[Tunnels & Trolls] Colonizing goblin lands
Eero Tuovinen:
That's it, Olli, you hit the nail in the head! Both of those are definitely part of the assumptions in this style of game, assumptions which I didn't lecture about too much through the game. It was more show and tell, but in hindsight it's obvious that the compartmentalized encounter thing would make much of the process of the game seem weird for the unprepared player.
Structured leadership is a feature I'm very fond of myself in a team-based challengeful fantasy adventure game. I've sort of encouraged that in my home game by requiring the players to organize themselves purposefully and define their goals clearly to get xp at all.
newsalor:
Hey Eero,
If you could have houseruled all you want, what would have you done? I'm asking, because based of the sessions the other week, I'm thinking about how I would run T&T. Also, I think I'll be able to collect the books from the post office tomorrow.
Eero Tuovinen:
That's a good question. The last time I tried to hash this out on paper in detail I got stuck due to time crunch. Our sessions in Oulu pretty much convinced me that the equipment system of the game doesn't really do anything I'd be interested in, so that'd probably be my first pick to change. I'll write this up in detail at some point, but what I'd do is, I'd replace individual weapons with "combat styles". So you'd have the average "brawling" at Strength 12 and 3 dice, then "civilian" style at strength 8 for 2 dice, something exotic like "ninja fighting" at 5 dice or whatever for those high dexterity types and so on and so forth. A monetary outlay could also be attached if desired for that low-level zing - you could only use "ninja fighting" if you had "ninja equipment" at XX gold pieces, or perhaps it's the training you have to pay for. Either way, I'd get rid of those hyper-detailed equipment names and replace them with a tidy list of a dozen or so different fighting styles, out of which any player could easily choose the optimal one for his character's current statistics. The part that really messes me up in the current equipment lists is the cross-referencing and alphabetic order; even if you know what you're doing and are just trying to find the optimal weapon for your character, you still have to go through the entire list of 200 weapons to find it because they're sorted by name and type instead of ability requirement.
Another larger fix I'd go for would be to replace the ability set with one that I'd like more. The way T&T handles abilities is very powerful, and I like how the abilities go up as characters gain experience, but I'm not necessarily entirely happy with the list of abilities itself. This is really 80% just a matter of taste and crazy game design urges - I have this notion that I should be able to redefine the procedures of the game in a way that'd allow different characters to have different ability sets altogether, and curiousity drives me on. But then there's also the fact that the abilities need to be imaginatively interesting - as you'll remember, I already dropped the extraneous Speed attribute they've added to the game since 5th edition simply because I can't deal with it as meaningful in the fiction next to strength, dexterity and constitution. Likewise I change the name of "Wizardry" into "Soul" just to make it sensible to my own aesthetics. Left to fiddle with this on my own, I'd probably end up with some ability set akin to the one I've been using in my D&D hack - Body, Wit, Will, Learning, Charisma and Luck, for instance.
A minor bit I'd fix would be to give wizards starting spells based on intelligence as opposed to giving them all 1st level spells. This is mainly a setting issue; T&T is not always entirely clear on what parts of the game are rules and what parts are setting, but in this case the reason wizards get that long list of spells is that they all belong in the guild with a standardized teaching method in the designer's game. I'd probably replace this with something else just to get out of a technical conundrum: what happens when a new 1st level spell is introduced into the game? Does a wizard learn it retroactively? If not, then what exactly is the list of spells he learns at chargen? I'd have to put some sort of less vague limit on that spell-learning than "all 1st level spells" anyway. This also has the positive effect of giving low-level wizards something to buy, as they can get more 1st level spells.
Those are the sort of things I'd do just to make the game bearable. Just for fun I'd add a maneuver system for fighters: sort of like spells, but activated by spite dice which the fighter could spend in battle to make special attacks. The 7th edition monsters tend to have this sort of mechanics, so it's easy to copy it for fighters. Perhaps fighters would pay money to learn this stuff as well; otherwise they don't tend to have the sort of money-sinks spell research is for wizards. This sort of houseruling is easy and fun in T&T, so nothing particularly special to it.
I'd also remove the 7th edition talent system and replace it with my own, which I pretty much already did when we played. The system in the book is just embarrassing.
What else... Those are the largest changes I'd make, frankly. Perhaps something else would come up after extensive play, but for the most part I'm really quite happy with the T&T rules system. Not like D&D, which lends itself to endless fiddling.
newsalor:
I'm leaning towards a similar direction.
I was thinking about character creation, races and rolling your attributes. I think that the overman approach worked best while the multiplication seemed cumbersome. So what I would do would give the goblins for example 2D6 in Charisma, but 4D6 in Strenght with the rule of 3 in force. You would't ever get triples with 2D6, but 4D6 would have a much greater chance of getting 3s than 3D6.
The stat spread that we used in the game suits me just fine, but I think I'd use the key stats thing in the book. Warriors would have the physical stats as key stats, scholars the mental and rogues would have all stats. In the rulebook it says that you can only use the level bonus on saving throws on those stats and you only level based on the same stats. This would give the rogues a lot more flexibility.
The talents I would ditch / change. I'd actually implement the character class thing from your D&D homebrew with the classes representing either a wide area of expertise like a vocation or a special advantage like knowing first level magic, having the fighter bonuses or having cheaper magic. The zeroeth level would represent childhood, so a beginning first level character would essentially have 2 class levels.
I'd keep the restrictions that the scholar, warrior and rogue arctypes have, but like a first level warrior would have something like "Lovable street urchin" and "Soldier (warrior bonuses)" levels with the first one of those providing rerolls in a wide variety of situations and the second one giving warrior bonuses. Likewise a wizard character could have something like "Gifted Child (cheaper magic) and "Scarlet Order Initiate (1st lvl magic)", but skills in the rerolling sense.
The neat thing with this system would be that a 1st level rogue would have the extra vocation naturally, because almost all special advantages would be denied to them. So you could have a first level rogue with "Scarlet Order Initiate (1st lvl magic)" and "Vagabond" or "Thief" and "Trapper". Combined with the saving rolls this would elegantly make rogues the jack-of-all-trades they deserve to be. If both vocations would apply to a saving roll, I would perhaps give a second reroll or perhaps some added bonus to the success?
I'm also contemplating solving the magic problem with ditching the spell lists completely in favor of a more freeform approach to magic. However, I'm thinking about having the level of magic that the character knows, determine its scope and then using the power of the saving roll system in implementing it. Spells would cost soulpoints according to their level in the power of 3 with the first level being smoke and mirrors or in general efects that would effect the circumstances for one character. A bolt of fire would be a second level spell consting 9 soul and with a fourth level spell, you could have a big wave hit a 100km stretch of coastline.
To access second level spells you'd also have to devote two levels to a particular style of magic. Let's say that the Scarlet Order would have a style of magic including summoning, illusion, hypnosis and all sorts of things that you can do with different parts of all sorts of lotus plants. If you had something like "Scarlet Order Dropout (1st lvl magic)" and "Scarlet Order Renegade" (2nd lvl magic)" and you'd want to learn elemental spells, you could apprentice to a elementalist and when you gain your next level, you could take "Elementalist apprentice (1st lvl magic)" or something.
The weapon/equipment side is actually the only part that I don't have a clear vision yet, so if you come up with something, do tell.
Eero Tuovinen:
Sounds good to me. I agree with you that the multiplication thing with non-human character abilities is not very pleasing aesthetically. Then again, I'm not that much of a fan of lots of different weird demihumans as player characters anyway, so it's not much of a problem for me, especially as the character race hardly impacts the numbers after character creation. I could imagine going with simple bonuses in D&D style, too. Whatever makes sense for the specific aesthetic of the campaign world; the thing I like about T&T is that it's very easy to create new content for it due to its simplicity.
That rule about only using the level bonus on key stat SRs is news to me. The new rulebook is arranged in a pretty confusing manner, so no wonder that I'd miss something like that. Sort of makes sense for why the game even bothers with the key statistics: without that rule there is not much point to it, as a player will focus his ability improvements on abilities that actually fit his character concept and character class - in other words, a key stat will be the highest anyway without any need to enforce it.
Using feats like you describe to implement special privileges is a pleasurable approach - "feats" being what I've been calling those special powers you get in my D&D homebrew. I'm not sure if I'd do it in T&T, but that's just my personal weirdness talking, not wanting to mix currents or something like that. No reason not to make the characters a bit more detailed if you feel like it.
Losing the spell list is certainly a simple approach. I'm hesitant of doing it myself at this point, but that's mostly because the spell lists are one of the largest sources of structure that T&T has. If you device a feat system as replacement, then it's not a problem of course.
Overall, good vision. I'll have to make a point of harassing you about this when I manage to lure you to visit us here in Upper Savo. I wouldn't mind playing T&T as a player, it seems that I'm almost the only GM for it in the country.
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