wolf90
Level 1 Medium
Posts: 18
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Post by wolf90 on Jun 2, 2010 21:26:25 GMT -6
Melee, Wizard and The Fantasy Trip was always a great game for quick, light play. That, combined with the solo play option, ranks it in my favorites list. Anyone else remember this game with any fondness? Not a RPG but in the same vein...
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Post by coffee on Jun 3, 2010 1:05:52 GMT -6
I remember TFT! It seemed like it took ages before I finally got my hands on In The Labyrinth. And when I finally did, it turned out I "needed" Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard (which I then dutifully bought).
I only ever ran it once as a RPG, but I did play it an awful lot solitaire. Good game.
Steve Jackson has said he created it because he was fed up with D&D's "lack of a combat system".
And I really loved the tiny dice in the boxed sets that came after the plastic bagged sets. I still have 4 of them.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jun 3, 2010 5:56:32 GMT -6
I finally got my hands on In The Labyrinth. And when I finally did, it turned out I "needed" Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard (which I then dutifully bought). Are those the only three books you need? I think I have/had one of those somewhere and it didn't really make sense, so I probably needed the others. |
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Post by coffee on Jun 3, 2010 7:51:20 GMT -6
To do just fighting, you only need Melee. Advanced adds some stuff, but isn't really necessary.
To do magical duelling, you need Wizard. Again, Advanced adds some stuff.
To do roleplaying campaigns, then you need In The Labyrinth (and one or preferably both of the others). But yeah, that's all you need.
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Post by thorswulf on Jun 3, 2010 13:29:26 GMT -6
I always wanted to play these games, but alas they were out of print, or unavailable to me until I moved to Washington state to attend college. The Evergreen State College is one of the big three liberal universities on the west coast (Reed in Portland & Berkley ar the other two), and they had an entire section in their library on rpgs, several wargames, and some awesome science fiction/fantasy in their literature area. Imagine my surprise and delight when they had all three of the In the Labyrinth booklets! Evergreen is deer to my heart for this reason. Apparently the head librarian was an old school gamer, and these were part of his collection!
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wolf90
Level 1 Medium
Posts: 18
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Post by wolf90 on Jun 3, 2010 19:28:35 GMT -6
Dark City Games has a number of TFT compatible adventures for sale. Good stuff. And they have adapted rules for SF and Western versions of TFT too...
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wolf90
Level 1 Medium
Posts: 18
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Post by wolf90 on Jun 3, 2010 19:30:55 GMT -6
And I really loved the tiny dice in the boxed sets that came after the plastic bagged sets. I still have 4 of them. I have some left too. They are great! |
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Post by castiglione on Jun 23, 2010 23:20:50 GMT -6
I really loved Melee/Wizard for how clean they were...which is why it really kills me to have to point out two faults that they had:
1) "High level" characters eventually got to the point where they would almost never miss; a fight between two strong characters basically resulted in them taking turns pounding on each other.
2) The rules for parrying made no sense; if a character parried, his opponent would have to roll 4d6 to hit instead of 3d6; not only did this not take the parrying player's skill into account at all, it also meant that when your opponent was parrying, not only was your chance of scoring a critical hit less than normal, so was your chance of suffering a critical failure.
I believe Dark City games corrected these flaws in their version of the rules.
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Post by coffee on Jun 23, 2010 23:40:22 GMT -6
The original parrying rule was that the attacker had to roll twice, hitting both times, in order to successfully hit.
Anyway, it wasn't too dissimilar to the AD&D rule, where a parry gives the attacker a flat -2 to hit...
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Post by castiglione on Jun 24, 2010 7:54:45 GMT -6
The original parrying rule was that the attacker had to roll twice, hitting both times, in order to successfully hit. Anyway, it wasn't too dissimilar to the AD&D rule, where a parry gives the attacker a flat -2 to hit... Argh...I'm getting old. My recollection of these things is getting foggy. Thanks for the correction! However, comparing the systems in AD&D and TFT is apples & oranges, though. Hit points in D&D represent not only physical toughness but one's ability to defend oneself so just having a flat -2 when your target is parrying makes sense. However, hits in TFT are taken off an attribute which is pretty much a measure of how much punishment you can take so having a parry rule in which the skill of the defender is not taken into account is odd. Dark City games got around this by allowing the defender to roll to parry (at the cost of an attack) with a successful roll negating the attacker's successful attack. |
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Post by coffee on Jun 24, 2010 9:45:29 GMT -6
The original parrying rule was that the attacker had to roll twice, hitting both times, in order to successfully hit. Anyway, it wasn't too dissimilar to the AD&D rule, where a parry gives the attacker a flat -2 to hit... Argh...I'm getting old. My recollection of these things is getting foggy. Thanks for the correction! However, comparing the systems in AD&D and TFT is apples & oranges, though. Hit points in D&D represent not only physical toughness but one's ability to defend oneself so just having a flat -2 when your target is parrying makes sense. However, hits in TFT are taken off an attribute which is pretty much a measure of how much punishment you can take so having a parry rule in which the skill of the defender is not taken into account is odd. Dark City games got around this by allowing the defender to roll to parry (at the cost of an attack) with a successful roll negating the attacker's successful attack. Actually, that wasn't meant as a correction -- the rule was changed to be 4 dice, instead of two rolls. That's how Jackson did things, constantly changing them based on feedback from the players. He probably would have gotten around to including the parrying character's skill eventually, but he lost control of the game when he left Metagaming. But you're right, Dark City has some pretty spiffy stuff. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who has fond memories of these classics. |
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Post by castiglione on Jun 25, 2010 21:46:58 GMT -6
BTW - for those TFT/Melee/Wizard fans out there, Boardgamegeeks Kwanchai has put together his own version of the game which can be found on the Melee page at: www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3464/meleeHe basically re-worked the art, etc., giving it a different feel. He also did the same with Ogre, giving it a pseudo-WWII feel but SJG came down hard on him and he was forced to take his version of Ogre off of BGG. |
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Post by coffee on Jun 26, 2010 1:49:37 GMT -6
Thanks for the link! Have an exalt for that.
[edit: Too soon; I just exalted somebody else. I'll come back later and give you one.]
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Post by castiglione on Jun 26, 2010 7:48:53 GMT -6
Thanks for the link! Have an exalt for that. [edit: Too soon; I just exalted somebody else. I'll come back later and give you one.] No worries. The we-working is really quite nice. I believe he also re-worded the rules (I think he had to due to copyright law). The new art for the cover, the counters, etc. are really nice, though, although they may not be everyone's cup of tea due to how "cartoony" they are. |
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