Melee, a Titan-like game?

On the Geek, user Kwanchai has worked his graphic magic on another OOP game called Melee. I've never played it (nor heard of before today) but it looks pretty cool. It reminds me of Titan in a way.

Can anyone enlighten the class about this Uber-Trashy game?

The only Melee that I'm familiar with is the paleolithic version of GURPS.

Dr_Mabuse wrote:

Can anyone enlighten the class about this Uber-Trashy game?

That's Melee, an early design by Steve Jackson for Metagaming. It begat Wizard, which helped begat The Fantasy Trip, which begat Man To Man (the first primitive version of GURPS), which, of course, begat GURPS itself.

It pretty much has zero similarity to Titan. It's a man-to-man (or small groups) fighting game, playable in anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes. There's no background, no real depth, and no attempt to be anything other than a tactical combat game.

TheDukester wrote:

Dr_Mabuse wrote:

Can anyone enlighten the class about this Uber-Trashy game?

That's Melee, an early design by Steve Jackson for Metagaming. It begat Wizard, which helped begat The Fantasy Trip, which begat Man To Man (the first primitive version of GURPS), which, of course, begat GURPS itself.

It pretty much has zero similarity to Titan. It's a man-to-man (or small groups) fighting game, playable in anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes. There's no background, no real depth, and no attempt to be anything other than a tactical combat game.

Thanks Dukester.

The aspect of Titan I was referring to was the Battleboard tactical fight sans the terrain, mustering or summoning, of course.

During the Titan Trashdome, some people were looking for something that skips the recruiting and Master board movement and goes straight into combat. I wonder if this would have more appeal to heretics naysayers of Titan?

TheDukester nailed it. Now excuse me while I go and look for the file.

MELEE is _super_ simple, but it's also pretty good. It's very, very light. You have a guy (or guys) with a weapon, armor, shield, etc. You're in a terrainless arena, and you move around and kill each other. The rules are online, and you can play it on VASSAL to check it out.

WIZARD added magic to it. There's other expansions and modules you can get for it...they're good if you like that 1970s style fantasy adventure gaming.

But no, not much like TITAN.

Michael Barnes wrote:

WIZARD added magic to it.

Wizard holds a bit of a soft spot in my heart. It was literally my introduction to gaming. A saw a friend's copy at school and said, "Hey, what's that?"

Now, MANY years later ... here I am still plugging away.

Me too, Dukester. Melee/Wizard was my very first "gamer's game" when I was a kid. I'm nostalgic about it but I played some last year and was meh. I still get off on the weird flavor of it.

I've actually never played Melee/Wizard as a PVP boardgame though. It was always the choose your adventure scenarios. I suppose if you wanted to roll up like 10 guys each and duke it out it could have some (Titan-ish) flavor. There are stats for a few fantasy creatures and you can easily make up your own. I think it's more work than it's worth.

For me, the solution is HeroScape. It may not be the best alternative but it's close enough.