TFT - Disguised Monsters

The Fantasy Trip was a role-playing game that came out in 1980 with the release of In The Labyrinth, the core rule set. It also included Melee (tactical combat) and Wizard (spellcasting), as well as the Advanced versions of them. The game was written by Steve Jackson who later used the system as a base for GURPS. This series of articles is a look at the rules of The Fantasy Trip as seen through modern eyes.

One of the monsters in The Fantasy Trip (TFT) is the Octopus. At first you would think its your typical octopus, but not in TFT. No, here it's an intelligent creature that lives in swamps or large pools of water. They prefer to ambush their opponents with its many tentacles. In essence, this is the Watcher in the Water from The Fellowship of the Ring book that attacks the Fellowship outside of Moria.

RPGs have long had a history of "stealing" ideas from other sources and turning them into monsters/races/spells for their games doing little more than changing the names. The Halfling/Hobbit situation that TSR ran into during the early days of D&D is a prime example of that.