Tunnels & Trolls 30th Anniversary Editiom
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The_Gneech
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Tunnels & Trolls 30th Anniversary ... Outline Edition?
(I'd like to mention for the record, that I didn't enter the text that reads "Editiom" above.
)
If you were a gamer in the 1980s and had trouble finding others of your ilk, sooner or later you may have found yourself with a bookshelf full of Tunnels & Trolls solo dungeons -- and if you're like most people who had 'em, you loved 'em. If so, you're going to like this release.
If you're not among that group, you've probably never heard of Tunnels & Trolls and have no idea what the big deal is. If so, you're probably going to give this release a giant "So what?"
For the record, I loved Tunnels & Trolls. Released shortly after D&D made its first big splash, T&T was put forth as "The COMPLETE and EASY fantasy roleplaying game!" and in many ways was the harbinger of many trends to come. T&T was (and still is) a rules-light played-for-laughs game with spells like "Take That You Fiend" (roughly equivalent to magic missile) and "Poor Baby" (equivalent to cure spells), which can fit an entire character on a 3x5 card, and for which you can create an entire party in about 10 minutes. It also pioneered such concepts as "armor as damage resistance" and "+1/-1 modifier for a stat above/below a given level."
Combat was simple in the extreme: heroes rolled all their dice and added up the total, monsters rolled all their dice and added up the total, and whoever had the bigger total did the difference in damage to the other side. Almost everything else that ever happened was GM arbitration based on a saving-throw mechanic ... or just GM fiat with no mechanic at all. Monsters had no stats, just a Monster Rating, from 5 for a pushover (say, a single goblin) to 1000+ for an unholy terror (say, a balrog). Any kind of special powers (e.g., a medusa's gaze) were up to the GM to decide on.
Besides a ton of solo adventures, T&T also brought the world such influential things as the Grimtooth's Traps and Citybook supplements, which were essentially T&T supplements except with the game rules yanked out to "genericize" them. T&T and its spinoffs (such as Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes, by Mike Stackpole) were extremely influential among people who would later become big names in the industry, even if the games themselves never quite enjoyed the massive popularity of D&D.
So this is why there is a 30th anniversary edition, and why it matters.
Having gotten all of that old-timey gushing out of the way, it's now time to take a good look at the actual product at hand.
Like most of the Fiery Dragon products, T&T is presented in a digest-size, hinged metal tin that's packed full of stuff ... a rulebook, an alternate rulebook, a monsters-and-treasures mini-booklet, a CD-ROM, four pages of cardstock counters, and four smallish six-sided dice. The cover art is done by Liz Danforth, who did the lion's share of the fifth edition T&T artwork -- and is in fact a sequel image to the fifth edition cover ... "the next round of combat," as it were. The internal art and the counters are done by Claudio Pozas (of counter collection fame), and do a pretty good job of carrying forward the look and feel of Ms. Danforth's earlier work.
The text is written by "The Justifiably Infamous Ken St. Andre," the ol' trollgod himself, in a very conversational tone -- including editorial smilies. This gives the whole thing the very odd feeling of being a long internet post that somebody just happened to print in booklet form -- a feeling which isn't any lessened by the fact that the "crunch" of the book is extremely sketchy. While it's very likely that nobody's going to be looking at this game except people who already have a fifth edition book or two lying around the house, it isn't really the best form to write the game with that assumption in mind. The text repeatedly references "what's different now," rather than a straight-up assertion of "this is how it works" -- and if you don't know what you're changing from, it can be very hard to tell what exactly you're changing to. I finished the book feeling more like I'd read an outline of the author's ideas about the game mechanics, than a document teaching me how to play the game. This wasn't a bad thing for me personally -- I know fifth edition T&T backwards and forwards -- but for somebody who'd never played it before, it could be a real problem.
As for the changes themselves, they all seem good on first blush, but I haven't had a chance to actually try them in play. T&T has never been about ideas like "game balance" or "tactical play," but rather tossing a handful of dice on the table and hooting if there are a ton of 6's -- so I expect that the new rules will not make that much of a difference in the actual gameplay. A couple of new classes have been added, a new "Talents" concept has been put into place to help customize characters beyond "a name and six stats," and character levels have been pretty radically altered. (Now instead of earning xp to gain levels, you spend xp to raise your stats, and the level of your highest 'class stat' determines your overall character level. It's an interesting idea that I'm looking forward to playing with.)
Then, there's the "Alternate Rules." This is a booklet with even less explanatory or flavor text, detailing what is ostensibly T&T7R (or, "Tunnels & Trolls 7th Edition - Revised" ... a little dig at WotC here, ya think?). This system has some fairly complex character generation options, including a kind of multiclassing system -- rather a strange idea in the context of T&T -- and very crunchy spell stat blocks. Does it really make sense to treat a spell with a name like "Healing Feeling" to a crunchy stat block? I dunno, it sorta jars me. Plus, these rules switch levels BACK to being what you gain with experience points. What the heck is the point of that? I pretty much intend to leave this whole booklet sitting in the tin. I like my freewheeling T&T just the way it was, thank you!
The monsters-and-treasure booklet is very short and not exactly comprehensive. It does provide some neat ideas for implementing monsters in the new T&T game beyond "16 dice + 150 adds" ... setting up their special abilities as something that just automatically happens during their turn. (If the medusa rolls a certain number of 6's during her attack phase, for instance, that automatically triggers her gaze and forces the appropriate saving throws.) What monsters are provided, are cool ... but there's not that many and almost all of them are of the "seen 'em all before" variety (chimerae, medusae, goblins, barbarians...). The treasures, on the other hand, are practically nonexistent, more like purchasing guidelines. It doesn't even have the "random gold and gems generator" of fifth edition, which seems like a pretty glaring omission given how often it came up in solo dungeons.
The CD-ROM contains a few supplementary PDFs: character sheets, a scan of the original Buffalo Castle solo, and some combat examples -- which seems like a chapter that should have been in the rulebook but got chopped out due to space limitations. I was rather disappointed that there was no introductory scenario for tabletop play at all -- maybe a converted first level of Dungeon of the Bear for instance. The CD-ROM also contains an ancient licensed MS-DOS T&T game, "totally unsupported, so play at your own risk!"
The counters are pretty cool, if you like counters. (I do, myself.) They include faeries and leprechauns, T&T's more unconventional character races. These are Claudio Pozas' usual fine work. There is also a poster-sized paper "map" (essentially a grid with a repeated graphic of a dungeon-style floor). This is a slightly odd thing to include, given that T&T is so very abstract and has no hard-and-fast rules about character movement.
Summary
Tunnels & Trolls 30th Anniversary Edition will be a fun trip down memory lane for any old-time fan, and mechanically speaking is a terrific "dungeon delving super-lite" game. However, this presentation is scattered and sort of dotty ... this feels a lot more like a rough development draft than an actual game release. Any competent gamer can probably pick it up and work out how to play in about 20 minutes total, which would make it the perfect pickup game if only it actually had any prewritten scenarios! No doubt you could grab one of Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics, assign monster ratings and saving throw levels to everything in it, and go -- but that sorta defeats the purpose. Once you've put that much work into it, you might as well just play Dungeons & Dragons unless you are such a big fan of T&T already that you've bought the game and this whole review is wasted on you anyway...
I ended up giving it three stars because, while I really like the core T&T ruleset and am totally jazzed to see it get some love after all these years, this release feels so half-baked that seems like it would be more likely to turn away new players than to attract them. I suspect Mr St. Andre is just one of those people who can't leave things alone -- and while I sympathize with the impulse (How many homebrew games have I written? Twenty? Fifty?), I do wish he'd spent more effort on filling in the rough edges of the main "seventh edition" rulebook, rather than including a confusing addon of a "revised" one.
-The Gneech
(I'd like to mention for the record, that I didn't enter the text that reads "Editiom" above.
)If you were a gamer in the 1980s and had trouble finding others of your ilk, sooner or later you may have found yourself with a bookshelf full of Tunnels & Trolls solo dungeons -- and if you're like most people who had 'em, you loved 'em. If so, you're going to like this release.
If you're not among that group, you've probably never heard of Tunnels & Trolls and have no idea what the big deal is. If so, you're probably going to give this release a giant "So what?"
For the record, I loved Tunnels & Trolls. Released shortly after D&D made its first big splash, T&T was put forth as "The COMPLETE and EASY fantasy roleplaying game!" and in many ways was the harbinger of many trends to come. T&T was (and still is) a rules-light played-for-laughs game with spells like "Take That You Fiend" (roughly equivalent to magic missile) and "Poor Baby" (equivalent to cure spells), which can fit an entire character on a 3x5 card, and for which you can create an entire party in about 10 minutes. It also pioneered such concepts as "armor as damage resistance" and "+1/-1 modifier for a stat above/below a given level."
Combat was simple in the extreme: heroes rolled all their dice and added up the total, monsters rolled all their dice and added up the total, and whoever had the bigger total did the difference in damage to the other side. Almost everything else that ever happened was GM arbitration based on a saving-throw mechanic ... or just GM fiat with no mechanic at all. Monsters had no stats, just a Monster Rating, from 5 for a pushover (say, a single goblin) to 1000+ for an unholy terror (say, a balrog). Any kind of special powers (e.g., a medusa's gaze) were up to the GM to decide on.
Besides a ton of solo adventures, T&T also brought the world such influential things as the Grimtooth's Traps and Citybook supplements, which were essentially T&T supplements except with the game rules yanked out to "genericize" them. T&T and its spinoffs (such as Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes, by Mike Stackpole) were extremely influential among people who would later become big names in the industry, even if the games themselves never quite enjoyed the massive popularity of D&D.
So this is why there is a 30th anniversary edition, and why it matters.
Having gotten all of that old-timey gushing out of the way, it's now time to take a good look at the actual product at hand.Like most of the Fiery Dragon products, T&T is presented in a digest-size, hinged metal tin that's packed full of stuff ... a rulebook, an alternate rulebook, a monsters-and-treasures mini-booklet, a CD-ROM, four pages of cardstock counters, and four smallish six-sided dice. The cover art is done by Liz Danforth, who did the lion's share of the fifth edition T&T artwork -- and is in fact a sequel image to the fifth edition cover ... "the next round of combat," as it were. The internal art and the counters are done by Claudio Pozas (of counter collection fame), and do a pretty good job of carrying forward the look and feel of Ms. Danforth's earlier work.
The text is written by "The Justifiably Infamous Ken St. Andre," the ol' trollgod himself, in a very conversational tone -- including editorial smilies. This gives the whole thing the very odd feeling of being a long internet post that somebody just happened to print in booklet form -- a feeling which isn't any lessened by the fact that the "crunch" of the book is extremely sketchy. While it's very likely that nobody's going to be looking at this game except people who already have a fifth edition book or two lying around the house, it isn't really the best form to write the game with that assumption in mind. The text repeatedly references "what's different now," rather than a straight-up assertion of "this is how it works" -- and if you don't know what you're changing from, it can be very hard to tell what exactly you're changing to. I finished the book feeling more like I'd read an outline of the author's ideas about the game mechanics, than a document teaching me how to play the game. This wasn't a bad thing for me personally -- I know fifth edition T&T backwards and forwards -- but for somebody who'd never played it before, it could be a real problem.
As for the changes themselves, they all seem good on first blush, but I haven't had a chance to actually try them in play. T&T has never been about ideas like "game balance" or "tactical play," but rather tossing a handful of dice on the table and hooting if there are a ton of 6's -- so I expect that the new rules will not make that much of a difference in the actual gameplay. A couple of new classes have been added, a new "Talents" concept has been put into place to help customize characters beyond "a name and six stats," and character levels have been pretty radically altered. (Now instead of earning xp to gain levels, you spend xp to raise your stats, and the level of your highest 'class stat' determines your overall character level. It's an interesting idea that I'm looking forward to playing with.)
Then, there's the "Alternate Rules." This is a booklet with even less explanatory or flavor text, detailing what is ostensibly T&T7R (or, "Tunnels & Trolls 7th Edition - Revised" ... a little dig at WotC here, ya think?). This system has some fairly complex character generation options, including a kind of multiclassing system -- rather a strange idea in the context of T&T -- and very crunchy spell stat blocks. Does it really make sense to treat a spell with a name like "Healing Feeling" to a crunchy stat block? I dunno, it sorta jars me. Plus, these rules switch levels BACK to being what you gain with experience points. What the heck is the point of that? I pretty much intend to leave this whole booklet sitting in the tin. I like my freewheeling T&T just the way it was, thank you!
The monsters-and-treasure booklet is very short and not exactly comprehensive. It does provide some neat ideas for implementing monsters in the new T&T game beyond "16 dice + 150 adds" ... setting up their special abilities as something that just automatically happens during their turn. (If the medusa rolls a certain number of 6's during her attack phase, for instance, that automatically triggers her gaze and forces the appropriate saving throws.) What monsters are provided, are cool ... but there's not that many and almost all of them are of the "seen 'em all before" variety (chimerae, medusae, goblins, barbarians...). The treasures, on the other hand, are practically nonexistent, more like purchasing guidelines. It doesn't even have the "random gold and gems generator" of fifth edition, which seems like a pretty glaring omission given how often it came up in solo dungeons.
The CD-ROM contains a few supplementary PDFs: character sheets, a scan of the original Buffalo Castle solo, and some combat examples -- which seems like a chapter that should have been in the rulebook but got chopped out due to space limitations. I was rather disappointed that there was no introductory scenario for tabletop play at all -- maybe a converted first level of Dungeon of the Bear for instance. The CD-ROM also contains an ancient licensed MS-DOS T&T game, "totally unsupported, so play at your own risk!"
The counters are pretty cool, if you like counters.
(I do, myself.) They include faeries and leprechauns, T&T's more unconventional character races. These are Claudio Pozas' usual fine work. There is also a poster-sized paper "map" (essentially a grid with a repeated graphic of a dungeon-style floor). This is a slightly odd thing to include, given that T&T is so very abstract and has no hard-and-fast rules about character movement.Summary
Tunnels & Trolls 30th Anniversary Edition will be a fun trip down memory lane for any old-time fan, and mechanically speaking is a terrific "dungeon delving super-lite" game. However, this presentation is scattered and sort of dotty ... this feels a lot more like a rough development draft than an actual game release. Any competent gamer can probably pick it up and work out how to play in about 20 minutes total, which would make it the perfect pickup game if only it actually had any prewritten scenarios! No doubt you could grab one of Goodman Games' Dungeon Crawl Classics, assign monster ratings and saving throw levels to everything in it, and go -- but that sorta defeats the purpose. Once you've put that much work into it, you might as well just play Dungeons & Dragons unless you are such a big fan of T&T already that you've bought the game and this whole review is wasted on you anyway...
I ended up giving it three stars because, while I really like the core T&T ruleset and am totally jazzed to see it get some love after all these years, this release feels so half-baked that seems like it would be more likely to turn away new players than to attract them. I suspect Mr St. Andre is just one of those people who can't leave things alone -- and while I sympathize with the impulse (How many homebrew games have I written? Twenty? Fifty?), I do wish he'd spent more effort on filling in the rough edges of the main "seventh edition" rulebook, rather than including a confusing addon of a "revised" one.
-The Gneech
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