Sunday, March 29, 2020

Tunnels and Trolls

Just talked about the 2nd RPG ever released, Tunnels and Trolls, on the store's Facebook page. Tunnels and Trolls cam about because, even in 1975, some people thought D&D too complicated. Tunnels and Trolls has a very basic system for combat. Weapons are rated for so many dice of damage. Everyone on each side rolls their weapons's dice, adds in any bonuses they might get, adds the totals together and compares the total to the opponent's total. The higher number wins the combat and does damage equal to the difference between the two totals.

Any armor worn can absorb that damage to a point, but any 6s rolled are called "spite damage" and the opponent takes the damage in "spite" of how much armor they might wear.

T&T was the first system to use a point system for magic. Wizards had a certain number of magic points and could cast spells as long as they had points. In addition T&T was the first system to use a sliding saving throw based on difficulty. A fairly easy task would require a roll of greater than 20- the applicable statistic. Harder tasks would add 20 to the required saving throw number.

T&T also worked well with solo adventures. since the system was so simple, an author who knew what they were doing could make up a sufficiently challenging yet easy to play adventure and the publisher sold thousands of these over the years.

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