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Free RPG Day Review #6: Tunnels & Trolls Featuring Goblin Lake Solitaire Adventure
The inaugural Free RPG Day was held on Saturday June 23rd in the USA and Saturday 21st July in the UK. Its aim was to bring gamers and potential customers into their local games store by making available a number of free mini supplements kindly provided by the publishers. Each is intended to introduce and showcase a particular RPG or range of supplements, either already available or forthcoming. The purpose here is to review as many of the following as possible in a series of mini-reviews, taking into consideration how well each stands on its own, how good each serves as an introduction or prequel to another fuller product, how well it stands up as Free RPG Day product, and just how good it is in general.
I have access to the following items, for which I would like to thank Roj at Wayland's Forge:
These do not constitute the full list of items available on Free RPG Day. There were some items that I was not able to get hold of and there cannot offer a full review.
* To be fair although I have a copy of The Rifter which was given away on the day, both time and personal prejudice will probably prevent me from giving a fair review. I declined a copy of the Flashpak for Cyberpunk 3.0 as I did not think that I could do a fair review of it following the extremely unfavourable review I had to give Cyberpunk 3.0 elsewhere. Similarly, Return to the Tomb of the Five Corners, GURPS Lite Fourth Edition, and Scion: the Hero have been covered elsewhere in detail, though all do a decent job of introducing their respective games.
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Tunnels & Trolls Featuring Goblin Lake Solitaire Adventure is one the several titles made available on Free RPG Day both in the USA and the UK. It comes as a 16-page booklet on glossy paper, including the cover and contains not just the Quick-Start Rules for one of the hobby’s oldest RPGs, but also a complete dungeon designed for solo play and a mini-adventure for use with an actual group of players.
The Quick-Start Rules are a shortened version of the Tunnels & Trolls game, which shows in the limited choice of character types (or classes), armour, weaponry, supplies, monsters, and magic. Elves, Dwarves, Hobbs (Hobbits/Halflings), and Men can be created, though the character types are limited to just Warriors and Wizards. Outside of the adventures no other monsters are given, and apart from money and gems, no other treasure types are given.
Yet all that is enough to play through everything included in the booklet and more. Not necessarily much more, but a GM could easily use the rules to run up an adventure or two, the material included enough to take the characters to 5th level. The booklet states that the rules herein differ from the earlier Tunnels & Trolls 5.5 Edition and the more recent 7th Edition, but they are undeniably Tunnels & Trolls. That is, slightly wacky -- especially the spell names -- and the use of dice pool mechanics to escape the obvious wargaming heritage of Dungeons & Dragons that Tunnels & Trolls was written in response to.
The first of the included adventures is Goblin Lake, a solo adventure written in 1979 and long out of print. Although it could be played by an ordinary adventuring character created using the Quick-Start Rules, Goblin Lake is designed to be played using a Goblin character, who enters the famed Goblin home of Fishsquish Lake and joins the tribe lead by King Snorkin. This is an eighty entry solo dungeon, one that nicely shows off the Tunnels & Trolls mechanics. The adventure gives a Goblin character the opportunity to usurp the throne from Snorkin, delve into the tunnels around the lake, and come up against the lake’s toughest denizen. In fact, the dungeon is itself quite tough, relying heavily on its dice rolls to over come it challenges. Not that these dice rolls are in any way difficult themselves, Tunnels & Trolls being a fairly easy system.
The full adventure, “Riverboat Adventure,” is understandably a direct and simple affair. It gives a quick run through of what the GM and the players need to do prior to the adventure itself, essentially getting the characters started in the city of Khosht where they have taken employment as poleman/guards aboard a riverboat. The adventure really only consists of two encounters along the river journey, but the GM can easily add more by developing the NPCs included as passengers and by designing encounters of his own to include.
What is so nice about Tunnels & Trolls Featuring Goblin Lake Solitaire Adventure is that it so complete. There are one or two elements missing -- it would have been nice if a few monsters and one or two sample magic items had been included to round out the booklet. Neither of them is really necessary, because the point of the book is to give everyone a taste of the game, not a complete game in itself. The solo adventure, Goblin Lake is a nice addition and gives players a taster of gaming format that has for the most part, passed into gaming history.
Highs: The complete rules, plus two adventures? What more can you ask for?
Lows: Perhaps a few more monsters and some magic items might have made this a more fulsome taster for Tunnels & Trolls.
Overall: There might be newer games and newer versions of games, yet Tunnels & Trolls has changed little -- still a bit goofy, still a bit clunky, but tongue kept in cheek this is still fun.
For Free RPG Day: Another pleasingly well done introduction to both a game line and an individual product that is aging like an incorrigible old relative.
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