Fantasy football is a TTRPG. Just, rather than one where you make fictional characters to build a fictional narrative around, it’s one where you build a narrative around real sportspeople. With phrases like “Jenkins never scores during weekday away games” replacing “Jen’Kins is cursed with dark luck due to his previous actions angering a witch”. Fantasy Fantasy League leans into this, creating a game about managing a fantasy sports team in a fantasy league where magic is as common as a first down.
Created by Periapt Games, Fantasy Fantasy League is a play-by-post style TTRPG for a group of players, inspired by fantasy football. In the game, the players act as managers of teams of fantasy heroes and earn points when those heroes complete their role within a fantasy epic, with each manager aiming to end the story with the most points possible, so they can claim they are the best fantasy manager ever. The game has two roles: managers (the players who manage the teams) and the commissioner (a single player who handles the dice rolling and works out the results).
Setting Up A Fantasy League
Unlike real sports leagues, Fantasy Fantasy League starts with a character-building phase, where players work together to create the characters that will be on the table for managers to use. To do this, each manager creates several character foundations, including a name and character description that explains where the character fits into the traditional fantasy narrative structure.
Once they’ve done this, the commissioner makes a series of secret dice rolls to give each character’s stats and special ability. Once this is done, the season can begin.
First, the managers will get a chance to draft their teams. This works like a traditional draft. The commissioner gives managers vague information about each character (like their highest stat) without sharing all of their information. Then the managers bid on them, with the highest bid getting the character.
The commissioner will then create a series of chapters, each reflecting a standard part of a traditional fantasy TTRPG narrative. Each chapter will have a numbered list of roles to fill, with each role representing a specific narrative job that needs to be done during the scene. Each role also has a stat that will be tested during the scene.
The commissioner should randomly assign the numbered roles to the players. The commissioner then tells players the chapter’s title and the names of the roles they’ve been given, without telling them which stat will be tested. The managers select which characters they’re going to put in this role, and then the commissioner explains what happens during the chapter, rolling dice to see if the player can perform the role’s required task. If the characters do well, they earn points for their manager, and the manager with the most points at the end of the season wins.
All The Fun Of Sports, Without The Sport
Fantasy Fantasy League is a really fun game that perfectly melds fantasy football with TTRPG mechanics and fantasy narratives. While it may seem pretty intimidating at first, once you get over the initial hurdle and get the game’s flow down, the experience becomes pretty intuitive, meaning you’ll be able to go through the chapters with only a little bit of work per week, which is perfect for a game designed for play-by-post, as it means that even the busiest player will be able to get their moves submitted in time.
Plus, some of that initial hurdle is warranted, as Fantasy Fantasy League has a decent amount of strategy lurking under the surface. Because as the chapters progress, you’ll be able to pick up little details that allow you to estimate your characters’ stats, allowing you to gradually come up with the best ways to approach each situation. However, this also means you’ll have to decide if it’s best to go with the character you know a good deal about, or gamble on one you’re unsure of, just so you can learn more about their abilities.
What’s especially fun is the narratives you’ll end up creating as you play the game. Obviously, the main narrative is the fantasy one laid out by the chapters. But this narrative is complemented by the meta-narratives the managers devise to explain why characters are the way they are, fleshing out the world as they do. For example, in my playtest, we had Dracul, the vampire who, despite having good stats, always fails on missions because he’s distracted by thoughts of pasta. Which means that you’ll end up becoming deeply connected to your characters as the game goes on, even if they constantly fail when you need the most.
The game admits upfront that it’s still in development, so naturally there are a few quirks that will need fixing in future versions. The biggest one for me is the overall structure of the game book. Currently, the game tends to include the rules for the managers and the commissioner together, which can make it hard to keep track of who needs to do what. I would love it if the game separated these rules more explicitly (via headings or chapter breaks), as it would make it easier to discover what you need to do at a glance.
Fantasy Fantasy League is an excellent game that effortlessly combines the fun of fantasy football with the excitement of fantasy TTRPGs. While some may be a little unsure of the idea of organizing characters rather than directly playing as them, those who can get over this hurdle will be treated to a really fun play-by-post experience, one that will keep you hooked from start to end and have you both falling in love with, and cursing out your roster of fantasy characters as they carry you to victory and break your heart in equal measure.
