Welcome to this tribute to my favorite Role Playing Game, The Fantasy Trip, designed by Steve Jackson and published by Metagaming in the late 1970s. I guess that the recent explosion of 70s nostalgia (That Seventies Show, for instance) inspired me to create this page.

TFT began with Melee, a gladiatorial combat microgame, and still the best cold steel tactical wargame ever. Then the microgame Wizard added magic combat and more monsters. For a total expenditure of $4.90, you got a complete fantasy combat wargame. A heck of a deal!

Metagaming then produced a series of programmed adventures for use with Melee and Wizard. Death Test was the first. Many others followed. All were pretty good and some were great.

Seeing the potential in TFT, Steve Jackson designed a roleplaying system around Melee and Wizard, called In The Labyrinth. Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard expanded the basic combat and magic systems. In TFT, Steve Jackson showed he was (in my humble opinion) the most talented science fiction/fantasy game designer of the time. He created the two best non-historical wargame designs of the 1970s, Ogre/GEV and Melee/Wizard. With In The Labyrinth, he had one of the better roleplaying systems of all time. In 1982, it was the second most popular RPG after Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Oh yeah, he also created GURPs and a few other games you might have heard of.

But unfortunately, at the height of The Fantasy Trip's popularity, Metagaming folded and no one picked up the rights to TFT. According to the Space Gamer, Howard Thompson (Metagaming's founder) wanted $250,000 for the rights to the system and no one was interested. Howard vanished from gaming and TFT died for the most part. To this day, no one seems able to find him. Howard, if you see this site, email me. I have a proposition...

I think that The Fantasy Trip has the best combat system of any RPG. It was also the first RPG to let you build your character from the ground up. This approach was later copied by other systems. It even had Prootwaddles!

And a few diehards like myself continue to play TFT. To this day, it's still my favorite system.

This page will be a clearinghouse for Fantasy Trip material and information. I also solicit your feedback and submissions.

Basically, I'm looking for anything related to TFT. Variants, expansions, adventures, other eras, you name it. Please email it to me (Word format preferred) and I'll post it. Monsters, I need Monsters!

Return to Home Page