Fantasy Wargaming Archives - Vintage RPG

The Highest Level of All

Stu Horvath — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 04:00:00 +0000

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we chat with Michael Monaco about his new book excavating the history of Fantasy Wargaming called The Highest Level of All. The game is a very idiosyncratic RPG created in the late ‘70s in the UK. I’ve talked about this game before, both in a previous episode of the podcast and in a post a million years ago — this is one of the RPGs from the early days that’s interested in “realistic” simulation. It has a reputation for being unplayable (which Mike dispels) and for having silly things like stat blocks for the Virgin Mary. But it is also a deeply intriguing game, partly because it was one of the first to hit shelves in mainstream bookstores, partly because it’s primary creator Bruce Galloway died not long after its publication. We try to get to the bottom of Fantasy Wargaming’s unusual, but enduring appeal!

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Buy the The Highest Level of All, or grab a free PDF from the publisher. You can also check out Mike’s blog, Swords & Dorkery for more on Fantasy Wargaming and other RPGs!

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Our friends at Cadabra Records are excited about their imminent Nightlands Festival. Come to New Jersey and join in a celebration of some of the greatest weird fiction through words, music and art. Tickets are on sale now!New Noble Knight discount code! Use VintageSpring for 10% off all your purchases online or in the store!Hang out with us on the Vintage RPG Discord!If you dig what we do, join us on the Vintage RPG Patreon for more roleplaying fun and surprises! Patrons keep us going!Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast!Available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients.Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com.Follow Vintage RPG on Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook. Learn more at the Vintage RPG FAQ.Follow Stu Horvath, John McGuire, VintageRPG and Unwinnable on Twitter.Intro music by George Collazo.The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter.Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!

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Fantasy Wargaming

Stu Horvath — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 05:00:00 +0000

This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we crack the cover of Bruce Galloway’s Fantasy Wargaming (1981), one of several games of the period attempting to make a more realistic (and therefore more complicated) version of Dungeons & Dragons. We chat about the mysterious, never released Leigh Cliffs adventure scenario for Fantasy Wargaming and we puzzle over the provided statistics for Moses, the Virgin Mary and the big cheese, God Himself.

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For more on Fantasy Wargaming and Leigh Cliffs, Mike Monaco has unearthed some fascinating details on his site.Use code LOVETOPLAY at our sponsor Noble Knight Game, online or in store, for $5 off any order of $25 or more from February 3 through February 29!If you dig what we do, join us on the Vintage RPG Patreon for more roleplaying fun and surprises! Patrons keep us going!Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast!Available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients.Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com.Follow Vintage RPG on Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook. Learn more at the Vintage RPG FAQ.Follow Stu Horvath, John McGuire, VintageRPG and Unwinnable on Twitter.Intro music by George Collazo.The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter.Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!

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Fantasy Wargaming (1981)

Stu Horvath — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 04:30:49 +0000

Here’s an odd one: Fantasy Wargaming: The Highest Level of All, by Bruce Galloway, published in the UK in 1981 and in the US in 1982. It is exactly the sort of game you’d expect to get when a person who doesn’t very much like D&D sits down to do it better, to correct it, make it more accurate. Galloway was the sort of person who would break out in a sweat to learn that your fighter’s sword didn’t match the historical period of his armor. I am not making that up – he mentioned it in the book’s introduction.

You’d think Galloway was just taking the piss, but Fantasy Wargaming is over 200 pages of charts, over-designed rules and dense dumps of historically and physically accurate data. He was serious about making a game that not only appears to be entirely unfun, but also completely unplayable. He has a palpable disdain for all the fantastic elements that he describes, including the ones he had in his own game! It’s a mess.

But it is also kind of cool? A guy who was passionate about tabletop gaming put this together and, despite it not being very good at all, got it published internationally in a high quality hard cover. This book is Galloway’s eccentricity made solid, a catalog of the minutiae of realism he obsessed over. The system is garbage, but the book is a monument to the weird and crazy creative impulses that gave birth to the early era of RPGs.

It is also interesting to speculate what would have happened to Fantasy Wargaming had Galloway not died soon after its publication in an automobile accident. After all, the original D&D white box is a mess and the idiosyncratic product of a fellow who had some odd notions about converting reality into math – look how that turned out.

The art is lovely though, cartoony but capable and sharing many of those hard to convey characteristics of British fantasy art. All done by a fellow named Lawrence Heath, who has few other credits that I can track down. That’s a shame. The cover, with its cartoonishly animated Baphomet, is one of my favorite pieces of art from the period. The interior illustrations display an unusual knack for experimentation in composition.

Oh, one more thing! There’s stats for God in here. And Moses, and dozens of other saints and religious figures. You know, just in case you were wondering.

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