In 1984 I worked at a shitty movie theater. It wasn’t
part of a chain, instead family owned and run by a sketchy guy out of
Chicago. We had three screens and an arcade you had to go outside and around to get to. We played a lot of Cannon Films (Runaway
Train, Masters of the Universe, Invasion USA, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2). This
was before we had multiplexes in our town. When they finally opened a six (!)
screen theater, my manager freaked out.
Anyway I had plenty of downtime when I worked. We could get
clean up done quickly, check the stock, and wait for any stragglers who
wanted more snacks without breaking a sweat. Of course since we were high schoolers we barely did that. We made student minimum wage ($2.85/hour) so there wasn’t a
huge incentive to excel. Still I did my job, eventually becoming an assistant
manager (and making an additional .25 cents per hour). But sometimes it was
seriously boring.
At the time my local rpg group played a ton of Rolemaster. Paul D. handled
GMing. I ran other games (supers, James Bond, GURPS). But I wanted to do
something with fantasy; I wanted to run Rolemaster. And I also wanted to use
elements Paul had brought to our table: The Lythic Pantheon. These deities
came from the Harn published setting. They’d released an awesome systemless cultural
sourcebook: Gods of Harn. I planned on adapting those gods to a new
setting and context- ignoring all the rich work and world building in the
supplement. Why? Because I was fifteen and knew better.
Anyway one night after wiping down the counters yet another
time, I started writing down notes on a paper towel. Gallerain and
Cainsar. Two neighboring kingdoms. This became the basis for a short RM
campaign I ran soon after. It ended after a handful of session, but I still liked the world, so I worked
on the larger continent. Then still later when I went to run Fantasy GURPS I
created another continent on that same world. Eventually that grew into the fantasy world I’d
run for another couple of decades over many campaigns. (For a rundown see here).
What’s the point of all that? This weekend in going through old boxes I found that paper towel. It’s wrinkled, stained, and threadbare
but still intact. So I’ve scanned that so I’ll always have this weird artifact.
