Fantasy Games Unlimited

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Background

Founded in 1975 and actively publishing until 1991 (limping along afterward to this day), Fantasy Games Unlimited (FGU) is known for its large, eclectic, and often very influential collection of published games. It is known in particular for the first "realistic" medieval RPG (Chivalry & Sorcery), two of the earliest RPGs set in Feudal Japan (Land of the Rising Sun and Bushido), the superhero crime-fighting game Villains & Vigilantes (a game that gave Champions a run for its money for a long time), and the first game with a focus on non-humanoid characters (Bunnies & Burrows) that also provided the first detailed martial arts system (!) and detailed skills system (!!).

About this group

This group is devoted to this wild, wonderful, weird game publisher's works. Anything related to the company, its personalities, or its games (board, wargame, or RPG, including offshoots of them like the post-2nd edition Chivalry & Sorcery publications, or Jeff Dee's Living Legends) is on-topic.


Rules

The usual rules of ttrpg.network apply with the following additions:

founded 7 months ago
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To kick things off... (ttrpg.network)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

OP: "Hello, I'm ZDL and I'm a long-time player of FGU games."

Group: "Hi, ZDL."

OP: "So, my first exposure to FGU was stumbling over this weird game called Chivalry & Sorcery ..."

Group: [sympathetic noises]


OK, AA style aside, I've been playing FGU games since I first encountered C&S in 1983. The 2nd edition had just been published, this big boxed set, and my FLGS had two boxes: one opened (near the cash register) for people to explore and one sealed. I explored the opened one, flipping through the books and decided that this was the game I'd been waiting for since it had an actual society (and rules for interacting with it) instead of just dungeon crawling. (I came to RPGs from the drama flake side of things, not the wargame nerd side, see.) So I bought the sealed one and took it home.

Little did I know that this marked the beginning of a phase where a single company would inform about 80% of my role-playing game choices for a decade or more. From that point onward I picked up, in rapid succession, Space Opera, Bushido, Flashing Blades, Wild West, Daredevils, Psi World, and Starships & Spacemen (in roughly that order). Most of these games have some of my strongest, fondest memories of RPGs attached to them, one of them I still play now (though Chivalry & Sorcery dramatically changed systems beginning with 3rd edition), and one of them is still numbered among my all-time favourite RPGs (Psi World).

I know I can't be entirely alone in having had my gaming shaped by this weird publisher, so I'm hoping I can find a few more people like me in this Lemmy community.