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A gangly freshman, I come back to my room late from the fraternity that I am pledging, only to find that my jock roommate has gone on a rampage. Probably drunk for only the first or second time in his life, he has thrown up everywhere, smashed liquor bottles and is passed out naked on his bed. I look by my desk to see my Fifth Edition copy of Tunnels & Trolls lying on the floor - covered in liquor and puke. I pick it up and throw it in the trash. “What the heck”, I say. “Surely they’ll be releasing another edition soon”.
Flash forward twenty odd years later…
A wizened Loomis crouches in his lair somewhere in Arizona. He is surrounded by stacks of dust-covered solitaire adventures and Nuclear Escalation boxes. The phone rings. Loomis answers. There is a Canadian voice on the other end. The voice is making a proposal. Loomis opens his mouth to tell the voice where to shove his toque – but stops. Not even he is sure why.
And then something wonderful happens…
If you are not familiar with Tunnels & Trolls, it is one of the first roleplaying games ever published. Designed by Ken St. Andre as a reaction to what he saw as the too complex and expensive D&D, it was first published in 1975. It has been idling along in its 5th Edition for some twenty odd years. But thanks to the good people at Fiery Dragon, all that has changed. 7th Edition Tunnels & Trolls is here.
The 30th Anniversary Edition comes packed in a sturdy tin with familiar cover art from Liz Danforth, the artist that painted the cover for the 5th Edition. Inside the tin, you will find a spiral bound copy of the 7th Edition Rulebook, a slim copy of the Alternative Rules, a Monsters & Magic book, two sheets of tokens, a folded battle map, a CD and three six-sided dice.
The 7th Edition rulebook is 120 pages long. If you have played 5th Edition, the rules will be familiar, but there are significant changes. There are two new attributes – Wizardry and Speed. There are also three new character types – Citizens, Specialists and Paragons. The Warrior-Wizard from the last edition has been folded into Specialists.
Talents are a new concept that work basically like a skill system. All characters start with one Talent that is tied to a particular attribute. Some character types, like Rogues, have a predefined beginning talent, but most get to choose their own. There is no set list of Talents, only examples for the GM to use as guidelines. Talents are used with the Saving Roll system and a player gets to pick a new one every time his character gains a level.
Combat is still dead simple. Each side rolls their dice and totals them up. The side with the highest total wins the round. The difference in the rolls is then divided up among the losing side as damage. One nice tweak is to the Monster Rating system. T&T combat used to suffer from the ‘death spiral’ effect. As a monster took damage, his combat effectiveness decreased. This meant that when the monster started losing – it was all downhill from there. In 7th Edition, a monster’s adds are reduced by damage, but the number of dice rolled remain the same. This mitigates the ‘death spiral’ effect and is a good change. Another tweak is the Spite Damage rules. Every 6 rolled during combat does a point of damage to the other side, regardless of who wins the round and regardless of armor. This means that lucky rolls will wear down even the most powerful of combatants.
The magic system is basically the same, but gone are the days when Wizards had to burn Strength to power their spells. The new Wizardry attribute is used for the purpose now and I consider that a good thing. I used a similar attribute (Power) in my games for years because I thought the original system was a bit ridiculous. There are also other tweaks to the system. Wizards must now make a Saving Roll to cast spells successfully and a system of magic resistance has been introduced. A Wizard cannot cast a spell (even a beneficial one) on a target that has a higher Wizardry score. Spells have also been condensed from twenty levels to thirteen and new spells added.
The old level and advancement system has been thrown out. Character level is now determined by the highest of a character’s ‘level attributes’. For example, the level attributes for a Wizard are DEX, INT, WIZ and CHR. If Balbous the Great has 18 DEX, 22 INT, 25 WIZ and 19 CHR, his 25 WIZ is used to determine his level (which is 2nd level in this case). Characters still get attribute points for combat, saving rolls, etc. but these points are now used to directly raise attributes. It takes a number of attribute points equal to the attribute’s current value x 100 to raise it by one point. For Balbous, it would take 1800 attribute points to raise his 18 DEX to 19. As a side benefit, any Talent tied to the attribute raised also gets increased by the character’s level. So, if Balbous is 2nd level and he has just increased his DEX to 19, he gets to add 2 (his level) to any Talents that he has that are tied to DEX. A character also gets to add his character level to any missed Saving Rolls that are based on his level attributes, to see if he actually makes the roll.
The 22-page Monsters & Magic book gives stat blocks for twenty-four monsters, as well as advice for balancing monster rating to character level. There is also a new ‘special damage’ system introduced for some monsters based on how many sixes the monster rolls in a particular combat round. For instance, if a Minotaur rolls at least seven sixes on his combat roll, he automatically casts a befuddle spell. This is a neat tweak that adds some needed flavor to the system. The short magic item section covers magic staves, potions and other magic items. It also gives advice on creating and pricing magic items based on the power of their enchantment.
The 32-page Alternative Rules book is a completely different take on the 7th Edition rules and was written by Scott Holden. The alternative rules depart from standard T&T in numerous ways and I confess that for that reason I only skimmed through them. Attributes are determined differently. Characters get access to a number of different ‘archetype abilities’ based on their archetype. Weapons are rated for a number of dice, but no adds. Spells are divided into five ‘tiers’ based on their power, etc. They are certainly worth a read, but they were just too different from standard T&T for me and I don’t think I will be using them.
The added goodies in the tin, include the counters, battle map and CD. The counters and battle map are ok I guess, but does anyone ever really get much use out of these things? I would have rather had a digest-sized solitaire adventure instead. The CD contains PDFs of the included counters, regular and alternative character sheets, expanded equipment, combat examples, the buffalo castle solitaire and a scanned rulebook for Crusaders of Khazan, the old T&T computer game, which is also included on the disk. The stuff is also ok, but it seems to have just been thrown on the disk without much thought. Getting the computer game to run on a modern system should be fun and the rulebook scan is pretty bad. The expanded equipment is nice, but it looks like it was copied straight from a manuscript. The provisions list doesn’t even have a heading to say which column is cost and which is weight. There is no cost listed for gunnes at all.
I like 7th Edition Tunnels & Trolls, but it also makes me sad for what could have been. The digest-sized rulebook is cute, but mine is already getting a little tatty. I assume this format was a condition of the agreement to publish 7th Edition, but I would still like to see a regular-sized version with a little more room for expanded layout and content (I won’t even dream about a hardback version). The format makes the rulebook feel like a lot of content was abbreviated or cut out completely (I would love to hear Ken’s comments about this). Finally, the book itself could have stood some more polish. For instance, how does a Rogue improve his Roguery talent?
I’m glad to see the original rules-light fantasy RPG is bravely making it’s way into the twenty-first century. If it had come out ten years ago, it might have been a real revolution. As it stands now, it is a flawed, but still beloved addition to my RPG collection. I applaud Ken St. Andre for taking the time to author this edition and all the good people at Fiery Dragon for making it happen.
