The Fantasy Trip Love-In Thread

[The Good Assyrian]

I recently dug out the copy of "The Fantasy Trip" that I scored a while back at Half Price Books and read it for the first time.  Man, it turns out to be a neat little system.  Pretty streamlined and looks like fun to play.  I have more often than not just used a stripped down version of GURPS in my games, anyway, so this may be a contender for running quick and dirty fantasy games now that my free time is more limited.

Anybody here have any experience with TFT?  I know that there is at least one gaming group here in Austin which has been playing it exclusively since the 80s.  Anybody using it out there in the wild?


TGA

[Dr Rotwang!]

I downloaded somefreebie legal adaptations of it.  I need to print one out and monkey withit at work why not.

[The Good Assyrian]

I downloaded somefreebie legal adaptations of it.  I need to print one out and monkey withit at work why not.

Yeah, it seems after poking around the web a bit that the game is undergoing a grassroots revival of sorts.  From my understanding, after Metagaming's demise the status of the game's IP rights is pretty murky, so it looks like some fans have retooled it and simplified it.  They also are marketing some new adventures.  Those who are interested can check it out at:

http://www.thefantasytrip.com/

Neat to see fans try to resurrect an Old Skool game that brought them a lot of fun over the years!


TGA

[jdrakeh]

Big TFT fan here, though I've played probably played the individual microgames (i.e., Melee and Wizard) more than the whole ball o' fun. I think my favorite thing about the system (which served as the proving ground for GURPS, mind you) are the rules for random encounters in downtime. They're sheer genius, abstracting the whole period of downtime into a few rolls. I've never seen anything else like it.

[Werekoala]

I too started out with Melee and Wizard (and in fact have an original shirinkwrapped Wizard game in near-mint stashed away somewhere), then graduated to TFT. Anyone looking for rules-lite and easy to pick up would be hard pressed to find better, IMO. And the GURPS ancestry is easily recognizable.

[Calithena]

I can't think of an RPG from the first twenty years of RPGing that I would say is flat-out better designed than TFT. You can find some that do particular things better, but this game is so awesomely put together it's pretty hard to top overall.

To tell the truth, this is still probably one of my top ten all-time RPGs.

[Dr Rotwang!]

Random adventures in downtime?!  Is that in the, the, the, the grass-roots freebies?

AaAAaAaAaAAaHHhHHH!  I prints to-nite!  

[The Good Assyrian]

You can totally see the beginnings of GURPS percolating in TFT, but I guess that the wonderment for me is in discovering this little gem that has all of the things I like about GURPS without all the cruft I'd have to strip out to make it fast and simple.

For example, I sat down last night and made this character in 10 minutes:

Salfred
Human
Thief

STR   8
DEX   12
INT   12

Spells
   Invisibility (3 IQ)

Talents
   Thief (2 IQ)
   Sword (2 IQ)
   Literacy (1 IQ)
   Charisma (2 IQ)
   Recognize Value (1 IQ)
   Courtly Graces (1 IQ)

Languages
   Common

So like in 10 minutes flat I have a cool character ready to go!  I even have a good idea of what his schtick is.  Obviously he's the kind of thief who hobnobs with rich folk, charms them with his conversation and winning smile while casing out the joint, and then comes back at midnight and does the deed while invisible.  Sweet!


TGA

[The Good Assyrian]

Random adventures in downtime?!  Is that in the, the, the, the grass-roots freebies?

I totally missed that when I was reading the original game last night!  I'll look it up when I get home from work.  It sounds really nifty!  Hopefully it is in the new version as well.


TGA

[jdrakeh]

Just in case you didn't already know, The Fantasy Trip is currently back in production here.

[kregmosier]

aw hells yeah...Melee/Wizard/TFT were (and hell, still are) kickass.  You gotta love an rpg you can carry around in your pocket (loved the whole microgames concept) and i completely agree that it's very much like GURPS with the extraneous bits stripped out.  

I've been linking to Dark City Games website every time this is brought up on some forum since first hearing about them a year or so ago.  I really like the fact that they've resurrected the system and are happily producing new cool content.  (although i'm personally holding out on purchasing for the Untamed West stuff.)

[The Good Assyrian]

aw hells yeah...Melee/Wizard/TFT were (and hell, still are) kickass.  You gotta love an rpg you can carry around in your pocket (loved the whole microgames concept) and i completely agree that it's very much like GURPS with the extraneous bits stripped out.  

I've been linking to Dark City Games website every time this is brought up on some forum since first hearing about them a year or so ago.  I really like the fact that they've resurrected the system and are happily producing new cool content.  (although i'm personally holding out on purchasing for the Untamed West stuff.)

Dark City Games has some neat TFT stuff.  Looks like they even have a sci-fi version of their new version of TFT which they are calling "Legends: Time & Space".  And it looks like they are writing new adventures in the 'Microquest" format of the original TFT stuff.  I've never seen any of the original Microquests.  Are they any good?


TGA

[arminius]

Played a lot of the "programmed adventure" microquests, either solitaire or with me reading the book and playing the opposition to the players. I never ran a full-blown campaign. The encounters in off-time idea is in In the Labyrinth, in the section on Jobs IIRC; essentially the jobs are shown in a table that gives the minimum qualifications, the monthly income (which might be variable in some cases, not sure), and a roll you'd make per month to see if anything unusual/dangerous happened to you. I think the latter could be just abstracted into damage but even if the rules don't say so (I don't remember), it could also be used as an advenure seed.

I think Flashing Blades had something kinda similar where if you joined the army on the northern frontier and rolled badly you might have to duel a Belgian or something like that.

It was more than slight inspiration for some of the ideas I put forth in my essay on proactive characters (a reaction to John Kim's essay which was the subject of a recent thread).

Hm...merge in some mechanics based on Burning Wheel's Relationships, Circles, Affiliations and Reputations and you'd have a pretty complete campaign framework.

[jdrakeh]

I've never seen any of the original Microquests.  Are they any good?

Some of them. I rather liked Deathtest and Master of the Amulets. The former was Tomb of Horrors difficult, while the latter was a full-fledged mini-setting and a small campaign. I wish that I still had the latter.

[arminius]

I've never seen any of the original Microquests.  Are they any good?

Grailquest and Security Station are excellent, but the latter has at least one typo that sends you to the wrong paragraph. I should take a look at my copy and post the erratum sometime. Also, Security Station is pretty damn deadly; I'd recommend either playing with significantly buffed-up characters, or changing one of the key elements of the scenario to make it less of a forced bottleneck-of-death, which I also wrote up a suggestion for at one point.

Death Test & Death Test 2 were pretty similar to each other, basically a forking trek through a series of challenges, with no way to circumvent challenges or to strategically choose one path vs. another. (Or at best, minimal ability to do those things; again, my memory is hazy.) Still, Death Test 2 in particular was a lot of fun. One other microquest, Orbquest, was a sequel of the Death Tests in a way. That is, the 'Tests' are portrayed as recruitment/training tools for a kind of warlord, while OQ was a missions he'd send you on. OQ is basically another Death Test except you go up a tower instead of through a maze. Somehow it seemed less interesting but I never played it.

As for the others (Unicorn Gold, Treasure of the Silver Dragon, Master of the Amulets), I haven't read them very closely at all so I can't comment. But you can google them and find summaries. Finally, Tollenkar's Lair is a "labyrinth" (read: dungeon) pretty much as intended by the full-blown ITL rules. I've had a look and it seems pretty good; note that it's definitely a GMed affair, not a solo quest.

Note that Guy McLimore was involved in a lot of the rules and modules; he now does Microtactix/Simply Roleplaying which I gather is in a similar vein to TFT, or maybe a few notches closer to GURPS: http://www.microtactix.com/newsite/plmain.shtml