Garnfellow
Explorer
Teflon Billy said:
Melee is definitely worth checking out, if only for the historical perspective it lends on the evolution of RPGs. A regular Melee box can be had on eBay for not too much money. (There was also an Advanced Melee box, which is much harder to find. Advanced Melee, Advanced Wizard, and In the Labyrinth together formed The Fantasy Trip game (TFT), sort of like how the PH, MM, and DMG formed AD&D.)
TFT is a revolutionary design, a model of elegant simplicity and clarity. It’s amazing how well the rules still read 25+ years later. Jackson's truly great insight was to use a grid system for combat resolution.
A real pity that he and Metagaming parted ways. In one of gaming's great "What Ifs," you have to wonder whether TFT might have become a serious contender for the fantasy role-playing market in the eighties. If, I had known at the time there was such a promising alternative available, I probably would have switched from AD&D to TFT somewhere around the time of the Wilderness Survival Guide.
Instead I stuck it out until 2nd edition came along, and TFT became hardly more than a footnote in the history of RPGs. TFT had (and for that matter, still has) a small but avid fanbase, but I'm not sure the game had much of an influence on the next generation of RPG game designers.
However, I believe Skip Williams was a fan of TFT, which strongly influenced some of the grid-based rules from the 2nd edition Player's Option books. Which in turn led to grid-based rules
) behind me, I realize how well TFT hits a sweet spot in my gaming tastes.
