Tunnels & Trolls advice
Peter Nordstrand:
I'm about to start a Tunnels & Trolls campaign. I've wanted to try it out ever since Ron published his actual play reports a few years back. We are aiming at a mini campaign of about five play sessions or so. Three players plus me is probably best, to make it scheduling easier.
I bought the 7th edition (30th anniversary rules) about a year ago. However, I have been hearing that these rules may not be the best for providing the ultimate T&T experience. I would like some advice in this regard. What is the difference between the variuos editions. Is there any rules I should ignore in the 7th edition? If so, why?
What about character generation and gm prep? I am thinking of coming up with a simple backstory, a basic setting and a couple of dungeons to explore befor we start making characters. I am thinking about something simple, like the old Keep on the Borderlands setup as I remember it from my early D&D experiences. Is this a good approach, do you think?
I'm a little unsure how to best prepare dungeons for this game. Advice anyone?
Thanks in advance.
Eero Tuovinen:
I actually agree with the 7th edition being worse than the older stuff. The problem is, I don't have the older editions at hand, so I can't reliably check to see if I'm just imagining some better rules in the older stuff.
The classic campaign set-up in Tunnels & Trolls used to revolve around one large dungeon which the GM stocks and restocks in between adventures; delving to the bottom of the dungeon would take a lot of sessions. The game would be framed such that this dungeon is the point and substance of play; there is no question of where the characters go or what they do, because the dungeon is the only option. The GM would not necessarily do more than sketch the overall dungeon at the beginning, as he could anticipate the progress of the players and stock up as the game progresses. The 7th edition has considerably loosened up these assumptions, of course, but you might wish to consider this set-up for the simplicity of it.
One thing that I'm sure about in comparing the 7th and older editions is that there is much less verbiage in the new text about character stables than there used to be. The new text has moved towards pre-loading character significance in general, so perhaps you'll want to tone that back a bit; the game works better when 1st level characters can get killed without the player losing a lot of backstory investment and having to stay out of the game for the rest of the session. The older editions used to work with this by having the players create several characters, between which they'd switch at times.
The new characters classes, or at least a part of them, are pretty strange. In general, though, when I read the new edition and almost ended up playing it, I got stuck in a bit of a revision cycle that threatened to swallow the whole game; for some reason the new edition has all sorts of bits that do not satisfy me. I could swear that the game used to have different xp rewards for failed and successful saves, for instance, while the new edition rewards both based on how difficult the save was to make.
If you feel interested in how the game might be GMed in practice, check out what I wrote about my own challengeful fantasy adventure that I ran a couple of weeks ago; it might have something useful in terms of approach and techniques for your purposes as well. I ultimately ended up using a homebrew D&D variant for the game due to not getting a grip on my dissatisfaction with the new T&T edition, but the method of play is essentially identical.
Ante:
Hope you'll have a good time Peter! T&T is one of my favourite games. It is an interesting blend of old-school gamism and more modern narrative gaming.
The 5th ed have some differences from the 7th, but none that I feel is of major importance. There are more types in the new one (that's "classes" for the D&D crowd) but they don't add that much. The biggies are Talents, Magic Resistance and Experience. I absolutely do *not* agree with Eero that 7th ed should be worse, and I don't understand who he in agreement with.
The way magic works now, with a Saving Roll to activate and with Magic Resistance, some feel it's tougher on the magic users that it should be. Note though that it's balanced by the fact that you'll get more AP from all those Saving Rolls and it should even out.
If there is something that should make or break a 7th ed game compared to a 5th ed one is "Kremm Resistance". If you feel magic should be something that can be resisted just take it out. The game wont break without it. Personally I like it.
The way T&T is usually set up is with a dungeon, but it's not like any other game can't be played with it. Actually, if you've played a game before by using Bangs I think you can use similar thinking in T&T to good effect.
Since the combat is very abstract, there's tons of opportunity to let the players narrate what's happening. The Saving Rolls is the main way to generate experience points and when the players know that they will want to get any opportunity to ask you to make a roll! Throw them a bone (like a Bang) and see what they do with it and then move on. You could build a dungeon like a vague tree of rooms that's populated with "bangs" in every room they encounter. An old school dungeon with any kind of crazyness in each and every room works excellent for this.
"Let's throw in a bizarre trap and let them call for SR's and narrate cool stuff while rolling dice!"
or the next room
"Let's throw in a bunch of hobgoblins here that have a thing for tauting hobbits and see what the party hobbit does with that!"
Hope you have fun. I play both Dogs and T&T these days and they complement each other perfectly.
Ante:
Oops! Forgot one thing Peter! You'd probably like to make the standard advancement be 10x the value of a stat and not 100x like the 7.0 book says. In the newest 7.5 ed that's how it works. It's also more in line with 5th ed.
Go wild
Peter Nordstrand:
Thank you both for your insights. I do appreciate it. You seem to agree on scenario/dungeon design principles, which I am taking to heart.
Regarding the rules:
Here's an old thread discussing (amongst other things) the virtues and flaws with 7.0 versus earlier editions. That's probably where I first picked up the idea that 7.0 is not quite as good. I'm rereading it right now. Indeed, there seems to be some significant differences, and the subject is surprisingly thoroughly examined in a wikipedia article. I also found an abrrevated version of the rules at http://www.freedungeons.com/rules/, and am using it for comparison. (Not that I'm quite sure what version this actually is. My guess is 5.5.)
The only problem is that all of these online resources is making me even more confused, and are giving me a hard time deciding what route to follow, rules wise. Something tells me that the more complex later rules aren't really needed for what I am looking for (which is a "look what funky moves I just made up, please reward me by oohing and aahing" kind of gamism).
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