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The Fantasy Trip

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On Saturday the Second Saturday Scrum Club played Steve Jackson's The Fantasy Trip. As a long time GURPS fan, I have been interested in trying The Fantasy Trip for a while. The current reprint Kickstarter seems to have brought the game to the surface again. The seed that would become GURPS is clearly present in The Fantasy Trip. You roll under a number on 3d6 for your action check, you use a primitive point buy system, there are only two classes and they can learn each other's skills, and fantasy items are priced in greenbacks.

The group on Saturday consisted of me, Joe, Steve, and Francesco. Steve was serving as the "Dungeon Master" by guiding us through a programmed adventure. I played a wizard, and Joe and Francesco each played a different take on the warrior. Joe played a missile/stealth focused warrior, while Francesco's was more tank oriented. This customization highlighted one of the strengths of the system.

The adventure involved us exploring a mysterious ruin, fighting monsters, and making off with lots or recyclable wire. 

I took a lot of pictures, so I will bury them below the break.







For my first trick, I triggered a poisoned mushroom and was knocked out.


 After recovering we fought a couple of other scavengers


 We made quick work of them. Which led to us getting confident...


 Steve made a pretty cool screen with rules facing in and out


 You can't tell, but those are aisles of shelves. Shelves full of boxes of magnetic storage tape.


 Also rats, booby traps, and enemy warriors


 Our hypothesis was that this guy couldn't hear us sneaking up on him


 Through experimentation  Francesco determined that our hypothesis was incorrect


 Things were very tense at this point. The tank was down, and the wizard (me) had burnt most of her strength missing with fireballs. These drew the ire of the giant.


 We managed to scrape by.


 Another fight with some rival scavengers that really shows off how much cooler Heroscape terrain is than a paper hex map.



 This thing should be safe to pick up


 Nope


 We finished out the evening victorious after another close call

I found the system itself to be pretty good, especially considering its age. It moved much faster than many other dungeon crawling board and miniature games I have played. There was a real tension burning strength points to cast spells, as these also serve as your hit points. While the balance may have been a little bit too harsh, I wouldn't want to see it reduced by much. I constantly felt like I was making consequential choices the whole night. This is one of the major indicators of quality for me in a game.

This was a fun game. I will probably be backing the Kickstarter, as I can see myself playing this again.4

You can read Joe's recap on his blog.




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