Talking With Steve Jackson About The Fantasy Trip

Recently, I was able to ask Steve Jackson, of Steve Jackson Games, a couple of questions about the upcoming relaunch of his classic role-playing/combat game The Fantasy Trip. In addition, he gave us at EN World an early look at the preliminary art for the cover of The Fantasy Trip: Melee.

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Christopher Helton: First off, let's talk about the game itself. For the uninitiated, what is The Fantasy Trip?

Steve Jackson: It's a fantasy role-playing game that I started writing in 1977. It had a period of great popularity, which waned when Metagaming went out of business and there was no further support. But some people have always continued to play it. And last year I recovered the rights, so I can publish a new edition now.

CH: What led to the creation of The Fantasy Trip?

SJ: TFT grew out of the combat game, Melee. I created Melee specifically because I didn't like the combat system in original D&D. I wanted something that would feel more realistic, that would take into account where the characters were in relation to each other, and that would not be so table-driven.

When Melee became popular, I did a magic version of it; that was Wizard. The next step was to write a full set of role-playing rules around the Melee/Wizard combat system, which is what we know today as The Fantasy Trip.

CH: There is a lot of interest in older games again, from the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons to a Kickstarter based around the third edition of Champions. What does The Fantasy Trip offer to people who are looking at older games, or want to recreate an experience from when they were younger?

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SJ: It's an old-school role-playing experience, centered around dungeon-crawling, monster-fighting, swords-and-sorcery adventure. It does not try to be generic, and it does not try to go into overwhelming detail. It's for people who want to sit down with a few friends and explore, fight, and try to get home alive!

CH: To flip that question, what about the Fantasy Trip would appeal to people who've never played it?

SJ: The same things, I hope. It's a lot lighter than GURPS, or, for that matter, the current edition of D&D. Character creation is easy, combats are quick without being trivial, and there are just not all that many rules to learn. It's not a game about finding exploits or weird combinations of skills. It's about creating a hero or a wizard, and going on an adventure.

CH: After four editions of GURPS some may wonder why you would revisit The Fantasy Trip. What do you say to them?

SJ: Because it's a different game and I like it a lot!

CH: Should people who've invested a lot of time and money into GURPS worry that it might be replaced by a simpler game in the Fantasy Trip?

SJ: Nope. The games have different strengths, and people who are into GURPS are not going to abandon it.

CH: What do you hope for the future of the Fantasy Trip?

SJ: Enough interest from fans that we can continue to put out new background and adventure material at a good rate. But I don't want to layer on complexity. Fans of complexity have already got games to play. This is about making a character in five minutes and going out to fight the orcs.

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[Mike Nadeau]

I still have all my TFT stuff including the solo/coop microquests. Hope to see a resurgence of those.

 

[Vanveen]

I owned TFT. I see Jackson's emphasis on the ruleset as common to the old-school era. The market was about Dungeons and Dragons and a few tiny competitors. Near universally, those competitors competed on the basis of their supposedly-superior rules. (Most of this was usually "But TSR isn't REALISTIC enough!!!!", leading to the trainwreck of Rolemaster critical hits, 50-minute combats between two opponents, and weird design choices like equating a character's physical strength to the amount of damage he could take.)

Modern games are about settings. What we've learned is that people want to play...and nobody has time. (WOTC's 5e is explicitly designed to be playable in X number of 4-hour chunks.) Even the exceptions like Dungeon World aren't focused on rulesets so much as structure: formats, like the detailed structural specs for a film script, that make organizing and designing play sessions much quicker.

I'm not sure how much appeal TFT will have to modern audiences.

 

[Vanveen]

I'd also be interested in the story of the rights recovery. It's my understanding that the founder of Metagaming essentially disappeared, leaving, for instance, an unclaimed contest that AFAIK has never been solved. Like David Trampier's sudden exit from the world of gaming, this whole saga has been a bit of a mystery for a long time.

 

[alohawild]

I have a copy of TFT with all the advance add-on stuff. I liked it a lot. My gaming group from the 1980s played it a lot until the new stuff dried-up with the loss of the Metagaming Company. I remember liking the solo-like adventure that created a search for the Holy Grail. I found a copy of Wizard on eBay and bought it to have a complete set of rules. So I am happy to see a reprint or rework being released, I will buy a copy.

 

[Ty Beard]

I owned TFT. I see Jackson's emphasis on the ruleset as common to the old-school era. The market was about Dungeons and Dragons and a few tiny competitors. Near universally, those competitors competed on the basis of their supposedly-superior rules. (Most of this was usually "But TSR isn't REALISTIC enough!!!!", leading to the trainwreck of Rolemaster critical hits, 50-minute combats between two opponents, and weird design choices like equating a character's physical strength to the amount of damage he could take.)

Modern games are about settings. What we've learned is that people want to play...and nobody has time. (WOTC's 5e is explicitly designed to be playable in X number of 4-hour chunks.) Even the exceptions like Dungeon World aren't focused on rulesets so much as structure: formats, like the detailed structural specs for a film script, that make organizing and designing play sessions much quicker.

I'm not sure how much appeal TFT will have to modern audiences.

I think it will do fine.

TFT has a super-fast character generation system - you can generate quite detailed characters in 5 ministers or less. Its combat system has never been bettered, in my opinion. It seemlessly integrates movement and combat in a very quick playing system in which tactics actually matter.

A very simple points build system is used to create a characters - ST (how strong and tough you are), DX (dexterity-how quick and accurate you are) and IQ (how intelligent you are). Humans start with 8 in each attribute and allocate 8 more points between them. Your IQ also initially governs how many skills and spells you can select. With experience, you can raise attributes somewhat or buy more skills or spells.

Here’s the character sheet for a starting fighter:

Bob ST 12, DX 12(10) IQ 8. leather armor/small shield -3 hits, -2 DX; broadsword 2d; dagger 1d-1; Knows Sword, Crossbow, Riding, Shield, Running and Literacy talents. Movement - 12

That’s it.

Characters are faced with meaningful tradeoffs - if you have a fighter, do you want to hit more often (DX), or have more hit points and use a bigger weapon (ST)? Do you increase your IQ and access more potent combat (or non-combat) talents? How much armor do you wear? While it protects you, it slows you down and that *matters*. You don’t start with enough attribute points to do everything well.

If you’re a wizard, you must allocate points between ST, which powers spells, DX, which governs your chance to,successfully cast spells and IQ, which governs the power of the spells.

In the full system, there’s plenty of scope for rogues, monks, alchemists, outdoorsmen, knights, etc. The system is essentially classless, so you can create hybrids if you want.

I think that TFT will do well in the modern era. The only reason it disappeared is because Metagaming went out of business and its owner bizarrely disappeared from the gaming scene. It was a great game in 1981 and I’d match it up against anything I’ve played in the last 35 years.

 

[Steve Bruns]

I concur. People today are too busy for uber-rules crunch, and TFT will find its niche somewhere between Munchkin and GURPS.

 

[Vanveen]

I concur. People today are too busy for uber-rules crunch, and TFT will find its niche somewhere between Munchkin and GURPS.

This and the previous comment are *exactly* what I was talking about. You're arguing for superiority of mechanics, just like it was 1981. And, yes, I am quite familiar with Melee, Wizard, and TFT, having owned first editions of all three.

Or more succinctly, you're arguing for orc with a pie.

 

[Ty Beard]

This and the previous comment are *exactly* what I was talking about. You're arguing for superiority of mechanics, just like it was 1981. And, yes, I am quite familiar with Melee, Wizard, and TFT, having owned first editions of all three.

Or more succinctly, you're arguing for orc with a pie.

No we’re simply stating that the TFT mechanics are excellent. And offering examples of why they are excellent. The other stuff that you believe is so important can effortlessly be implemented with TFT as well.

And it wasn’t like you had some brilliant new observation - all you really said was “Modern games are about settings.”

That’s been the case since the late 1980s, so it’s hardly an earth shattering revelation. And there’s nothing about TFT that can’t accommodate settings. Therefore, your observation is (a) well known; and (b) a straw man argument when applied to TFT, because nowhere has SJG stated that there will be no settings for TFT.

In fact, Steve pretty much said the opposite of what you implied - “[I hope for enough] interest from fans that we can continue to put out new background and adventure material at a good rate. [emphasis mine].

”Background” is a synonym for “setting”.

 

[Ty Beard]

I'd also be interested in the story of the rights recovery. It's my understanding that the founder of Metagaming essentially disappeared, leaving, for instance, an unclaimed contest that AFAIK has never been solved. Like David Trampier's sudden exit from the world of gaming, this whole saga has been a bit of a mystery for a long time.

17 USC § 203.

 

[pogre]

Its 3d6 and skill based. I always thought the lineage from this to GRUPS was pretty clear.

I am trying to remember, and have not owned the games or books for years -

Isn't it played on a hex grid and facing is super important?

We played some Melee and Wizard, but never really got into it as a campaign style role playing game.