Old D&D editions and clones - Tunnels & Trolls 1st ed.

Now, some of you might object to that title. Surely T&T is not a clone of D&D, and it surely isn't an old D&D edition!? No, it is not, but it is the first published game inspired by D&D and it fits right in here in the series about how much the old games inspire and engage today.

Those of you who have read or played later editions of T&T should really take a peek at this edition if you get the opportunity! I own the 2013 reprint, which might be available yet. I do not know. Anyway. What's interesting about this game are two things, how it differs from later T&T editions and how it differs from D&D.

I found it interesting that on the first page you get a short summary of how to run a game as a GM, how to play it as a player and even the point of sitting around the table talking get across well. I like it a lot. This little section is actually a fairly good primer of what it's all about. Fun details is that the caller is mentioned, as the "Voicer".

There are many fun small idiosyncrasies in this game, but most of it is in the presentation that is extremely colloquial. Ken even jokes about the illustrations right beside the current paragraph. The rules are fairly easy and smooth and there are not multiple odd subsystems.

I like some of the advice for how to run the game, like the emphasize on house ruling, "this is not my game". It is a hack of another game that grew into its own and it is paying its dues. Then there's the suggestion to put in lot of stuff in the dungeons, since "Nobody likes to mess around in a dull dungeon". Here I think Ken is onto something. The big empty dungeon is something I feel have been overvalued in the OSR conversations. I'm not so sure it was a regular feature of the Old Ways even.  Ken goes on with some other good advice suggesting that all the threats in the dungeon should be avoidable or be possible to nullify by smart players.

Much of the rules is as you'd expect, with the suggestion you start with a horisontal cut away fo your multi level dungeon, and there are rules for reaction rolls and capturing monsters. I also love the fact that there are names to the character levels. A Veteran is someone who has reached 3rd level, by the way. Not first.

Comparing this to modern versions of T&T and there are some differences. Armour is ablative, Saving Rolls are mainly done on Luck and you get XP for gold and deepest dungeon level penetrated.

I would actually gladly pick up those for all editions, liking them a lot. In general, I like this edition a lot. Expanding Saving Rolls into the "meta mechanic" it got later on and I feel you've almost hit the sweet spot for T&T rules. There's a rawness to the rules, but it's brimming with enthusiasm and small snippets of the life in the Phoenix campaign, like how they all have 3-15 characters per player! For me the rules feels like a big smiling invitation to just roll some dice and dive in the deep end. This is another winner. I really want to play this game!

Reading T&T 7.5 - Saving Rolls p.99-126

So, now we have come to that mechanic which makes us T&T fans rave so much about the game. Usually I don't talk that directly about rules here. I think you should buy the rules to find out. Today I think I will, though.

What's the fuss all about then? Nothing much, but it has implications. Starting the section on Saving Rolls, we read that sometimes only luck can save a delver. That's when you roll a SR. Rolling a SR is done with two dice, and then you add a relevant stat, like LK och STR. If you meet a target number, depending on difficulty, you succeed. Easy ones, level 1, is TN 20 and then it increase by five per level.

Nothing special, eh? Well. One nice feature is that when you roll doubles, you add and roll again! I love exploding dice, and ever since I encountered it in MERP during the 1980-ies I have loved that mechanic. The feeling when you really need to succeed and you get those two 5 staring back at you, roll again and get two 4 and roll again and get more, is priceless! That's why I couldn't play diceless. Random chance is just to much fun.

Now imagine doing this for anything, at any time, to resolve any crazy idea you get. Why would you? Because of AP.

Just after the section on Saving Rolls, with two very good examples of different SRs, we start to read on Adventure Points. These are used to raise your stats, and you gain them from, among other activities, rolling SRs. Note, you get it for rolling, not for suceeding! There's no reason not to try to do something cool, because you will get a reward in the form of AP, just for trying. This is a game where being active counts. The rules in this section is very well written with many examples sprinkled throughout, this is also true for the section on Adventure Points.

I remember when I first heard of Feng Shui, by Robin Laws. Chinese action movies are something I enjoy a lot, and that game seemed very fun. But, when I read it I didn't feel the love like I expected. I didn't feel the game mechanic inspired me to do over the top action stunts. Removing obstacles is one thing, but providing wires for the wire-fu and bullets for my gun was something else. Then I encountered Wushu - the ancient art of action role-playing. This was a game that gave me what I wanted! For every weird stunt you try, the easier it is to succeed. That, is a stroke of design genius. That is how I feel about the interplay of Saving Rolls and Adventure Points.

Adventure points you can get for slaying monsters, outwitting them, casting spells and any thing the GM feel is worth rewarding. How they are used, and how fast a progression the game will have is discussed in the rules, and more than one way presented for quicker and slower games. In my games my played by the book, and I let my players raise their stats as soon as they could. In the middle of a fight someone would take a look at their stats, ask for a SR and I would gladly allow it and then see them raise the stat and continue the fight. Entertainment was guaranteed when they scrambled for that SR and a few more points.

I will close with one thing our game designer feel is worthy of Adventure Points is Daring. Daring is described as the difficulty and danger of the tunnels and encounters for a session. Exposing your character to danger is worthy of reward if you survive. Think about this quote: "A general guideline is to reward 100 AP for each level of dungeon or difficulty that is overcome".

How do you handle that? If the delvers go down to level 3, do you give them 300 as they set foot on level 2? Going down a chute and at once going up again using an elevator from level 9, is that worth 900? You get no strict advice from the rules. I found this to be a very charming and very old school so I rewarded 100 times the deepest level visited and encountered something, when my players was back in town alive. Combine this with the stable rule, and there are interesting strategic options of resource management available to the game.

Next week it's time for Magic

Reading T&T 7.5 - Combat

Welcome to T&T Friday! We have come to those rules which see most use at the gaming table, combat rules. Let's jump right in.

At start a few terms are defined, and the basic idea of rolling your attack dice and comparing them to the opponent's result. Most interesting here is the concept of Spite.

When you roll a 6 on a die in combat, something special happen. You might have found a weakness, or just made a very precise strike. Any dice with sixes total up, and ignore armor! Suddenly even the "tin box" Warrior isn't safe! This is a very good addition, and a common house rule for fifth ed games. I really like it. Apparently the idea to let it be the trigger for special effects was not Ken's idea, but came from FDP. Also very nifty. Talk a walk into House Rule territory and you can have it trigger effects on magic items as well.

Then we have something which I find interesting. In T&T there is a combat turn sequence, and everything that happen in combat happen in a specific order. For many gamers the way you act in combat is all dependent on initiative, and not what you do. Older editions of D&D do like T&T, and Rolemaster have some very involved and quite quaint ways to structure a combat round. Me, I'm most at home in an initiative based round. Still, I like the way it works in T&T.

Worth noting in the section about the round, is the length of it. The official length is 2 minutes! Compare that to GURPS where a round is 1 second! The difference in length of combat rounds never cease to amaze me.

Let's take a look at something Ken writes here, which I think is the core of the whole game system:

Every combat is different, and it is your job as a gamer and judge to adjust the details in your mind so it makes sense. Visualize the fight, and you won't have to be told that Mungo the Hobb did 11 points of damage to the giant with a sneak attack to the ankle. What else could Mungo reach? When the giant falls down, our doughty little warrior might want to start attacking the giant's head. Let him.

and

The action takes place in your imagination, not in a blow-by-blow manner. And remember, you can try anything in combat, and the DM will deal with it. He may call for a Saving Roll to see how well you succeed, but go ahead, be creative and tricky. The game will be more fun.

Notice how it's phrased. It's your job! The game is a creative endeavour, and I really love the phrase "you can try anything in combat". This is the core of the T&T experience for me. We get a toolbox, and an inspired example of how to invent stuff and have fun. While it's damn obvious I think we need to be reminded sometimes of how essential this is. You know to make the best pecan pie in the world? Make it count in combat. You can.

The last part of this section before we start in Saving Rolls are Missile Combat. Even though the rules have been fairly stable, missile combat seem to change a bit almost every edition. Now it's a DEX (or Talent) based SR to hit, based on range, and that's it. It works.

Next week: Saving Rolls!

Reading T&T 7.5 - Talents p.31-35

Welcome back to Tunnels & Trolls Friday! Today I will focus on a new feature of 7th ed, namely Talents. Skill systems have been grafted onto Tunnels & Trolls since way back. Michael Stackpole wrote one that's included in the 5.5 printing, I've been told (my 5th ed is from 1979), and many lesser know designers have done so for their home campaigns. Talents is a idea in that vein, but by Ken St. Andre.

Back when I was a strong critic of all class based game systems, I used to think that since every character of a specific class at a specific level were basically all the same, and that it was boring. The system of Feats which were introduced in D&D 3rd ed. was to me a boon. Now you could finally differentiate your hero from everyone else! It turned out to be much more complicated than that, unfortunately. The Talents of T&T, though, have a similar function to make your imaginary persona a bit special. Lucky for us, the mechanics are way simpler. Even elegant.

Our designer mentions on page 31 how you can use Saving Rolls to make anything happen in a T&T session. Not until page 99 will we get a description how to make those rolls (SR for short) but here in this section Ken manages to descrive their general utility better than the section where they are the subject of discussion! So, since you can roll a SR for anything, why do you need Talents? Well, it isn't really argued in the rule text why. Well, there is that suggestion to the player to imagine what skill there are that defines who or what your character are, and to use that as a Talent. I'd say that their main utility is to make you special. It's chrome, really. Anything you can do with a SR can be a Talent. I like the idea.

When we get to the meat of the rules, we encounter some oddities. In the example we have a Rogue who takes Thievery as his Talent. Looking to see what it says in the description for the Rogue Type, we see that a newly created Rogue has to take Roguery as the first Talent! The example is thus breaking the rules. It makes you wonder if that rule was written later, and the example not modified. While we are talking about rules, I am wondering if the concept can't be taken further. Since your rating in a Talen will be determined randomly at creation and never changed, you might end up with a 1 or a 6. With a higher and higher attributes as you gain levels it will be less and less of an issue, but it feels like an itch I'd like to scratch.

In Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes by Michael Stackpole (still for sale from Flying Buffalo, and there's a solo written by Dave Arneson available! What are you waiting for? Go grab it, and tell Rick I sent you.),  you can level up your skills. It would probably be possible to do the same for Talents. How about this? One way would be to put a tick mark beside the Talent when used, and when you have used it as many times as you have ranks in it, pay 100 AP and raise it by one. Possibly 100 x Rank. Well. Let me know if you try it out.

Another cool House Rule would be to not base Talents on a specific ability, but letting the situation dictate. Thanks Dalton for that one!

What I really likes about Talents, and I do like them, is things like page 33 where Ken really shows us how to take a trait and do a cool stunt, even in combat where the use of Talents wont work to just boost your combat ability. More examples like this in the chapter about SRs and people might take notice why we T&T junkies harp on about how cool the SR mechanic is.

So a Talent will set you apart, but will also boost your ability to be extra good at once special thing. Take not that when asked about their Talents, my players managed to be creative (mind you, you can make up anything, there's no list!) and one of them took Cooking! Belive it or not, it can be used both in combat, business and interacting with monsters. Talents are pure roleplaying opportunity in a box.

Let me finish off with a quote from the rules about Talents. Ken writes: "Saving Rolls against a Talent may be called for by either the GM or the player." Maybe it should not be necessary to put that in the rules, but it's still good to see it. You have a cool idea? Go for it! Say Yes or roll the dice. Heck, roll some dice anyway.

Next week: Levels!

Morale rules for T&T

In his post on Grognardia yesterday, James wrote about the morale rules he uses in Dwimmermount. I made me remember fondly the simple and effective rules that grace the Basic/Expert D&D. Just like I said in my comment on Grognardia, I consider morale rules to be a very sensible rule that makes us remember that we don't need to resort to murder and mayhem. Playing scoundrels out for gold and glory it actually makes very little sense. I have a soft spot for the design whch can be called "rules for effect".

My beloved T&T, in its 7th ed., actually don't have any moral rules. Many times lately I've found thinks lacking in this edition which was in the 5th ed. If there are any morale rules in 5th ed., I can't confirm it, since my copy is in storage. So I was thinking that maybe they wouldn't be so hard to make up.

Now things became more complex. I think it would be neat to only use d6, and base it on a SR like almost everything else in T&T. If it makes sense to consider morale when the own force have been reduced to half, the leader killed or maybe excessive amount of hits, we have a set of numbers that decrease. Also, when fighting a monster's MR will decrease. All these numbers decrease. It feels like they have to be considered, somehow.

The morale rating, what would that be? I'd like to base it upon something existing, so the system can be used with everything that's been published before. MR, level and Combat Adds are the components we have to use, apart from the stats of course. Level is usually not a very interesting number in T&T. Compared to D&D, it means little. MR and CA are both involved in combat, so maybe that would be something to base morale rules upon.

My first idea was to use the same mechanic you use for calculate dice of attack from MR, 1 + MR/10. Take that many dice and if any of them is a 6, you make your morale check and keep fighting. That mechanic has the problem that it's hard to figure out a way to account for lax troops and crack troops with bad and good morale, respectively.

My second idea was to roll a SR of some kind. Then we hit upon the trouble of determining the level of difficulty. Base it on level? Base on MR? Both have the nonsensical effect of making bigger monsters fail more often. I'd rather not bring in a subtraction, even though 10 - level might be a suggestion. That would of course have the problem that you'd have to scale 10 to the capabilities of the monster.

If you have any ideas how to sort this out, feel free to suggest them.

Fight on! How to make combat interesting

I've read more than once about Tunnels & Trolls that people think it's a neat game, but that they get tired of rolling buckets of dice and that the abstract combat system don't work well for them. I'm a bit surprised that the dice pool system is much of a problem, considering how popular that kind of game mechanic is, and also how easy it is to manage by some shortcuts. Today, though, I'm going to talk about the combat system, and how you can get it to sing. Note: these ideas work for any game system! If I get a bit rambling, bear with me and see if I might have some cools ideas in here after all.

In his very enjoyable book Play Dirty, author John Wick writes about a lot of cool things to use at the gaming table. Naturally, he also writes about combat. Some of the tricks he writes about, I'll show you here as well and talk about other stuff in the same vein. When I attended the Ad Astra convention in Toronto earlier this year I listened to a panel about how to write combat scenes. When reading Play Dirty I was reminded of that, since in that book John wrote the same thing those panelists said. First off, a real fight is quick. Real quick. I remember making fun of AD&D when I was younger, because the game turn was so ridiculously long but you only got one attack in! In T&T a combat turn by the book is two minutes. Obviously these games are not good aproximations of real combat. They don't need to be, but if you really want to end a combat quick, here's how to do it.

So, if all those game turns is just waiting for a killing blow, and all the circling and shuffling about is just wearing each other down, then let's go for the kill. So, let's feint and kick him in the groin or poke him in the eyes. Then, when he is down, kick him until he wont get up.

Feint – SR on DEX or LK. Why not take the average? Level? Well, I use the level of the dungeon as a general metric, but otherwise use his level, or MR/10 if no level is applicable. You're playing D&D? Roll as many d6 as the difference in level between you, add then and try to get under your DEX.

Groin kick – SR on LK or STR or maybe the average. You don't need to give him 2d6 Spite damage, just say he's out of the fight. In D&D you can call for an attack against a tougher AC and call it a day.

Poking eyes – Make a SR on SPD to see if your opponent manage to deflect your attack. You are going to do something in the middle of his field of vision, so it won't be easy. Say, level based on MR/10 with a bonus of +2? Maybe base it on his SPD/10 if he has one.

One thing to notice here is of course that T&T have a very cool mechanic, the Saving Roll, which can be used for anything. This is important so I'll say it again, it can be used for anything. I wonder if people who claim T&T combat is abstract and unengaging have understood that they can do anything. It's in the rules, pal! Let's get back to John Wick and Play Dirty again.

John notes one thing I find really spot on. He writes “Never let your players say, 'I roll to hit'. You know what they're doing, you want to know how they are doing it.” That's not only amusing, but also very true. Nobody will roll to miss, so why bother “rolling to hit”? So, following John, a DM should ask “where”, “how” and “when”. Good players will catch on, since you'll be giving them a bonus for each of those three. Imagine the three maneuvers mentioned above, but with a hefty bonus because the player said he was crouching down as if hit, kick out just as that other NPC/PC character shoved the target off balance (hey, if it's a minute or two it will happen all the time as people scuffle around). Beautyful and grim. Also, quite fun. All this about bonuses makes me want to bring up Wushu. In that game there are no penalties, only bonuses. I have read many games that talk about cool maneuvers, but they all have penalties. Not so in Wushu. The more cool stuff you say to try, the easier it is to succeed. Now, I fully understand that not everyone wants their fantasy games to be like an over the top wuxia movie, but take a long hard look at the idea that you award stunts if you really want to spice up combat in your game. Penalties are telling the player "don't even try it, boy".

Now, you might not want to go that far, but there are still a few tricks left. One interesting suggestion from the panel at Ad Astra, was that since the fight will be very much waiting and then a few short blows before it's over, you have to make it interesting in some other way. The method that stuck in my brain was the idea that you can always describe the event from the viewpoint of another character. Since you only have one character as a player in a RPG, you'll have to make do with that. Try to describe you're next maneuver in combat by mentioning how you get caught up in the successful attack by the player before you in the initiative (or something like that). That player gets to shine once more and will hopefully reward you with some inspired narrative next turn where your character is in the spotlight. Make combat fun together. Having fun together is why we play roleplaying games, right? I would even suggest that if you treat them nice, you could probably borrow a creature from the Game Master if you promise to return them in decent shape. Go wild.

I'm not always very good at following my own advice in this post, but I'm trying and will see if I can't manage to collect some real life drama from my game table some time. Oh, and buy John's book!

Fight on!