College, Chapter 0
#1 of An Alternate Path
I love roleplaying games. They let you experience things you just can't experience for real, such as jumping out an airlock and running along the surface of a space station so that you can sneak in behind the bad guys, rip off one of their arms and then use it as a club to kill the rest. And it does not hurt your cause if those bad guys are storm troopers from Star Wars, since they wear armor designed to kill the wearer if there is a blaster within a mile. So maybe you can see how roleplaying games can be fun.
Recently, in something of a midlife crisis, I asked a friend who GMs if he'd run a one on one game for me. He agreed to do so, and the chapters that follow are either edited logs of those games or are supplemental materials that fill in gaps and details. The basic idea came from a real life event which did not come to fruition: I was accepted to attend Penn State University, University Park campus, to study film and video production. Sadly, the financial aid package did not cover enough, and my parents could not contribute the balance. Right there is the first of many deviations from actual history.
The second deviation from history is a bit of fun fantasy we can all relate to: humans and furs coexist, though not necessarily peacefully. My character in these stories is human. My two roommates are furs. One is a skunk and the other is a lemur. Across the hall from us lives a zebra, attending the college on a football scholarship. He's a good player, though he may not have gotten his scholarship on athletic skill alone. In another building, the dorms not being coeducational at the time, dwell three femmes: an otter, a vixen and an aurochs who complete the main characters of this story.
Another deviation concerns dorm rooms on campus. Penn State has just double occupancy rooms. In this case, three of us share a single room, though it is more accurately a suite. Each of us has our own private space, sharing a common room with a very utilitarian bathroom. I love showers, but sometimes, lounging in a tub full of hot water is a good thing.
The biggest difference, in my opinion, between the real world and this game, comes from an alternate history. During the Maryland Campaign of the Civil War, one of General Lee's couriers did not stop to take a puff on his cigar or some trivial thing such as that, and lose a set of orders. Instead of being a major southern defeat, the Battle of Antietam ended with a Confederate victory, leaving Washington D.C. effectively isolated. The Union acknowledged the secession, and the Confederate States of America became the fourth country of North America. Treaties negotiated over the next 120 plus years created a North American version of the European Union: free movement across borders of goods and labor. If you wonder why there's a border crossing between Maryland and Virgina, this is why.
Other differences between real history and this game world exist, but these do not matter much at all. More could be mentioned here, but wouldn't you rather be surprised?
I would like to acknowledge some useful sources of information and inspiration. First off, my friend for GMing this campaign for me, and second one of the wizards on FurryMuck who pointed out a nifty feature from Weather Underground: the weather almanac. Look up any city's or town's weather almanac in the past. Not every place goes far enough back, but some do go far enough, so the weather will be as accurate as we were able to make it. Wikipedia, while it may not be the world's most reliable source of information, did provide some useful background data for scenes and events in the game. Mostly, we used this for sports scores, but it came in handy for other things too.
As usual, except for my character, none of the other characters in this story bear any intentional resemblence to any persons, living or dead, except in name.