I had the magic lion that had 2 bodies and 1 head show up in a D&D game once.

my players felt so sorry for it, their characters cried as they killed it.

Who the hell wants to play a hobbit anyway!  

Quote from: Exploderwizard;834145Who the hell wants to play a hobbit anyway!  

God that condescending "Youv'e been doing it all wrong and we are here to enlighten you with out brilliance!" and "Who would want to play a dirty hobbit or elf?" and "All those fantasy novel writers got it all wrong wrong wrong!" really ground my gears. Moreso because it drags down what otherwise was a viable idea.

Quote from: Arkansan;834073Huh, didn't know that. I wonder has anyone around here ever played it? Was there any follow up to it?

We played a little, but it was a pretty mixed (and mostly not so great) bag of stuff. The real standout area of interesting ideas was magic, but the implementation in detail didn't grab my gang. The man-to-man and battle rules were fairly well done, as one would expect from those fellows, and easy enough to use, but nothing to crow about.

One little bit of interest is the bestiary, if you want more examples of the sort of monsters medieval folks imagined -- but you can probably find some better collections (associated perhaps with more worthwhile rules sets) for free online. The "more truly medieval fantasy" thing seems pretty perennial.

best D&D game I have ever been in was one where we 3 players had to bring peace to the waring kingdoms of the ogre, and the kingdoms of man (human, dwarf, and elf).  We started the Olympics. but THAT wasn't why it was the greatest game.

it was the greatest game because we ecologically destabilized the planet by exterminating all the halflings in the world.  (or at least enough to prevent there being a breeding population.

now before you complain, let me say in our defense. they all looked like the Oompa-Loompas from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  (the Gene Wilder one not the Johnny Depp one)

orange skin, green hair, white bib overalls, maroon shirt, and they all spoke in song.

we took one look at these and decided that they were too stupid to live.
we got no experience points for killing them but we didn't care.
the GM just let us, reluctantly, run with our chosen goal.
it was a hoot.

It seems to me as though this unplayable piece of lunacy was in every public library ever. In Canada, at least.  I wonder if there was some kind of mass sell-off or donation?

Quote from: RPGPundit;834873It seems to me as though this unplayable piece of lunacy was in every public library ever. In Canada, at least.  I wonder if there was some kind of mass sell-off or donation?

I think Fantasy Wargaming was sold primarily through standard book stores rather than game stores, and perhaps with a large print run typical of mass market hardbacks rather than most RPG products of the time (other than D&D.) And keep in mind the time period: D&D was in the 1e era. D&D looked way better than most RPGs, which were mostly all paperback and stapled through the spine. But the PHB or Monster Manual still didn't look like mainstream hardbacks. Fantasy Wargaming was thicker, and one version had a dust jacket. I believe that version was also sold through The Science Fiction Book Club.

Being sold through the sfbc meant a lot of people including me got it for 1 cent as part of the introductory offer, then quit the club after buying the minimum # of books.

Quote from: RPGPundit;834873It seems to me as though this unplayable piece of lunacy was in every public library ever. In Canada, at least.  I wonder if there was some kind of mass sell-off or donation?

Well it originated in the UK. Hence why it is an RPG is called a Wargame. So it would have filtered into Canada probably via orders and more likely donations. Seems like the game was more prevalent in libraries in the northern US than in the southern. But could be coincidence.

I have been to a couble of libraries across the US. Some in really obsure towns and found one of the Star Fleet Battles hardbacks on the shelves. Also the other Fantasy Wargaming book, which was at least actually about Wargaming.

But as someone else pointed out. It was a common sight in Book Club offers. Considering how cheaply it is printed it is possible they overprinted it. Considering the authors egos. That really wouldnt surprise me at all.

http://www.trimboli.name/fwcharacters.html

Not exactly unplayable...but reading it takes me back to grad school seminar and endless journal articles pontificating about subjective crap. I forced myself to read the whole thing and it ranks right along side Role-Playing Master and Master of the Game by Gygax for entertainment value.

Very good. Looks like you got it all right if I recall correctly. Been a while since ground through it for that review.

Quote from: Omega;834915Well it originated in the UK. Hence why it is an RPG is called a Wargame. So it would have filtered into Canada probably via orders and more likely donations.

Canada got tons of RPG and similar books in the 80s from the UK.  I think the Fighting Fantasy books (and Dungeoneer books), and things like Sorcery, and Maelstrom, were far more common in canada than in the U.S.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;834062Is it possible you're looking for this one?

http://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Wargaming-Highest-Level-All/dp/0812828623/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1433020739&sr=8-1&keywords=fantasy+wargaming

Yeah, that book was *everywhere*. I love the overblown title (1). A friend of mine has it. It's...not a playable system. How bad is it? Well, there's a solo adventure in the back, and the first thing the solo adventure does is *remove the entire combat system you're supposed to use in the game*. When the author tells you right up front that he doesn't find the combat system viable, that's a problem.

There are actually TWO books, and I have the second one. It has 3 good adventures in it, and some other stuff. The adventures are very good, not that I can remember them in detail (books around here somewhere...).

There's one where you go on a major quest to get two artifacts (axe and shield, in a complex built in the skeleton of a titan/200' humanoid). Another is a take-off of "Red Nails", where you go to temple that's been isolated from the rest of the world for a century, and devolved into three factions that fight over a few square feet of stone floor. Another is set in a nice castle (well laid out, one of the few semi-credible castle floorplans I've seen in a fantasy game). I think there's one more adventure, and then some bad mass combat rules.

Still, if you can get that second book, cheap, it's worthwhile, because it's tough to get multiple really playable adventures that veteran players don't already know about.







(1) note this is hyperbole, and only opinion on my part, that a book calling itself "the highest level of all fantasy wargaming" is a bit pretentious.

Sorry, Doom, I think you've mixed up FW with High Fantasy, by Jeffrey Dillow.

Derp. My bad...hard to keep track of unplayable 80s RPGs, I guess.