1. Preserving Our Past
The Secrets of the Société de l’Ultime Maîtres have been closely guarded for centuries—and will good reason! Their principles shatters many of the most common assumptions about role playing games, how they should be played and even calls into question the entire concept of ‘leveling-up.’ Many consider such concepts heretical.
Such knowledge would be devastating were it to fall into the wrong hands (See ‘Rosenbergs’ below). For this reason, the true history of Extreme Dungeon Mastery has remained under the guardianship of XDM Masters down through the centuries and remains carefully maintained to this day.
What can be told, however sparsely, paints a vivid and tantalizing picture of the movement from its foundations in ancient Sumer and Babylon, through its classical Greek revival period, its ruthless oppression under Roman law, its adaptation of Ottoman Empire and Ming Dynasty philosophies, its near extinction with the Knights Templar and exile among the Aztec states, the advent of role playing games in the 1970s and Extreme Dungeon Mastery’s resurgence in more recent times in the Utah desert.
- Early Foundations of the XDMs: Sumerian and Babylonian writings prove to be the first attempts at role playing game charts and tables.
- Classical Xtreme Tragedies and Comdies: The first formalized attempts at performance role playing games using the ‘rock, papyrus, knife’ method which lead to the discovery of the polyhedron.
- Eastern RPGs and the Birth of the Campaign Setting: Where you will discover that Sun Tsu’s ‘Art of War’ is considered to be the first ‘hard back’ RPG.
- Early LARPs of the Roman Coliseum: The first formalized Live Action Role Playing (LARP) games took place in the Coliseum where the ever popular ‘Christians VS. Lions’ LARP proved to be in serious need of game balancing.
- The XDMs Templar: The tragic history of the XDMs Templar and how in a single night their Open Gaming Licenses were all emphatically revoked.
- The Founding of the Société de l’Ultime Maîtres: Recent discoveries that the American Founding Fathers were all XDMs, their participation in the Boston Dice Party and ultimately the forming of the first international society of XDMs in France during the Reign of Terror.The modern history of XDMs, their tragic betrayal by the Rosenbergs, the East-West XDM gap and efforts by the Chinese cultural revolution to coopt the XDM movement before Gary Gygax brought RPGs forward in Western Civilization and allowed the XDMs to flourish once again.
All these and more history you will learn in your XDM: Xtreme Dungeon Mastery manual once you have been initiated.
Themocracy
“Société de l’Ultime Maîtres” is grammatically wrong, you most probably meant “Société des Maîtres Ultimes”.
Aszarsha is right! I am ashamed to admit that the XDM founding fathers understanding of the beautiful French language was woefully lacking. Aszarsha’s corrected translation is officially adopted.