December 26, 2017: The Fantasy Trip Returns Home

[Warren Dew]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

• Can you give us details on the TFT release schedule or the format of the new releases? No, because I don't know myself. We’ll probably do at least one Kickstarter – for Melee – in 2018. With miniatures! Lots of miniatures!

For the record, painted miniatures would be much more attractive to me than unpainted miniatures, even at a much higher cost. Back when Melee was first published I was a college student with more time than money, and painted lots of minis. Now, I have more money than time, so my miniatures end up languishing unpainted for decades, no matter how much I'd like to paint them. I suspect a lot of other TFT fans are in a similar situation.

• What changes will you make in the new TFT releases? I want a fully modern presentation, but most of the rules are pretty good as they are. I might revisit the cost of spells, and I might make some changes in the character advancement rules. But I might just leave things alone.

Count my vote for keeping the ITL character advancement rules. The exponential increase in cost makes it theoretically possible to have arbitrarily powerful characters, but in practice, power is limited to a level appropriate for a fantasy game.

Tying the requirement to total attribute points helps maintain character differentiation. A ST 13, IQ 27, DX 20 character is still pretty clearly a mage, but a 60 point character is quite powerful and difficult to get.

Okay, I do have a couple of minor suggestions. The rule that only damage that gets through armor counts for experience undervalues highly armored opponents; I suggest that the full damage before subtraction for armor be counted for experience as long as any of damage gets through. Also, jobs providing a chance of attribute increase is overly generous to high attribute characters; they should probably provide some amount of experience instead. The job system in general could do with some rework.

• What does this mean for GURPS? Probably nothing; I have no intention of combining the systems. TFT is a much simpler system than GURPS, optimized for single sessions and dungeon crawls. They can co-exist on the store shelves and in your own collection.

TFT is the only system I ever considered replacing my homebrew with. That said, I think it's optimized for play without a gamesmaster, including solo play.

• What about the TFT releases that you didn’t write? What about other Metagaming releases? I did not get any of those rights, or any other Metagaming rights, and I can’t tell you anything about their status.

That's a pity; some of them were really good, like Grailquest and, for those who didn't mind some tech flavor, Security Station, and probably others I've forgotten. In a kickstarter, they would have made good additions for higher reward levels - though I don't know if that would fit with your current kickstarter strategy. I still love my Designer's Edition Ogre, but I got the impression the experience was a bit hectic for you.

[bert]

Congratulations Steve!

Would you mind, at some point in time, to write a bit more about the history of the fantasy trip, what made you leave Metagaming, start SJGames and eventually design GURPS?

[philreed]

Now _this_ is a gameboard for Wizard:

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php...0#post21593510

[Chris Rice]

I'd be a +1 for painted miniatures as I already own hundreds of painted D&D and Heroscape minis and have no time or inclination for painting.

I've also used Heroscape Hex terrain for years which is a perfect fit for TFT.

Steve, you might want to take a look at David O. Miller's website. He's a diehard fan and has done some great things with Terrain. He even created a set of rules to cope with three dimensional terrain like Heroscape although he's otherwise a TFT purist. I've had some contact with him and he's very approachable.

http://www.meleewizards.com

[K Peterson]

Great news! I can't wait for a Kickstarter.

I'd love to see unpainted miniatures (because I enjoy painting them, and because prepaints usually look like garbage), and high-quality interlocking tiles.

[Groknard]

Originally Posted by philreed

Now _this_ is a gameboard for Wizard:

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php...0#post21593510

That's mine! Please feel free to steal and improve on whatever you see there. It was a labor of love and, really, only supposed to be a prototype for something that would be super-durable that I could take to my grave... AND BEYOND!

And it looks even better with little miniatures.

[BuffaloRick]

Congratulations, Steve! It's about time.
Rick Loomis

[GlennDoren]

As someone who does NOT paint minis, I would vote for hi-quality pre-painted minis if you go with minis. Otherwise, go the chit route! I loved having a complete ready-to-go experience every time I picked up a microquest. And I am also a big fan of the art style used in the originals (including those bell bottom silhouettes). Those original Melee chits provided the right mix of iconic images without too much detail, so your imagination could fill in the details.

Obviously we're all big fans here, so we'd likely plunk down a ton more money than is practical for a fancy new edition. If you released a hardcover with amazing art and layout, we'd eat it up. Any additional microquests, add-ons, etc... as long as they make sense, we'd buy em. Still, having a microgame-style version (or an equivalent with quality components) would certainly be more practical. In the end, I'll want (and mostly use) a PDF on my iPad, so I'm a big thumbs up for a PDF version. Otherwise, I'll be forced to make my own upon release--Steve n team might as well do it justice with an official PDF.

The "complete and realistic, yet still elegant and playable" aspect of Melee/Wizard is a key feature that should be maintained.

And then of course a nice iPad/tablet version with microquests and AI-controlled NPCs would be great... but that's a whole new ballgame :) Frankly, the game system and AI wouldn't be that tough (and I say that from having spent 20+ in the computer game industry, doing AI)... you could even expose the AI/game system to allow other devs/designers to improve and expand it.

Excited to see where this goes... Congrats Steve!

--Glenn Doren
aka Letter in "Where We're Going", Fantasy Gamer #1 :)

[pyratejohn]

Originally Posted by theRedEft

So bizarre to join this forum to read and reply to this announcement thread and have the post above mine be from a guy from Columbia. I grew up there, buying all my gaming stuff at Patowmack Toys in the Mall, including and especially Metagaming/SJG stuff.

Small world! I spent plenty of time ogling game books in that store and was sad when they went out of business. While I did not grow up here, at this point I have spent close to three decades here, and I can say the gaming culture is still strong in this area.

Who else here has spent the last few days going through their collection of Melee/Wizard/TFT books, adventures ideas, character sheets, etc.? I know I have! The last few days have been pretty grim (my father-in-law passed away a few days before Xmas), so it is nice to have something positive to latch on to.

[Cjannise]

Just throwing this out there. The experienced fighter generating rules given in Death Test 2 used for starting characters is a great deal more fun than just 8+8+8+8. It gives you a random chance to roll a stronger intro character, and takes the bite out of losing a character you took so long to build. For those unfamiliar, you roll 2 dice and add 5 for each stat . If the total number is less than 32, you get to add up to 32 wherever needed. I always preferred this. It would be nice to see this as an official optional rule.