Basement Delving: Lost Worlds

These "Lost Worlds" books are amazing. In case you don't know: Each book is about one character and you need two books to play a battle.

You hand your book to your opponent but you keep your character's combat sheet to decide your next move. The book you hold shows the posture or attack of your opponent's character. So if you fight the dwarf and the other player decides on an overhead swing, you see that particular move (well, unless the combat system decided that your own attack actually beats that overhead swing, then you might see the dwarf fall down).

So each turn is both players stating the move, cross-referencing the result, and flipping to the indicated pages to see the next posture of their opponent. Totally awesome fun.

I even converted a total non-gamer once, that guy made fun of me the first day when I said he should try it, but for the rest of the semester he was always bummed out when I forgot to bring the books to class.

I think this Alfred Leonardi guy also designed a similar system for air battles with a World War I flavor? Not sure. There were a few more of the fantasy books, I remember a friend of mine had a ranger lady with a quarterstaff who was hard to beat even with my favorite sword-swinging mage. Oh, and note the book of extra spells I was lucky enough to get as well. I wish someone would scan all of these and turns the whole thing into an online game...