Your impressions are spot on. It all began with simple board games
named
"Melee" and "Wizard" then evolved into an RPG. Of the three core
products,
"In The Labyrinth" was the last and layered RPG elements on top of
the board
games and tied them together. That's why, it would be virtually
impossible,
IMHO, to play TFT as a pure (or "true") RPG. The essence of TFT is the
encounter on the hex grid with just enough role playing to get from
encounter to encounter. This is true, of course, of any RPG. The
others that
you mention focus of the role playing, rather than the board game,
so an
encounter can be played without any physical representation at all.
P.S.
Don't worry about getting flamed too much. Months ago I suggested
that the
hex grid and counters could be replaced with inches and miniatures.
Whew!
You would have thought I had made the suggestion to grind sacred
cows into
Big Macs by the vitriolic responses. I do understand the desire to
maintain
the "purity" of TFT though. In a way, I think that the conservation
of TFT,
the reason we still have it today, is because of people who have
supported
it and invested a lot of themselves in to it.
Ray Rangel
ray.rangel@cox.net
http://xraysvision.blogspot.com/