A Boy and his Troll

My first memory of T&T was a long, long time ago. I was very young and in some bookstore at our local mall leafing through a Dragon magazine, being a D&D player at the time. At the back, there was a comic called Wormy and the characters were playing a game called Tunnels & Trolls. I don't remember exactly how it went, but here's the gist: One player, who I think who was playing an ogre, was trying to break down a door. The GM told him to make a dexterity roll. The roll was failed, but the GM ruled that because he missed it and had such a HUGE strength and like a 3 dexterity, the door was intact but that there was now an ogre-sized hole in the wall.

I thought it was very funny (children being easily amused) and that it sounded like it would be a fun game to play. At that point, I thought that the T&T was just a parody of D&D that the writer of the comic had made up. They didn't carry it at our local gamestore, so I had never heard of it... until I found a book called "Dicing with Dragons" by Ian Livingstone.

Contained inside was summery descriptions of D&D, Runequest, Traveller AND a game called Tunnels & Trolls. It went into great detail, describing character creation, combat, monsters, saving-rolls and a few spells, monsters, weapons and armor. I was amazed at how compact and logical the rules were. No strange "Saving Throws". Armor protected you from damage instead of making you harder to hit. In fact, with a few elaborations on my part, it was enough to play the game. My friends and I started playing it, casting our D&D books aside.

During this time, I also picked up the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks that had recently come out, Warlock of Firetop Mountain being the first I think. Excellent and as close to a T&T solo as you can get without actually being one. I still have them.

Much later, while in San Francisco, I found a T&T rule book in a bookstore. I grabbed it. I still have it, though the binding is totally gone and it is now held together with a paper-clip.

I read it cover-to-cover that night. I found that many of the rules that we had been playing with were very close to the official rules and switching over was painless.

We played for a while, as we went into High School.. but then my gaming group broke up, going off to do other things. I bought and played solos until eventually I couldn't find any more. My T&T books were packed away.

Many years passed. One night, while sitting in a coffee shop with some of my friends, someone mentioned Tunnels & Trolls... my rulebook was dug out of the closet and we started playing the night after.

The party consisted of my friend Eric, playing a Leprechaun named Lucky, and Paul, playing a Samuri-type Warrior named Sabuku while I GMed. Those were some of the best games that I remember, both of them having great senses of humor which fit so well into the tongue-in-cheek style of the T&T world.

At one point, when confronted with awesomely powerful evil wizard and his pet dragon, the situation seemed helpless. While the wizard gloated, Lucky whipped out a magic "Kick Me" sign that he had found on previous adventure and slapped it on the wizard's back. When the dragon saw it, he was compelled by the sign's magic and immediately punted the wizard over the nearest horizon. It was hilarious! Guess you had to be there :P

During this time, once while at Eric's house we decide to play a quick game. I said, "Hey Eric, want to go upstairs and get Lucky?" Of course, what I ment was, "Do you want to go upstairs to your room and get your character so we can play T&T?" but that's not what it sounded like. Everyone broke up laughing while I stared, completely confused... until I understood what it had sounded like! LOL!

More time passed. We played many other games: Champions, Fantasy Hero, AD&D, Warhammer Fantasy, Warhammer Quest, Cyberpunk, GURPS, etc. but T&T was always my favorite.

I spent a year in Modesto, isolated from basically everyone I knew. I think T&T solos helped keep me sane during this time. This is when I originally wrote Delvermaker and Trollmaster on my old Amiga.

I found and played the T&T computer game for a while. Not the best PC game by today's standards, but it did have that irresistable T&T charm (and a nice map). I would really like to see a new version done with cutting-edge technology. An online game would also be incredible.

Finding Ken St. Andre and a nice, healthy following for T&T on the net has re-kindled my interest. I've found many of the modules that I didn't have through Flying Buffalo and online used game stores and am gradually working to complete my collection.

I'm currently playing in Ken's Gristlegrim adventure as Noir Alfyn, an Elven warrior-wizard. Pretty much the penultimate T&T experience, in my opinion: playing in the game creator's own personal dungeon :)

Well, that's my T&T story. Not deep or profound. T&T didn't change my life or anything, just made it a little more fun.