Looking for something new

[dbm]

This interview has more on the reclaiming of TFT.

 

[pemerton]

@velkymx

I know two systems that I think fit your parameters:

*Agon 2e (actual play reports here: https://www.enworld.org/threads/agon-2nd-ed-actual-play.690886/)
*Prince Valiant (many actual play reports on these boards, one of them is here: https://www.enworld.org/threads/prince-valiant-actual-play.654732/)

Prince Valiant is not in print but copies can sometimes be found.

I recommend both without reservation.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Thanks for confirming that.

I knew SJ was the #1 designer- it’s obvious from reading credits on the boxes- but I hadn’t heard about the behind the scenes stuff. Thanks for the history lesson!

There's probably more to it than what's publicly known, but it's hard to guess at the details. Howard Thompson is still something of a mysterious figure in gaming circles and there were all sorts of rumors about why he shut down Metagaming so suddenly and has held on to the rights so tightly for as long as he did. There was also some apparent bad blood between him and Steve when SJG was starting up, which led to legal proceedings where Steve wound up with Ogre/GEV/One-Page Bulge. Howard then printed a spiteful little "game" called Fistful of Turkeys that parodied SJG stylings (particularly One-Page Bulge) and was marked as being from a faux company called Some Turkey Games. He also started up a new Metagaming house organ digest mag called Interplay, and this not long after selling The Space Gamer to SJG because Metagaming didn't want to expend time and effort on producing a magazine any more. Interplay felt very much like another spite play aimed at Steve, who'd turned TSG from a modestly popular mag under Metagaming into one of the top ten (and arguably to four or five) mags of its era.

If nothing else, Metagaming was a historically important company for creating the microgame format, which was quite the craze well into the 80s and has seen fitful revivals ever since. The original Cheapass Games stuff might be the ultimate expression of the "clever rules, cheap components" philosophy, but Howard Thompson started it way back when. And then he packed up his toys and more-or-less vanished, leaving most of the company's work in perpetual licensing limbo. There are probably some former Metagaming staff and freelance designers that could tell us more (Steve being the most obvious) but none of them have come forward yet, and a few (eg Lynn Willis, designer of Godsfire, Olympica and Holy War as well as a bunch of GDW, WEG and Chaosium stuff) have passed away at this point.

SJG's really the only company that's bothered to put real effort into reviving those old games, and even then it's only been the ones Steve authored himself. Other creators (or their estates, for deceased ones) could presumably use the same legal process Steve did to recover TFT/Melee/Wizard/etc. but none have been inclined to do so. Avalon Hill did get the rights to Stellar Conquest and Hitler's War before they collapsed themselves - which is kind of ironic, given that Howard wrote Stellar Conquest and started Metagaming to publish it after having it be rejected by AH in the first place.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I can’t tell you how many Metagaming products I own. And I also have some of the microgames from companies that followed their lead, like TSR, Task Force & Cheapass.

 

[johnmarron]

I'm going to suggest Outgunned, by Two Little Mice. Let's see how it meets your criteria.

• Easy to Learn: Super easy to learn! The core mechanic is add a stat and skill and roll that many d6's, looking for matching faces. The more matching faces you get, the better your success.
• Story-Focused: Designed to emulate action movies, so lots of exciting moments, and more narrative than tactical.
• Light on Rules: Very light rules, with a fun "push-your-luck" re-roll mechanic.
• No Maps Needed: I don't think you could really use maps, with all the high-flying action going on.
• GM Friendly: Super easy on the GM side. Antagonist stats are a couple of numbers and a handful of special abilities which you can get on cards to make running them even easier. Good advice on pacing for an action movie feel.

Bonus Points:

• Genre Mashup: Core game covers modern action movies, but the Action Flicks book gives tons of support for various action genres like SF, Wuxia, Cyberpunk, Supernatural, etc.
• Flexible Play: Great for one-shots. Designed to do short campaigns of 6-8 sessions, but gives guidance on stringing a number of these shorter runs into a series of sequels to form a longer campaign.

The game is only available in PDF at the moment, but should be shipping to KS backers by the end of this month, and available for sale to the general public soon after.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I can’t tell you how many Metagaming products I own. And I also have some of the microgames from companies that followed their lead, like TSR, Task Force & Cheapass.

If you were around in the early 80s it was pretty easy to own Metagaming's whole catalog, the low costs on almost everything and (functionally) five-year company lifespan made that a very doable goal. Task Force was probably the second-heaviest microgame publisher in terms of product count, including some things that grew far beyond fitting in ziplock baggies like Star Fleet Battles and Starfire. SPI had a handful of their own, some of which wound up getting slim boxed sets and a few more that only got published in Ares magazine. TSR had their classic eight released in two batches of four, as did Heritage/Dwarfstar with their eight small-box games - which were the most expensive of their ilk and some of the best, with very ambitious designs and relatively high-end components for the format. Mayfair had four as well with the same ziplock bag packaging as TFG used, Close Simulations had a pair. Steve Jackson Games pumped out a slew of them as time went by, some in an odd one-page folding sheet format and then later in those hinged hard plastic pocket boxes, with some (especially Ogre and Car Wars) getting editions in multiple formats. There were a few oddballs in the 90s that tried using VCR cases for packaging, but for the most part the niche for microgames largely evaporated with the rise of CCGs, other small card games, and stuff like the Disk Wars fad.

EDIT: Oh yeah, there were also a couple from Fat Messiah Games, both in the TFG baggie format. Shapeshifters was a classic wizard's duel game worth of Merlin and Madam Mim, while Last Frontier: Vesuvius Incident was a pretty great solo "alien bughunt" game that was probably meant to be the start of a series of similar games. Those were both quite good, beacons of the microgame format in the early 90s.

And yeah, I'm pretty nostalgic about the history of these things.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If you were around in the early 80s…

 

[DragonLancer]

Here's the gist:

• Easy to Learn: No one wants a rule book coma! It would be great if it had some super consistency across the rules. 1/2 page cheat sheet would be ok.
• Story-Focused: Epic moments, player agency, and plot twists galore!
• Light on Rules: Dice are fun, spreadsheets are not!
• No Maps Needed: Theatre of the mind for vivid storytelling!
• GM Friendly: Easy prep for epic adventures!

Have you looked at the Daggerheart play test? The PDF is fairly big but the rules are actually really simple and plays into exactly what you are looking at here. You can download for free, from Daggerheart.com

 

[aramis erak]

Simple yet different? Epic campaign?

King Arthur Pendragon. If you want the cheap overview of the mechanics: DriveThruRPG $3. Fully playable. My review (the one on that page) is accurate - the core of 4th, 5th, or 6th has ways to link starting characters more tightly to the setting, and better explanations of the skills... it's enough to get a taste-test. Or, for some, to run campaigns in a timeless height of Camelot. The "Tales of ___" series are specifically intended to be used with this booklet, but work fine with any edition.

Then, add The Great Pendragon Campaign. GPC is multiple hundreds of pages of timeline and adventure seeds, plus a number of short adventures.The other, longer, adventures in separate volumes are there if one needs or wants them.

My Pendragon 4th player guide is 2 pages, but that includes all the standard horses, quick squire creation, and the 3 standard solos (Your Own Land, At the Crossroads, Lover's Solo) in minimalist checkbox form. Note that the solos are absent from BoK.

Character gen is about 1/5 of the 48pp book, rules of play about 2/5.
While Char Gen differs across the 4th/5th divide, the rules of play are much the same. From what I've read, 6th is mechanically still very very close to 5th.

While Many say Prince Valiant was Greg's Mangum Opus, Pendragon is the cornerstone of his ongoing memory, right alongside RuneQuest's Glorantha.

 

[pemerton]

While Many say Prince Valiant was Greg's Mangum Opus

I hold that view, but have always assumed I was a minority!