Does Anybody Remember Metagaming?

Does anybody remember Metagaming?

Okay, some people do, but to my surprise not many of my gamer buddies remember them, and those that do are generally older than me. I was still a teenager when their heyday passed, so I'm not entirely certain of the details, but here's what I know:

Metagaming was a game company which was founded in the early 1970s. By "gaming company" I mainly mean a company which was serving the serious gaming crowd, not the party or family gaming crowd. At that point, the "geek gamer" market was (I think) pretty heavily dominated by Avalon Hill (now a subdivision of Wizards of the Coast), which specialized in a variety of wargames, from games only a little more complex than Risk to complex simulations which appealed to rules lawyers. (I, by the way, have been a rules lawyer in my day and do not consider the term to be derogatory. After all, I was a big fan of Star Fleet Battles back then.)

Metagaming primarily produced microgames, small-box games which retailed for low prices ($2.95 and $3.95 prices were common) and which could be played fairly quickly, but which returned a pretty high value for the money.

Metagaming was founded and owned by Howard Thompson. Never heard of him? Neither have I. Apparently he disappeared from the gaming world in the early 80s. Someone any of you who play games seriously probably have heard of is Steve Jackson, who was a key designer for Metagaming. Jackson went on to found Steve Jackson Games, a still-extant and successful gaming company which was released many excellent games. Jackson's company owns the right to two of Metagaming's games - O.G.R.E. and G.E.V. - though he apparently was unable to get the rights to any others when he left Metagaming.

Metagaming produced almost two dozen microgames during its existence, plus a number of "microhistories" - microgames based on historical scenarios - and a handful of larger game productions (though nothing as big as Avalon Hill produced).

The funny thing is, around the time Metagaming was founded, a little company called Tactical Studies Rules came out with what would become the most popular and most influential role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons, and RPGs would come to dominate the geek gaming industry by 1980. This left Metagaming (among others) in something of a bind. Metagaming endeavored to enter the RPG market by producing a series of rules and modules called The Fantasy Trip. In reality the game was a flimsy RPG structure around a fairly simple and elegant combat system - resembling, to my mind, the superhero RPG Champions rather closely. It's also been noted that TFT is after a fashion a prototype for Steve Jackson Games' GURPS, one of the most popular RPG systems around today.

Metagaming went out of business in 1982. Steve Jackson went to found his own company, and founder Thompson apparently left the industry. Consequently, other than the two games which Steve Jackson owns, the other Metagaming games are in legal limbo. This seems to have led to some people offering downloadable copies of some of the games, or offering bootleg copies of some games on eBay, since no one is defending the copyright to the games in any way.

As best I can tell, Metagaming was a pretty successful company for its day, and better-loved than some niche players. Microgames continue to this day, with one of the more popular purveyors being Cheapass Games, but they tend to fall into the family or novelty end of the games market, and mostly don't appeal to the geekier side of gamers. The advent of computer wargames has mostly rendered tabletop wargames obsolete. Which is too bad, since computer games lack the social interaction of any tabletop games.

But the market has spoken, and the days of microgame wargames are in the distant past.

Some interesting links to Metagaming-related web sites are in the sidebar to the left.

I don't recall exactly when I personally discovered Metagaming games. Certainly I wasn't there at the beginning (since I was about 5 when the company started publishing), but by 1980 I was well into playing D&D and had probably branched into microgames as well. What's interesting is that my most vivid memories of playing microgames was in high school, which for me was from 1983-1987. This is interesting because this is after Metagaming went out of business. Yet I'm sure I was still buying their products during that time.

My research indicates that the reason for this is probably because Metagaming published many, many copies of their products during their existence, and gaming stores - perhaps due to the low prices and small size of the games - bought and stocked and even overstocked them, and consequently had copies on hand for years afterwards.

For some reason, a couple of weeks ago I was struck with nostalgia for playing microgames. I still own one such game - Helltank! - and decided to try to track down some more. I wasn't terribly surprised to find them available on eBay, but I was surprised to find many of them unopened and unpunched ("punched" is a term for cutting or separating the game counters from the counter sheets on which they're printed, or plastic sheets in which they were molded). This is what suggests to me that there are simply many copies of the games in existence. (One eBay seller had multiple unopened copies of two microgames available.)

I think the game I remember most fondly was WarpWar, a space combat game in which players design their own ships, use a "diceless" combat system, and still play a game in about an hour. However, I remember The Fantasy Trip games Melee and especially Wizard fondly as well, as nifty little combat systems with some inventiveness so them. Holy War also sticks in my head as a clever little game.

So I've started buying some of these games on eBay. Most of them are going for anywhere from $2.00 to $10.00, depending on condition and demand. The Fantasy Trip games are going for $15.00 to $30.00, and are clearly the in-demand games. Remember, these games had original retail prices of only $3 or $4, so while $10 might be a decent price to pay for one (adjusted for inflation), $30 is a little ridiculous!

I figure I'll try to collect a bunch of these games, and then have some folks over for an evening of microgaming. We can all try out some little 2-player games, decide which ones we like, and maybe have a little nostalgia-fest. Or at least I'll have a little nostalgia-fest.

All this does make me wonder if there would be a market for some programming frameworks for simple little computer wargames: A system to fairly easily throw together some rules, add some graphics, and either play one-on-one realtime combat, or play-by-e-mail game systems. Okay, this is just a frivolity, but it seems to me like there ought to be a little freeware market and programming interest for producing some inventive-but-simple games. The computer strategy game market is so dominated by high-end games there's gotta be a little space for the hobbyist end of the market.

Anyway, there you have it: Metagaming. A little slice of my childhood.