From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.misc


https://gmkeros.wordpress.com/2024/05/17/the-highest-level-of-all-the-story-of-fantasy-wargaming/

The Highest Level of All: The Story of Fantasy Wargaming by Mike Monaco,
is a free pdf download published at CMU Press under a CC BY-NC-ND
license, and dealing with the history of the eponymous (if a bit
incongruously titled) Fantasy Wargaming roleplaying game system. Yes, it
turns out you can write whole books not only about DnD. At least if itrCOs something as weird as that game at least.

The original game Fantasy Wargaming: The Highest Level of All (or just
Fantasy Wargaming in some editions) was a 1981 book by Bruce Galloway, a
clear variation on Dungeons and Dragons, based on GallowayrCOs home rules. Unlike itrCOs competition it was not afraid of using actual historical concepts like astrology and occultism in itrCOs descriptions, although it
also was written so densely it was hard to make sense of it in any shape
or form by someone not already familiar with roleplaying games. And,
well, it was called Fantasy Wargaming.

Which made this a problem, as the game was published both in the UK and
the US by mainstream publishers obviously trying to break into the
nascent TTRPG market. The most available version was most likely the one published by the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club, which made the
game available to many people who did not have any experience with
roleplaying games before.

Unfortunately one has to say, as the gamerCOs size (300pgs) and conceptual denseness made parsing the book quite a feat, meaning if people used
this as an introduction to roleplaying, it might not have been very successful.

The Story of Fantasy Wargaming goes into this, and into the development
of the game. It could have been a bit more thorough and a bit more
critical, but for what it is itrCOs a nice look into the environment that created it. And well, itrCOs free.

(I learned about this book from an episode of the Vintage RPG Podcast
which had the author on and talked about this project. Well worth a listen)




https://press.etc.cmu.edu/books/highest-level-all

The Highest Level of All
The Story of Fantasy Wargaming
By: Mike Monaco , & Heather Ford (Illustrator)
The Highest Level of All unearths the full story of FW and explores the intriguing personalities behind the game, as well as examining the game
to demonstrate the booksrCO significance and influence in the RPG world. Wargaming cover
Imprint
ETC Press
Copyright
Creative Commons NonCommercial, NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)
Release Date
December 14, 2022
Pages
222
ISBN
9781387411009
Language
English
Product Dimensions
6 x 9
Cover Design
Heather Ford
Total Downloads: 1787

Fantasy Wargaming (FW) was published in the early days of fantasy
role-playing games as an alternative to the dominant game, Dungeons &
Dragons. Because the book was published by a mainstream publishing house (Patrick Stephens Ltd in the UK; Stein & Day in the USA), it had
distribution through channels unavailable to any other FRPGrCobeing sold
in mainstream book stores rather than just in specialist hobby shops and
it even appeared as a selection in the Science Fiction Book Club. For
this reason the book had a larger audience than almost any other FRP
game of the time.

However it never gained much of a player base and became a bit notorious
as a game that was overly complicated and poorly organized. The authors
of the book were mostly unknown in gaming circles, and the book seemed destined to be little more than a curiosity of gaming history. That the
lead author died in an accident before a planned sequel to FW could be completed seemed to doom FW to obscurity.

The Highest Level of All unearths the full story of FW and explores the intriguing personalities behind the game, as well as examining the game
to demonstrate the booksrCO significance and influence in the RPG world.
By interviewing the people involved in the creation of the book and
compiling the first ever bibliography of reviews and mentions of FW, the author puts together a more complete picture of the book, the authors,
and the game itself.
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