few small ones. The most popular games of 1980 were Starweb and Tribes of Crane. It was in this environment that Flying Buffalo launched Heroic Fantasy. Publication history The game became available for play in March 1982. By November 1982, it had over 400 players. By the late 1980s, it was computer moderated. Heroic Fantasy was Flying Buffalo's third PBM game, which the company also made available as an early turn-based computer game on a commercial network known as "TheSource". In the 1980s, players negotiated a nine-story maze. In the 1990s, Flying Buffalo Inc. programmed two subsequent editions with the following rationale: In the first two versions, we told the players there was going to be nine levels to the game, and the object was to go through all nine levels and exit. Players exiting from the ninth level would be given wall plaques as a prize. We never actually finished programming the lower levels, because only a couple people ever got as far as the 6th level, and after eight years only a half dozen are playing in the 5th level. We decided that maybe nine levels was too much. The company reduced the number of dungeon levels to four, with players then exiting the dungeon to adventure in an outside environment, "recruiting an army, until you find a castle to invade". Rick Loomis described some of the changes from the first version of Heroic Fantasy in a 1990 edition of Flying Buffalo Quarterly, for example, stating that bows and crossbows had been introduced allowing players to shoot across rooms. Another addition was the "store" where players could purchase items and revive deceased characters (for a hefty price). By 1991, the first two dungeon levels of the new version were active and Flying Buffalo was playtesting Level 3 and programming Level 4. After the August 4, 2021 sale of Flying Buffalo Inc. to Webbed Sphere, the PBM games—which were not included in the sale—continued under a new company: Rick Loomis PBM Games. The company, run by Loomis' sisters and their PBM computer expert, continues to offer Heroic Fantasy by postal mail and email as of August 2021 with one, two, and four week turn rates and a "solo" variant where one player can explore the dungeon without other player characters. Gameplay Heroic Fantasy is a game in which the players lead a team of characters. At the outset, players