Why You Should be Playing: The Fantasy Trip

[@m.a.packer5450]

This game has everything I've ever wanted from a tabletop game

[@majkus]

I believe the 'trigger' that led from Chainmail to Dungeons and Dragons was the 'Fantasy Supplement' for Chainmail giving stats for orcs, dwarves, etc, and perhaps more importantly, rules and tables for individual combat between figures (still in the freestyle miniatures mode, not grid-based like Melee).

[@GreenTeaViewer]

I think using the Harn setting for TFT would be a great idea. Never thought of that!

[@josephwiesenfarth9989]

Played TFT on Harn back in the 90s. Put a summary of our rule changes using the original TFT on the Fantasy Trip Facebook page Files section.

[@dragonlair9469]

I had all three of these when they originally came out. Fond memories!

[@CastleArchon]

I just had melee only. Wish I would have seen the others.

[@leslietrenton8914]

Same here.. and on an auction at Gothcon (Gothenburg, Sweden) 1983, I managed to get hold of the Screen, which seems to have been a rarity. Loved this game.

[@jimmystetler2572]

GRPS and Munchkin made me a Steve Jackson fan for life.

[@CastleArchon]

GURPS is really THE reference to have if you want to make a rule for any RPG. If there is a situation or skill, GURPS will light the way.

[@marccaron6008]

Before I played Basic D&D in 1980, I played Melee by Metagaming. It was a fun afternoon.

[@brianwilliams533]

Great video Jim! Thank you for bringing TFT to my attention.

[@Joshuaaaaaa9]

I have a lot of HarnWorld stuff and want to put my TFT/ITL campaign there. I'm concerned about the TFT/ITL magic levels being too high to convert well.

[@ajmunzi]

Great video! Do you suggest to use the TFT melee combat instead of the Harn itself? Would the conversion be easy?

[@CastleArchon]

Hârn itself is system-agnostic, so you may be referring to Hârnmaster. Personally, I would use TFT because of the team tactics, but Hârnmaster offers some good personal detail and damage to each combat.

[@chrislundgren182]

Can the RPG game be played more theatre of the mind style of play? I have blind players?

[@CastleArchon]

I have been told that it can, but it is not the default. Something like that I would recommend the FATE system highly.

[@sentino68]

What’s a labernith?? LOL! So sorry! I will go and see the Melee download now.

[@CastleArchon]

NO worries! Grab it! It's a steal for the play you could get out of it!

[@PaulCuchnaII]

Is this still available on tabletop simulator? Every steam link I find seems to lead to a dead end. I would really like the setup like you have in the video.

[@CastleArchon]

I can get it to you on a personal level. Friend me at CastleArchon on Steam.

[@CastleArchon]

@@PaulCuchnaII Got you on the friends list.

[@rocksfalleverybodydies9334]

@@CastleArchon Hello, I just emailed you about this as well. I hope you can assist with the setup you mentioned. Really enjoying your TFT instructional series.

[@CastleArchon]

@@rocksfalleverybodydies9334 Thanks! I need to make more of them, or at least talk about TFT some more.

[@thebestbuckethead]

@@CastleArchon What email can I send the request to? I'd love to try the game.

[@Zomfoo]

“Labernith”? 🤣

[@CastleArchon]

Oh if you got a chuckle out of that one, just wait until you see other videos of me botching other words and names. I think my ratio is one out of every two it happens. :)

[@Mind_of_MATT]

His tongue got in front of his eye teeth & he couldn't see what he was saying. 😁

[@pinballwizards416]

LOL!

[@WilliamHostman]

"walk up to the monster and roll dice to attrition until somebody lost all their hitpoints" - That's a GM fail, not a system fail (at least not a system fail that melee doesn't share) and thus feels like a strawman argument in trying to fast-talk players into TFT. Combat in AD&D, AD&D 2, and BECMI/Cyclopaedia can be just as tactical... if the GM lets it be. AD&D 2+PO:C&T, 3.0, 3.5, and 4E all have equally as good a set of rules for tactical bashing. TFT is a decent game... but if you're hoping to convert D&D players, attacking D&D isn't the way to do it. (and I'm not even a big fan of D&D.)

[@CastleArchon]

William, a good DM can make D&D tactical, but it takes work. TFT does it by default. I stand by my statement, not out of hate for D&D, but as compared, I believe my comparison is fair. D&D, as popular as it is, is rather combat dry by default. (Unless you are talking 4th edition. That version was heavy on boardgame tactics. However, 4th ed. is not what people think about when they think of the D&D system.)

[@adzi6164]

old but well, even in TFT, once the melee combat begins, it's basically back-and-forth (aside from massive hit effects) until one side decides to flee or falls, so the "roll dice to attrition until somebody lost all their hitpoints" is still here. Yet, TFT even then has clearly and relatively simply defined rules about doing other stuff than attacking or fighting defensively, and it's there where TFT's strengths lie - in being, ironically enough, an actual boardgame, instead of what D&D became... while D&D is not a bad game overall, it tend to exist in some weird middle-space between a fully fuzzy-narrative experience and a tactical miniatures game - it has too many rigidly defined areas and distances to be the former, yet often lacked clearly defined rules for the latter. And when D&D 4e appeared, it looked more like a game about using the abilities with cooldowns than a game of maneuvers (even if, again, D&D4e is a good game, just not something one would expect D&D to be, which caused a backlash) refereeingandreflection.wordpress.com/2019/08/13/kickstopper-what-a-long-fantasy-trip-its-been/

[@mikefoster6018]

@@CastleArchon Yeah. I have basically given up D&D as it seemed so repetitious - even with creative GMs using printed adventures etc. I'd always end up waiting ages for a druid player to resolve all their animal's actions, just so I could fire my short bow. And out of combat the adventures seem so full of linear signposting, plus a massive weighting towards a searching rooms and interrogating/persuading NPCs. Yawn.

[@CastleArchon]

@@mikefoster6018 Mainstream roleplaying has gone far away from old school gaming, which admittedly, can be anti-climactic because of it's harshness. It is fun, but the masses want that more cinematic feel, so that is what is given. Heroes have to be given 3 strikes before death, linear plots, and all of that. Not really wrong, because companies are just catering to what the customers want. However, I do wish people could taste the idea of what we like, but it has to be explained ahead of time what these games are. Don't get attached to characters too much. Dice are not your friends. It is more of a simulation with a story coming along for the ride.

[@mikefoster6018]

@@CastleArchon Yeah. The irony for me is that the tropes that feel more like modern storytelling RPGs are a bit A-Team-ish (slightly gonzo, players expect to live, cinematic/episodic etc) have a lesson to apply to old-school RPGs too, which is that the identity of the team/party is really important. If players committed more to the identity of their party, and a bit less to their individual characters, then they might be happier with less hard to kill characters etc. It's cool to take one for the team!

[@TheInfamousRPGGroup-on-Rumble]

DnD has gone back to being a miniatures wargame, it is no longer an RPG imo

[@CastleArchon]

They certainly made it that way in 4th. Do you mean that for 5th edition?