Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc,rec.games.board
Subject: Re: Dumb Moves By Game Companies
From: noren@trident.datasys.swri.edu (Greg Noren)
Date: 31 Dec 92 15:21:01 GMT
Followup-To: rec.games.frp.misc
Organization: Southwest Research Institute
Summary: The Fantasy Trip discussed.

In article <1992Dec31.024928.8878@trl.oz.au> s.mathers@trl.oz.au writes:
>In article <1992Dec31.001743.25722@netcom.com>, mhall@netcom.com (Michael Hall) writes:
>|> Metagaming's refusal to sell The Fantasy Trip to Steve Jackson for a
>|> reasonable price and letting this role-playing system die.  Steve Jackson's
>|> refusal to buy The Fantasy Trip for a few million bucks to save it from
>|> certain death.
>
>What's The Fantasy Trip like, if anyone knows?

My experience was with the microgames _Melee_, _Wizard_, and _Deathtest_.  Are
there any other games/cookbooks comprising TFT?  Also I think Jackson was
involved in the design of the first two if not all three.  Anyone got their
copies handy?

Basically, _Melee_ started the "Trip" with hand-to-hand, tactical combat 
between characters created and outfitted by you and your opponents.  You have
a point pool per character and divide it to give the character its attributes
such as strength, dexterity, and movement.  Then each charater is armed and
armored paying close attention to the character's attributes because stronger
individuals can carry and use the heaver weapons (like a two-handed sword),
heaver armor cuts your movement down, etc.  You dump all of the characters
on to the board (plain, large hexagons) and let the battle begin.  You use
multiple dice versus a character's dexterity to see if the person hits what
he/she is attacking (a.k.a. TO HIT).  Different weapons do different dice
rolls worth of damage when they hit.  Armor absorbs some of the damage.
What's left reduces the victim's strength level.  Get down to a certain level
and the character is unconscious.  Last character alive wins the battle.

The above is somewhat oversimplified, but you get the idea.  The rules were
tight and easy to learn and master (and teach to newbies).  _Wizard_ as you
might expect introduces magic and spells along with multi-hex characters
like ogres and small and large dragons the latter of which encompasses
SEVEN hexes and were mothers to kill.  There were "campaign" rules for the
system which allowed for characters who survived contests gaining some
experience and improving attributes.  _Deathtest_ provided a solitare system
and single campaign - once some of your characters got through the _Deathtest_
campaign, it was pretty much unusable by you since you knew all of the secrets
(help here please if I've got _Deathtest_ wrong - I spent much more time with
the other two).

I like the system so much I and a good friend concocted a variation called
"Arena of Death" which pitted your team of four characters against "the
board".  Kind of a distant cousin to _Deathtest_ except it wasn't truely
solitare (but very playable as such - optimally, someone else played "the
board's" charcters) and you could play it over and over as there was no
"story" to learn - you simply had to traverse the arena twice for your team 
to (hopefully) get out.  And it played campaign style in that a successful
team went up in experience to become stronger for the next attempt.  Needless
to say Metagaming rejected the finshed product complaining it was too much
like "hack-and-slash" combat a view not shared by any of the playtesters I
used.  But then I guess our biases got in the way of our objectivity.  Also,
Metagaming was heavy into _Deathtest_ at the time looking for TFT stuff along
those lines.  Sigh.  I expect they had LOTS of TFT submissions to evaluate.

A good variety of enjoyment at microgame prices.  Some of Metagaming's most
successful games (IMHO, of course).

--
I disclaim:  The words above are mine... My company speaketh their own.

Gregory Noren                             (512)522-5531 (a human)
Southwest Research Institute              (512)522-5499 (just the FAX)
Internet:  noren@trident.datasys.swri.edu (129.162.50.211)