Tunnels and Trolls

Trolls in search of tunnels

The Easter holidays loom. And that entails portable family gaming in case of rainy days or evenings in. We usually take a board game or two with us when we go away, but it's good to have some theatre-of-the-mind RPG stuff on hand as well.

'Theatre of the mind' is how I played most RPGs in my youth; I can recall only one or two scenarios for which we used miniatures consistently. For most of the games I've run since returning to gaming, though, miniatures have been the default. We have lots of them, and they do help with large parties and younger players.

But most of the best games I've run in the past few years have been the miniatures-free sessions: an excursion to Hell in Heroquest Glorantha; a delve inside the slowly reanimating skeleton of a kaiju-like behemoth using Dungeon World; and a Whitehack scenario involving an insectoid scientist and his time-bending, terraforming experiments.

The advantages of miniature-based gaming are obvious: visual scene-setting and tactical possibilities. The disadvantages are fairly clear too: every encounter looks like a wargame; the imagination is constrained by the limits of terrain and tabletop; and a huge amount of time and effort is needed to keep things fresh. That's especially true of games with kids: "We killed that orc last time!".

There's one hoary RPG that was clearly designed without regard to miniatures: Tunnels and Trolls. I don't think I ever actually played this as a kid, but I often borrowed the rulebook from a friend or from the library. I recall being slightly baffled by it. The combat system seemed to be arbitrary to an undesirable extreme, despite the huge list of exotic weapons. And then there were those silly spell names. So it remained an unplayed oddity.

I decided to give it another look and bought the PDF of the fifth-edition rules. And, with adult eyes, I like what I see. It's amazing how advanced the game appears now. In many ways, it's similar to Dungeon World. Its 'saving throws' provide a universal, 2d6-based mechanic - or near-universal, as it's not the default for combat or spell-casting. But it is applicable to combat, as it covers any special ploy you attempt.

A great thing about the saving rolls is that they're heavily based on the character's core attributes. So DEX 11 is better than DEX 10, and so on. That's a huge advance on just having bands of modifiers.

Also, the combat system looks much more interesting than it did to my youthful and Runequest-jaded eyes. The default is that each side rolls damage (based on weapons and 'adds' derived from character attributes), and then the losing side takes the difference in actual damage, split equally between the parties.

That sounds simplistic. But there are plenty of hidden subtleties. For instance, while damage is shared out, not all characters will be equally able to absorb it. A plate-armoured dwarf with a CON (hit points) of 32 will laugh at all but the highest doses of damage. But an unarmoured wizard or lightly armoured rogue will often have to back out of the fight to stay alive - which means that any future damage will be focused on those still left in the fight. So that near-invulnerable dwarf could soon be in a lot more trouble.

And it's clear that those sudden switches in situation will lead to the attempting of death-defying feats, which is where the saving rolls come into combat.

There's also a simple mechanic that makes wounded monsters weaker, which in turn encourages the DM to do something unexpected on their part - or simply let them flee the field. That 'death spiral' adds a nice touch of realism and mirrors the 'don't stay in the kitchen' aspect of PC combat.

Rolling up a few characters with the kids has illustrated some other nice aspects of the game's design. Arms and armour are pricey, and characters will typically be much worse equipped than their counterparts in many other RPGs. That provides ample motivation for dungeon-crawling. My son rolled up a dwarf of formidable physique (ST 22 and CON 32), but could only equip him with a short sword, a face-mask and gauntlets.

I like the open nature of the attributes, too. While dwarves will start off strong (2 x rolled ST and CON), all characters can increase their stats as they gain levels. And higher ST and DEX will allow them access to more powerful weapons. That's hardly realistic, but it makes for a great game incentive; if you want to wield a greatsword effectively, you need to get your ST up to 21 and your DEX up to 18. That's more easily done than in many other games that incorporate training (e.g. RuneQuest), but it will still probably take a bit of work. And if you're happy to throw realism out of the window (two-handed swords aren't that heavy, and wielding a weapon with two hands is probably easier and more natural than with one), then it all works fine.

As for magic, the silly names don't bother me in the slightest now - Take that, you fiend! is probably a better name than D&D's Magic missile or RuneQuest's Disruption. All three games require a bit of thought about how these spells are actually described 'in universe', so T&T's light-hearted approach is neither here nor there. If you want a dark sword-and-sorcery flavour, just have the wizard describe the effects of their spell.

And actually, in the holidays, we might just go with the T&T silliness in all its Pratchety charm.