Melee: By Mike

The alternate title for this review may as well be: “Why Steve Jackson is my hero.” I’m just going to lay it all out up front: I love this game. I love it dearly, and I think Steve Jackson is a genius for writing it for me. Melee may well be the finest example of elegant minimalist game design ever.

Melee (formally titled, The Fantasy Trip: Melee) was the third in the Microgame series for Metagaming (the first two being Steve Jackson’s Ogre and the now forgotten Chittin: I, the Harvest Wars). As an interesting side note, when Jackson left Metagaming to found his own company, he was able to take Ogre with him, but couldn’t meet the asking price for the Fantasy Trip titles. Had he been able to keep Melee (and its sister game Wizard), then GURPS may never have been born.

My own introduction to Melee came in 1985. I was an avid gamer who’d never strayed too far outside the realm of comfortable TSR titles. But then we moved to a new city, and I ran into Joe, who was a couple years older and lived right next door. Joe and his friends introduced me to several new games, including Wizard, as well as the gritty Dragonquest (and a slew of distracting, boobie-filled Heavy Metal magazines that they left so casually laying around their gaming den). I don’t remember much about those early Wizard sessions, except that they were a blast, and they required me to learn the word “myrmidon.”

I didn’t actually get to play Melee, but I flipped through it between other sessions, and I was entranced by it. So the next year—after we moved yet again—I ran across copies of both Melee and Wizard down at the Dragon’s Lair. Melee itself was written in 1977, Advanced Melee came out in ’82, and Metagaming itself went out of business in 1983, taking Melee and the whole Fantasy Trip with it. But lucky me; there in 1986, I was able to find a bagged version of the basic game for the original cover price of $2.95 (Wizard was a bit more pricey at $3.95). I was in heaven, and Melee quickly became a staple of our game sessions.

But enough of my teasing. What made this 32 page pamphlet game so cool? Simplicity. Melee was nothing more than a combat engine for gaming. In addition to the rules booklet, its Ziploc packaging also included a fold-out hex map arena and a load of flimsy cardstock markers to stand in for real miniatures. Other than the choices for races and weapons listed, virtually all world information was remarkably absent from the game. All the background and setting and fluff had been completely stripped away, leaving nothing but a beautifully simple combat mechanic. Melee was the combat system, Wizard was the magic, and then Metagaming released eight MicroQuest adventures to provide a world to play it in. But that was only if you felt you needed a world. And we didn’t.

We played Melee as a simple head-to-head, GM-less tactical boardgame. The structure was very simple: characters squared off in the arena, gladiator style, and anyone who walked away from the combat (most were not played to the death) gained some measure of experience points with which to improve themselves for next time. Sure, the rules allowed for this to be the basis for a full fantasy RPG system, and a quick web search showed me many examples of loyal gamers using The Fantasy Trip as their primary gaming engine. But we never felt a need to take it that far. Heck, even though we had miniatures galore from other games, we never moved beyond using the cheap cardstock markers provided in the game itself. A Melee combat was something that could be cracked off in five minutes while waiting for something else, or it could turn into hours of a Coliseum-class tournament.

As for mechanics, there were only two stats involved: Strength and Dexterity (Wizard introduced Intelligence into the mix). Your Dex was your initiative score and attack skill, and your Strength served double duty as both Hit Points and attack damage (by determining how big a weapon you can carry). All rolling was done with 3d6. That was it. Sure, there were rules for armor and movement and weapon ranges and facing, but everything boiled down to just these few core elements. It was so simple that once, while on vacation without any of my gaming books, I recreated most of the rules from memory—because really, once you have the races and weapons and armor in table form, the rest is cake. And yet, even with this simplicity, the tactical map-based nature of it made Melee a more tactical and realistic combat engine than a lot of the “hit with weapon—repeat” combat systems of RPGs in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

And I am still amazed to this day at how well-balanced it was. To create a character, pick a race. This determines how many points you have (24 for a human, for example). Now divide those points between Str and Dex. It was a tradeoff of speed and skill vs. hit points and attack power, and there was no inherent advantage in loading your points one way versus another. The speedy characters hit well, but only nickel and dimed away at their opponents, while the brutes almost never hit, but when they did… it was a doozy.

The only shame about this amazing game is that it looks like it will never see the light of day again. Sure it needs a little updating to catch up with the last 20 years of gaming culture, but I think there’s a need for a game like this today: simple head-to-head combat without all the bells and whistles, and certainly without all that money-sucking collectible figure nonsense that’s swept the tactical combat game genre of the last few years.

Check the Web—every few weeks or so, an old copy of Melee or Wizard shows up on eBay and goes for a dozen bucks or less. If you can find it, it’s worth your time, and even if you only play it a handful of times, you’ll get your money’s worth.

Click Here to search for Melee on Ebay.

Click Here to purchase the Russell Crowe classic, Gladiator, on DVD.

Click Here to subscribe to Heavy Metal Magazine.

Click Here to purchase The Gladiator by Marianne LaCroix.