[Tequesian]

Literally made me tear up a little reading this thread.

When I was about 12 or so, I used to haunt a local store in Bangor Maine called the Gamekeeper. I still have most of the microgames I purchased there, as well as those 3 little magazines. In jr. high, I managed to teach a few folks ogre or one world or warp war, but none of them were up for anything long term. Thus, I virtually memorized TFT, but just for my own amusement, often during commercial breaks while watching the tube. ( sort of the same way I did homework)

Until one afternoon while hanging around the jrotc office in high school. I had played a superhero role-playing game that I liked, but did not run. (V&V, actually) Anyway, I asked one of my buddies if they wanted to have a sword fight. We laughed, but as I started to explain Melee to them, they became intrigued. Started trying to work out how to play it with nothing but what I had in my pockets, so I cut out some squares of paper for counters, and hand drew hexes on some notebook paper. As it happened, I had a couple dice in my pocket, so we had to roll one of them twice. Pretty much just told my friends about Str and Dex, and the weapons they could use with what scores. Then we had a quick battle that took us up to about ten minutes before school let out.

After it was over, we had a laugh, and they asked me if I had just made that game up. Ah, nope. Revealed that TFT was a real game with real hard copy rules, and my friends expressed interest. When I mentioned it to the other friends I gamed with on Sundays, the fella running the superhero game said he could use a break, and started a game that ran for pretty much 6 years, with occasional breaks to try a different game or take finals... whatever. Due to a combination of poverty, and well, we all know the backstory to TFT here in general, right? Anyway, circumstances beyond my control, but I pretty much made up all the adventures for our TFT game.

Which might be why we stuck with it. While it is true that I have not had such friends before or since (still in touch with many of them) it was not my magnetic personality keeping them in thrall. My hypothesis on it is that a combination of TFT`s flexible rules and a bit of laziness on my part made a game that we were all invested in.

A lot of times I showed up on Sunday afternoon without a clue of where to go next, so I just asked my players what they wanted to do. That was what I built the next adventure upon. Some were better than others, as with any game, but it was entirely a collective storytelling. I think that was what kept the crew coming back. I wasn't the boss, just a referee, and part time writer. Well, being high schoolers might have had to do with it, too. We did roll with it after high school though, until GURPS came along.

Of course, occasionally players do ... stuff. Did not know the term 'munchkin' at the time, but I still had a player notice the rules regarding halflings with thrown stuff... and the rules on boomerangs. Yep, I let him do it, sort of. A fight heavy game might have been dominated by hoards of halfling boomerangers, but my game had a fair bit of roleplaying. He had a fair bit of fun trying to explain to the odd carpenter of a medieval village exactly what he wanted made, not to mention the very remarkable nature of a party of wanderers, one of whom is very short, with a relatively large and weird looking club.

Not that they were very sneaky anyway, as another player was a lizardman.

You might be thinking at this point that my game was just goofy as I caved to the whims of my players, but you'd be wrong. Like I said, everything the players wanted became a role playing opportunity. A village that has never seen a lizardman before might chase him off with torches and pitchforks, which can be a real problem when coming in half beat up and looking to heal. Not to mention any random encounter can be made challenging for the combat monsters just by putting a couple zeros behind the number of whatevers encountered. An entire herd of buffalo is pretty formidable.

As I think back on it, the guiding rule for my players might have been 'be careful what you wish for.'

In the years between then and now, I have gamed occasionally. The few I have run started as TFT before becoming GURPS. The only real house rule I run is that negative half Str to zero is unconscious.

Anyway, it made me really happy to read that the game might become available again. We had fun with it. Hopefully others do likewise.