Heroic Fantasy is a game in which the players lead a team of characters through a nine-story maze. There is no final object of the game or way to "win"; the purpose of the game is to advance by negotiating challenging mazes, defeating monsters, and collecting treasure and experience points. At the outset, players choose a party of up to fifteen characters using one hundred "points", which can be used to maximize the size of the party or choose a smaller party of stronger characters. Various options are available when choosing characters including races such as dwarves, giants, fairies, leprechauns, and gremlins; and types such as magic users or fighters. While negotiating mazes, players have various spells available for use, including "blast", "sleep", and "fireball". Players can find different types of treasure in the mazes, to include four types of potions: healing, strength, poison, and Stygean, the latter which adds "ten to the character's Constitution regardless of its current value". According to Jim Townsend there is also a fifth—a cloning potion—which replicates a character that is "VERY rare". Players can also find magical items such as elf cloaks, fairy rings, glowing amulets, shining and glowing rings, and Thundereggs, which have various properties and effects, as well as basic treasure such as gold rings, coins, and jewels, which provide only experience points. While exploring mazes, players can encounter other player characters as well as monsters run by the computer, or non player characters, with the latter being more prevalent. According to Jim Townsend, NPCs belong to clans, and actions taken against one are viewed similarly by other NPCs in the same clan.
Publication history
Heroic Fantasy was Flying Buffalo's third PBM, which the company also made available as an early turn-based computer game on a commercial network known as "TheSource".
Reception
Graham Masters Jr. reviewed the game for Computer Gaming World, and stated that "HF allows a player whose group has been severely weakened through the death of several characters to send in a "rescue" party." W. G. Armintrout reviewed Heroic Fantasy in The Space Gamer No. 57. Armintrout commented that "Heroic Fantasy is a fun game of dungeon delving, and I can recommend it to anyone who enjoys the insides of underground mazes. There are a lot of options, and a lot of player-vs.-player interaction. The speech orders add a distinct role-playing dimension." In the April 1983 edition of Dragon, Michael Gray stated "This is Flying Buffalo’s science fiction play-by-mail game of conquest, trade, exploration and diplomacy. And it's nothing short of a masterpiece!" A D Young reviewed Heroic Fantasy for White Dwarf #46, and stated that "Heroic Fantasy is an excellent game for beginners. It does not involve very much diplomacy, and the rescue-party rule makes it a game you can enjoy for a longtime." Heroic Fantasy won the Origins Award for Best Play by Mail or Correspondence Game of 2011.
