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IN the LABYRINTH Is a Fantasy Game

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IN the LABYRINTH Is a Fantasy Game FROM THE PUBLISHER For whom is a game designed? A game may satisfy the designer, the publisher, or the gamer. The best games satisfy all, the worst only one. THE FANTASY TRIP game system satisfies all three with its inexpensive format because: 1. it allows all the designer's material to be published, 2. the publisher is assured a fast-selling product, 3. the gamer gets a bargain fantasy role-playing game system. What you don't get is a box of expensive, marginally useful components. The booklet modules don't provide playing pieces. Examples in some modules show playing pieces from THE FANTASY TRIP: MELEE and WIZARD. They aren't strictly necessary. You can use chess pieces, beads, or other small objects just as well. You may wish to buy, or may already own, some of the metal miniatures sold for this purpose. The choice is yours. All necessary forms and map blanks are included. You may photocopy these for your personal use. In some cases, you may wish to use scratch paper instead. Again, the choice is yours. All you buy is the necessary minimum. THE FANTASY TRIP is the best fantasy role-playing game system published yet. We decided to make it inexpensive because we wanted more people to be able to play it. There are lots of ways to spend your gaming dollar. THE FANTASY TRIP requires only the necessary minimum and leaves you maximum choice. That's best for the designer, the publisher, and you. GOOD GAMING, Howard Thompson METAGAMING Game Design by Steve Jackson Cover by Roger Stine Illustrations by Robert Phillips Graphics by Ben Ostrander Copyright® 1980 by Steve Jackson Published by Metagaming THE FANTASY TRIP is the trademark for Metagaming's fantasy role-playing system. All rights reserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I - INTRODUCTION 3 PART II - ROLE PLAYING: CREATING A CHARACTER 5 KINDS OF CHARACTER 6 CHARACTER GENERATION TABLES 7 TALENTS 11 PART III - CREATING A WORLD 18 A. CREATING A LABYRINTH 18 RANDOM STOCKING 19 MAPPING 21 B. THE WORLD OUTSIDE 23 C. ECONOMIC SYSTEM 24 TABLE OF JOBS 26 D. CULTURES AND CUSTOMS 27 E. GAME TIME 31 PART IV - GOING ON AN ADVENTURE 33 A. SETUP FOR PLAY 33 EQUIPMENT TABLE 36 B. PLAYING THE GAME 37 PART V - FLORA AND FAUNA: THE CREATURES OF CIDRI 50 APPENDIX A: WEAPONS TABLE 68 APPENDIX B: THE VILLAGE OF BENDWYN 70 APPENDIX C: MAP OF SOUTHERN ELYNTIA 72 CHARACTER RECORD SHEET 74 GM CHARACTER RECORD SHEETS 75 BLANK HEX SHEET 76 NOTE PAPER/HEX SHEET 77 LABYRINTH MAPS/MEGAHEXES CENTERSECTION 3 fair, but his word is law. It is his task to keep balance in the I. INTRODUCTION game and to see that the players have a fair chance — and enjoy themselves! IN THE LABYRINTH is a fantasy game. It allows any num- IN THE LABYRINTH may be played two ways. It is ber of players, refereed by a Game Master, to enter the world possible for a GM to design a small tunnel complex in a couple of Cidri - a world where swords and sorcery meet fragments of hours; then, the players sit down, develop new characters, of super-science, where medieval knights battle monsters to and begin play. At the end of the evening, the survivors with save fair maidens, and wizards labor in their towers to cast the most loot and experience are the winners. ever-more-powerful spells. Each player becomes an adventurer, More challenging is the "campaign game." In such a game, traveling with his companions to deserted cities and beast- the GM is likely to spend much more time to create a de- haunted tunnels, braving dangers to win loot and glory. IN tailed world. There may be dozens of players, not all of whom THE LABYRINTH allows you to play out the worlds of will be active at any given time. Play is not terminated after heroic fantasy — and live them for yourself. one session; rather, the game goes on indefinitely. Months and IN THE LABYRINTH is a "role-playing" game. The years pass in the fantasy world at a rate chosen by the players, players do not just move counters on the board. Each figure while characters adventure, gain experience, age, make alli- in the game is a "character" — an individual person (or elf or ances, work at their jobs, intrigue against one another . dwarf or halfling or orc . ) with his own likes, dislikes, whatever the players want. Labyrinth adventures are conduct- special talents and abilities, magical spells, possessions and ed at intervals by the GM, and the players spend the interim desires. Each player creates a character — whatever type he planning and negotiating. Several GMs (some of whom may wishes. Then the player becomes that character, striving to also be players) can co-operate on a large campaign. survive dangers and gain experience. Successful characters THE FANTASY TRIP is not the first role-playing game to will be able to increase their abilities, becoming more re- be published, but we feel it is the most detailed and playable nowned fighters or more powerful wizards; unsuccessful ones one yet to appear. For the first time, players are presented will die and be removed from the game, leaving the player to with a detailed and integrated system of movement, action, start over with new figures. The essence of a role-playing game and combat, allowing the GM to understand and supervise is the new persona the player takes on; the interactions be- their sccond-to-sccond actions without constant argument. tween the characters and the Game Master make every game The magic and combat systems from THE FANTASY TRIP: different and exciting. MELEE and TFT:WIZARD MicroGames are necessary for The key to the game is the Game Master, or GM. The GM playing IN THE LABYRINTH. Or, THE FANTASY TRIP: sets up the labyrinth which the characters will explore. He ADVANCED MELEE or TFT: ADVANCED WIZARD, soon may even create an entire outside world for them to travel to be released, may be used. through! The GM referees the game, taking the part of Fate Best of all, we feel that THE FANTASY TRIP: IN THE and the Gods. He (or an assistant) also plays the monsters, LABYRINTH is complete enough to allow new GMs and beasts, and other wanderers that the players will encounter. players to participate without extensive study and improv- The Game Master is the final arbiter; he should strive to be isation. Existing games are marred by serious flaws and omis- 4 sions which force players to rewrite the rules for themselves knows for sure even WHAT Cidri is. Certainly no ordinary before they begin. Every group plays differently. By exten- planet, Cidri is BIG. No complete map of its surface is known. sive playtesting, we think we have "filled in the holes" to the The standard work, compiled two hundred years ago by the point where Game Masters can use their creativity and imagin- Imperial College of Cartographers at Predimuskity, shows 48 ation to devise better and more realistic game worlds, rather continents (defined as land masses of over 5,000,000 square than wasting it in trying to figure out how to play. km.); five of these are in excess of 60,000,000 square km. If you play the game . if you enjoy building a labyrinth, Almost half the known surface of Cidri is covered with water; a nation, or a world for your friends to explore ... if you can most of its seas are dotted with islands. Yet even the great become, for a little while, a wholly different person, with a Book of Maps lists nine hundred and eleven locations which different outlook on life, meeting strange situations and cannot be found within the known area - including the solving them in new ways . then this will have been worth mountain city of Paska-Dal, which (by Gate) has carried on all the work that went into it. Have fun. commerce with gem merchants everywhere for at least four hundred years. THE WORLD OF CIDRI Yet build it the Mnoren did - a whole enormous world. THE FANTASY TRIP is a game system designed for the And, having built it, they peopled it. Farmers, technicians, lover of heroic fantasy: "swords and sorcery," Merrie England servants, guards, slaves, stowaways . plants for gardens, in the days of Arthur, the swashbuckling Renaissance ... pasts jungles, and fields . animals for companions, food, hunting, that never were, or futures that may well be yet to come. It or to balance the thousands of ecologies interweaving across was intended to turn any story into a game (or to let any the planet . creatures great and small from every one of the gamer create his own stories) - just as long as the subject was worlds they knew. a little larger than life. Strong arms, quick wits, mystic secrets, For hundreds of years they enjoyed their world. Few trav- beautiful women and dashing men ... this is THE FANTASY eled elsewhere - what need, when Cidri held all? The other TRIP. worlds of probability were once again left to their own The combat games, MELEE and WIZARD, needed no peoples. A few thousand of the rulers (for their numbers had special world. MELEE can simulate any "medieval" weapons never been great) lived in glittering mansions scattered through combat, past or future. WIZARD introduced a magic system, Cidri. The broad continents, with their diverse people and but still a system that could, with a little stretching, fit into cultures, were their playgrounds. And gradually the Mnoren the grimoires of most fantasy sorcerers.
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