New Year Post

Saturday Game-

Richard the alternate reality low-tech Fighter has a safari ship which he uses to capture / hunt exotic creatures in the Thousand Spiders asteroid belt.  The crew and his hired mercenaries ( a Dragonborn and a Dwarf ;; shrug ::) enter a region known as the Badsands, filled with sand, ooze, and water as well as asteroidal islands in search of a creature most like Horeshoe Crab, but fully enclosed and more insectoid.

The pilot was abusing Stim to stay alert while moving through this treacherous terrain and was relieved by the BioScience officer who suggested that they park and let the creatures come to them.  It was during this time that the Dwarf spotted a glittering light outside.  A quick telescopic enhancement revealed it to be a ship flying in a semi-random course.  Boarding it required fancy piloting and a zipline (the Gnome used his Wings of Flying), and it quickly became apparent that a bloody struggle had transpired; a female crew member's broken body floated in the shifting space of the ship's hall.

TL;DR: Biological Research and Seeder ship from a foreign polity had gone to the trouble to alter creatures and plants to maximise their adaptability to the Badsands and was doing it as clandestinely as possible when attacked by Chimp-Dog-like pirates.  A hot conflict forced the pirates to reconsider a return boarding and the intact crew of the foreign ship paid the PCs 1,000 Gold units to help repair and tow them in the direction of home.  The trajectory will take the ship near creatures 3 and 6 on the safari list.  The foreign BioScience crew helped the PCs with their Double Horseshoe Crab nab, with a mating pair.

Sunday Game-

Eleis the Aelbaan Frost Wizard was converted to her pre-Porphyry analogue, Elspeth Coldwell, a British archaeologist and anthropologist (covers for her magic use), in the Tunnels & Trolls 5.x / MSPE / Porphyry game system.  Together with a female version of Phillip Marlowe from the back of the MSPE book, the two had been invited to Savage island where Kenneth Allard (Stormhaven product from FBInc.) had invited numerous guests for a symposium on how best to solve each other's problems and make the world a better place in the process.  Among those attending were photojournalists covering war-torn regions, civilian commercial space explorers, archaeologists, nature documentarians, industrialists, extreme sports athletes, explorers, scientists in all fields of study, etc.  Stormhaven's guests began to dwindle as emergency calls and alerts called each away in turn.  Consulting social media and news outlets provided a pallet of reasons: economic crisis in the markets, arsonists burning the capitol of Kazakhstan, Sunni-Shiite reconciliation under a Jihadist banner violently sweeping up the Muslim world, and the discovery of a new, luminous object in the Solar system, among others.  This linked up with the detective's current case of a series of seemingly unrelated murders where the victims had been killed in various classical-element-related fashions, as well as other occult components.

Those guests who remained were invited by Allard to join him globtrotting in search for answers to these crises.  While aboard his high-tech dirigible, Elspeth discovered that an area of the ship not marked on the map was concealed from scrying, and brought the detective along to explore.  Gaining entry to the room with the hidden door, the  two entered a modern wizard's study and work room.  Allard met them there and gave Elspeth a copy of Anam Cara so she could investigate the occult symbols in the Celtic work, as their first stop would be the British Isles.  The archaeologist and detective are then asked by Allard to attend an esoteric play seemingly combining early forms of Theseus and the Minotaur, and Oedipus Rex and the Sphinx, starting at midnight.  Interested int eh original manuscript, Coldwell contacts the translator and arranges to read her digital copy.  As the pair leave in their hired cab, they are followed, but the tail gets into a traffic accident.  A random hail storm ponds the cab, and Elspeth befuddles the driver to drive through.  Around the time he wakes from the effect, they are out in the woods on roads covered with acorns and shrouded by the canopy of old oaks.  A short but memorable drive further over a rickety bridge brings them to a colonial African manor under a dome of ancient trees completely blocking out the sky; a figure is seen at the open door, and we hold it there.

I Do Declare...-

PORPHYRY: World of The Burn, a Tunnels & Trolls 5th Edition and Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes RPGs Setting and Accessory...is now in the hands of Jez Gordon for Layout & Artwork.

As soon as it is ready to transfer to LuLu and OneBookshelf (DriveThruRPG/RPGNow), I'll be letting you folks know.

In retrospect, I've had 19 characters, run by 16 Players, in the Porphyry setting, and I've only had the thing going since late December or early January.

I'm resting up a bit before giving Urutsk a similar minimalist treatment, then back to work on Porphyry regional sandbox guides, etc.

A plan to add Pages to this blog is in the works, so as to help sort things out so that the different games and settings will be more easily accessible to those interested.

On Thursday the 17th, I'll be part of a Game Designers Discussion Panel.

--More on that in a bit.

See you for plenty of gaming on Google+

Why My Writing a Tunnels and Trolls Product is Good For Urutsk-

You see, now that PORPHYRY: World of The Burn is nearly complete, I've a better idea of how to frame Urutsk products than before this.

I've read the comments you folks have left over these years, and I've taken them to heart, believe it or not.

Something playable should be out for the big U sometime this year.

And, if you dig on the T&T, you'll have that much less to wait.

Weekly games continue to be played on Google+: Wed & Thu are Urutsk, and Fri is T&T

Best,

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 ::

Wild West Tunnels and Trolls: Teq / Artifice Rank One-

This represents another part of the Woolly Wild West T&T thing I did back in, or about, 2000.

LINK

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

-=Guild Houses of Blood (an old Tunnels and Trolls 5 URUTSK Resource)=-

This LINK is to an old T&T5 version of my 'Red Planet' in the Av star system in which Urutsk revolves.

Body Types, fewer Bloods, Natures, non-human Species and alternate Human populations of the sister-planet, more fiddly bits, customisation, classes. Spelling and name changes are prevalent.

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

An old Tunnels and Trolls character of mine...-

This game was run by my dear friend, Brian Penn, using the Minarian setting of the old TSR boardgame, Divine Right, although using his heavily house-ruled Tunnels & Trolls setup.
---

NAME: H'Yuz Almshare Ki Taanvaaq're
|>Subtlestly Wrought Power, I Proceed from Spirit, a Sylph, not of this earth, but of the Highest Ever-Wise Glory, and dispatched as [His] angel<|

6'8"; female; elf; ash-wood white skin; dark purple hair; grey-blue left eye, right eye: leather patch; thin, cold lips; somewhat disingenuous smile; Piercing gaze. Lean and wiry build.

Taanvaaq is an amazonian elven woman draped in a mottled green tunic with matching breeches. Wears mottled green leather armour; armed with a sword-breaker, and a battered scimitar. An outcast among Elves of Neuss for deviant behavior, Taanvaaq was unable to complete her Wiccan initiations, and now wanders the outlands. Prone to interest in Gunnes and Alchemy rather than vernal traipsings, Taanvaaq blew-up a powder keg she found off a frequently traveled road through the nearby glade. A child was injured, losing her hearing, and Taanvaaq was cast out. She then entered less isolated lands, and began to interact with other kindred. She has heard many snide remarks regarding Elves, and so she has become the opposite. Gregarious, not-overly witty, and has gone out of her way to befriend any willing Dwarf she has met. She has a great love of the outdoors, but is equally delighted with tools and chemicals. Her main goal [was] to become an accomplished Gunnes user, Gunnesmith, as well as an Alchemist. After a very costly trek through the Goblin Mountains, Taanvaaq pursued a warlock who had been supplying the goblins, hobgoblins, and other dark kin with weapons, armour, and bare supplies. As he had been the impetous for the killing in the mountains, Taanvaaq spared no effort in avenging the blood of her lovers and friends.

Taanvaaq launched herself off Djaks and scrambled for a few yards on all fours. By the time she had her footing, she leapt over a fallen tree and did not miss a step upon landing; leaves scattered behind her.

By raven wing I speed my flight; by wheeling hawk I learn to fight; by moon above to give me light; I pass unhindered through the night; to taste the blood of my foe's life; by fire, water, earth and sky lead me through in the Maker's might!

But to others her chant was a ravening howl that receeded into the darkness.

She pursued him into the Eastern Lands, from whence he hailed, and after slaying him in a filthy alley, discovered that he was an official to the Great King. Now with a bounty upon her head, and Immerian charges of dissertation, and possibly murder, she has made refuge in the province of Anatom.

Most recently, she founded the Order of the Blood Star, serving the king of Anatnom to search out the goblin hordes that are infiltrating the walled, mountain pass city.

---

Taanvaaq finally overcame an anti-magical curse that had befallen Anatnom which would have prevented the mystical device, the Dawn Star, from shining over Anatnom and exposing her infiltrators and enemies, had she not succeeded in empowering it through her self-sacrifice.

I later had her appear as a minor divinity who helped those who love the land, but Taanvaaq always had a frightful wild side, and this manifested in a great likelihood of her slaying her petitioner if the cause was unjust or duplicitous.

She is a bitter-sweet character to Brian, due to her suicide through which her blood was used to cast a 'wish'/'prayer' to let the watery blood-red light shine in the darkness --a recurring theme as readers of this blog may have noted.
--To me, she was my only successful player character in nearly thirty years of gaming, insofar that she accomplished her goal.

Her name, and that of her created Magicked weapons, are derived from the Vrun language.

[General][Gaming] "But You're Wrong, Steve. You See, It's Only Solitare"-

It is confirmed that Wojo/Vysh' s player is moving upstate for better employment. :)
--I hope to have his last session, this Friday, be memorable for him.

Part of my Classic-Play years were spent listening to a LOT of Jethro Tull, and as I type this, Chequred Flag, off of the Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll, Too Young to Die album, is just ending, and Warchild is beginning.
--Not only do certain albums/songs remind me of certain times and games, but they seem to re-activate centres in my brain with the same sort of creative energies present then.

My mother, of all people, reminded me that I ran a lot of Call of Cthulhu (two or more years of 36-hour sessions each weekend), far removed from the 'right way' of dealing with the Mythos, but a method that kept even the more jaded GMs and picky players coming back.
--What was I doing then that worked so well, and had I lost it in the meanwhile?
---Happily, no, I still have the mental film projector playing in my mind, and am able to articulate it in 'real-time' keeping the PCs on their toes as much as Indy was forced to be back in Raiders, while keeping them totally off-kilter as regards what's around the next turn.

It's not in the holy writ of mouldering and soft-drink stained folio sized booklets, kids. Rather, it is in your noggin and in your heart. Loving the scenes you are describing. It seems to me, that unless you love the game you are running, you cannot expect your players to give much of a good golly about it, either.
--Formulae, charts, and reconstituting a 'lost art' through philosophising the perceived intent of other, now departed, game-players turned 'pros' is a deathtrap, in my worthless opinion.

So, what do I have planned for Friday? I can't tell you that, because now a few of my play group have the URL to this blog, but I can tell you that I am already thinking of the to-be-published Adventure Locations and how they are going to be set up, and even what they'll look like, whether I digi-paint the covers myself, or I continue to utilise Peter Mullen's excellent artistic tallents, or grab the talents of other great artists available in the Classic-Play community and elseswhere.
--To that end, I have made a contact of a local printer and wargamer, and need to discuss the technomantic page layout-look I am seeking for in Autumn Garden Vol. I. I'll need to get my Wacom digital tablet to communicate with my PC again, and then give this guy my roughs rendered in the various art programmes I've fiddled with for over a decade.

Furthermore, I have found a means of securing an actual boxed game release venue ready for brick and mortar stores, as well as selling them out of my home. This prospect, filling a boxed set with custom dice and up to date catalogue and other bit-inserts, thrills me with the same sort of giddiness that I felt when a really cool game caught my eye on The Compleat Strategist, Davie, Florida store when I was a wee cur in my tender teens.
--Likewise, cardboard figures have now progressed to the point where custom artwork can result in game-specific runs, Print on Demand, so that's pretty toe-curling (except my freshly broken one, that is).

Time for chocolate! :D

[RPG] I have been to the edge, and back!-

OK, not really that "monumentous" a trek, just reading through the Players' Manual and finding errors, inconsistencies, oddities, and other cool word-like thingies that need a fixin'.

My good buddy, Brian Penn, and I spoke on Sunday and he gave me his very non-D&D (and very Tunnels & Trolls) perspective on how it read and how terms he wasn't familiar with threw his initial perceptions for loops when they were later defined within the text. That was interesting. I think he's planning on posting those findings after he gets through with the Referee's Manual. I'll wait for him to speak for himself.

Beyond the new stuff (Sanguine Elements taking a larger role) I can see tighter editing on the background stuff in the PM, and some more of it being moved to either a Setting Manual, or the RM. Both groakes and Brian have given me great feedback on the Genetic Memory and incorporating it more fully into the low-tech setting of Early Autumn, without having to add rules mechanisms. Whew!

After tomo--, after today's (I'm writing this at 2am) game session, I ought to have the time to pore over the RM and make a list of what wisdom ought to be included. Some topics include city and nation 'building'; common-sense stuff about materials and their susceptibilities; how to make combat cool and exciting by thinking instead of coming up with boatloads of tack-on rules/feats/etc.; and, lots of imagination-inspiring (get the Ref out of a jam) tables to roll upon, from common folk met on roads, to random descriptions of Ancient complexes, etc.

If I have been somewhat more acerbic than usual (in other words, showing my personality rather than keeping this blog on task), I apologise for any wasted time in your blog reading lives. I hate that crap, too, and sadly, I occasionally slide into the cesspool.
--Having broken a toe on Tuesday night; getting into arguments with my father who is convinced I am keeping him from the Internet (although his Mac, too, seems to have been damaged in the lightning strike), and my ex- being diagnosed with Thyroid Cancer, I've been a bit ... stressed out.

So, here's to all of you gamers of all stripes who are going to be gaming this weekend.
--Do It Your Way, and old Blue Eyes will be smiling up from, er-- down from... Well, you catch my drift.

[RPG] Editing and Expanding the Manuals-

I spent the better part of yesterday/night looking over the Manuals, catching errors and looking at how bleak the Referee's looks on a surface skim.

Although the Ref's Manual is going to be expanded considerably, I think a lot of the best work (crunch-wise) in it is in the descriptions/explanations of the Terrain. Running with that, I plan on leaving out a lot of needless personal exposition, and instead, stick to encapsulated data designed to be immediately useful for the Ref in the playing of the game. If folks want a lot of gaming philosophy there are plenty of blogs on the subject.

& More like these bits from 5th edition Tunnels & Trolls:

* The Logic of Magic
* Unusual Combat Situations
* Personalising Monsters
* How to Be a GM
* "Do This When You Get Out"
* More about City, World, and Dungeon Building

Beyond those, I still have the Technology rules, and the entire 'Aberrations/Magic/High-Psionics (HiPsi)' section/book yet to edit/write. --and, the handful of Arcane spells (the term will dissolve, as there are no set lists in the setting) included were included because they were devised in-play in my Alpha game.

Your feedback is much appreciated.

Thanks,

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