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Old 03-14-2018, 05:44 PM   #21
Agemegos
 
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Default Re: The Obligatory “How Did You Get Started in TFT” Thread

Dissatisfied with AD&D and struggling to design my own FRPG, I saw Advanced Mêlée, Advanced Wizard, and In the Labyrinth on the shelves of Napoleon's Military Bookshop in Pitt Street, Sydney, bought them, and gave away my D&D books.
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Old 04-12-2018, 03:44 PM   #22
Terquem
 
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Default Re: The Obligatory “How Did You Get Started in TFT” Thread

In the years 1979/80 A friend of mine in high school and I wrote a set of game rules called Fanta-Z-1. We typed up the rules on an old manual typewriter, and he (Robert Henegar) help the most by teaching me how to do the Copy and Paste Up with glue and scissors (his father was a Graphics Design Artist at Pepperdine University)

We raised enough money from our parents to have 50 copies printed. I turned over 20 copies to the Military Shoppe in the Lakewood Mall, in Lakewood California with the agreement that the books would sell for $6.99. The store kept $1.99 and I got $5 in store credit (yes not a terribly good deal, but then again I was 15 at the time)

I used my store credit for Melee and Wizard, as well as my first few Traveller LBBs. I also scored Rivets.

I think, eventually we sold only 7 copies.

I was already playing D&D (I was DMing a Palace of the Vampire Queen game from 1976 to 1981), T&T, Runequest, and a role playing game of my own creation at the time.

I am now 54, and I have never participated in a Kickstarter campaign before now. This is one I will be happy to get behind. I don’t know if I will actually get to play the new version of Melee and Wizard (I still play the old version when I can, in fact I hope to run a game this weekend with my wife or oldest son, whomever I can tie down).
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Old 04-17-2018, 04:01 PM   #23
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Default Re: The Obligatory “How Did You Get Started in TFT” Thread

It was 1981. I felt like an old hand, having been brought into the world of D&D by my girlfriend several years earlier. (Yea, I know, how many of you can say _that_. :) )

A friend, who ran a family-owned hobby shop in Portland, OR, pulled me aside one day and said, "I've got this new game..." He'd shown me Melee already, so I was curious.

The first session was a blast, even though I was the only player who's PC survived. (I really did try to save the others, several times, but after they screwed up time and time again, my rogue took the opportunity to vamoose and never looked back.)
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Old 04-22-2018, 08:25 PM   #24
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Default Re: The Obligatory “How Did You Get Started in TFT” Thread

It was a long, long time ago... 2017, as it happens! I kid, but some times that really does feel like a long time ago, especially with how much the TFT community has changed\re-emereged in this last year.

Anyhow, as my self-deprecating handle implies I'm probably the newest and least experienced TFT FM out there, having started my "Wyrmfire" campaign almost a year ago now.

My interest in the game sprung from three sources: 1. My general lack of money as a college student which attracted me to a set of rules that then lived in the copyright twilight-zone.; 2. My father's experience with the original "Melee"back in the late 1970's-1980's, and my attraction to the simple rules of that and other microgames like Rivets (which inspired a short story I wrote for a college course), and Orge; and 3. my growning dissatisfaction with playing Pathfinder, whose combat i found glacial and dull.

Anyhow, about a year on and I'm coming to the end of my first campaign, and inspire of being rather loose with the rules grown tremendously as both a player and GM thanks to the systems brutal effectiveness. It's also inspired me to try other vintage gaming systems as well, such as AD&D and Top Secret, and I intend on buying whatever version of Advanced Melee\Adanced Wizard\Into The Labyrinth Steve comes up with, assuming the current kickstarter ect. goes well. Now if only we could keep those 1980s prices (without the inflation)!
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Old 05-01-2018, 03:07 PM   #25
David L Pulver
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Default Re: The Obligatory “How Did You Get Started in TFT” Thread

I dunno whether I'm old, but this is how...

In May of 1978 I had just bought the D&D Basic Set as my first RPG at a local hobby shop, and also picked up some British military modelling/figure wargaming magazines. These mentioned a little store in the UK called "Games Workshop." I was in Canada and my family was going to visit English relatives that sumer, so after we flew in to London and I badgered them to take me to Hammersmith, where Games Workshop was hidden. As the only game I'd bought so far was the Basic Set, a real game shop (and Games Workshop was one of the best at the time) was full of tons of Cool Stuff.

I spent most of my limited funds on D&D stuff (Blackmoor, Greyhawk, Eldritch Wizardry, City State) and miniatures, but I had a couple of pounds left at the end. The proprietor said "how about this?" and handed me Melee.

So that was the first Steve Jackson game I bought. I liked it, but didn't do too much with it as it seemed a bit limited on its own. But within 6 months or so I got around to ordering Wizard and Death Test, and that was enough for me to start a TFT game and begin making up dungeons and so on. When ITL came out a few years later, I dropped my D&D game and began running TFT. I remember I was reading Riddlemaster of Hed and also watching the Masada mini-series at the time, so there was an odd mix of shapeshifters, bards, and Jewish-inspired martyr-warriors in the game.


(Oddly enough, I'd know about Ogre, Chitin, and a few other Microgames BEFORE I got into RPGs from reading the interesting Analog SF magazine ads, but being only 12 or so, international mail order was too intimidating for me.)
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Old 05-01-2018, 06:33 PM   #26
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Default Re: The Obligatory “How Did You Get Started in TFT” Thread

Didn't keep any of those dungeon notes, did you, David?

(Today I got a good look at the color version of the six-level Tollenkar's Lair dungeon. Beautiful. And confusing at first glance, as any six-level labyrinth ought to be . . . but when you look at a given section, it becomes obvious what it is showing.)
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Old 05-02-2018, 12:36 PM   #27
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Default Re: The Obligatory “How Did You Get Started in TFT” Thread

I'm looking forward to replacing my copy of Tollenkar's lair.

About 4 years ago, my daughter's dogs, two Australian Shepherd's that I have been caring for since she moved out of the US, knocked over a shelf in the garage, and a box spilled on the floor. The one item in the box the dog's "took an interest in" was my original copy.
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Old 05-02-2018, 01:17 PM   #28
David L Pulver
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Default Re: The Obligatory “How Did You Get Started in TFT” Thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jackson View Post
Didn't keep any of those dungeon notes, did you, David?

(Today I got a good look at the color version of the six-level Tollenkar's Lair dungeon. Beautiful. And confusing at first glance, as any six-level labyrinth ought to be . . . but when you look at a given section, it becomes obvious what it is showing.)
Color Tollenkar sounds great! Looking forward to seeing it!

I actually do have the old dungeon notes from my very first Melee/Wizard dungeon made when I was 13 years old in 1978. About five pages of messy pen-and-ink dungeon notes for "Beneath the Dragonlord's Mountain" dungeon, a couple of original monsters (one illustrated!) a crude dungeon hex map (drawn on the 1978 Gamma World hexgrid!), and a hand-colored wilderness hex map.

Alas, I don't seem to have kept the campaign notes for the later In The Labyrinth game dating to 1981-ish, though I may have a few character sheets of them (maybe of Jewish-inspired mage Elezar). The only other thing I can find from it is a pencil-note writeup of a Beholder in TFT terms that my brother did.
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Last edited by David L Pulver; 05-02-2018 at 01:39 PM.
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Old 05-02-2018, 05:03 PM   #29
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Default Re: The Obligatory “How Did You Get Started in TFT” Thread

I was about 11 when I picked up the Melee (after Ice War and OGRE) microgame from our main game shop. I'd already learned several Avalon Hill wargames including Squad Leader. I enjoyed running arena battles and seeing who could stay alive and build up some experience. I got my dad to play Death Test with me. We got wiped out at first but then developed a winning strategy. I got all the other TFT books and started a campaign on the Duchy of Dran map that expanded to about 50 maps of the same type over about 8 years.

I have my entire old TFT campaigns. It's a few cubic feet of pages. Needs some re-organizing, but I've got pretty much all of it. Tons of stuff. Lots of great campaign maps, thousands of NPCs (many of them dead, with notes about how they died), wargame counters for the armies (I used AH's Alesia for mass combat), fleet lists for combat using Ramspeed, labyrinths, house rules, counters, etc etc.

Yeah, coloring the Tollenkar's Lair map makes it much easier to see which level is which, though it's still confusing to look at. For my own labyrinths, I mostly just noted how sections connected rather than trying to put many levels on one map. Without insubstantial warriors or something, there's not a lot of need for the multi-layer overlay, but it's certainly cool, visually striking, and I think it's a great centerpiece for ITL to show the concept of things making sense and being interconnected in general.
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Old 05-04-2018, 03:36 PM   #30
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Default Re: The Obligatory “How Did You Get Started in TFT” Thread

I'm probably a lot younger than most of you. I actually discovered The Fantasy Trip by complete accident. Back in high school in 2005 I was turned onto a game called Heroscape. It came with amazing plastic hexagon terrain that you could put together and stack to create unique battlefields. The miniatures were pre painted and were cool too. I hung out on the fan forums for the game for years.

Eventually I came across a thread of someone who customized their Heroscape terrain to make it more realistic by adding flock and stuff. After reading his tutorials, he explained his inspiration. He was a fan of the Fantasy Trip back in the day, and when he saw the hexagon terrain he just had to have it. I started looking into the system a bit and really enjoyed it. I played with some of my extra Warhammer figures.

I haven't played around in it for ages. If something new is coming I might consider getting back into it.
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