadowwalker, Headmistress, Warriors' Academy
- Silverbolt
- Skitz
- Ai Jiao Min
- Proteus
Reserve members:
Members on inactive status are:
- Sorciere
- Phantasia
- Psyche
- Major Kanis
- Crystal
- WildFlyte
Retired/resigned members
- Shockwave
- Flash (No, not DC's Flash)
Pending candidates for membership:
Q: What's the difference between "Inactive" and "Reserve" members?A: Reserve members can be called up on a moment's notice -- they'reeffectively "on duty" 24 hours a day, but can do other things withtheir lives until and unless they're needed. Inactive members area step closer to being non-members. They have terminated theirconnections to the Warriors in everything but name. They can stillbe called up in emergencies, but they are not expected to beavailable at a moment's notice.Q: What is Doug's role there?A: Doug is the Warriors' Security Chief -- he oversees the day-to-dayoperations of the Warriors' powered infantry (who act primarily as "base guards" for the Mansion) as well as a dedicated security staff.His "duty station" is the "tv room" -- the main security office withits banks of monitors and communications station.Q: What is the Mansion?A: The Mansion is the Warriors' home -- a sprawling Edwardian estatesome miles outside of London, England which has been refitted as a proper headquarters for the world's premiere superteam. Its features include: reinforcing the structure, the addition of several levels of subbasements, a dedicated megaframe computer (which had achieved a level of pseudosentience during the late 1980s, but which lost it again after battle damage), a "danger room", temporary metahuman restraining and holding facilities, quarters for all Warriors(whther they choose to live there or not), and a force dome protectingthe entire estate.A picture of the Mansion building itself can be found at
www.warriors-alpha.net/gr...ansion.jpgQ: Oh. Okay. Are there any other branches?A: At the moment, only Warriors Alpha is
known to be active.Warriors Beta, based in Tokyo, disbanded toward the end of the 1990sand its members either resigned or were reassigned to Alpha. AWarriors Delta campaign, set in the Sinai peninsula, was created andone session run for it, back in the early 1990s. (That adventurebecame my contribution to
GURPS Supers Adventures notlong afterward.) Another Warriors Branch was created at some pointby John "Skitz" Freiler, although nobody remembers too much about it;it might have been a second Delta branch, or it might have been Gamma.Within the context of the game world, neither of these two latterbranches was ever formally disbanded, so as far as anyone is concerned,they're still out there doing their business quietly and efficiently,without bothering the home office in London.Q: Where can I learn more about Warriors' World and the Warriors themselves?A: Well, you don't have too many options. The campaigndoesn't have much in the way of a Web presence at the moment.I do own the domain warriors-alpha.net, but there isn't muchthere except the framework for a website that I haven't donemuch work on since late 2002. I believe all the current playersare online, but I'm not posting their names or addresses,just to save them from a) harrassment, and b) spam.HexeQ: What's the deal with Wetter Hexe being a god?A: The same deal with Marvel's Thor being a god. Sorta. The difference is a little complex. Gods as manifested in a particular universe are actually a "timeslice" of vastly more powerful, extradimensional creatures who operate in many different universes simultaneously; think of them as "inserting" themselves into many different "stories" at once. So all the Thors that exist in various universes are just "faces" -- avatars -- of a single being who can manage them all simultaneously. However, the Being who is Hexe wanted a different experience of a mortal world, and poured *all* of itself into a human child. That Being no longer exists in the "metaplane" where all the other meta-level gods live, and no longer has active avatars in any other universe; its entire existence is now bound into the mortal form which is Hexe. It is by no means mortal now -- when Hexe dies (and she will, eventually), the Being she is will return to the metaplane with all its experiences intact.Q: Okay, Hexe's a goddess.
Which goddess is she?A: I'm sorry, citizen, that information is not available at your security clearance. Seriously, although we in the campaign know what pantheon she belongs to and in what way, Helen has asked me not make that information public. She
has laughed, though, at the idea that Hexe's Athena, particularly the version from
Saint Seiya.Q: Just how powerful is Hexe? A: Very very. Using V&V rules straight out of the box, Hexe can: control the weather in an area of several hundred square miles, run at nearly 200 MPH, fly at supersonic speeds, survive being at ground zero for a nuclear explosion, take on a noncorporeal spirit form, and use the air for dozens of yards around her as a single massive sensory organ. She can lift close to 1400 pounds, and does about a third of a Fuzion Kill with her bare hands. (Unlike Doug, none of that is martial arts prowess --that's all pure power.) And that's with almost all of her "true" nature's power throttled down!(( SECTIONS FOR OTHER CHARACTERS? SILVERBOLT, SHADOWWALKER, KAT,DWIM? ))
GURPS International Super TeamsQ: What is the relationship between Warriors' World and the IST World?A: Warriors' World inspired
GURPS International Super Teams. Here's how it happened. I joined the WW campaign in late 1986. In 1987 I started frequenting the Illuminati BBS -- the pre-Net forerunner of sjgames.com. Along about 1988, I had grown dissatisfied with the lack of "history" in Warriors' World -- there was at the time no coherent explanation of how the game world had gotten to the point shown in the games. So I wroteup a timeline which explained everything (in my opinion) and offered it to the then-current GMs. They turned it down, as theyhad their own ideas.The timeline languished for a year or so, until SJGames started the playtest for the first edition of the
GURPS Supers sourcebook. Steve Jackson Games ran playtests for their upcoming products out of the BBS, and being a BBS member let you get involved in the process. While playtest progressed, people started posting favorite "war stories" and characters from their superhero campaigns to the playtest board. One day, I posted the rejected timeline from Warriors' World. Less than 24 hours later, I had an email from folk at SJGames saying, "Would you write 10,000 words on this and let us use it? We don't like the gameworld we have." I did, they liked it, and it became the IST World chapter of
GURPS Supers. And I was rewarded with a contract to write
GURPS International Super Teams, which I completed in 1990, and which was released in April of 1991.Not surprisingly, a number of characters from Warriors' World have counterparts in the IST World.Q: What Warriors' World characters appear in IST?A: A fair number, including some not mentioned in Drunkard's Walk (at least not as of early 2004). Argurous Astraph is Silverbolt. Witchwind is inspired by Hexe, but isn't really terribly close to her. Warrior is a character initially created by Joe "Dwimanor" Avins. Drifter was played by John D. Gold. Nightscream (mentioned in
GURPS Supers and edited out of IST, but available on my website) is a highly variant version of Shadowwalker. Patchwork was an NPC I created as a "villain who isn't" plot mcGuffin. Similarly, I created The Void as a villain for the campaign; she was even more dangerous under V&V. Poprock, who appears in
GURPS Supers, wasalso from Warriors' World.Q: Where can I find official IST World merchandise/materials?A: Good question. Both IST and
IST Kingston (from Modern Myth Publishing) are long, long out of print. No additional materials were ever written for the world. (
SuperTemps and
Super Scum predate IST, and I incorporated them into it; they are not really IST materials.) I have, of course, a page of IST material here on my site, but they aren't "official". If there are any other official materials, I don't know about them. You can always write en masse to Steve Jackson Games and demand them,of course.Q: Will IST ever get a second edition?A: It doesn't seem to be likely for the foreseeable future.However, if you send your cards and letters to Steve Jackson Gamesasking for a new, expanded edition, maybe we can get somethinggoing.Q: Is there an official IST World version of Doug?A: No. Many of the characters from Warriors' World made guest appearances in on form or another, but Doug is not one of them.He's pretty impossible to build in GURPS Supers without creatinga new power expressly for him.Q: Have you done that?A: No.Q: Why not?A: I've never needed to play Doug in
GURPS.Drunkard's Walk IQ: What's the story about Haven? I liked that series!A: When I first started thinking up the Walk, Peggy and I were inthe middle of Mercedes Lackey's mid- to late-1990s burst ofproductivity for Velgarth, the world in which her "Heralds ofValdemar" and "Vows and Honor" books are set (among other series).That setting being on my mind at the time, naturally, I imaginedwhat would happen if Doug were to blunder into it. This was, infact, the genesis of the
Drunkard's Walk, and became itsfirst Step when I decided that Doug would visit more than one world. The reason I did not follow through and actually write more than an outline and a bit of setup for
DW1 is because Mercedes Lackey's agent -- and thus Lackey -- is actively hostile to any form of electronic fan fiction set in her worlds. Now part of this is for a very, very good reason, a very
valid reason. It's possible for a writer to lose control of their own creation -- or lose some freedom to write what they want within their own creation -- if they run into a particularly obnoxious fan author. This happened to Marion Zimmer Bradley, and the experience was a strong influence on Lackey. (You can see the story [url=
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
