Thursday 8 March 2012

Every Tom, Dick and Harry - Citizens in Tunnels & Trolls {T&T}



Fantasy role-playing generally focuses on the players slipping into the well-worn boots of hardy warriors or fire-wielding mages. After all, why would anyone want to be a regular shmo in an imaginary world when most of us are like that in reality?

But hold that thought. Some of the best stories ever told feature normal people are their protagonists, people without skills with a longsword or knowledge of forgotten magical tomes. Take the daddy of all stories, The Lord of the Rings for instance. While we admire characters like Aragorn and Legolas for their combat prowess, the main protagonists are a handful of Hobbits, regular, simple folk who have been taken out of their comfort zone and thrust into a dark world of giant spiders, Ringwraiths and Balrogs. Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin weren't trained to fight: they like sitting around smoking kingsfoil and eating cakes. But we identified with these characters on their epic journey because they were ordinary, just like us.

Indeed, being a run-of-the-mill dishwasher or butcher who is cast into a dungeon teeming with ghouls, goblins and ghosts can increase tension, making combat that bit more nail-biting. Three hulking warriors and a wizard with electricity crackling from his eyes taking on a horde of orcs is cool, but this is a very normal thing. If you take four shepherds with skinning knives and dropped them into that scenario then you've got yourself a combat that's a little bit different than usual.

In Tunnels & Trolls 7.x, Citizens is described as "your average dweller in Trollworld" with "no special training in combat or magic". To represent their inability to use weapons well, their combat adds are halved from their attributes. If a Citizen wants to attempt to cast a spell, they have to make two saving rolls, one on INT and the second on DEX. The odds are certainly against the citizen and Ken even says in the rules that there is little point in players running Citizen characters as they're most suited to stock NPCs.

Yet, I don't think a Citizen-based adventure or campaign is a bad idea. If the GM scales encounters and creates a good 'fish out of water' story then I reckon solid gold role-playing opportunities will arise. Tom K Loney must have seen this potential so he created Under the Sundered Moon, an adventure that explores the under-used character type. I'd love to see more of these adventures or regular solos that allow for Citizens to be played without being killed off before paragraph 2.


8 comments:

  1. I love the idea of regular guys thrown into a world of magic and weirdness. I recently ran a dungeon crawl with ordinary fantasy-world college students who get stuck in a dungeon and have to navigate back out.

    Commence shameless plugging.

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  2. I also enjoy the idea of citizens actually doing something. There is nothing to stop them achieving greatness and huge stats. With Temple of the fool God and my other solos that I am working on, players who play citizens can take a few bonuses if they want to help them out.

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  3. We think alike, Scott. I have had thoughts of writing a solo or two for citizens. Maybe I will, since there seems to be at least a little interest in the type.

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    1. Write it. I'll buy it. Send me a Trollmail when you're done. :)

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  4. Let's not forget Jerry Teleha who is working light-years beyond what I did in "Sundered" with his "Stay Alive."

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  5. I love this idea. Does anyone require their PCs to start off a citizens instead of full fledged delvers?

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  6. Resident has become an overall organization in the last 75 years and is presently perceived as a worldwide brand. Consistently since the year 1986 Citizen has been perceived as the biggest watchmaker on the planet. go now

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  7. Resident has become an overall organization in the last 75 years and is presently perceived as a worldwide brand. Consistently since the year 1986 Citizen has been perceived as the biggest watchmaker on the planet. go now

    ReplyDelete