| Designer(s) | Ken St. Andre |
|---|---|
| Publisher(s) | Flying Buffalo |
| Publication date | 1975 |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| System(s) | Custom |
Tunnels & Trolls (abbreviated T&T) is a fantasy role-playing game designed by Ken St. Andre and first published in 1975 by Flying Buffalo. The second modern role-playing game published, it was written by Ken St. Andre to be a more accessible alternative to Dungeons and Dragons[1][2] and is suitable for solitaire, play-by-mail, play-by-post and group gameplay.
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The Tunnels & Trolls core ruleset does not detail a specific setting, saying only that gameplay occurs in "a world somewhat but not exactly similar to Tolkien's Middle Earth." In an interview in 1986, Ken St Andre stated that "my conception of the T&T world was based on The Lord of The Rings as it would have been done by Marvel Comics in 1974 with Conan, Elric, the Gray Mouser and a host of badguys thrown in."[3]
The 5.5 Edition includes Ken St. Andre's house campaign setting, Trollworld.
Six prime attributes define characters in Tunnels & Trolls:
Some editions add the following prime attributes:
A new character begins with a randomly generated score for each attribute, determined by rolling three six-side dice.
The rules recommend that novice players create human characters, but also offer the options of elves, dwarves, and hobbits. Other races, like leprechauns and fairies, serve as additional character options. A character's race affects his or her attributes.
Players also choose a character class for their character. The two base classes are Warriors and Wizards. Wizards can cast spells but have combat limitations. While Warriors cannot cast magic, they are allowed the full use of weapons and armor is twice as effective in blocking damage. Rogues and Warrior-Wizards are also available as character classes. These two classes both combine the abilities of the Warrior and the Wizard. Rogues in Tunnels & Trolls are not thieves, unlike the Rogue classes in Dungeons & Dragons, but could be more accurately described as 'Rogue Wizards'. Rogues are limited in their spell-casting abilities, can utilize the full range of combat weapons and armor as a warrior but do not receive the Warrior's armor bonus. Warrior-Wizards are not so limited, but the player must be lucky with the dice when creating the character: high minimum attribute scores are required. Later editions include new classes such as Specialist Mage, Paragon (a renaming of the Warrior-Wizard), Leader, and Ranger.
New characters begin with an amount of gold pieces determined by rolling three six-sided dice and multiplying the total by ten. These gold pieces can be used to buy weapons, armor, and other equipment.
Combat is handled by comparing dice rolls between a character and his opponent. Both sides roll a number of dice determined by which weapon is in use, then modify the appropriate result by "personal adds". Totals are compared, with the higher roll damaging the opposing combatant by the difference in totals. Armor absorbs this damage taken, and any amount remaining is subtracted from the Constitution attribute.
Tunnels & Trolls is unusual among roleplaying games in conducting mass combat resolution with one set of rolls, as the above system applies to combats between any number of opponents.
Personal adds are determined by Strength, Luck, and Dexterity. For every point above 12 possessed in each of these attributes, the character receives a one-point bonus to his personal adds. Similarly, for every point below 9 possessed in each of these attributes, the character receives a one-point penalty.
In the 7th Edition, the formula was changed to include Speed in the personal adds.
The 5.5 edition (and 7th) introduced 'spite damage' whereby each "6" rolled on the combat dice causes a minimum of one damage to be inflicted on the opposing side, regardless of armor or the respective combat totals. This helped resolve the interminable stalemate that could occur between evenly-matched, heavily-armored opponents.
Apart from combat, most checks are made against a character's attributes and factor in a difficulty level based on the task at hand.
Tunnels & Trolls was also the first system to publish a series of fantasy-themed gamebooks - adventures which are designed to be played by one person, without the need for a referee. At least twenty such adventures were published by Flying Buffalo. The Fighting Fantasy series achieved great popularity using this format. Both T&T's simplicity and its reliance on use of six-sided dice (as compared to the various polyhedral dice used by Dungeons and Dragons) contributed to its success in this format.
The first edition of Tunnels & Trolls was published in April 1975,[4] and underwent several modifications between then and 1979 when the 5th edition of the rules was published. This edition was also translated and published abroad in the United Kingdom, Germany,[5] France, Italy, Finland, and Japan, and it entered these markets before Dungeons & Dragons did in most cases. Corgi Books in the United Kingdom produced mass-market paperback-sized versions of the core rulebook as well as many of the solo adventures (occasionally with adult content removed), a format which paved the way for the renowned Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks. In 2005, Flying Buffalo updated the 5th edition rules with a 5.5 publication that added about 40 pages of extra material. That same year, Fiery Dragon Productions of Canada produced a 30th Anniversary Edition under license in a tin box complete with CD, map, and monster counters, two new versions of the rules. Ken St. Andre used the opportunity to extensively update the style of play and introduce new role-playing concepts, such as character level determined by character attribute statistics instead of arbitrary numbers of experience points. The 30th Anniversary rules are generally known as the 7th edition, to avoid confusion due to the distribution of many unlicensed versions claiming to be the 6th edition via the internet.[6] One of the most significant innovations of 7th edition is the introduction of a skills system.
Before its license ended in December, 2009 Outlaw Press released the following T&T items; 25 Mini-Solo's, 38 full-sized Solo's, 23 GM Adventures, 7 novels, 1 boardgame, 3 types of dice, 32 magazine issues (total) and 10 campaign supplements. The T&T magazines 'The Hobbit Hole' and 'Dungeonier Digest' include scenarios and articles by the designer of T&T, Ken St. Andre.
The relatively simple rules for Tunnels & Trolls have led to it being used for a wide variety of genres. Modern discussion of the game is found at Trollhalla and the Trollbridge. The 7.5 edition was released in 2008 by Fiery Dragon Productions, being an update and clarification on the 30th Anniversary Edition.
In 1999 Pyramid magazine named Tunnels & Trolls as one of The Millennium's Most Underrated Games. Editor Scott Haring said of the game "everybody knows this was the second ever fantasy roleplaying game ... But to dismiss it as just an opportunistic ripoff would be grossly unfair. Flying Buffalo's T&T had it's[sic] own zany feel -- it was much less serious than D&D -- and a less-complicated game system."[7]
Monsters! Monsters! is a subset of the T&T rules tailored to playing monsters. It is fully compatible with 5th edition. Copyright dates listed are 1976 and 1979, published by Metagaming and then Flying Buffalo. It is occasionally reprinted as photocopies by the author, Ken St. Andre. It has occasionally been illegally reprinted.[6] It is currently available from Flying Buffalo.
Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes is a variant system, credited to Michael A. Stackpole. Publication was by Flying Buffalo, who released it in 1983, and Sleuth Publications Ltd. in 1986. While the basics are the same, it adds a skill system, changes the time scale of combat rounds, and includes rules for modern weapons.
In the 1980s, a ColecoVision adaptation was announced but never released.
In 1990 a computer version (Crusaders of Khazan) was published by New World Computing, which embedded portions of many of the favorite old solo modules. Crusaders of Khazan is often said to be buggy and somewhat difficult to play. Crusaders of Khazan is included in the 30th Anniversary Edition tin, but not the PDF version.