History

Wizard was designed by Steve Jackson, later of Steve Jackson Games

Steve Jackson Games

Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...

, and released by Metagaming in 1978 as Microgame #6 as a magic-based pocket board game of individual combat. It was based on Metaming's earlier Melee release, with the difference being that it added magic to the game system. Melee, Wizard and gamemaster supplement In the Labyrinth eventually formed Metagaming's The Fantasy Trip

The Fantasy Trip

The Fantasy Trip is a role-playing game that was designed by Steve Jackson and was published by Metagaming Concepts.It was developed from Metagaming's Melee and Wizard MicroGames, also designed by Steve Jackson, which provided the basic combat and magic rules...

fantasy role-playing system. Both Melee and Wizard were expanded and re-released as Advanced Wizard and Advanced Melee, with many role-playing elements added to the basic fantasy combat system. When Steve Jackson released GURPS

GURPS

The Generic Universal RolePlaying System, or GURPS, is a tabletop role-playing game system designed to allow for play in any game setting...

years later, the magic system in its fantasy supplements took some ideas from Wizard.

Gameplay

Wizard continued the melee system of having strength and dexterity being the key physical attributes that determined combat outcomes, and added IQ as a third ability score that determined magical ability. A player had points to put into each attribute. A high IQ score allowed the use of more varied and powerful spells. Casting a spell would cause a temporary drain on one's strength score, limiting the amount of spells one could cast in a given period of time before resting.

External links

• The Museum of Role-Playing Games
• Board Game Geek