WELCOME!

Welcome to the Annals of the Red Brigade, as written by Kanela, my alter-ego during this adventure. This is essentially a write up of Hywel's second campaign set in this new world. His first campaign was quick, taking a week's holiday to complete (Wortham Manor 1998), and dealt with the formation of the brigade. These volumes took me a loooong time to complete, and my time during the adventures was often spent frantically scribbling notes about who did what to whom, and any quick witticisms from the others - a note sometimes made in haste was obvious at the time, and then obscure a day later. All this was made worse by the fact that Hywel lives about 115 miles from my work, 95 miles from my home - this led to 210 mile journeys each Wednesday night, getting home in the early hours of the morning. In the end I bought a Toshiba Libretto subnotebook so that I could write up these notes at lunchtime at work.

It was a lot of effort, then. But it was worth it on many levels.

First, it made Kanela's position as Annalist real. I believed it, and so did everyone else.

Second, it sped up the arrival of Kanela's voice and personality. It becomes obvious what he liked, hated, disliked and feared. If for no other reason, that makes this kind of struggle worthwhile.

Third, it created a resource for the GamesMaster - Hywel found it useful to remind him what had been happening behind our backs, and what we had been told. It will also end up printed out with all the early annals, and any later ones Hywel writes to fill in the history of the Brigade, for the next Annalist. Hobbit has promised to bind these annals in leather, as a permenant record. See Hywel's Homepage for his backgrounds for other campaigns. All those tarot cards helped the suspension of disbelief.

Fourth, it was fun - I'm not dedicated enough to do all this if I don't enjoy it. The write ups of our dead brothers were all my own work - I was just told "5 brothers died." It took ages to create all those people, never to be seen again. But it helped to make the game a bit more real - always believe it yourself, even if no-one else does - there, that's my fatuous advice to role-players everywhere.

Have fun reading, I had fun writing,

TOERAG.

The icons below transport you back here, or to other sites of interest to the traveller of these stories, you'll find them on all my pages.