Mail Room: Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls

Look what came in the mail today, the Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls Rulebook. First impressions? 363 pages of awesomeness, especially if you if are a long-time fan. This is the 8th edition, and I have probably been collecting editions of this game since the early 1980's when I fell in love with the system.

The original creators are at the helm for this one, and it is one of the few RPGs that has maintainted the same creative team for over 40 years of print. Liz Danforth takes the editing role this time, and she also contributes art, which is noteworthy since she is also a well-known artist for Magic the Gathering. Ken St. Andre from the original game is the primary author, and the two together again deliver some incredible streamlining and game design. There are even notes on design decisions sprinkled throughout the book, and these alone are a fascinating look into the evolution of the game.

Overpowered but Balanced

What strikes me about this game is that is it unafraid to make warriors real masters of war, wizards truly powerful, and rogues a master of trickery. The base classes are almost overpowered in their specializations when compared to each other, and completely over the top when compared to the "everybody is roughly equal" of the D&D world view. Warriors add 1d6 per level to their attacks. Wizards are second to none at casting destructive spells and repeatedly flinging destruction from their hands. Rogues can both fight and cast magic in the same turn, but do not get the mana-reducing benefits of a mage or the extra dice of a fighter - but are still incredibly fun, flexible, and deadly all the same. Every character class feels like it flagrantly breaks the rules and feels overpowered, but in the grand scheme of things they feel balanced in power levels between each other and I want to play them all.

No Ability Score Limits

T&T uses an open-ended attribute system with a point-buy system for raising attributes. You get "adventure points" for defeating foes, saving rolls, spell-casting, and special events and you use those points to increase your attributes. While they start at the 3d6 norms you may be used to, they can ramp up past 20...30...40...and even up into to the hundreds. You want to be Thor with a STR of 100? You can do that here, play that, and still be challenged in fights while playing alongside rogues with a DEX of 100 and wizards with INT scores past the century mark. Everyone is hilariously overpowered, but it all works together well. The monsters are also hilariously overpowered at times, but again, you need that Thor to beat back the alien-intelligence infused dinosaur wielding a steampunk auto-cannon and a serrated long-sword the size of a telephone pole.

No Level Chart

There is no level chart. Your "level" is calculated by your highest attribute divided by ten. You have a CON of 33? You are a third level character now. You get no "hit points per level", since your CON is your hit points. You want more hit points? Raise your CON. You want more mana? Raise your WIZ score. You want to do more damage in combat there are a couple scores which feed into your combat adds, like STR or DEX. I like this system, and it removes the silly and balance-oriented limits other games use because high ability scores break the rules. The rules here handle high ability scores, and in fact, expect them at higher levels for characters to survive.

Make Your Own Monsters

Monsters are DIY and their abilities are mostly GM fiat. Every monster is rated by a "monster rating" which is a dice-plus-adds calculation, and their attack is a bulk dice total against thew party's dice total. If I want laser-eyed floating eye-pods to swarm out of the yawning dungeon chasm, I assign the group a MR and have those "laser eyes" be the attack which the MR represents. I don't need long stat blocks for them, nor do I need carefully provisioned differences between ranged attacks and melee attacks and how this all works out on a grid. If I want a monster's damage to weaken instead of kill, I will say the damage goes to STR instead of CON. If the party gets covered by sewage I will reduce their CHR ten or twenty points, fine, but some of them may still look better than the average peasant because they are so damn charismatic. That is this game.

Aggregated Combat is Freedom

It is a aggregated combat system that simplifies, but in that it gives both characters and the GM an incredible freedom from having to follow a strict combat checklist every turn. Back in the day, the system was created as a simplification in comparison to the more structured old D&D rules, and while D&D has gotten more structured over the years (only recently making a move back towards simplicity), T&T has remained its simple and original brilliantly aggregated self.

It doesn't matter that off-hand dagger use is a at a -4 or whatever, and that the flanking bonus of being here versus there is a +2 - none of those little, trivial things matter. You are all fighting together as a team, the monsters are doing the same, and every ounce of magic, sword swing, or ranged fire contributes to the total effort on each side, and helps push over that grand total of power against the opposing side. In a sense, this is more realistic than micro-managing every tiny modifier and situation by some classic war-gaming rule, and better simulates a cinematic action scene where a group is all using their powers together in a climactic battle scene like something out of an Avengers movie.

More Soon...

I also have the PDF from Drive Thru RPG (on sale for $20 right now), and I have the basic rules sections printed out for play - a must for group play since I can staple together the spellbook and character creation parts separately and pass those around the table. I do not like "passing the book around" the table during play since it slows down everything, and can easily waste the first two hours of play as everyone likes to read and consider options - while the others wait for their turn. Plus, if a printout gets ripped, scribbled on, or destroyed by Cheetos hands I can just print out another.

Plus the PDF can live on my phone where I will always have it for reference. T&T is simple enough I could play from my phone with a dice rolling app and some scrap paper or napkins for character sheets.

It is great to see a classic system come back as a part of Kickstarter, and have the deluxe, definitive version of the game (though the 5th edition is still very popular (with no PDF for this version), and there is even a simple free version available as well, along with a PDF of the 7.5 version for $15). It is worth saying that all the versions are still very much compatible with each other, and all the old single and multi-player adventures still "work" together well. For me, the Deluxe version is where it is at, incorporating the best-of parts of newer versions, while simplifying the too-many-options parts of everything since the tent-pole 5.5 version of the game.

This is a game I loved and it is great to see it back again.

UPDATE: The 5th edition PDF is now available!