Free RPG stuff tomorrow

Free RPG Day is almost here, specifically on Saturday, June 15.  Go here to find your nearest participating store.

New edition of Tunnels &Trolls this summer

Details here

Boycott Outlaw Press

It seems that James Shipman is continuing his thieving ways, blatantly ripping off the work of others for his Outlaw Press publications.  I confess that I'm not certain how much good it will do, but Paul Ingrassia over at the Troll Hammer Press blog is trying to organize a boycott, hoping to hit Shipman where it will hurt the most (the wallet).

T&T 8th edition?

It appears that Ken St. Andre has announced that their is work being done on an upcoming 8th edition of Tunnels & Trolls. I'm curious to see as to how it will differ, and how similar it will be, to the 7th and 7.5 editions of the game. In any case, it's good to know that the 2nd oldest published RPG still has some life in it.



Edit: or maybe not

Happy birthday, Ken St. Andre

Just wanted to wish a happy birthday to the Trollgod himself, Ken St. Andre.

If it wasn't for Ken's work on Tunnels & Trolls, I wouldn't be writing Trollslayers, and as a result I probably wouldn't be bothering with this blog.

So happy birthday, Ken, and hopefully you'll roll lots of doubles today!

Jim Shipman is back... unfortunately

I may not have a lot of contact with T&T fandom these days, but I still have enough goodwill toward the T&T crowd that what Jim Shipman is still up to pisses me off.  And I'm not the the only one whom it annoys.

Trollslayers

Shortly after Dungeons & Dragons was released back in 1974, a man named Ken St. Andre flipped through the rules, liked the idea, but disliked the actual implementation. He would go on to write Tunnels & Trolls, the second published RPG. For a while there, T&T was the #2 RPG out there, primarily on the strength of its simple rules, as well as a large number of solo adventures available for the game. Over the years, it's relative strength in the RPG market has diminished, but T&T has refused to disappear, thanks in part to a small-but-dedicated fan base.

I have been on the periphery of T&T fandom for several years, as the game is one that has simultaneously intrigued and frustrated me. I like the simple rules, the unabashed old-school feel it has, and the DIY attitude it seems to encourage. That said, there were also several elements present that didn't appeal to me. Some of these were fairly easy to house-rule, but others were more problematic; re-writing them to my liking would effectively mean re-writing the game from the ground up, instead of merely having some house-rules in effect.

In the past, I've always stopped short of making that extra step; too much work, and it's not like there were any lack of other games to vie for my interest. But recently, the kernel of an idea on how to rework T&T more to my personal tastes began to take hold, and wouldn't go away. Very little is on paper (or computer) as of yet, but the ideas are swimming around in my head; altering the basic attributes, scaling them so that increases are more linear that geometric, using the 'saving throw' roll as a universal action mechanic, deleting the need for a separate damage roll, re-writing magic from the ground up, adding some simple rules for professions and talents, and a few other changes here and there.

The tentative name for this new set of rules would be Trollslayers; I want to be honest and acknowledge the game's heritage, and having 'troll' somewhere in the title seems to be a good step in that direction. It would be very much 'old-school' in feel, with rules for things like hiring henchmen, morale checks, an emphasis on exploration, not shying away from player-character mortality, rules for building castles and ruling domains, etc. It would not be a 'retro-clone', but rather more of a 'heartbreaker' (albeit a self-aware one). It would have bits and pieces of several other games (D&D, Runequest, TFT, among others) mixed in, hopefully hitting that sweet spot between simplicity and detail that I like. It probably won't appeal to anyone else – if it does, great, but that's not the primary goal – but if it keeps me happy while running it, and my players happy while playing it, then I will have accomplished my goal.

So that's the mission statement, I guess. Future posts will break down and detail different aspects of the rule system as I work on them. Hopefully, by year's end I'll have enough to knock out a basic playtest document, and then see what happens from there.