#FGU

[oldschoolfrp]

Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age: A Wargamers Guide to the Age of Conan, by Lin Carter and Scott Bizar, with Roy Krenkel illustrations, FGU, 1975. Dennis Mize sculpted a range of 25mm miniatures for this game, appearing in Ral Partha's 1979 catalog.

[vintagerpg]

OK, here’s another one. This is Freedom Fighters (1986), one of the last games released by Fantasy Games Unlimited. It was designed by the Keith brothers, who had previously produced a mountain of Traveller material for GDW, FASA, Gamelords, and Digest. The introduction states an intention for complexity and realism. Eesh.

The root is pretty obviously Traveller, with character creation focusing on a randomly generated lifepath made of background terms, from which skills are derived. I can’t be bothered to dig too deeply into the 44 or so pages of combat rules, but they don’t actually seem egregious. They’re more than I want to deal with, but seem logical and don’t have any obvious spots where they might bog down. There are only five hit locations (less than RuneQuest!). On the other hand, there is a whole system that manages the simulation of verbal communication in place of just roleplaying it out, so I dunno. The verbal combat system is actually kind of entertaining, with a bunch of rhetorical maneuvers? I can’t imagine anyone actually using it though.

As with most of these types of games, I’m more interested in them as cultural objects. The campaign frame is scant (2.5 pages out of 208!) — the US has been conquered either by the Soviets and their allies (sort of like Red Dawn), an all-out alien invasion (a-la War of the Worlds) or a quiet alien invasion (like V or, later, They Live). In the face of this, players are tasked with fighting against tyranny to preserve the American way of life. This sort of thing seems to have been a cultural preoccupation in the ‘80s, but aside of some broad assumptions about the “American Way of Life,” the box set is weirdly free of the sort of Red Scare fear-mongering I expected. Rather, this seems to be an earnest attempt at taking a set of wargaming conditions the authors found interesting (they list many, many other occupations that could be used as a setting or could inform the main ones) and building an RPG out of them, without much concern for the political implications — it actually reminds me a bit of the COIN series of asymmetrical wargames from GMT in this regard.

[al3x-just-v1b1ng]

..-. --. ..- -.--.- / --- .-. ..-.

[angela-maps]

Mysterious Ruin

Civilizations rise and fall, and in their wake the remnants of their great and mighty structures are left at the mercy of nature and the elements. While some of these structures provide endless hours of subterranean peril for would-be adventurers, other ruins serve as mere reminders of times gone by, providing convenient landmarks when travelling overland, and some small measure of protection from the elements. Fully animated and available in four variants – summer, winter, fey, and as the site of a goblin encampment – this ruins map provides the perfect camping grounds for your party, a stop in their search for hidden treasure, or just your run-of-the-mill random encounter with a monster that’s way out of their league!

[kittsu-and-company]

pretty sure everyone else has been through this, bud

quit acting like you’re anything special

fgu-

post

[overlookedfile]

You know you're planning a wild campaign for your players when the first NPCs you generate are:

Elf Fighter (female) Kenku Bard (male) Aasimar Rogue (male) Dragonborn Sorcerer (trans) Elf Barbarian (male) Warforged Warlock (n/a) Tabaxi Paladin (nonbinary) Goliath Cleric (female)

Thank god for FGU's character creation wizard and HeroForge. Lmao

~

Completely unrelated to that, because I can never focus on any one thing, I'm still clawing away at the writer's block for my actual stories. The latest manifestation of that is dicking around with Genesys stats for Viggo.

Skills:

Charm (Pr): 2 Ranks

Coercion (Will): 2 Ranks

Coordination (Ag): 2 Ranks

Knowledge (Dragons) (Int): 3 Ranks

Leadership (Will): 1 Rank

Mechanics (Int): 2 Ranks

Melee (Br): 2 Ranks

Survival (Cun): 3 Ranks

Something tells me that, even though I can never seem to find a group who wants to play Genesys, I'm probably gonna end up creating a whole HtTYD setting for the system anyway. *sigh*

[nitw]

Sorry this question might be weird ajskla but Are you a student?

i am technically! i'm on a type of educational course rn called an FGU, i'm not sure if there are similar concepts elsewhere in the world but basically: it's an optional 1-3 years or so for anyone under the age of 25 who have finished high school but aren't sure about what they wanna do next. the specific track you choose is also based on whether you want it to be more work-oriented for future business opportunities, or as a chance to develop your creative/productive skills, or maybe you just need to catch up on base subjects from hs!

the track i'm on is focused on photography, graphic design, painting, and other kinds of visual art mediums! i get to learn a lot about all of it while actively working with it and filling out a portfolio, and sometimes we're picked up by companies to do commissioned designs and stuff, but there's also math and danish classes involved. our school actually has a giftshop too lmao, and we're the ones who mainly contribute to it!!

[smiteworks]

Dear Community,

SmiteWorks creators of FANTASY GROUNDS are soliciting your Ruleset Requests. Fantasy Grounds users have already been submitting requests and voting. Have your voice heard.

Don't see your favorite Ruleset listed?

Have a Ruleset you would like to see officially supported on Fantasy Grounds Unity? Submit the Ruleset for Community Vote.

Got Feature Requests?

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Our NEW Feature Tool is growing with requests. See how your FGU wishes are faring, add new requests, and promote your most wanted to the top.

[fooghou]

FGU Avatar #0001 - Internet Cowboy

[bearworkshq]

The 13th Circle | Baba Lysaga's Nocturnes and Nightmares

When hell rains from above, and a garden world becomes a living graveyard, heroes are only ever given a single chance. Three parties have succeeded at the cost of their lives, but the Maze King has one last trick up his sleeve.

I got to work on this horrifying supplement, creating the maps for both the adventures that lie within. Go grab them on DTRPG or the whole FGU conversion! https://www.dmsguild.com/product/432737/Baba-Lysagas-Nocturnes-and-Nightmares-Fantasy-Grounds?affiliate_id=3673303

[oldschoolfrp]

Elemental magic of light; elemental magic of darkness (Denis Loubet and David Helber, Swordbearer, 2nd ed by FGU, 1985)

[vintagerpg]

Year of the Phoenix (1986, no relation to Phoenix Command) was the last RPG published by Fantasy Games Unlimited before they shuttered. It represents one of the stranger military RPGs to come out in the ‘80s. Actually, in all honesty, this is basically a percentile skill-based system and not deeply preoccupied with the minutia of tactical small arms combat, so I dunno if it is technically a military RPG. On the other hand, combat is still annoyingly complicated and features ten hit locations (four more than RuneQuest), so, pretty heavy. Again, though, I don’t really care about these as games, I am interested in how they are weird jingoisticly infected artifacts of Cold War-era gaming. And boy, is Year of the Phoenix that.

There’s an elaborate set-up here. Players make their characters as members of a near-future space program. They go up in the rocket to deal with a hostage situation on a space station and the Libyans (of course) detonate a bomb, after which they come down in the year 2197. Guess what? While they were gone, the USSR won World War III and took over North America. Their grip isn’t tight, and there are plenty of resistance groups to join, which the players presumably do, and the game goes from there. The vision of the future is…naive. It could maybe be fun if you got rid of stuff like the fact that resistance in the southern states is a reborn Confederacy and the implication that all this happened because of “godlessness.” For instance: it is revealed at the end of the introductory adventure that some folks on Staten Island have the Statue of Liberty hidden in a secret underground bunker?

I dunno, its hard to take it all seriously and is sort of baffling it exists at all. And it is a pretty elaborate product, especially for an FGU game, with cardstock counters and a color map. What a one for a company to go out on.

[awesamcozy]

i think tommy would feed jack manifold to the zombies for a joke

FHVKJCN,DSJKO*&u%*(y$fgU

[angela-maps]

Labyrinth

BEHOLD, The Cosmic Labyrinth! Mad wizard’s folly, planar themed crucible, or mysterious dungeon beyond this reality? This gargantuan 100×100 map offers endless possibilities for thematic encounters as your players travel this garden of forked paths through ice, swamp, jungle, river biomes; through sandy, spidery, deadly, gold-filled, disco-checkered halls; in mushroom-laden, stone-crumbling, marsh-gas filled corridors; across crystalline, bone-filled, sandy, tentacular, volcanic and electricity-rippling rooms! That, and a few areas of well-earned respite, should access be permitted! All in the hopes of surviving until they reach the heart of the labyrinth and there, face the horrors that await… So naive to think they can succeed, they remind me of the babe!⁠

[tsbsjb]

2

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[postsofbabel]

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