You can make a character in the fantasy trip in under two minutes. The magic system is amazing, the combat system is fast, deadly, fun. Fantasy trip is better than D&D in every category.
TFT in fact began in 1977 with the publication of Melee, which to me does date it right in the early days of the hobby. There was an explosion of games around 1979-80 but Steve Jackson's design does predate that era. Also, Car Wars did not arrive until 1981, and TFT was basically his second major design of any kind, just after Ogre.
Nice review. I love TFT. I believe Steve Jackson worked on an even earlier RPG product called Monsters, Monsters. It is a Tunnels & Trolls variant in which you play the monsters.
I think Steve Jackson only edited Monsters, Monsters - initially, it was published by Metagaming, but later by FBInc, which was the publisher back then for T&T.
I think Metagaming, the original publisher, was out of Austin. I grew up in Texas and they always came to our dinky little conventions. I remember them trying to push The Fantasy Trip as being "more realistic" than D&D. A strange marketing ploy but one that Runequest used a few years earlier (possibly inciting Gygax's incoherent rant against realism in Dragon #16). I'm not sure Into the Labyrinth was the first point buy (or, more accurately point allocation) RPG since Bushido did it in 1979. The first real point-based game was Champions from '81. It was the first to have different costs for different attributes as well as the now common Advantages and Disadvantages. These fit perfectly in the super-hero genre where you fought the same villains over and over and they could learn your weaknesses. It made much less sense when these where transferred into GURPS. So many different ideas appeared during that period from '78 to '84 that it seems like we've just been re-inventing the wheel ever since.
In old-school D&D, the way DMs in our area played it, you could easily be killed by a swarm of lower-level characters or critters. The idea of "mooks," hopeless opponents to make the PCs feel heroic, postdates my involvement running D&D and has never been a thing in Glory Road Roleplay.
I first encountered "mook" rules in 1981 in a game called Bushido. I've used that idea ever since but they didn't seem to get popular in general until being featured prominently in games like 7th Sea or Feng Shui.
Even as someone who is trapped in the last century, I get tired of hearing people glorify the RPG's of old. The games we played may have been awesome but they also had a whole lot of suck to them. It wasn't excalibur being handed down from the powers that be to us. It was a big period of trial and error, and by my mind point-buy should have been there from the very beginning. It just makes sense. When you made all the big decisions in your life, did you roll on a table to find the direction you decided to follow? I'm betting you didn't, just as I didn't roll up my major when I entered college. Even in the context of early D&D, randomly rolled characters did not make sense. I mean, we start the game, roll up our characters and the DM looks at the module and it tells us the party should have three fighters, one magic-user, one cleric and one thief. Oops. We all rolled fighters. Guess we've got to go roll again. If anything, D&D should have given us stock characters and then had the players roll to see which one they would play. That would at least keep people from playing the same roles over and over again. So I'm not dissing on randomly rolled characters. I have had fun rolling them up, and they are great way of coming up with a character when you can't think of anything (and yes, I roll 3d6 straight down the line). But. It was a mistake. It should have been point-buy all along. Great cat BTW :-)
I've never once ran an adventure as if there absolutely needed to be certain PC classes for success. There are interesting obstacles to, say, an all Fighter party to be sure, but nothing insurmountable. Generally some combination of hirelings or magic items can work around most obstacles. If you come to a point where there's a door magically held shut with Wizard Lock and your party has no M-U, that's not the end of the game. That's simply a challenge to overcome. That's part of the fun of the game. Seeing players try to work around things they're not prepared for, even if the solution is to give up for now and come back at a later date. That's better than telling them "No, you have to have a wizard in this party!" That's ass. There ought to always be at least two solutions to any given problem or it's not really an RPG.
Yeah, I have to admit, I don't understand Pundit's hate boner regarding point based RPG games. I love GURPS, I like D&D, but one thing that always threw me off was the character creation aspect, specially when it comes to attributes. I agree the criticism regarding SJWs, but this idea that point based RPG is some how responsible for the current state of RPG games and the cancer that is SJWs in entertainment? Come on. These kinds of comments is what makes me double guess Pundit's opinions regarding RPGs in general. Yeah, I want to like this channel, I really do, but I have to say, it is hard...
We started out with attributes rolled with dice. Point buy became popular in the late Nineties but we returned to random chargen early in this century. A group can still agree to use point buy if they want to and it is really useful for crafting NPCs with specific features, although you could also just make up the NPC. sites.google.com/site/grreference/
After all the extra fluff, might as well play GURPS. Disappointed in how it seems real heavy. I guess nothing stopping me just to grab Melee and Wizard by themselves.
@@CastleArchon I was going to say, you seemed to take a more positive view in your own video after getting this. After playing a lot of Gurps in the day, I really prefer TFT and its sleekness.
Did Steve Jackson - the guy who created the Illuminati card game after all - get the name for 'The Fantasy Trip' from the Three System Response developed by the Tavistock Institute? In brief, it is a system of psychological warfare whose third phase is called 'The Fantasy Trip'. Just a theory, I have no idea if that is actually the case, of course, just a question.
You can make a character in the fantasy trip in under two minutes. The magic system is amazing, the combat system is fast, deadly, fun. Fantasy trip is better than D&D in every category.
Ahhh *_The Fantasy Trip_* , what a fantastic game.
TFT can be used for a full on wilderness, urban and dungeon crawling game. It is not just limited to the dungeon environment.
TFT in fact began in 1977 with the publication of Melee, which to me does date it right in the early days of the hobby. There was an explosion of games around 1979-80 but Steve Jackson's design does predate that era. Also, Car Wars did not arrive until 1981, and TFT was basically his second major design of any kind, just after Ogre.
Fair, but melee (which comes in the box set) is not in any way an RPG. It's a skirmish wargame.
Nice, "warts and all" review of probably my favourite old school RPG. Thanks
Nice review. I love TFT.
I believe Steve Jackson worked on an even earlier RPG product called Monsters, Monsters. It is a Tunnels & Trolls variant in which you play the monsters.
I think Steve Jackson only edited Monsters, Monsters - initially, it was published by Metagaming, but later by FBInc, which was the publisher back then for T&T.
Played Monster, Monsters, Monsters several times !
I think Metagaming, the original publisher, was out of Austin. I grew up in Texas and they always came to our dinky little conventions. I remember them trying to push The Fantasy Trip as being "more realistic" than D&D. A strange marketing ploy but one that Runequest used a few years earlier (possibly inciting Gygax's incoherent rant against realism in Dragon #16).
I'm not sure Into the Labyrinth was the first point buy (or, more accurately point allocation) RPG since Bushido did it in 1979.
The first real point-based game was Champions from '81. It was the first to have different costs for different attributes as well as the now common Advantages and Disadvantages. These fit perfectly in the super-hero genre where you fought the same villains over and over and they could learn your weaknesses. It made much less sense when these where transferred into GURPS.
So many different ideas appeared during that period from '78 to '84 that it seems like we've just been re-inventing the wheel ever since.
"Realistic" was a popular & ridiculous buzzword of that era.
In old-school D&D, the way DMs in our area played it, you could easily be killed by a swarm of lower-level characters or critters. The idea of "mooks," hopeless opponents to make the PCs feel heroic, postdates my involvement running D&D and has never been a thing in Glory Road Roleplay.
I first encountered "mook" rules in 1981 in a game called Bushido. I've used that idea ever since but they didn't seem to get popular in general until being featured prominently in games like 7th Sea or Feng Shui.
Recently found your channel and I love it. Nice to hear someone pushing back against the dead hand of political correctness.
Even as someone who is trapped in the last century, I get tired of hearing people glorify the RPG's of old. The games we played may have been awesome but they also had a whole lot of suck to them. It wasn't excalibur being handed down from the powers that be to us. It was a big period of trial and error, and by my mind point-buy should have been there from the very beginning. It just makes sense. When you made all the big decisions in your life, did you roll on a table to find the direction you decided to follow? I'm betting you didn't, just as I didn't roll up my major when I entered college.
Even in the context of early D&D, randomly rolled characters did not make sense. I mean, we start the game, roll up our characters and the DM looks at the module and it tells us the party should have three fighters, one magic-user, one cleric and one thief. Oops. We all rolled fighters. Guess we've got to go roll again. If anything, D&D should have given us stock characters and then had the players roll to see which one they would play. That would at least keep people from playing the same roles over and over again.
So I'm not dissing on randomly rolled characters. I have had fun rolling them up, and they are great way of coming up with a character when you can't think of anything (and yes, I roll 3d6 straight down the line). But. It was a mistake. It should have been point-buy all along.
Great cat BTW :-)
I've never once ran an adventure as if there absolutely needed to be certain PC classes for success. There are interesting obstacles to, say, an all Fighter party to be sure, but nothing insurmountable. Generally some combination of hirelings or magic items can work around most obstacles. If you come to a point where there's a door magically held shut with Wizard Lock and your party has no M-U, that's not the end of the game. That's simply a challenge to overcome. That's part of the fun of the game. Seeing players try to work around things they're not prepared for, even if the solution is to give up for now and come back at a later date. That's better than telling them "No, you have to have a wizard in this party!" That's ass. There ought to always be at least two solutions to any given problem or it's not really an RPG.
Yeah, I have to admit, I don't understand Pundit's hate boner regarding point based RPG games. I love GURPS, I like D&D, but one thing that always threw me off was the character creation aspect, specially when it comes to attributes.
I agree the criticism regarding SJWs, but this idea that point based RPG is some how responsible for the current state of RPG games and the cancer that is SJWs in entertainment? Come on. These kinds of comments is what makes me double guess Pundit's opinions regarding RPGs in general.
Yeah, I want to like this channel, I really do, but I have to say, it is hard...
Breaks out some comfort food and listens.
We started out with attributes rolled with dice. Point buy became popular in the late Nineties but we returned to random chargen early in this century. A group can still agree to use point buy if they want to and it is really useful for crafting NPCs with specific features, although you could also just make up the NPC.
sites.google.com/site/grreference/
Can't trust a review from someone who pronounces it "meelee" ... it's pronounced "maylay" ... look it up
No. Wrong.
fed them? Them? How many cats do you have? More cat the merrier!
I have 2. And I disagree; 2 is both the ideal number and the socially permissible maximum.
Otherwise you become an Old Cat Lady, like The Quartering.
After all the extra fluff, might as well play GURPS. Disappointed in how it seems real heavy. I guess nothing stopping me just to grab Melee and Wizard by themselves.
It's closer to a more slick-playing GURPS-Ultra-Lite
@@RPGPundit Feh, I just bought the whole thing anyway. LOL! :)
@@CastleArchon I was going to say, you seemed to take a more positive view in your own video after getting this. After playing a lot of Gurps in the day, I really prefer TFT and its sleekness.
@26:00 late middle-age bald white men with goatees: the key OSR demographic.
Paper counters and black and white tiles... wow they really cheaped out.
I think it's more in keeping with the old school aesthetic
Its better that way. Use The Imagination. Keep it simple, stupid.
Zoomers want flashy colours
@@DAEDRICDUKE1 spoiled brats. 😀
Did Steve Jackson - the guy who created the Illuminati card game after all - get the name for 'The Fantasy Trip' from the Three System Response developed by the Tavistock Institute? In brief, it is a system of psychological warfare whose third phase is called 'The Fantasy Trip'.
Just a theory, I have no idea if that is actually the case, of course, just a question.
Good question! I have no idea.