Re-Opening the Gates of Cidri

[JLV]

Sorry to reactivate this thread almost a decade after the fact, but I stumbled across it when I was researching other information on TFT.

Cidri was a wonderful concept -- just detailed enough to help you figure out how to use it, but not so detailed that you need to feel constrained. You could drop the Forgotten Realms in there wholesale (at least once you did the stat conversions) if you wanted to, and still have plenty of room left over for the Lands Beyond the Mountains or Ardonirane.

Sadly, as someone said, I think HT retains all the copyright on things like that. He can't copyright the game mechanics (so theoretically TFT could be republished as long as you rewrote it in your own words), but the details of something like Cidri can be copyrighted, and he still holds that (and will long after he, and I and everyone else is dead).

I think he refuses to do anything with it more out of spite than anything else. While I have no idea precisely why he and SJ broke up the band back in '80 or '81, I do know that HT was incredibly petty about the whole thing and never lost an opportunity to attack SJ, at least by implication, with snide comments often almost verging on the slanderous. To Steve's great credit, I don't recall him ever responding in kind. I also know that when SJ offered to buy back the rights to TFT when Howard was folding up the Metagaming tent, Thompson demanded a quarter of a million dollars for the property. In 1982. When I wonder if he'd made much more than $10K or $20K profit on it himself. I understand that technically it's still "on offer" today, though he insists the only way he'll consider an offer is if you send a cashier's check for the amount you're willing to pay and he'll decide to accept or reject based on the amount you offer -- no negotiation or discussion allowed. Which is an odd way to do business, if you think about it. And which at least implies to me that he's still afraid it would wind up in SJ's hands somehow.

I suppose, were I suddenly to win the big lottery, I might try offering him a quarter million, just to see if he'd accept it. Not sure what I'd do then -- probably just turn it into public domain so everyone could enjoy it again. (I think Steve made it clear somewhere else a long time ago that he was GURPS focused now and really didn't want TFT anymore, though I might ask him if he'd be willing to organize and publish all that "other information" and those "other microquests/microgames" that he mentioned in his designer's notes in the Space Gamer way back when....)

In the meantime, if the OP isn't already aware of it, there are a couple of clones out there. Legends of the Ancient World, by Dark City Games, is the first, which is merely a "rules light" version of Melee and Wizard redesigned just a little to accent solitaire play (and with some extra spells and a couple of rules adjustments for fatigue and healing magic thrown in) and is entirely devoted to microquest-like mini games, complete with maps and counters -- all of which are quite good and I can strongly recommend. As a side note, the owner of DCG re-registered the The Fantasy Trip trademark (which HT had allowed to lapse back in 1988) and so "owns" the TFT name now (though not the Intellectual Property, of course). He also has a couple of microquests available on the Dark City Games web page for free download if anyone is looking for more microquest goodness. This past winter they just released a new one (Ebon Rebirth) and there are rumors of at least one more in playtest right now (perhaps the long awaited Shades of Vulcan?). Either way, DCG has been around for quite a few years and the quality of their products is excellent.

For people looking for another concept of TFT as a complete RPG, there's Heroes and Other Worlds, which is sort of a mashup of TFT and the Moldvay Basic D&D. There are some good and interesting ideas in there, and it's well worth picking up, even though I have some minor philosophical differences on the approach Mr. Brandon took (many of the spells are not significantly different from each other, or one or another spell in TFT and seem awfully redundant, while others are good and useful -- but everyone will probably look at that differently -- and I have a problem with only heroes getting to use Endurance since it simply doesn't pass my "common sense test." Do evil people somehow lose their Endurance? ;-) ), but overall it is very well written, and would provide a very good framework for a TFT-like RPG campaign. Again, highly recommended. He's also kept the works coming (you can buy them on LuLu) and has a "monster manual" (with traps and treasures thrown in), a very thick book of magic, a couple of campaign settings, and the back of the basic rules book (which has everything you need to play; the other stuff is just gravy -- though very good gravy) even has both a solitaire adventure and a small dungeon the players can work through. He also publishes a magazine (Cauldron) on an irregular basis that provides more information and adventures for the players -- sort of a cross between Interplay and Dungeoneer, would probably be the best way to describe it. It too is well written and worth picking up. Issue "0" is available for free download (and you can buy a hard-copy from LuLu as well). According to his web site, there's plenty more to come, and if his prognostications regarding publishing dates are usually a bit off (in some cases wildly), he has thus far delivered on every single one of them, and since he's a one-man show that has to still put food on the table for his family, I'd say it's pretty understandable that things will get delayed.

Anyway, this went on a lot more than I intended it to when I first started to write. Call it an excess of enthusiasm for what is still, in my mind, the single best Fantasy RPG system published.

[simply Nathan]

Cidri is and long has been one of my favorite campaign settings. Overt Christians without D&D-style empowered clerics and the can of worms that brings, a fair mix of races, rather overt acceptance of dungeon delving as a profession, and two things I think fairly crucial:

A sample town and a sample dungeon, both with maps; the town has stats and descriptions for NPCs of interest and the dungeon has monster encounters. Many setting books, I believe, would benefit greatly from the inclusion of such things as they give a novice GM material to work from rather than "This is the king of this kingdom, this is the king of this other kingdom way over here, this is a widespread order of church militants, this is the general political atmosphere" I'm used to getting.

TFT as a system has only a few things I would change to improve it, all of which would make it more GURPS-like in execution. It's mostly fine the way it is.

[JohnPaulB]

Originally Posted by JLV

Sorry to reactivate this thread almost a decade after the fact, but I stumbled across it when I was researching other information on TFT.

Anyway, this went on a lot more than I intended it to when I first started to write. Call it an excess of enthusiasm for what is still, in my mind, the single best Fantasy RPG system published.

I am reactivating this thread because The Fantasy Trip HAS been republished by Steve Jackson himself.

http://forums.sjgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=100

[sjard]

Closed as an unnecessary necro considering there is an entire subforum for TFT.

The Fantasy Trip subforum.