What, Exactly, is The Fantasy Trip: Melee

[Dave Crowell]

In making your intitial case for TFT you said that it was "the first to reengineer an RPG from the ground up". You did not say that an RPG had to be optimized for miniatures play. Without that caveat both Traveller and RuneQuest may be considered to have pipped TFT to the post. Especially as TFT did not become a full blown RPG system until the release of the ITL supplement, one could argue that Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard were also part of the expansion from tactical wargame to RPG. And, yes, I do realize that the decision to release TFT as five (5) seperate products was not entirely that of the designer.

As the hobby has shown there is nothing inherent to RPGs qua RPGs that requires a provision for tactical miniatures play.