Re: Addressing the Elephant in the room (No, not you Sir! Please, sit down.)
 

You Too?!!

In mid '76 Before MELEE came out, moved from our Austin property on Brodie Lane off 290 - now get these directions: "just before 'Convict Hill Rd' comes into Brodie, and if you hit 'W Slaughter Ln' you went too far". I am 100% serious about that! LOL! We didn't even have a normal mailing address back then; it was just some wacky Rural Route code.

NOW think what it would have been like as a Jr High kid in '77 after the release of Melee, to ask other kids to come over to play this new game where you chop each other up, IF you don't fill each other up with arrows first,.. and use those directions to your house LOL!

I couldn't have found Metagaming back in the day, as I didn't start driving until around 1980. Even if I had known about the TFT Play-Test Sessions, the address printed on the Microgame Boxes would have lead me to a Post Office over on the other side of the Colorado River and UT - and I probably would not have thought to simply write and ask where they were physically located LOL!

As a teen, all kinds of wacky projections go on through your mind, like:

If I had called to ask if i could join the Play-Test Group, what if HT might have told me: "If you're too dumb to find us, you're too dumb play with us"
<click>
Dial Tone

And,

What if HT might have asked me where I lived? "Uh,..on Brodie, near,..Uh,.. Convict Hill,.. ugh,...before,.. ugh... Slaughter Ln,... "
<click>
Dial-Tone

So we both had bad timing; and I just had a worse address
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Re: Addressing the Elephant in the room (No, not you Sir! Please, sit down.)
 

Heh. I have a client whose address is *still* "So and So Ranch, X miles south of Hwy Y on Hwy Z".

I got Melee in 9th grade (1979). Actually, I accidentally bought Death Test first. But even though I lacked the rules for combat, I was intrigued. Then a buddy bought Melee and showed it to me. For some odd reason, the individual weapon counters stood out. I was already a Metagaming fan due to Ogre/GEV. So I bought Melee. Then Wizard. I tried a number of ways to use Melee with AD&D, but teenaged AD&D players in my school were utterly hidebound.

Then ITL came out. I accidentally bought Advanced Melee first (a recurring theme in my early wargame days) instead of ITL. Then Advanced Wizard because the store was sold out of ITL. Finally, a good while later, ITL was back in stock. In fact, I was on the verge of starting a roleplaying campaign modeled after D&D but using Advanced Melee when I got ITL.

My reaction was "Huh. That's an easy way to do characters." I started the first of MANY TFT campaigns a week later.

Re: Addressing the Elephant in the room (No, not you Sir! Please, sit down.)
 

LOL! Yes, I recall those as well. Not quite "the big city" LOL!

Yes, and as I said in post#1, it was the TFT Rulebook Whiplash Syndrome, which gave them the biggest excuse to use as a justification not to covert and kept them dug-in. That is the biggest part I want to see "fixed" with the re-release. Thankfully I had a good group back then of TFT Loyalists, but the numbers of D&D'ers in constrast was staggering by comparison. I tried hard, but as the saying goes: "You can't save them all.", especially with a sales-objection like that to overcome with a hardened prospect; it just added to their existing sales-resistance.

THAT'S RIGHT!! There was some big weird gap between the early printings of ITL!!! I forgot about that! That was another problem with trying to convert others away from "The Church of Gygax", and made it tough, when you did, as my buddies had to wait to get their own copies because the store didn't have ITL back in stock for a long time, but DID have AM and AW. - I forgot ALL about that! LOL!

I see you are located in Tyler. You would have had ride on the back of one of those AMAZING Smoked Turkeys from Greenberg's for over 200 miles to get down to Austin - before cooking it, of course - and see if you could have picked-up a copy of ITL at Metagaming in-person LOL!

Re: Addressing the Elephant in the room (No, not you Sir! Please, sit down.)
 

It took me a few years, but I generally used my Christmas Bonus and/or my Tax Refund to pick up one or two of them each year; and now own all of them (except for the most recent three sci-fi ones). I must say that I am VERY happy with the quality of their effort. And it is extremely easy to run them using classic TFT rules if that's your preference. The only trouble you'll find is the lack of healing magic in TFT, and you can either retrofit that, or simply supply extra healing potions...

In short, I strongly recommend them to anyone looking for some new adventures to run -- heck, they even have a more-or-less consistent "game world" (which is explained in some detail in the "Campaign Guide" included in Fire in the Streets).

For those interested in taking a look, here's a link to the DCG web page...

(Note: I include the link with a bit of trepidation, but rely on Steve Jackson's comment a month or two ago regarding including links to places where things can be purchased as permitting this -- since technically, I guess, DCG is in "competition" with SJG. Also, since SJG doesn't actually have anything TFT on the market yet, I don't feel I'm cutting into their profits by doing this. However, if Steve or Andrew feel differently about it, I trust they'll either ask me to delete the link, or do so themselves...)

Re: Addressing the Elephant in the room (No, not you Sir! Please, sit down.)
 

This kind of comment is extremely off-putting. It certainly isn't going to be helpful when it comes time to convince new gamers to try TFT. You can have whatever opinions you like about the merits of various RPGs, but you need to express them in ways that aren't derogatory to people who have different views.

Re: Addressing the Elephant in the room (No, not you Sir! Please, sit down.)
 

The moniker was the colloquial name of a CULTURAL MIND-SET in place back in the 80s, and had nothing to do with my opinion of the merits of a game system. Awareness of the reference and keeping it in 'Context' making ALL the difference.

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Re: Addressing the Elephant in the room (No, not you Sir! Please, sit down.)
 

Heh. I lived out near Brodie Lane too, but I didn't get there until I was transferred there by the USAF after my Berlin tour, so I wasn't living there until late 1989. Then I only "actually" lived there for about a year since I spent over two years "TDY" (on temporary assignments) elsewhere, including for Panama and the First Gulf War. So my gaming time was pretty shot anyway. At least we had a street address! ;-)

Re: Addressing the Elephant in the room (No, not you Sir! Please, sit down.)
 

Sorry to heat that. FRP Gaming was HUGE in the Marines; I was so surprised and pleased to discover! In fact, it was while I was stationed in CA, than MtM was released in '86; which as was clearly stated in the book(or TSG, can't recall now): "was NOT TFT all over again". So, like you, I have been waiting a long time to see TFT regain it's exposure, and hopefully find the TRUE measure of it potential.

LOL! We did get a proper address after we moved,... just so TSG could be delivered ;-)

Re: Addressing the Elephant in the room (No, not you Sir! Please, sit down.)
 

Yep, I was in Berlin in '86, and we had a good gaming group there. We played everything from Twilight 2000 and MtM to Pax Britannia! But life got to be so hectic from about 1989 on that a new group just never seemed to gel. Half the time, half the group was either in a war zone somewhere, or we were working 24 hour shifts and all on different shift schedules, and then everyone PCSd and you had to start all over! It didn't really ever calm back down, for me at least -- I was on the run until 2004 when I finally retired. But now, the gods have been generous to me -- I have free time, and TFT is on the cusp of reviving again! Now, if I could just move back to Texas (I'm way out in the woods in northern Taxifornia) so I can once again afford my hobby AND find people to play with! ;-)

Re: Addressing the Elephant in the room (No, not you Sir! Please, sit down.)
 

Yeah, they are obscenely delicious. There was a time, in the dimly remembered past, when Texas was something of a gaming hub. Metagaming, Heritage Miniatures, Martian Metals and of course, SJG. We even had a decent wholesale distributor in Dallas, Southgames. One of the principals was Al Pare of Reaper miniatures fame. (I worked at a local hobby store and handled all gaming and model inventory orders).