Melee (game)
| Designer(s) | Steve Jackson |
|---|---|
| Publisher(s) | Metagaming |
| Genre(s) | Man to Man combat with medieval weapons |
| System(s) | Custom |
Melee is a simple man-to-man combat boardgame designed by Steve Jackson, and released in 1977 by Metagaming Concepts.
Melee was designed by Steve Jackson, and was originally released in 1977 as MicroGame #3 by Metagaming Concepts. At the time Jackson was getting involved with Dungeons & Dragons, but he found the various-sized dice irritating, and he found the combat rules confusing and unsatisfying, particularly the lack of tactics, so he designed Melee as something different. Jackson had originally joined the Society for Creative Anachronism to gain a more visceral understanding of actual combat, and based Melee on his studies of the SCA.
When designing Melee, Jackson saw the possibility to expand it into a full fantasy roleplaying game that could compete with D&D, and thus, even before Melee was released, Metagaming started advertising that full RPG system, The Fantasy Trip. Jackson also put together the game system's magic rules, which were published as Wizard (1978), MicroGame #6.
Metagaming published MicroQuest #1, Death Test (1978), which was a short adventure for use with Melee or Wizard. Jackson planned for The Fantasy Trip to be released as a boxed set, but publisher Howard M. Thompson decided that the price was too high and so he split the product into four books: Advanced Melee (1980), which had the combat extensions to the Melee system, Advanced Wizard (1980), which had the magic extensions, In the Labyrinth (1980), which had the Games Master rules, and Tollenkar's Lair (1980), which was a GM adventure.
Jackson was unhappy with this change and left the company the same year and founded Steve Jackson Games. Metagaming later released Dragons of Underearth (1982), a roleplaying game which was a cut-down version of The Fantasy Trip, primarily based on the original Melee and Wizard rules.
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