Phantasie

Despite sharing a name with the SSI series, this Phantasie is a 1996 HyperCard role-playing toolkit by Jonathan Scott. It is not a port of a published RPG but a referee's framework: the human game master designs the world's spells, species, characters, adventures, and magic items, then runs sessions through the Phantasie stack.

A referee-driven RPG engine

Phantasie sits closer to a tabletop GM screen than to a CRPG. The HyperCard stack provides editors for the components a referee normally tracks on paper, then keeps the bookkeeping in sync as players move through a session. There is no built-in setting; the referee supplies all of it.

What the stack lets you author

Custom spells, custom species, individual characters, magical items, and entire adventures all live in editable cards inside the stack. Once authored, they are referenced by the in-session screens so the referee never has to re-key stat blocks during play.

HyperCard era requirements

The download is a 68k HyperCard 2.x stack targeting System 7.0 through Mac OS 9. It runs cleanly under Basilisk II or Mini vMac with a HyperCard installation, and its data is stored in the same stack file, which makes worlds easy to share or back up.

Long in the making

The author's own release note describes Phantasie as "a long time in the making", positioning it as the result of years of personal tabletop campaigning rather than a commercial product. It was distributed without a registration fee through Info-Mac and Macintosh Garden.