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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Some Dude" data-source="post: 9434086" data-attributes="member: 6980080">Full disclosure: I am a a T&T fanboi. If I had to pick one fantasy RPG to play for the rest of my life, heck, maybe even one RPG, period, it would be T&T.That having been said, it's a game I love, warts and all. And there are some warts.I read in a blog somewhere, some time ago, that "every RPG since D&D has tried to distinguish itself either by being ike D&D, or by not being ike D&D." Paraphrasing, and I wish I could remember who wrote that to give them proper credit. I think about that statement all the time.T&T was the first example of the latter. It was written by Ken St. Andre, who encountered D&D and loved the idea, but found it to be too complicated, and too expensive. And who also didn't like the funny dice. St. Andre set out to write a game that "...my friends and I could play at reasonable cost, with reasonable equipment."D&D was the second commercially published RPG. Its design was intended to be sleek and easy to understand, and to avoid redundancy. For example, why have Constitution and Hit Points? In T&T, you Constitution is your hit points.T&T has no Saving Throws distinct from your attributes. You use attributes checks for that. Though, to be fair, that wasn't made explicit until edition 5.5. Before that, most Saving Rolls (as T&T attribute checks are called) were made on a character's Luck attribute.Tunnels & Trolls is fast, fun, easy and whimsical. St Andre said he wanted T&T to be like "Lord of the Rings, as it might have been told by Marvel Comics in 1975." And that sounds like a hell of a lot of fun to me. And, as someone who has a lot of T&T play under their belt, I can say that it is fun.William W. Connors, whose list of AD&D writing credits is as long as your arm, calls T&T his favorite game, and once said, "When I wrote AD&D for a living, I played T&T for fun." Perhaps less enthusiastically, game designer Greg Costikyan said in the mid- 80s, "If I were going to run a fantasy campaign these days, I'd probably use the Tunnels & Trolls rules. Yeah, they're dumb, but they're simple and adequate to my needs."Tunnels & Trolls is often derided as a copy of D&D (it's not, it has explicitly different design goals), or a badly designed game (it's not, but it does require a proactive GM to balance encounters).T&T innovated a lot. It's an older design, to be sure, but it still runs quite smoothly. I recently ran a game for my nephew and his friends (all avid 5e players), who said it was a lot of fun, and were disappointed to learn that it's currently out of print.T&T is best known for its solo adventures, which is a shame. I like and pay the solos (I love The Fantasy Trip as well, but sometimes I don't want something so tactical), which is kind of a shame. GM-led games of T&T do have some nuance, especially in combat, that the solos can lack. So, in my opinion, the solos, while fun (and some are WAY better than others) aren't really the best way to play.T&T uses a simultaneous combat resolution. All combatants roll dice, add the results, highest total wins. losing side takes the difference in damage. Missiles and Magic are handled separately. There can be vast differences in capability between monster(s) and party, so the liberal use of "stunts" is encouraged. These are feats of strength, daring, or skill that are defined by the payes, and adjudicated by the GM.Spellcasting is powered by Strength, as in it's an expendable, and renewable, resource. We, in older editions. later editions added a separate stat for spells (which I personally don't like).The T&T rules have remained largely compatible across its numerous editions, and the latest official edition (Deluxe, released in 2015) can run 1st edition adventures and vice-versa, with minimal conversion. I think this speaks to the quality of T&T's design.And while the reddit community for T&T is small (and most fans are olds, so that makes sense), there is a dedicated forum, and over 1600 people contributed to the Deluxe T&T Kickstarter. Still small potatoes in the larger RPG world, but there is a dedicated community of fans.So, to answer you questions:1. It's a fun, simple, classic FRPG that is definitely worth a try, IMO.2. 5th edition is the fan favorite (and mine), and pobaby the "purest" T&T experience you can have.</blockquote>

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