Mass Combat as an Individual Mini-Game-

JB commented on the previous post by reminding me of 1st edition Stormbringer's section [3.10] for mass combat ([3.11] Naval combat is worth a read, too), which reduces the recommended method down to a POW v. POW (Wis v. Wis or PSI v. PSI) conflict. Successfully beating the meta-opposition of the GM's roll means that the PC has survived unharmed, has used her weapon/defence skills and is eligible to improve.

Failing the roll indicates that the character is subject to 2d10 points of damage with only her armour to reduce the effects. If the character has only sustained a Minor Wound (less than half of her total) she is similarly eligible to improver her fighting skills. Those suffering a Major Wound are in too much pain to gain the benefit.

Naval warfare is more or less as above, but is sink or swim as regards the fate of each ship in the combat.

Thoughts?

Seriously!

I'm wondering when Ken St. Andre's recognition in the earliest days of the RPG hobby will be better known, as his version of The Game was already being sold while what would become known as D&D LBB were still relatively obscure, if actually in LBB format at that time.

In an e-mail on a computer a decade gone by now, I spoke with Ken, who related that he was selling copies of T&T in comb-bound format while Gary still hadn't gotten his game rules out (at least on the West Coast). In this account, Gary was a bit peeved that Ken was already capitalising (*laff*) on T&T before D&D was hitting the Arizona gaming scene. No one at the stores had even heard of polyhedral dice, so we can use that to date the event.

If RQ2 praised Ken for 'having done it again' or some such, in the intro (as well as digging on the Saving Roll mechanism which would see light in RQ as the Opposed Roll mechanism), his importance in the field is clearly understated. Ken and I aren't even that close any longer, and I'm still steamed that his contributions are relegated to a cutsie/satirical treatment of D&D. Hogwash.

Where are the Andreas Davours, the Tori Bernquists, etc., to give Ken St. Andre his due in the RPG field's historical significance?

:: crickets ::

An Old Tunnels and Trolls Wild West .pdf-

I think it was 2000 or early 2001 when I wrote up a Woolly Wild West document on a T&T board that Ken was frequenting.

This is the Addenda.
--Sorry. I'll look for the original, but I'm not too hopeful.

LINK

A Letter from Ken St. Andre to Jim Shipman-

I am reposting the letter Ken sent me (and likely others).

James,

I received your package yesterday with some surprise. Received six copies of the revised Gristlegrim Dungeon. This dismays me, as I told you to quit publishing it back in January of this year when I broke with you. If this parcel was an attempt at a reconciliation between us, then I appreciate the effort you took, but I reject it. Our friendship and partnership is broken and done forever. I do not wish to collaborate on Gristlegrim or any other project with you. Not now! Not ever again! You had no right to add your material to my work. You have no right to continue publishing and selling it. Please stop!

James, you no longer have any right to publish or sell my works. We have no written contracts. We have no formal accounting of royalties. Your habit of sending money and or copies of the items is no longer good enough. Any informal agreements we may have made in 2009 and earlier are terminated on my side of the deal. I no longer wish to associate with you, either professionally or informally.

Find some other outlet for your creativity. Leave me, and leave Tunnels and Trolls, alone. I am rejecting any further association with you.

I hope this is clearly understood. Do not publish anything with my name on it as author. Do not presume to collaborate with me on my projects. Do not keep attempting to infiltrate trollhalla.com under false names--you are banned and unwelcome on that site. Do not attempt to rewrite the history of Tunnels and Trolls on Wikipedia or any other online sources. Do not send me money. Do not send me product. I do not want it from you. However, I am under no legal obligation to send back things that arrive unsolicited in the mail. I won't waste the money or the effort to send them back. I am not interested in theatrical gestures. I simply wish to terminate our association and to move on with other things in life.

I hereby reclaim my rights to anything I ever gave you to publish. In particular, I assert my right to the novel Griffin Feathers which consists entirely of my own work with some input in the short sections of the book from the members of Trollhalla.

I am forwarding the "royalties" that you sent me to Jeff Freels, the artist whose work you have re-used to illustrate this version of Gristlegrim. He deserves compensation for his work.

James, I am not angry at you, and I do not hate you. I simply will not associate with you ever again. For several years we were, I thought, very good friends. Outlaw Press did a lot for Tunnels and Trolls. You know why that time has ended. Let it go. Move on.

James, I will be publishing this letter in open forums on the internet, so that all the world can see how I feel, and how I react to what I can only believe are attempts to manipulate me and to gain control of Tunnels and Trolls. If you have no ulterior intentions, then forgive me for being suspicious, but I no longer feel that I can trust you.

James, you have your own unique style of creativity. Please go and do your own thing, and stop messing with me and with Tunnels and Trolls.


Sincerely,
Ken St. Andre

[RPG] Speak your Mind on Skills-

Prone to multi-tasking, I am working on:

* Creating pregens for two convention sessions
* Writing the streamlined PM
* Re-designing the Character Control Record
* Providing input to my map artist
* Tracking my other artist's output relative to the deadline
* Cleaning up for the SO's coming over to cook for mum and me
* Floating ideas for the weekly game
* Waiting to hear from Work regarding new assignments
* Tending to home-things

...more or less in that order.

One idea that keeps vacillating in my mind is to collapse the skills into the overarching framework I'd used for years on Guild Houses of Blood, namely:

Academic
Arcane
Athletic
Combat
Communication/Aesthetic
Covert
General (Civilisation)
Professional
Technical/Trades
Wilderness

My 'new school' players prefer micro-managing individual skills, but I am being plagued by wise admonitions to Keep It Simple/As Simple as Possible, but Not Simpler.

I think the Middle Path I'll adopt is the above with Specialisations.
--But, don't quote me on that.

Thoughts/Input/Derision?
--I'd love to hear everyone from 'Skills? Hate 'em!' to 'Skills? Natch'' folks here at TGT.

Best,

[Gaming] SO's 3.5 and Rackham's AT-43-

Goodbye-boy was in his last session of my SO's 3.5 game, and I must say, she put us through our paces. This was her fourth session of her first real GMing run, and it was pretty cool.

* 3.5: Wolf-shifter Elf and my this-that-and-everything character scout up to the outskirts of 'Gaehile' > sp? < (Wilderlands of High Fantasy), and my PC remains somewhat hidden while he goes back to fetch the rest of the party. Hobgobs detect me, and a fight erupts, a horn is sounded, reinforcements arrive as the party enters this alleyway. Classic error on our part. We slog through the first wave (my remarkable hits were met with crummy damage) and soon we are really taking hits left and right. Two party members each break to either side and flush out the Hobgob archers pincussioning us as their better armoured buddies stop the rest of us in our tracks. We eventually waste the first wave and move a bit just as the reinforcements begin to perforate my PC to within 3 of unconsciousness. The fight really engaged us, and she felt pretty good afterwards. --We said our fare-thee-well's to 'Ray', and headed for the other LGS.

* AT-43: Bought about $100 of 3 for 2 deals, and now have four of the (5?) faction Army Books. I purchased the Twins and Urod for my Red Bloc faction after using them in our intro-game a couple of weeks ago; picked up the MedTec set (2 busty nurses, and a doctor, plus a few cargo boxes as dressing); and purchased my SO a King Buggy flying vehicle for her Karman Gorilla faction.
--We played, and I had the twins piloting Urod alongside my much liked UNA Wing Troopers (Jump Packs) in a joint anti-Ape mission. Since this was our first unsupervised game, we had to dig around and find rules, making it a 3+ hour experience, but some of that was purchasing stuff, etc.
---I won this one (Urod with the Twins is a really tough cookie) with only two UNA troopers lost, to her entire force killed and the Buggy 'esplowded'.

* Thoughts on the two combats: While this is an 'Apples-to-Oranges' comparison, I'd say that the flexibility of the RPG, especially one in which the non-combatants Wizard was forced to crossbow a lot, and my 'not-a-meleer' only affected one Hobgob with Colour Spray, and thereafter missed with Acid Splash, and hit for 1 HP with Ray of Frost, reinforced the fun chaos of largely uncoordinated fights (arising from the on-the-fly stop-gapping and 'flanking'), while demonstrating how crazy it is for goobers like PCs to be doing the business of grunts and grogs.
--AT-43, for the variety of gear/attacks/movement capabilities the units possess, illustrated how deadly tight clusters of troops can be when 'bad stuff goes down' in their area. Fortunately, SO's last-stand AoE attack against my troopers wouldn't have been able to wipe them out due to the 6cm Command Radius and the standard wargamey rule that the Commander is the last figure to die, even with a drift, but still, it could have been messier. Likewise, Eligibility for Cover saved my UNAs (minus one) while my propitious Overwatch took out two of her damned dirty stinking apes pretty early on.

:: Which do I prefer?
--Lemonade. No, seriously. I like running in a more martially-informed RPG crew who are also quick-enough to adapt to new circumstances and be able to operate as meaningful detachments for as long as necessary, or conducive, before shoring up again and pressing on.

The Troll combat from last Friday, in which I got to illustrate the grogs' more tactical understanding (holding the chokepoint with a heavy flamer, while coilstock archers were harrassing the caster and his guard, made the PCs' defending those elements with melee support a really nicely oiled death machine ('skill + chance' as another blog has mentioned the wisdom of Ken St. Andre).
--I am hoping that as the SO GMs more, and plays AT-43, more, her playing tactically in my game will be a natural outgrowth.

I love the challenge. :)

[General][Specific][Other] ;)-

I apologise for not posting for a day or two (more?), but I've been out of sorts, but am doing much better now. Thanks for the patience.

• Also, hello to the new public subscribers. > waves <

So, yes, um, this 'ought' to have been the first week of the editing and polishing month toward the beta .pdf release, but you know how life goes. :)

I have been working with Peter Mullen on having a unified artistic feel throughout Vol. I and, my, it is looking very good. Peter is a real pleasure to work with, very professional and personable. The art alone promises to be great.
We are at the full incorporation of the 'iconic' figures in the cover's foreground, and they look sweet. :) After that, the colour begins. big grin

I am asking those inclined to pray for, or beam 'Good Thoughts' to Jeff Berry (of Qadardalikoi-fame), who is not feeling very well at all.
He and I have been discussing a project (I find fascinating, timely, and dare I say, important) which ought to fascinate anyone interested in the early history of in our hobby, as told by a witness to its proceedings. I'll keep you informed as it progresses.
Jeff is another golden individual I am blessed to have crossed paths with.

So, what is the state of Vol. I's text? Not in .pdf form, to be certain. :D
I've begun the mental layout process and letting my inspirational games help inform me of the order of elements, something I think is often overlooked in games (with 4E's PHB being a particularly odd example -- almost Lovecrafian in its bizarreness).
Likewise, last night as I was waiting to become sleepy-enough to go to bed, I was looking at the Tekumel Bestiary and its non-stat descriptions (the bulk of the work) and how the stats are entirely in the last few pages. That, my friends, is both cool, and ...not. Cool from an immersion PoV, but not in a gamist way. I think you see what I'm saying.
So, that's the sort of stuff I'm engaged in now, before I drive myself crazy (-ier) with swapping bits out and whittling text down to fit within my 96pp-limit framework. I'd like to keep it down to 64 pages, but am not certain if that'll happen. Ken told me long ago, "Less is more, unless it's not enough." I hear you, Ken (and James M.) ;)

One player is almost certainly not going to be at the game tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. Sometimes I feel like the jaded and low attention-span youth of today -- oh look, a squirrel! I foresee his leaving the game and that potentially ending the playtest game due to his connections with the LGS owner and 'typical guy' bull. I hope I'm wrong.
Regardless, Qerzyk's Dockface is burning, and the Hierophantic Church's agents are after both sets of the PCs (both their Primes and 2nds). Could get messy.

In other news, this post on the Ode to Black Dougal blog is a really interesting topic to me, given my background(s), and I thought I would share it with you cool cats.

Interview: Ken St. Andre (Creator of Tunnels & Trolls)-

(c) Copyright 2009 Ken St. Andre and Kyrinn S. Eis All Rights Reserved

The following is an interview with Tunnels & Trolls creator, Ken St. Andre, conducted via e-mail and re-printed here with his knowledge and permission.


* Timeshadows: Hello, Ken. Welcome to The Grand Tapestry. The bar wench will bring you a frosty mead in a moment. Do you mind if we get right into the interview?

Hello, Kyrinn,
Thanks for showing me The Grand Tapestry. Can't we just stick to the mead, best drunk warm, my lady, and skip the interview? Ah, I remember swilling mead with the Society for Creative Anachronism when I was a young and solitary troll--those were good times. To tell the truth, I'd much rather cavort with the barmaid than ramble on about ancient glories, but I guess an old troll has to take whatever pleasures are offered to him. So ask away . . .

* T: Alright, then. I know from other interviews, as well as our personal correspondence, that your original Point of View as regards Tunnels & Trolls was that of the fantasy titles that comic book publisher Marvel (and DC?, others?) put out in the '60-70's. Do you mind listing a few of the titles?

Marvel Comics made history with the release of Conan the Barbarian comics back in about 1970 with art by Barry Smith. I was already a big Conan fan, and I started buying them with the very first issue, which I still have somewhere in my back room. Conan was popular and other swords and sorcery comics appeared. Lin Carter's Thongor appeared in Creatures on the Loose even before Conan. D. C . Comics did an adaptation of the Grey Mouser and Fafhrd. I'm not going to do a history of fantasy in comics here, but there was plenty of good stuff available back in the 70s. I never saw a really good version of Lord of the Rings though (I saw some not so good ones).

* T: Which of those were your favourites, and what made them appealing?

I bought every sword and sorcery item I could find in those days. It wasn't as common as it is now. Conan, in any form, was my favorite, but I identified a bit with the Grey Mouser and also with Elric of Melnibone. Not that I was as short as a child or an albino by any means, but I never had the muscles of Conan, and always figured I'd live by my wits instead of my brawn in any fantasy world.

What made them appealing? Adventure, monsters, scantily clad women. All that carried over from my childhood love of Tarzan. Bookish, nerdy honor student Ken St. Andre would have done anything to be a fantasy hero--anything except join a gym and actually build muscles.

* T: With that knowledge, the 'explosive' Ability-score-growth of T&T makes more sense. Do you think that employing the 2-point per level Ability scheme found in Michael Stackpole's Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes would 'work' with T&T, or is the game intrinsically cinematic and for a lack of better word, 'heroic'?

Stackpole's MSPE was an attempt to do two things with T & T. He/We wanted to show that the game system could be used in any setting--and what is further from classic fantasy than 20th century detective/espionage fiction? And we wanted to add the whole concept of Skills to the Tunnels and Trolls rules. Mike jumped in and did all that with MSPE, and it worked well enough, but it never really satisfied me or caught my interest. Perhaps it's because I'm more of a swordsman than a shooter. In my youth I fenced (with foils and sabers), I wielded a 2-handed greatsword for the SCA kingdom of Atenveldt, I took archery in college and actually made the archery team for a semester--that despite having terrible vision. I could shoot, too, but I didn't shoot much or often.

As for the game being cinematic, imho, all role-playing games are inherently cinematic. They are crammed with fascinating characters and dangerous situations. The difference is in the game masters. A dull GM like me reduces it to an evening of jokes and dice rolling while a cinematic GM like Larry DiTillio (he of Babylon 5 fame) will deliver an adventure that you remember all your life.

* T: May I take us back a bit further?

Blow in my ear, and you can take me anywhere. :)

* T: demure smile

You have to understand that I was already designing my own games, (I did a Star Trek board game with competing empires that we spent many a Friday evening playing at the Cosmic Circle meetings) and writing my own fiction long before I ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons. I was heavily into fantasy, and hoped to write it for myself some day. Then around the end of 1974 I began to hear about this fantasy game called Dungeons and Dragons, but in the godforsaken wilderness that was Phoenix at the time, in the days before the internet, something you heard about in California was kind of hard to find in Phoenix. I was eager to play it, but clueless.

Then, on a gaming night visit, I finally found someone with the original boxed set of Dungeons and Dragons that he was showing off. No one was playing the game. Nobody knew how yet. But I borrowed it and read through it for a couple of hours. A lot of it made no sense to me. I had no background in miniatures, so talk about moving so many inches per turn was just gibberish. And the dice! What the heck was a 4-sided die, or a 10-sided one. Eight, twelve, and twenty sides!!! Not possible. At least, not obtainable by me at that time.

But I came away from my reading with a basic idea of what the game was supposed to be about. Adventurers invading the strongholds of wizards and monsters and coming back with treasure. Hey, this was just like the Conan stories I loved. I had to have this game, and if I couldn't easily get one, I wasn't about to wait. I would invent my own. And I wouldn't just copy what I'd read, but I'd make what seemed logical to me. Yes, adventurers needed attributes, and those attributes would be Strength, Intelligence, Luck, Constitution, Dexterity, and Charisma. What the heck good was Wisdom? Luck made a lot more sense. And they would need weapons and armor and magic. So, off to the library to research weapons and monsters. What does armor do? It absorbs damage. It doesn't make you harder to hit. Armor makes you easier to hit--it's heavy and slows you down, but if the hits bounce off, you don't get hurt.

And I used my antique typewriter and I wrote down everything about how to make a character, and how to make a monster and I created a dozen pages or so of something I could use to create that fantasy gaming experience that I had been hearing about. I tried it on my friends. They liked it. They kept borrowing and copying my notes, which were getting ragged fast, and they gave me ideas I hadn't considered at the beginning--like other kindreds. Why not play elves, and dwarves, and hobbits, and leprechauns? How could I have overlooked missile weapons? What do you do if you're in trouble--saving rolls were born--all on luck originally, but it didn't take long to generalize the idea to the other attributes. And it got to be such a pain having people borrow my notes that I vowed to produce a rulesbook for everyone. And by midsummer, with a lot of help from my friends, Bear Peters, Marc Anthony, Steve McAllister, Rob Carver, I got the first edition of Tunnels and Trolls typed up and illustrated and pasted together, and off to the Arizona State University print shop. 100 copies.

Basically, I saw a need, I jumped in and did something, and I got a deal with a gaming company--Flying Buffalo--that got my game out in the wider world beyond my own circle of friends. In those days everyone was creating their own versions of Dungeons and Dragons, but most people didn't publish, and their versions were closer to the original than mine, probably because they had played the original and understood it better. Thus, most of their variants perished and were absorbed back into the mainstream of D & D while T & T varied ever further from that basic inspiration to become the game it is today.

* T: What role do the fans of Tunnels & Trolls have in the release of, first, 7th Edition, and more recently, 7.5?

Fans provide demand. The idea that people would want the game enough to buy it is very inspiring to a writer/game designer. They also provide encouragement and feedback. T & T never really had any playtesting. I put it out there, and people played the games. If it didn't work for them, the rules say go ahead and change it to suit yourself. If someone told me how and why it didn't work, I might try something different via house rules which in turn might show up in the next edition. The current rate of advancement by using adventure points came from fans. 100 times the current attribute was way too slow for tournament games at a convention, but fans loved the ten times current attribute rate. Thus, to take STR from 9 to 10 only required 90 adventure points, and you could get that many in a couple of fights easily. Fans caused that change. Talents came about in 7.0 because of a perceived need (from fans) for Skills in T & T, and because I didn't like the mechanical sort of way Stackpole implemented them in MSPE.

* T: As an avid reader, I know you have a fairly expansive, favourite authors list, but I was wondering if you would share a few of them with us, as well as which stories/novels in particular you were most inspired by?

My favorite authors are all adventure writers: Edgar Rice Burroughs, J. R. R. Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Ken St. Andre (heh) and in comics I'd have to say my all-time favorite was Roy Thomas. There are hundreds of others that I like and admire very much, but those would be my tops.

* T: You have published fiction in Mage's Blood & Old Bones, and in your first novel, Griffin Feathers. How was that experience, and can we look forward to more fiction from you in the near future?

I always wanted to be a writer. I always thought I was. I've just been working a bit harder at it this last few years. And yes, there will be more fiction from me, right up until I die. Right now, you can read the continuing adventures (diary) of Lerotrahh on Twitter. It's fun, telling a story, 140 characters at a time.

* T: I recently saw your Top 25 RPGs list, and noticed several similarities to mine, even excepting our favourite KSA titles such as Monsters! Monsters! and Chaosium's Stormbringer. Tunnels & Trolls placed in the Top-10, didn't it?

Tunnels and Trolls came in 8th (behind 3 versions of D & D which I think should have ll been lumped together) in the RPGBlogII list of the top 25 rpgs. He got 150 responses, and I mobilized Trollhalla at the end to vote for T & T. Nothing like a little ballot box stuffing.

* T: One of our Top-10's, both, was MAR ('Phil') Barker's Empire of the Petal Throne (originally published by TSR). What comes to mind when you think of that product or Tekumel in general?

I heard about Tekumel from the beginning, and I love the world creation that Barker did with it. It's easy to see pre-Columbian and Japanese influences on the game along with other exotic cultures. Most of my familiarity with Tekumel comes from Barker's excellent novels about it--those I really admired. Barker and I exchanged letters once only back in the days before email, where he advised me to be more open-minded about other people's creations. I've tried to take that advice, but I never became a Barker follower.

* T: What is your current level of involvement with Tunnels & Trolls? Are there new T&T products by KSA being produced? Where does T&T live these days? Can you tell us more about Outlaw Press' as a producer of current and older-edition products?

I am more heavily involved with T & T these days than ever before. A lot of it comes from running the fanclub a Trollhalla
Jim Shipman of Outlaw Press is always after me to write stuff. With all the encouragement I'm getting, it's easy and fun to turn out new stuff for the game. The creation of T & T 7 and 7.5 has given me back that sense of evolution in the game that we had in the early years when I went through 5 editions in 8 years.

Outlaw Press is the creation of James L. Shipman, and it has figured prominently in the renaissance of Tunnels and Trolls in the marketplace. The best thing any T & T fan could do (or even if you're just curious) is visit their website and look around.

* T: Thank you, Ken St. Andre.

Thanks for giving me this chance to talk, Kyrinn. But I've probably put my foot as far into my mouth as I can get it for now. Now, where did that barmaid with the mead get to? (Trollgod looks around for action.)

End

Friday Pre-Game Monologue-

Hi,

* Ken has said that my questions actually forced him to think, so that is causing the delay. Let us take that as a positive sign.

* I have been expanding the role of the Ancients in shaping the PCs through four d% rolls to determine actual heritage, and the possibility of Imperial Legacy. Through this, I hope the little hints help form the image of the evolution of the setting, and how unique aberrations can develop into systematised mental routines or defining physical traits.
This is one reason why I think the subsequent book on Aberrations is necessary, as the full extent of the genetics-theme in the setting could easily drown the fantastical/adventurous, if included in the core rules -- and, may not even appeal to some play groups. By packaging it separately, it can play whatever role a given group assigns it in their game.

* It looks as if it was propitious timing for me to have started the APG secondary-characters, as Tybalt's player will not be present, again.
The new Apothecary 2ndary was happily fortunate to have rolled as an ancestor a Medical Officer, and along with the odd dreams and deja-vu, she gains a degree of competence at related Tests.
Ashta's ancestor was a Ship's Superstructure Technician, which immediately suggests a link to the Yirinn/Dryvv, and makes her Western Isles Vrun ancestry even more interesting.

* I need to think of which creatures will make the final cut of the book. Recent grog-hive-mind consciousness has informed me of the importance of a select and defining group of regular miscreants and inimicals upon whose weapons the PCs may fling themselves.

* Thinking of where I ought to look among my stuff, to find my copy of Jorune.

* When this work is complete, I think I'd like to run a Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes - Villains & Vigilantes crossover game. Likely just a mini-series (5-session?) affair, with pre-generated characters, likely on based on my most loved Bill Willingham Elementals setting.