The Empire of The Petal Throne is a
role-paying game system that was developed to provide a more "realistic" alternative to the
Tolkien-flavored RPGs which arose from
D&D/Chainmail
? miniatures (
wargaming) rules.
Like most highly-detailed game systems it required a great deal of work to become involved in, and was consequently never as popular as those, like D&D, which emphasized fun over "realism".