Source of the Nile: Fantasy Style

The set of hex-crawl board-game rules I wrote over last summer (tentatively titled "Fantastic Frontiers") might be regarded as a mash-up of three different game systems:

• The wilderness exploration system of Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival.
• The expedition planning, discovery, and combat systems of Discovery Games' Source of the Nile (or Search for the Nile, depending on edition).
• The character creation and encounter systems of the classic D&D's rules booklet Vol III: Underworld and Wilderness Adventures.

It's thus particularly interesting to note that several early articles on Source of the Nile were published in Dragon Magazine. Here's a list of all three articles:

1. See Africa And Die!, by Gary Gygax: A set of proposed revisions and house rules, along with general praise for the game design. Many enthusiastic suggestions, although most of them are pretty minor. Some new bonuses are clearly intended to reduce lethality, and a system for more realistic population of tribes is given as a table. Also, a nice system for randomly generating tribe names.
2. Search for the Nile Revisited, by David Weseley: A response to the first article by a SftN designer. He accurately notes that most of the proposed changes are trying to introduce more subjective role-playing elements into the game.
3. Lost Civilizations, by Eric Holmes: Dr Holmes suggests adding a possible "forgotten city of Atlantis" encounter type, with a variety of random pulp-flavored features. Holme also recounts his own game, in which his intrepid explorer met with a series of complete disasters and barely escaped alive after discovering virtually nothing!

All of this is to suggest that the project of integrating an exploration/discovery game (with a distinctly historical flavor) and a fantasy adventure game was a very active area of interest in the late 1970s. I wonder why no one ever managed to follow up on that project? I'll keep working on my own mash-up, when I have time.

SOURCE OF THE NILE is a very fine game in its infancy. It needs further development, more illustrations and graphics, and better packaging. It is my sincere hope that the publisher will do well enough with it to eventually give it the treatment it deserves. Meanwhile, it is certainly worth buying in its current form, for it is a good game, and any future editions can make it a great game. - Gary Gygax