[guymc]

I’m opening a can of worms admitting this here, but...

There almost was a superhero game based on The Fantasy Trip.

Back in the days when I was Line Editor for TFT at Metagaming, Greg Poehlein and I designed In The Name of Justice, a Microgame-format superhero/super villain battle game based on TFT. The game featured 10 pregenerated characters which could be matched up in hero vs villain tactical combats.

The intent was to see if, eventually, a full-scale superhero RPG could be built around In the Labyrinth’s basic concepts.

I believe Metagaming announced the project officially at one point. The game was complete and ready for final edit, artwork, and typesetting/layout at the time Metagaming went silent. And that was that.

Some of the concepts (and the title) were reused for later projects Greg and I worked together, but ITNOJ as a TFT-based game was never released. But it proves that it CAN be done.

I don’t think Steve has any interest in multi-genre TFT products. After all, that’s what GURPS is for. But it is an interesting experiment. At the core, TFT is a way to simulate adventure-oriented human action, and is widely adaptable to any genre.

No, I cannot easily lay my hands on the original manuscript. That was several computer format changes ago, and I think the minifloppies it was on are probably long-lost. I think Greg came across the character cards or at least the stats some time back.

The game relied on creating Powers that were basically handled like Spells, chosen during character creation. Supers were treated as a separate character type like Heroes and Wizards in TFT, with rules for how they could select powers. Some Powers enhanced basic stats like ST/DX/MA to superhuman levels. Others worked almost exactly like Spells in that they used ST to operate, but Supers could use character points to buy energy reserves that could be used only to fuel Powers, not as ST for other purposes. Some Powers granted flight, or invulnerability (essentially Armor), or supersenses (enhancing IQ only for appropriate sensory rolls).

All of that was background not included in ITNOJ itself, which had only pregenerated characters so it would go into a Microgame format. But the pregens were built with those concepts behind them. We’d intended, if ITNOJ was popular, to follow up with Microquest-like packages adding more characters and combat scenarios/arenas (rooftops, city streets, a bank, villain lairs, etc.) and eventually the full RPG ruleset.

Alas, one more “might have been”. The late David Tepool actually turned in a final manuscript for High Noon, his TFT-based Old West gunfight game. It, too, was a limited-scope proof-of-concept Microgame — But Metagaming went dark, Greg, Dave and I were hired to do Star Trek by FASA and we went other directions.

Greg’s made no secret of the fact that the Plainlabel Game System he developed was his attempt to fill a market void that the unavailability of TFT created. It became the basis for several fantasy arena type games, the Simply Roleplaying! universal RPG system, and supplements Simply Fantastic, (heroic fantasy - which Microtactix did release) and Simply Superhuman (which was about 95% finished by Bob Portnell and I but never released).

If you are curious about PlainLabel, Simply Roleplaying! is still downloadable for free at DriveThruRPG.com.