This work is collectively copyright 1990 by Freeland Abbott, with
individual submissions copyrighted by the contributors (whom I've
tried to acknowledge, but the quantity of material and attempts to
arrange it coherently have sometimes prevented that).  Free right to
copy for personal use is granted, but any publication or profit
without the written permission of the aforementioned parties is
strictly prohibited.

Welcome to the city of Tabolport, a fantasy role-playing setting
developed by various contributors over Usenet.  The idea behind its
creation was that by sharing and collaborating on a designing a single
city, everyone could be saved a great deal of work, and at the same
time a city of unusual richness (we hope) might be created.  Further
submissions are more than welcome; they may either be posted to
rec.games.frp, or mailed to Freeland Abbott, fabbott@athena.mit.edu.
Anything submitted will then become subject to the copyright
restrictions above, giving the author rights to any individual
section, with the exeception that anyone may freely copy the
collection for their own use.  The semi-organization of the collection is
outlined below:

country: notes about the country outside of the city itself.
	Tabolport is properly a city-state, loosely allied into a feudal
	empire of sorts.  Anything relevant to the city-state but not the
	city goes here.

etc: this is a repository for unclassified miscellany and for things
	still awaiting proper filing.  It's intended as a catch-all, and
	thus can't really be described well...

history: historical notes for background to campaigns, generally not
	affecting play directly, but useful for texture, inspiration, and
	background.  Files here will often overlap references with people
	and places as well.  Myths and stories will be included as
	"history", for want of a better description.

people: brief descriptions of the various people in Tabolport, from
	the important movers and shakers to beggars on the street.  In
	some cases, if people are described elsewhere, the information is
	not repeated; in others, it is.  

places: descriptions and notes regarding various places (usually real
	and standing, but sometimes not) in the city itself.  These form
	the bulk of the material submitted, from which other entries are
	culled, and generally include descriptions of relevant people.

factions: Information about organizations, groups, and power blocks,
	as well as their membership, policies, and resources.  Great for
	plot hooks, and to add some color.  Here, too, people may be
	described who are not repeated elsewhere.

world: information about more distant places, broken down more or less
	as the city itself is, but by geographic area above the other
	divisions.  This also includes the world maps.

The hardcopy versions of the project have been assembled from many
files, divided into directories exactly as above.  Using scribe, those
then get collected into the hardcopy version.  Thus, in a very few
cases, scribe commands have been put into the files: those reading the
hardcopy won't see them and don't need to worry; those reading the
electronic files should simply ignore anything beginning with an 'at'
(@@) character which they do not recognize.  In most cases, the purpose
of the command can be easily determined, which is one reason scribe
was chosen instead of any alternative formatter.

