New Tunnels & Trolls first look at UK Games Expo. Update: Beta releaseed.

[Some Dude]

It doesn't seem to have stopped a number of various companies over the years.

• Rolemaster reinventing itself, then going back to closer to RM 1e rules...
  • Similar for Spacemaster
• the licensee for Twilight 2013... but it was not edition compatibility; it was that T2K 2e was compatible with Dark Conspiracy 1e and Traveller the New Era, but Twilight: 2013 (the 3rd edition) was not compatible with any other edition, and the setting was somewhat different.
• Fantasy Flight Games with WFRP 3 and L5R 5
• Avalon Hill with RuneQuest Slayers (not even similar settings nor mechanics. Not bad, but totally different. AH was bought and RQS didnt see release until the contract returned ownership to the author)
• Wizards with 3E, 4E, and 5E
• Cubicle 7 and the various Warhammer properties (the FFG versions of 40K were intercompatible...)
• Free League and T2K 4e - again, a 2e compatible would have been compatible with DC1e and T:TNE - both of which have active fanbases.
• Every official licensed Star Trek game is new, with only FASA and Modphius' versions gettting a second edition.
• the various official star wars games

Not sure any of these have had continuous and compatible rulesets as long as T&T, but this kind of reinforces my point. As I've said previously (here or elsewhere, I can't remember), games that take an established set of rules with a fanbase and make sweeping changes are rarely popular or successful. T2K 4th edition is doing well enough, from what I understand, but there are exceptions to every rule. And while I understand the creative impulse to slaughter sacred cows, I'm not sure it's a good idea commercially. I'm one of the few people who likes Over the Edge 3rd edition better than the previous ones. But that is a minority opinion, as OtE 3e's commercial failure clearly illustrates.

Scott Malthouse has made a thread on BlueSky discussing a bit of his reasoning behind T&T: A New Age.

https://bsky.app/profile/voxparlour.bsky.social%2Fpost%2F3m6txwdnjyc25

I like Scott. I was excited when he took over the design of nu-T&T. But I just haven't liked what I've seen so far. Scott says, "We want to honour the game by evolving it." But this seems like a "baby with the bathwater" approach. Scott also says, "T&T hasn't moved on design-wise for decades. That consistency is great, but it also feels like a dinosaur in a modern context. Some people dig that, others don't. We want a game that new players can really easily grasp, where they can feel empowered by the rules." And while I understand wanting to address issues of balance in T&T, and to modernize it, this is more than an "evolution." Besides which, the OSR attracts plenty of younger players, so I'm not really sure I agree that older automatically equals less accessible. I'd go one further and say that T&T 5e is easier to grok than T&T-ANA by orders of magnitude. And an evolution implies successive changes over time. This feels more like an entirely different set of rules with a couple of terms from T&T applied to the surface like a decal.

I'm legitimately curious, for those who have played this new version, does it "feel" like T&T in play? Why or why not? I haven't gotten it to the table, and my interest in this project has been waning since the alpha. I realize that not every game is for every player. And I do not wish to wax negative. And while I know I'll never play all the games I own, I try to limit my purchases to games I am at least interested in playing. So far, I'm not feeling that with nu-T&T. I would love to change my mind.

T&T is my favorite game, so I definitely have a bias towards older rules. But I also study T&T's rules a lot, and objectively, it definitely has flaws. So I'm not saying I'd only accept the rules as they were. But this all seems a bridge too far for me. Alas. Still, I hope Rebellion does well with it.