The Fantasy Trip: Melee, Wizard, In the Labyrinth

Fantasy Combat & RPG Rules (A Fan Page)

The Fantasy Trip by Steve Jackson Games (SJG) and I go way back to the beginning. I surely have more hours of playing this game than any other. If you are interested in using miniatures for fantasy small action combat, you really need to check this out.

In the Labyrinth rule book is shown above, which is the RPG rules, can be played with counters, paper figures, or miniatures (It is not really intended for ‘theater of the mind’ game play). I have always liked it for three main reasons. One is that they give you enough info/background without burying you in so much you cannot use it effectively. A Game Master (GM) who requires a lot of hand-holding my not think it is enough. The second is that things like distance, facing, intervening obstacles are all important. This leads to it making a great tabletop miniatures game. Lastly is that the combat mechanics use a more logical approach than some other popular games. Here the attacker knows what score is needed to hit based on their own abilities (and distance, etc. as mentioned above) and the potential damage is based on the weapon uses. The defenders armor, defensive magic, and abilities are used to reduce (or deflect) some or all of that. This allows the GM to keep somethings a mystery as well as other benefit that would take a long time to discuss.

The core (non-magical) combat is covered in a small rules set called Melee. At the time of this writing, SJG is offering the pdf version for FREE on their site Warehouse23. I recommend everyone pick this up. It is a great little rules set for arena combat or other small actions. And it is easy to expand into other genres by simply making up stats for other weapons/armor. We use it here for Wild West and Sci-Fi gaming quite regularly. Some of our minis and homemade terrain items are shown below. Our fantasy offering can be found here.