5 reasons you should play Tunnels and Trolls

It was around 3 years ago when I first got into Tunnels and Trolls and I haven't looked back since. The unbridled joy this game has brought me over the years is unparalleled in any other game and part of the reason I write this blog is to share my experiences in the hope that more people will get into the game.

Here are five reasons I think you should pick up Tunnels and Trolls and get stuck in:



Simple, elegant mechanics

Tunnels and Trolls was the first roleplaying game to use a universal saving roll. Couple this with the sole use of six-sided dice, simple combat and monsters you can create on the fly, this game is easy to pick up and play.



A sense of humour

With spells names like Hidey Hole and Take That You Fiends, it's clear that Tunnels and Trolls doesn't take itself seriously. Adventures are laced with pop culture references and humour and the characters you will come across are wonderfully zany. This isn't to say that you can't play a serious game with these rules, but light-hearted definitely works best.



Easy to play alone

Not only was Tunnels and Trolls designed as an alternative to Dungeons and Dragons, it was also made to allow for easy solitaire and play-by-mail games. There is a wealth of solitaire adventures to get your hands on and sites such as Trollbridge host numerous play-by-post games if you can't get a group together.




A tight-knit community

Although Flying Buffalo isn't an industry giant like Wizards of the Coast, Tunnels and Trolls has a fantastic and burgeoning community. The main hub of activity is in the hallowed halls of Trollhalla, a members-only online club for players. The site is run by Ken St. Andre himself, who is easily accessible unlike many other RPG creators. Trollhalla is home to some of the nicest people I've come across and it's a brilliant place to make new friends



Inexpensive

Getting a copy of the latest rules, which is a boxed set chock full of material, will set you back about $20 more or less. After this initial purchase pretty much everything else is cheap and cheerful compared to other RPGs, and in some cases completely free. Also you don't need to fork out for funny-looking dice - just take them straight out of any boardgame you have lying around.

So there you have it, five reasons why you should play Tunnels and Trolls. Let me know if you decide to pick up the game and try it out and tell me your experience.

Creating a great Tunnels and Trolls monster

Fashioning a creature for Tunnels and Trolls is as easy as making a consceous decision to not travel back in time and jump into a volcano. In essence, you need two things: a name and a monster rating. Here's an example:

Burger Golem
MR 24

This is a perfectly acceptable monster. You know that it will roll 3 dice and plus 12 to the total. However, a Burger Golem on its own is going to be incredibly boring, like an old man reciting bible passages while doing his tax return. The Burger Golem needs some pazzazz - some flavour, so let's add some special damage. I usually give mine a couple at lower levels, but 3 or 4 special attacks make higher level creatures unpredictable to the delvers:

Burger Golem
MR 24
Special Abilities:
Spite 2/Hamburger Hop - When 2 sixes are rolled, the Burger Golem is able to bound out of the way of oncoming attacks. Halve and damage done to it this round.
Spite 3/Greased Lightning - When 3 sixes are rolled Burger Golem fires a TTYF with 13 INT. The target must also make a level 1 saving roll on DEX or fall on their faces, putting them out of the next round of combat.

As you can see, the little ham-bugger is taking shape with its new spite-triggered attacks. Now we must give him a special ability, positive or negative (preferably a bit of both), to further flesh him out.

Burger Golem
MR 24
Special Damage:
Spite 2/Hamburger Hop - When 2 sixes are rolled, the Burger Golem is able to bound out of the way of oncoming attacks. Halve and damage done to it this round.
Spite 3/Greased Lightning - When 3 sixes are rolled Burger Golem fires a TTYF with 13 INT. The target must also make a level 1 saving roll on DEX or fall on their faces, putting them out of the next round of combat.

Special Ability:
Sizzling skin - the Burger Golem takes half damage from ice weapons or magic. However, it take double damage from water weapons or magic.

Now Burger Golem has a strength and weakness, he's pretty much done. All that's left if to give him a little bit of flavour:

Burger Golems are created from the fastest of fast food by wizards with too much time on their hands. Their hot greasy skin makes them difficult to get close to, but damn do they smell good. In fact, you can usually smell a Burger Golem from 10 meters away.

So there we have it. A method to flesh out your Tunnels and Trolls monsters to make them more fun to play.

3 cool ideas for clerics

Back in the early days of Dungeons and Dragons, when 0e emerged from the primordial soup of wargaming, Clerics were the class to be. Not only could they be armed to the balls, they had the power to make the undead spin around and make a beeline for the exit as if they had just seen mummy and daddy skeleton boning on the sofa. Sometimes these rotting shamblers would burst into flame just from a point of the Cleric's finger. If that wasn't enough they could smear the holy savlon of goodness on a booboo to heal it, as well as having a bunch of other spells at its disposal. Clerics were the bee's knees.

In honour of these heathen-smiting god botherers, here are three interesting ideas for your Cleric:

1. Stranger in a strange land - Make your Cleric a wanderer from a distant land. Maybe he or she worships a deity that nobody in the campaign location has never heard of. Does he or she go around converting people? Or does he/she have to wrestle with their own faith and the lure of other gods?

2. Taboo spell - Choose a spell that the Cleric will only use as a last minute resort for one reason or another. Make it a higher level spell that you will only be able to use rarrely anyway - no use in making it 'cure light wounds'. This gives great roleplaying opportunities.

3. Demonic vice - Everybody's got their vice, but what if it were moreso for a cleric? Maybe he/she has become the vessel of a weak demonic entity who forces them into gambling, excessive drinking or maybe murder? How does the cleric battle this demon in his mind? Choose a vice for your cleric and have it cropup every once in a while.

Monsters! Monsters! - an overview

I've been posting infrequently lately due to my laptop being in the shop for repair. I hope to have it back today or tomorrow, so I'll be posting more from this weekend.

Saving scantily clad floozies from towers and thwarting the schemes of a sociopathic lich is all in a day's work for the hero. But nobody cares about the monsters whose lives are made hell by these gallant folk, who stride into a cave, tear the guts out of half a family of kobolds while their whimpering sprogs watch in horror as mummy and daddy are kicked around by a twat in a funny cloak; and then stripped of their life savings.

In Ken St Andre's Monsters! Monsters! the roles are reversed and the player gets to take on the role of a Ghoul or Yeti or even a Balrog, each of whom have the sole aim of getting revenge on hero-kind and the evil civilised world by demolishing their towns and cities and eating their most beautiful people. The game uses familiar Tunnels and Trolls rules with some tweaks and a random character generation system using an ordinary deck of cards. For instance, drawing the ace of spades lands you with a Dragon to play with, or the six of diamonds nets you a Shoggoth. Some monsters are ridiculously powerful and others, such as the bland 'Human Scum' gets the average stats of an average human from averageville, averagestonia. Nobody wants to be Human Scum.

Adventures in Monsters! Monsters! usually revolve around going to a town and causing mayhem. Types of wandering enemies range from a cow to a warband of 10 fighters, each having a certain reaction to your monster depending on its charisma score. They could be friendly towards you - offering you chocolate and giving you a massage, they could be indifferent to you, or they could just flat out attack you.

I've yet to play a game of Monsters! Monsters! but I'm looking forward to reviewing it. It has all the humour of Tunnels and Trolls plus the chance to play as a Hydra.

Losing my Vampire: The Requiem virginity

It doesn't take the most observant person to notice that vampires are enjoying a comeback. Done with luring buxom Victorian women into their boudoirs for a nightcap followed by good old fashioned jugular penetration, the once dark stalkers of the night have now become just plain old stalkers. The ever-maligned Stephanie Meyer rocked the worlds of teenage girls with her pensive vegetarian daywalkers who shine like emotionally unsteady disco balls in the daylight while offering some garbled message derived from Mormonism. Afterwards the bloodgates opened and there was the inevitable slew of angsty vamp dramas bathing our screens, from highschooley Vampire Diaries to the political raunchfest that is Anna Paquin's nipples, err, I mean True Blood.

So it was nice to sit down on Thursday night with my regular group minus one and get back to some proper gritty vampire action in my first ever game of Vampire: The Requiem. We played the first chapter of the introductory mini-campaign that is included with the rules. My character was a botanist who worked at the University of New Orleans and the other player rolled up a barkeep from a local club. After getting a brief lowdown on the rules we were off on one of the best adventures I've experienced on any system.

For those who came in late, Vampire: The Requiem uses White Wolf's storyteller system, utilising D10s as the core mechanic. It works well, making the focus more on story and character development than seeing how many civvies you can relieve of their mortality. Like a pair of silk briefs the experience was smooth and comfortable and I look forward to diving back into the New Orleans night for another taste of Vampire.

Heroes in Dungeons and Dragons

Back in those halcyon days of gaming; when TSR was top dog, much due to the lack of many other dogs, Dungeons and Dragons was a merciless game. Heroes were little more than peasants who were slightly more capable in hacking and hewing goblins that most other dung-covered citizen. In those days it was common for players to roll up characters who were as fragile as Christian Bale's ego i.e. started with 1 hit point. Coupled with a violent trend for Dungeon Masters to throw their "friends" into over-deadly situations, early Dungeons and Dragons was a meat grinder.

Ok, so this isn't entirely fair. Surely back in the Basic/Expert days there were some Dungeon Masters who preferred to keep their players from shuffling the mortal coil at the hands of a bunch of foaming, disgruntled bugbears. It's just that with such weak early level characters it's no wonder many gaming groups decided to start at higher levels.

Anyone who has played or is the least bit familiar with 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons knows that heroes are no longer soggy flannels, but are beefed up superheroes from first level. Wizards of the Coast emphasise the game needs to be fun for players too and as a result killing characters is actually quite difficult unless the DM chucks in monsters 5 levels higher than the party. A TPK is still possible, but it's now frowned upon by the creators.

To be honest, 4th Edition has a point. What fun is it if a) the players can't make it to second level and b) the DM needs to constantly be catering for new characters? Heroes are heroes for a reason; although some of their ridiculous powers could be stripped away. I guess that's why Wizards have given us the Essentials line, which feels more like a call out to the old days of Dungeons and Dragons, where basic attacks were king and spells were limited.

Heroes are tough, hardy and shouldn't go down with a good fight. 4th Edition has pumped characters but Essentials has made them sensible. While the old days of Dungeons and Dragons had a wonderful flavour, fabulously evoked in OSR games such as Swords and Wizardry and Labyrinth Lord, this new generation makes heroes more heroic, as they should be.

What do you think? Do you prefer your heroes straight out of the old school or do you like them to be people to be reckoned with?