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Dedication


This book is dedicated to all the indoor soccer players I’ve ever played with or against. If not for my weekly jaunts into Chaos with all of you, I’d be as mad as a hatter. (And I’d have no idea what it feels like to have been in combat.)



Acknowledgments


The author would like to offer special thanks to the following people, for without their contributions, this work would never have been created. Liz Danforth for listening to my mad prattling about this book. Dr. William F. Wu for asking questions that made me think about answers—ditto David M. Honigsberg in this regard. Dennis L. McKiernan and Jennifer Roberson for their help with horses and similar paradoxes of fantasy fiction. Ricia Mainhardt and Christopher Schelling for finding this project its various homes and Caitlin Blasdell for her patience as the book expanded to fill the time available to write it and then some. And, finally, Rick Loomis, the president of Flying Buffalo Inc., for allowing me to create and use this world.

Chaos began as a play-by-mail-game experiment I ran for Flying Buffalo Inc. (P. O. Box 1467, Scottsdale, AZ 85252 or http://www.flyingbuffalo.com) in 1984. For three months I created the world just ahead of a dozen players, fleshing it out in directions they forced me to explore. While we all had great fun, and the experience of having to write on demand each and every day helped me immeasurably in my career, the game died after the momentous occasion of the Bear’s Eve Ball. Rick and I decided we could not pay writers enough to make writing up adventures worth their while, nor could we ever give customers enough stuff if we charged them what it really cost to prepare their adventures.

The players involved in the playtest were Phil Murnane, Liz Danforth, Scott Hagen, Steve MacGregor, Jay Dunkelberger, Mark O’Green, Chris Lancaster, Dave Pettit, Rick Shaffstall, Jim Walker, William Paxton, Jeffrey Martis, and E. L. Fredrick. To them my thanks for making the game incredibly interesting and challenging to run. Characters often take over stories, and such was the case with the game. While none of their characters appear in this book, their influence is everywhere.



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