Tunnels & Trolls News

Several readers contacted me this morning to draw my attention to some big news on the Tunnels & Trolls front.

World-renowned independent creative studio Rebellion is delighted to announce the acquisition of Tunnels & Trolls, one of the trailblazing games of the fantasy genre, and the second roleplaying game ever published.   

First published in 1975 by Flying Buffalo as a more player-friendly alternative to Dungeons & Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls introduced roleplaying to new audiences through its streamlined mechanics and pioneering approach to solo roleplaying. Now, almost 50 years after its original publication, the Rebellion Unplugged team is bringing Tunnels & Trolls into a new era.  

“Tunnels & Trolls is an unrecognised trailblazer in the games industry”, said Duncan Molloy, head of Rebellion Unplugged. “The team at Flying Buffalo responded to an entirely new medium by focusing on how roleplaying could be more approachable, more accessible, and more fun. So much of the modern era of roleplaying from old school hacks, to streamlined systems, to solo play, can directly trace its roots directly back to this series. We’re very excited to channel that spirit in bringing Tunnels & Trolls into the modern era.” 

“When I first discovered Tunnels & Trolls in the mid-1970s, I didn’t realize I was unlocking a life-long interest in fantasy roleplaying games, books, movies, and all things genre-based” recalled Rebellion CEO and Creative Director Jason Kingsley OBE, “The game has remained with me throughout my life, and I can’t wait to see what the team have in store for it!”  

After the passing of Flying Buffalo founder Rick Loomis, the company had been taken over by Webbed Sphere Inc. “We are very excited to see Rebellion expand this rich property” added Jon Huston, president of Webbed Sphere. “As a long-time fan, I always felt that the Flying Buffalo roleplaying lines had such incredible potential.” 

As part of the acquisition Rebellion have taken over Flying Buffalo’s entire line of roleplaying games, including the cult classic Citybook, Grimtooth, and Merchants Spies and Private Eyes series. The entire back-catalogue of Flying Buffalo PDFs will remain available to purchase online, with future releases coming directly from Rebellion Unplugged.

This is potentially big news, especially if Rebellion makes a serious go of publishing and promoting Tunnels & Trolls and other Flying Buffalo RPG properties. I find it interesting, though, that the name of T&T's creator, Ken St. Andre, appears nowhere in this press release or anywhere else on the Rebellion website. Even if he's not involved in the future development of the game, I nevertheless would have expected him to be mentioned, perhaps with a quote about how happy he is that his baby is now in safe hands. 

Regardless, I'll be keeping my eye on this story.

White Dwarf: Issue #39

Issue #39 (March 1983) of White Dwarf sports not only a cover by Nicholas Bibby (who also did last month's cover) but also a new cover logo and non-justified text, the latter of which makes its articles much easier on the eyes (or mine, at any rate). Another addition is a book review column by Dave Langford. In addition, Ian Livingstone mentions in his editorial that this issue is just the start of changes to the magazine. Future issues will include more original fiction, a comic strip, and a column devoted to boardgames. 

Kicking off the issue is part one of "Inhuman Gods" by Phil Masters. The article presents a half-dozen gods for various nonhuman D&D monsters, such as the aaracokra from the Fiend Folio and the desert raiders from issue #12 of White Dwarf. This is the kind of article I ate up when I was younger and, even now, I can appreciate the creativity that went into imagining the types of deities "lesser" species must worship. Nowadays, my natural inclination is toward greater simplicity when it comes to gods and cosmological questions, so I don't favor the "a god for every monster" approach employed here. 

"Open Box" reviews four of TSR's "Endless Quest" choose-your-own-adventure books, including Dungeon of Dread. The reviewer, Marcus L. Rowland, judges them individually, with the lowest receiving 5 out of 10 and the highest 7 out of 10. All, he says, are clearly geared toward younger readers and suffer from "a surfeit of lucky coincidences, cute talking animals, and lousy dialogue." I can't really disagree. Also reviewed is Citybook 1 from Flying Buffalo (7 out of 10) and four Traveller adventures. The first two are by FASA: Rescue on Galatea (6 out of 10) and The Trail of the Sky Raiders (8 out of 10). The other pair are from GDW: Prison Planet (5 out of 10) and Double Adventure 6: Divine Intervention/Night of Conquest (9 out of 10). I'll readily grant that Prison Planet isn't among GDW's best work, but I likely wouldn't judge it as low the reviewer, Andy Slack. 

"Runeblades" by Dave Morris presents rules for creating rune weapons for Chaosium's non-Gloranthan RuneQuest setting, Questworld. I can't say it impressed me much, since it's effectively just a collection of magic swords, none of which stood out as unique in the annals of RPG history. Similarly, part four of "An Introduction to Traveller" by Andy Slack is a bit of a letdown. This installment focuses on campaigns, specifically the kinds of decisions a referee must make before starting a new Traveller campaign. I suppose an utter neophyte might find its discussions of size, scope, the presence of Earthlike worlds, alien races genuinely insightful. For myself, it's more of the same I've read many times in many different places – too bad, as Slack often produced some of the best Traveller material to be found anywhere.

"Slayground" by Marcus L. Rowland is a Champions scenario set at a London fun fair, where three supervillains are causing mayhem. The main attraction here (pun slightly intended) is the environment, which offers unique options for superheroic fisticuffs. It's also interesting to see a Champions adventure in the pages of WD, something I can't recall being a common feature. "Stand By to Repel Boarders" by Andrew Miller is a good, if short, article about starship security in Traveller. Miller discusses airlocks and iris valves, as well as tactics for fighting in enclosed spaces aboard spacegoing vessels. It's a niche article but a useful one, especially if your Traveller adventures sometimes include a little Snapshot-style action.

"The Daughter of Danu" by Alan E. and Charles M. Paull is an AD&D adventure that makes use of the faerie information presented in issues #37 and #38. The scenario is geared toward characters of levels 2-4 and concerns the troubles experienced by a rural village beset by two different tribes of warring goblins, each of which is trying to curry the favor of Black Annis. It's a classic set-up, trite even, but the faerie lore details add just enough spice to make it seem fresh. 

Dave Langford's premier "Critical Mass" column reviews several science fiction and fantasy books, the most significant of which are Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two, Isaac Asimov's Foundation's Edge, and Robert Heinlein's Friday. Langford likes the first book and has mixed feelings about the second two. Having read all three, I can't say I disagree with his assessment, though I think I probably disliked Friday more than he seems to have. Reading this column is fascinating, primarily because it engenders strange feelings of nostalgia of the time before science fiction and (especially) fantasy literature had become as big as they are today. Also, am I really old enough to remember new books by Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein? Yikes.

"A Day in the Life of a Monster" by Lewis Pulsipher is an examination of monster intelligence and how it might influence their motivations. Pulsipher even includes a simple system to aid the referee in deciding the goals of a monster (or group of monsters). "Monster Mash" presents two new monsters for use with RuneQuest and "Non-Player Characters" by Roger and Georgia Moore presents three detailed NPCs for use with AD&D (including Konun the Halfling (the joke should be obvious).

All in all, it's a good issue, with lots of varied content. This is quite close to what I think of when I remember White Dwarf: a mix of long and short articles for use with many games but with D&D, RuneQuest, and Traveller predominating, as God intended. What's not to like?

Pulp Fantasy Library: Can These Bones Live?

With Halloween less than a week away, I found my thoughts drifting toward "spooky" stories I could discuss in this week's installment of Pulp Fantasy Library. There were a lot of good candidates – some of which might appear in the coming weeks – but the one that most excited me was Manly Wade Wellman's "Can These Bones Live?," a short story featuring the Appalachian balladeer, Silver John. 

Now, I'm a huge fan of Wellman's fiction in general and the stories of John in particular, but what was the deciding factor in my decision was the publication where it first appeared: Sorcerer's Apprentice (issue #11/summer 1981, to be precise). For those unfamiliar with this periodical, Sorcerer's Apprentice was published by Flying Buffalo in support of its fantasy roleplaying game, Tunnels & Trolls. Original fiction by established fantasy and science fiction authors was a common feature of many gaming magazines in the 1970s and '80s and Sorcerer's Apprentice was no different. 

While traveling, John encounters "eight men in rough country clothes" carrying "a big chest of new-sawed planks" that measured "nine feet long and three feet wide and another three high." One of the men, Embro Hallcott by name, approaches John and asks him his name and business.

"Well, mostly I study things. This morning, back yonder at that settlement, I heard tell about a big skeleton that turned up on a Chaw Hollow farm."

"You a government man?" the grizzled one inquired of me.

"You mean, look for blockade stills?" I shook my head. "Not me. Call me a truth seeker, somebody who wonders himself about riddles in this life."

John's a character about which Wellman tells us little. Like most good pulp fantasy protagonists, his origins and history are largely unimportant. All that matters is that he's here, where something interesting is about to occur. In this case, that something interesting is the burial of the aforementioned big skeleton. John helps the eight men carry the chest holding it half a mile to Stumber Creek Church. 

The preacher, Travis Melick, is a gaunt man "in a jimswinger coat, a-carrying a book covered with black leather." Though he's never met John, he knows him by reputation, having "heard of good things [he'd] done." The approbation of the preacher reassures Hallcott and his fellows, he were still somewhat suspicious of the guitar-toting stranger. 

The men heave the chest – a massive coffin really – toward the graveyard, where a fresh grave has already been made for it. Before burying it, one of the men, called Oat, asks that it be opened first, since that is "the true old way." John then peers inside.

The bones inside were loose from one another and half-wrapped in a Turkey Track quilt, but I saw they were laid out in order. They were big, the way Hallcott had said, big enough for an almighty big bear. I had a notion that the arms were right long; maybe all the bones were long. Thick, too. The skull at the head of the coffin was like a big gourd, with caves of eyeholes and two rows of big, lean teeth, Hallcott banged the lid shut and hooked it again.

With that out of the way, Melick begins the burial rite for "the remains of a poor lost creature," a rite that involves quoting from the Book of Ezekiel (from which the title of the short story comes). Afterwards, the men lower the coffin into the grave and they depart. Melick asks John if he'll be his guest for the night, but he puts him off, saying he wants to "wait here a spell." 

Hallcott takes notice of this fact and asks John why he wishes to stay at the gravesite rather than leave like everyone else. John doesn't offer a solid explanation. Instead, he talks about the Book of Ezekiel and the many oddities in it – living bones, flying wheels, and the like. Hallcott agrees there are "strange doings in Ezekiel" and the two men settle down for a nighttime vigil together. They pass the time eating sandwiches and pondering the big skeleton they buried.

"I reckon you'll agree with me, them bones we buried were right curious. Great big ones, and long arms, like on an ape."

"Or maybe on Sasquatch," I said. "Or Bigfoot."

"You believe in them tales?"

"I always wonder myself if there's not truth in air tale. And as for bones – I recollect something the Indians called Kalu, off in a place named Hosea's Hollow. Bones a-rattling 'round, and sure death to a natural man."

"You believe that, too?"

"Believe it? I saw it happen one time. Only Kalu got somebody else, not me."

"Can these bones live?" Hallcott repeated the text.

I trust it won't come as a surprise to anyone to reveal that, yes, these bones can live and the remainder of the yarn is spent the consequences of that. Like most of Wellman's Silver John stories, this one is charmingly told in a folksy, understated way that evokes the tension of a good ghost story. The reader won't be frightened down to his bones, but he might well be transported to the woods, hunkered down around the campfire to hold off the chilly night air, while shadows dance and strange sounds echo. "Can These Bones Live?" is thus a genuinely effective short story and a reminder of why Wellman is rightly considered one of the masters of pulp fantasy.

Flying Buffalo News

Since the middle of June, I'd been hearing rumors that Flying Buffalo, the oldest still-extant RPG publisher, had been sold to someone, but no one had any details on who that someone might be. The Internet being what it is, all sorts of fanciful theories were put forward, the most plausible one in my opinion being Goodman Games, which had a longstanding relationship with Flying Buffalo as a result of its reprints of the beloved Grimtooth's Traps books. 

In due course, Steve Crompton, manager of Flying Buffalo, confirmed the rumors but was tight-lipped about FB's new owner. This was frustrating, though understandable, given the way business acquisitions work. However, if you visit the website of Flying Buffalo, you will see that it not only looks quite different than it used to, but that it's also very spare. A single long on the homepage leads to a press release that identifies the company's new owners as Webbed Sphere, Inc. of Corbin, Kentucky, USA. Self-described in the release as "a management and holding company for numerous ventures, including online retailer Troll and Toad, home decor brands Darware, Decorae, and AuldHome; game and toy publisher Toy Vault, and jigsaw publisher Mchezo," it doesn't seem, on first blush, to be an obvious choice as the new publisher of Tunnels & Trolls and other venerable FB game lines, like Nuclear War, but stranger things have happened.

Though not a regular player of T&T, I'm very much a well-wisher and hope that the purchase of Flying Buffalo will not negatively impact it in any way. I've noticed a renewed interest in the game in recent years and the Deluxe Edition of the game (published in 2015) seems to have been well received by fans. I'll certainly be keeping an ear out for additional news. If any readers are more knowledgeable in these matters, I'd anything you have to share on the subject. 

Retrospective: Grimtooth's Traps

Trap-filled dungeons are an iconic element of Dungeons & Dragons (and, to a lesser extent, many other fantasy roleplaying games). Of course, filling a dungeon with traps requires, well, traps and even the most imaginative referee is likely to run out of ideas for them after a while. That's doubly true for referees like me, who've never been good at coming up with interesting and satisfying traps. 

That's why I find it surprising how few books of traps have been published over the years, at least when compared to books of monsters, magic items, or spells. Flying Buffalo's Grimtooth's Traps series, the first volume of which appeared in 1981, is one of the few books of traps I've ever read. Much Citybook (also produced by Flying Buffalo), Grimtooth's Traps is an anthology of traps written by a number of different authors (including Steve Crompton, Liz Danforth, Rick Loomis, Michael Stackpole, and Ken St. Andre, among many more). 

The book is presented as if the titular Grimtooth, a black-eyed troll, had collected all these traps "from the four corners of the earth" and passed them on to Paul Ryan O'Connor, who then typed them up for publication. Grimtooth himself provides sardonic commentary on many of the entries, cackling gleefully at the thought of how much mayhem a trap will wreak upon adventurers. Exactly how annoying one finds Grimtooth is a matter of taste. I know people who find his snarkiness genuinely amusing, while I don't find he adds much value the trap write-ups. In fact, I find Grimtooth actively detracts from my ability to take the entries seriously – which is a shame, because many of them are truly imaginative. 

The first volume is divided into four chapters, each one dedicated to a different type of trap. Chapter one presents room traps, chapter two presents corridor traps, chapter three presents door traps, and chapter four presents trapped items and artifacts. Each trap is described free of game mechanics, leaving it to each referee to decide best to integrate it into his preferred game system. These descriptions vary in length, from only a couple of short paragraphs to close to a full page. Since many of the traps are complex, or at least difficult to understand through words alone, they're accompanied illustrations or diagrams of their workings. These diagrams are probably the best part of Grimtooth's Traps; they do a very good job of clarifying how a trap works, as well as helping a referee decide how to use it in his dungeons. Finally, each trap gets a lethality rating, represented by skulls in the margin near their descriptions.

The quality and nature of the traps described in Grimtooth's Traps are quite variable. While comparatively few of them could be described as realistic, many are at least plausible, in that their mechanisms make sense. That's vitally important to a good trap in my opinion. Traps whose functioning is impenetrable aren't much fun, unless one is a killer referee who enjoys inflicting unavoidable pain on player characters. Unfortunately, there are more than a few traps of this sort in the book, such as, for example, a statue made of pure sodium that, when carried through a waterfall explodes, killing the carrier, or a spyglass that shoots a dagger into the eye of anyone who looks inside it. On the one hand, one can almost admire the fiendish cleverness of traps like these. On the other, though, they come across as cruel and spiteful rather. I have a hard time imagining any player whose character is subjected to these feeling as if he'd been fairly bested by the referee. More likely, he'll be ticked off and not without justification in my opinion.

All that said, I retain a fondness for Grimtooth's Traps. As someone who has trouble coming up with interesting traps, I appreciate the work that went into creating these entries, even the vicious ones. The latter are reminders of an older, more adversarial form of play that has largely fallen out of fashion nowadays but was once quite widespread (or at least not uncommon). Consequently, the book remains valuable as a historical document, if nothing else, though I continue to hope that I might one day make use of some of its fairer, more interesting traps.

Retrospective: Citybook I: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker

When I look back on my own early years in the hobby, I recognized that, by and large, I avoided "generic" roleplaying game supplements, preferring instead to purchase "official" ones. There are exceptions here and there. I regret such brand-based snobbery now, because, among other things, it missed out on a number of genuinely excellent RPG books, such a the Citybook series published by Flying Buffalo. 

Years later, I had the chance to see copies of the series and was quite surprised by how good most of them were, starting with Citybook I: Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker. Edited by Larry DiTillio (of Masks of Nyarlathotep fame, among other things), the first volume appeared in 1982 and features twenty-five different places of business – "business" being very broadly defined – to drop into a fantasy city of your choice. The entries are written by a variety of authors, such as DiTillio himself, Liz Danforth, Michael Stackpole, and Steven S. Crompton, and several others unknown to me. Consequently, the entries have varied tone and content, which contributes greatly to its utility, I think, since the referee has plenty of options to suit his own tastes.

The entries are divided into categories, namely lodging and entertainment, personal services, hardware, food services, community services, spiritual services, and security services. Each category includes at least two entries, though some, like personal services, contain quite a few more. The entries all follow a similar format, providing first an overview of the establishment, its important NPCs (starting with its proprietor), its layout (complete with map), and some scenario suggestions. Since the text is nearly 120 pages in length, most entries are three or four pages in length, with some being even longer – more than enough detail to get the referee started in imagining the place in question. In addition to the aforementioned maps, the entries are illustrated (by Danforth, Crompton, and Stephan Peregrine), depicting not just NPCs but also other aspects of the businesses, such as the goods they offer for sale. 

The entries are consistently quite good, in part, I think, because none of them feel truly generic. For example, the Diamond Spider Tavern is quite different from the Grey Minstrel Inn, reflecting not just the personalities of their owners but also their histories (the Grey Minstrel Inn being haunted, for example). Likewise, Bron Arvo's Armory is quite distinct from Blades by Tor, despite the fact that they're both weapons outfitters of the sort adventurers usually visit. It's a testament to the writers' imaginations that they can make even mundane businesses feel unique and, in many cases, compelling enough to serve as more than places for characters to drop a few coin. As someone who's often struggled with this in my own forays into urban adventuring, I was quite impressed.

Citybook I is still available in electronic form from Flying Buffalo, along with the other entries in the series, of which there were ultimately seven installments. Not having seen any of the others, I can't offer any comments about their quality, but, if they're anywhere near as well done and creative as the ones in Citybook I, that's money well spent. The first entry in the series surprised me with its excellence and made me re-evaluate my opinion of many third party supplements produced during the heyday of the hobby. In future entries in this series, I'll take a greater look at some of them.

Interview: Steve Crompton

For long-time fans of Flying Buffalo gaming products, such as Tunnels & Trolls and Grimtooth's Traps, Steve Crompton needs no introduction. For the benefit of them and others not yet familiar with his decades of work in the RPG world, I present the following interview, to which Mr Crompton very kindly agreed. 

Steve Crompton at the GAMA Expo, March 2020

1. How did you first become involved in the hobby of roleplaying?

I ran into Rick [Loomis] though church while I was still a teenager and he gave me and my sister a couple of solo adventures to play. So I learned to RPG via the solo adventures back in 1979. Before that, I’m not sure I’d really even heard of D&D, let alone T&T.

2. After being given those solo adventures, did you then start to participate in a group? What games did you play?

I think the very first time I ever played an RPG, it was with Rick Loomis and he ran Buffalo Castle as a solo. I don’t think I had gotten though Buffalo Castle without dying, so it was fun to have it run by its creator. It was probably in 1979 or '80. Once I was I working in the store, I would often join in a game if things were slow. The first time I played with Ken St. Andre, it was in Gristlegrim Dungeon and I died in about 15 minutes. I also played in adventures run by Bear Peters, Mike Stackpole and Larry DiTillio, so I’ve been very lucky to have been able to be in adventures run by some of the greats of T&T history! I think most of them killed me at some point! I did have a regular RPG group when we were running our Lejentia Campaign back in the late 80’s and early 90’s

3. How did you come to be employed by Flying Buffalo?

Rick knew I wanted to be a graphic artist and was taking commercial art courses via a high school “working trades” program. (So I think that was a factor for him picking me)  He needed someone to work the Flying Buffalo store and I was polite and a good talker, so he offered me the job as a store clerk which I accepted. Back then, eventually best selling author Michael Stackpole was my store manager!

4. While at Flying Buffalo, you worked on a wide variety of projects, but I suspect you're best known for the illustrations in Grimtooth's Traps, which have a very distinctive style. Did you receive a lot of direction on how to illustrate these books or were they largely of your own invention? What about Grimtooth himself: did you create his appearance or were you given instructions beforehand?

I was working in the store in late 1980 when Liz Danforth (who was Flying Buffalo’s art director at the time) came to me and said that they were developing this book of traps they were going to publish. She knew I had taken drafting classes, so she thought I would be a good match for drawing out the traps they came up with. 

At the time, Grimtooth wasn’t really in the picture, but at some point, either Liz, or perhaps it was Paul O’Connor (Grimtooth's Traps editor) came up with the idea to use Grimtooth as the narrator. Grimtooth was a character that Liz created as a sort of sardonic “mascot” for our Sorcerer’s Apprentice magazine. So, she had already drawn him, and that was my guide for any Grimtooth illustrations I did going forward. My take was more influenced by the thousands of comic books I had read. In the original first edition of Grimtooth’s Traps, I think there are maybe two or three illustrations of him in the whole book, but he was its voice. In later re-printings (once we realized how popular he was with the fans), I added him in to more illustrations and elsewhere in the book. 

For the trap illustrations, I wasn’t really given any specific instructions other than to make the trap match is description. As we went along, though, the text was sometimes changed to match what I had drawn, as I would sometimes add a “twist” to the trap or its location. 

5. Are there any illustrations you did for Flying Buffalo that you're particularly proud of, even after all these years?  

My personal favorite is of Grimtooth’s Airship flying through a storm – that’s a great one. I have a cute illo of Grimtina on a BMX bicycle, but she also has a big gun and an attitude. I also had a lot of fun drawing the Grimtooth comic pages in the Traps Too reprint and Traps Lite! 

6. Aside from Flying Buffalo, you also did work for GDW and FGU, in each case for science fiction roleplaying games. Do you enjoy sci-fi illustration as much as fantasy?

Certainly I liked the variety of doing different things and trying to take on different styles and approaches to my work to match the genre and tone of a given project. I tended to make those illustrations far less cartoony and more technical in their look. I used a lot of Zipatone screens in the sci-fi art that I rarely used in the fantasy pieces, for example. I tried to give the sci-fi art a sort of futuristic “noir” look.

7. You've produced a lot of artwork outside the RPG industry, primarily in the field of comics. How did you become involved in comics illustration/writing?

Really I was a comic book fan long before role-playing games even existed, so doing comics was in my blood from about the age of 5. I think a lot of my art for Nuclear War and Grimtooth’s Traps really reflect my comic book upbringing. I regularly went to San Diego Comic Con starting in 1988, and it was there I met the publisher of Revolutionary Comics, Todd Loren. He gave me my first break into the comics field and I ended up doing numerous comics for him, Rip Off Press, Kitchen Sink, Mu Press, and many others. My main claim to comic fame is Demi the Demoness. She’s appeared in over 40 comics and I wrote her into my City of the Gods novel and some game books I’ve done.  Ken St. Andre is actually working on a City of the Gods T&T solo adventure and I’m sure Demi will have an appearance there as well. 

8. Do you still have the chance to play RPGs?

Not as often as I like. Sometimes Bear Peters or Ken St. Andre will run something and I’ll join in.  Mostly I play the T&T Phone app, which has 30 solos in it on my phone. I read a lot of gaming books all the time as I am usually editing or even writing parts of them.  So my main RPG exposure nowadays is “on-the-job” so to speak. 

9. You're now the managing director of Flying Buffalo. What does that job entail?

When I first took on that role, we had to do a complete inventory of all our products that we had in stock. This was not something that has been done in many years so it was a big task. My next big task was completing several Kickstarters that had been started while Rick Loomis was alive. That included part of the Nuclear War Kickstarter, the Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes Kickstarter and the Elven Lords Kickstarter. We’ve completed two of those and will soon be mailing out the full-color version of Elven Lords to the backer and that will end that one as well.  

My ongoing mission is to promote Flying Buffalo however I can and help let the world and our fans know that the Buffalo is still flying and will continue to do so. In fact, since December we have either printed or released on DriveThruRPG 14 new or reprinted RPG solos, GM adventures, and other books. Seven of them are brand new, and seven of them are enhanced reprints of items that were previously out of print and unavailable on DriveThru. I also do customer service to take care of problems that distributors or customers have with orders or with trying to order things from us. I also have duties related to helping with Rick’s estate settlement and dealing with the Loomis family, various rights holders and other RPG industry friends of Rick who are helping and advising us in various ways. And I work with freelancing and licensees who want to  print T&T books in Spanish, Japanese or German for example. So that’s my job in a nutshell. Its challenging and I love every minute of it. I consider it to be a great honor to be able to help keep Rick’s dream alive and continue to help bring in orders and new products to keep Flying Buffalo a going concern!

Weird Maps II

I talked the other day about weird maps, focusing primarily on literary examples of them. Today, I want to draw attention to the maps of Trollworld, the setting of Ken St. Andre's Tunnels & Trolls.

This is the continent of Ralph (or Rrr'lff, as it is known in some later sources). As you can see, it's shaped like a dragon, just like the one depicted in the Chart of Weirdworld. If anything, though Ralph is even more fantastical, since it looks like the entire body of a dragon rather than just its head. Ralph is home to Khazan, perhaps the best known city of Trollworld.

Zorr is the eagle-shaped continent of Trollworld. It's also the land of the letter "z," as nearly all of its locations include that letter somewhere in their names. If I recall correctly – and my knowledge of T&T lore is limited – Trollish names tend to include lots of z's in them. Of course, that's a minor detail in my estimation compared to the appearance of the continent itself. Trollworld isn't a natural place; there is nary a concern for plate tectonics, geology, or anything remotely scientific. Instead, I suspect that Zorr, like Ralph, looks that way, because someone thought it was cool – and that's a perfectly valid reason in a fantasy roleplaying game setting! 

Allow me to lay my cards on the table: in my own efforts to create fantasy settings, I have tended toward the Middle-earth/Hyboria model when it comes to map making. I don't outright eschew magical weirdness and whimsy but neither do I embrace it the way that Trollworld clearly does. Is that a mistake? No, I don't think it is – not all fantasy settings are the same and there is room for a variety of different approaches. At the same time, I can't help but look at maps like that of Weirdworld or Trollworld and wonder. Isn't that what maps of fantasy worlds should make us do?

Retrospective: Buffalo Castle

I've noted many times before on this blog that one of my great regrets as a gamer is that there are games about which I had irrational prejudices back in the day, prejudices based largely on what the older guys I knew said about the games in question. While I eventually came to realize that the "wisdom" those older guys imparted was often half-baked, their influence over my opinion nevertheless remained for a long time. For that reason, I was unforgivably snobbish toward Ken St. Andre's Tunnels & Trolls for far too long, considering it a "silly" knock-off of Dungeons & Dragons. I know better now.

And yet, like RuneQuest, T&T was -- and is -- a roleplaying game that fascinated me, even as I turned my nose up at it. Even now, I'm not entirely sure why that was. Some of it, no doubt, was a symptom of my formerly regular bouts of dissatisfaction with D&D. In the past, I used to find some aspect of Dungeons & Dragons annoying or uncongenial and I'd start to look about for alternatives to it. Another part of it, I think, is that Tunnels & Trolls seemed to exist in its own little world, by which I mean that its players and authors alike were quite content to simply do their own thing without apology. Don't like T&T? Think it's a "joke game?" Fine, whatever. Your loss. I've never met an evangelical T&T player, the kind of guy who goes on and on about how great his preferred game was, let alone how much better his game was than yours. They were always live and let live and, even in my younger, stupider days, I found their attitudes attractive.

That's probably why, despite my frequent protestations to the contrary, I'd occasionally looked in on T&T to see how the other half lived. This was made even easier when a friend of mine bought a copy of the fifth edition boxed set sometime in the mid-80s. Though I questioned his wisdom in "wasting" his money on such a purchase, I was secretly glad he'd done so, because I knew it'd give me the chance to read the T&T rulebook at length on my own, something I'd never done before, instead relying on furtive glances at it in stores or at local game gatherings. This helped me begin to overcome my irrational dismissal of the game (though the spell names still rankled, I can't deny), though not enough that I'd embrace the game in any lasting way.

In addition to the rulebook, my friend's boxed set also contained an adventure called Buffalo Castle. Buffalo Castle is a solitaire dungeon, first published in 1976 and written by Rick Loomis. It is, so far as I know, not only the first solitaire dungeon for T&T but the first solitaire dungeon of any type in the hobby, predating the Fighting Fantasy books by six years, which is quite an achievement. (The first Choose Your Own Adventure book was written in 1969, but did not see publication until the same year as Buffalo Castle; I have no idea if Loomis had seen a copy when he wrote his solitaire or even if the idea of solo adventures originated with him.) My old dismissiveness initially returned for a time, seeing solitaire dungeons for "real" RPGs (as opposed to gamebooks) as somehow beyond the pale, but my curiosity was powerful and I eventually borrowed Buffalo Castle from my friend and played it.

I can't, in truth, say that Buffalo Castle is an amazing adventure. It's a rather limited -- and small -- dungeon crawl designed to be played only by fighter characters (no magic allowed). There are only about 150 entries in the whole 32-page book, most of them only a sentence or two long. Yet, there was something strangely compelling about it nonetheless. A surreality perhaps? This was a dungeon, after all, where you can find not only bored trolls guarding chests but also octopi and, yes, an enraged buffalo. There are deathtraps galore, as well as treasures like magic aspirin and diplomas from the Buffalo School of Dungeon Delving. This was nothing like the dungeons TSR published or that I imitated so studiously in my own games. This was different.

I wasn't sure that I actually liked what made Buffalo Castle (and, by extension, T&T) so different from what I was used to, but I wasn't sure that I didn't like it either. The whole thing was so bizarre, so odd, that I don't think I ever sorted out my feelings toward it, except that I was pretty sure T&T was never going to replace D&D in my gaming group. And so it was. As I got older, though, my gaming style and preferences changed and I often found myself including bits of incongruous humor and weirdness in my adventures here and there, generally without rhyme or reason -- something to break up the staid seriousness that is the primary color of my imagination. Such oddities are still spices in my porridge rather than the main ingredients, but they're there nonetheless and, once upon a time, they weren't.

Looking back now, I can't help but wonder if the seeds for this change were sown by T&T and Buffalo Castle without my realizing it.

Retrospective: Starfaring

While Ken St. Andre is probably best known for having created Tunnels & Trolls, the second roleplaying game in history (or, around this blog, for co-creating Stormbringer, which I consider one of the best, if not the best, swords-and-sorcery RPGs ever written), he's also responsible for having created the second science fiction roleplaying game in history, Starfaring. Published in 1976, Starfaring beat Traveller to the market by a year and only missed being the first SF RPG of any sort by a few months (that honor instead going to Metamorphosis Alpha). In any case, Starfaring was the first RPG to deal with interstellar travel and exploration, being very much in the vein of the original Star Trek, even if its approach and tone are much more lighthearted.

Indeed, I suspect that, much like Tunnels & Trolls, Starfaring is regularly dismissed as being a "joke game," because it doesn't take itself too seriously. This is a game, after all, that begins by quoting J.B.S. Haldane's famous epigram about the universe being "stranger than we can imagine" and following it up with "Oh yeah?" And of course the game isn't helped by the fact that it is "outrageously illustrated" (according to the credits) by Ernest Hogan in a cartoonish and satirical style that reminds me of a drug and sex-fueled version of Tom Wham. St. Andre's own introduction admits that he "had no idea that my artist would have such a bizarre imagination," while also stating that "if you don't like the artwork, that's your problem." One's reaction to Starfaring is likely colored very strongly by one's reaction to its artwork, or at least one's ability to take the game on its own merits regardless of what one think about Hogan's illustrations.

I mentioned earlier that Starfaring is very much in the vein of Star Trek. It postulates a future some 600 years hence in which humanity has discovered interstellar travel and psi powers -- both due to alien technology, the latter having been actualized through the use of a drug called LSDX-6000 -- and is now traveling the galaxy in search of both habitable planets (Earth being polluted and overpopulated) and "star crystals" that are used to power high technology. As a game, Starfaring makes a number of assumptions that differ greatly from most other RPGs. First, the game seems intended to be played with just one GM (or Galaxy Master) and one player (or Ship Master) at a time. There could well be multiple Ship Masters in the same campaign, but the structure of the game itself strikes me as if it would be difficult for all of them to be playing the game at the same time. Second, a Ship Master, as his name suggests, portrays not a single character but the entire crew of a starship, from the captain on down to its most expendable security guard. It's an interesting approach and makes sense in context, but I imagine many gamers today would find it unsatisfying.

Character creation is, as is fitting for a game where a player portrays many characters, simple and straightforward. The default setting assumes that humans are the primary characters, but it's also possible to play androids, robots, aliens, and "shell people," which is to say, an intelligent being whose consciousness has become disembodied and is now contained within some type of technological device (Think "Spock's Brain," however painful that may be). Far more detail is given to ship design, since, in many respects, it's the player's ship that is the real character in Starfaring. In the game's setting, planetary governments dispense loans (at 20% interest -- this was published in the 1970s, after all) to parties interested in exploring space for fun and profit. Thus, a player can build as big and as expensive a ship (or as small and inexpensive) as he likes, but he is expected to pay off at least half the loan after 3 missions, funds being acquired from bounties offered for the discovery of habitable and/or useful worlds. If the loan can't be paid off in a timely fashion, the creditor seizes the ship and the player must start anew.

As you can see, Starfaring's basic setup is an odd mixture of roleplaying and (possibly competitive) simulation. It's a mixture I actually find rather intriguing, but then that's probably because I like the idea of players having to manage domains, armies, and organizations. Being such an early design, Starfaring would likely require a lot of referee adjudication and house ruling to fulfill its potential, but that's true of OD&D too, so I don't see it as a problem. Likewise, the game rules, though brief (under 60 pages) include lots of random tables for creating star systems, planets, and alien life forms. There are also discussions of starship combat, psi powers, equipment, hazards (both in normal space and "subspace"), so the referee has a lot of ideas to draw upon, even if the rules that accompany these discussions are often cursory almost to the point of non-existence.

I never owned or played Starfaring back in the day. In fact, I'd never even heard of it till it was long out of print and only recently managed to see a copy of it. One day, I'll try to hunt down a copy for myself, as I think it's in a style of RPG that hasn't gotten a lot of development over the years. Nowadays, I suspect some would call Starfaring an example of "troupe style play," but I'm not sure that describes it quite rightly. Starfaring actually strikes me as having a great deal in common with freeform wargames from the late 60s and early 70s, the kinds of games whose DNA mingled with that of miniatures wargaming to produce OD&D. Consequently, I think Starfaring represents a path not taken and one I'd like to explore more fully if I can ever snag a copy of the thing at a reasonable price. Certainly, by today's standards, it's a sketchy and whimsical little game, but it's also a very imaginative one whose basic structure is worthy of closer examination, appreciation, and perhaps emulation.

Retrospective: Tunnels & Trolls

I've mentioned before that part of my initiation into the hobby was the adoption of certain prejudices about games other than Dungeons & Dragons. One of the main targets of such irrationality was Tunnels & Trolls, the second RPG published (in 1975) and whose greatest flaw -- aside from not being D&D -- was that it was "silly." You have to remember that, while 1979, the year I started gaming, was still several years before fantastic realism became the norm, it was nevertheless a powerful force in many places, including, apparently, among the people by whom I was brought into the hobby. Whimsy and humor were antithetical to "serious roleplaying" and so games that evinced either were seen as unfit for play by discerning gamers. Ludicrous though this position is, it's one against which I nevertheless have to fight even now and, while, I've been largely successful in keeping it in check, it still pops up every now and again, despite my best efforts to the contrary.

If I were to pick a single mistake I made in my gaming education to call "tragic," it would be my rejection of Tunnels & Trolls back when I had the chance to become better acquainted with it. A friend of mine purchased the 5th edition of the game sometime in the early 80s. He was quite keen on the game and wanted to free me from my regular refereeing duties by starting a T&T campaign with me as a player. If I recall correctly, I created a human rogue -- rogues being not thieves but rather hedge wizards -- modeled somewhat on the Gray Mouser and was initially excited about the prospect of playing him.

That is, until I read T&T's spell list. Among the 1st-level spells are Oh There It Is, Take That, You Fiend, and Oh-Go-Away. For some reason, I just couldn't accept these spells names and every tale I'd been told by the older guys at the hobby shop about how the game was silly came rushing back to my memory. I made a feeble effort to try playing the game, whose mechanics I found intriguing, but it didn't last too long. I tried a few more times later and got a little more into the game. By that time, though, my opinion had ossified and I wasn't willing to look beyond the surface of T&T, a situation I didn't rectify until this year, actually.

I made a point of acquiring both the 5th edition rules I played way back when and the latest edition (v7.5), along with a number of solo adventures. I also started lurking at various T&T oriented forums, including Trollhalla, to get a better sense of the game and what I might have been missing. And I've been missing quite a lot. T&T is a very cleverly designed game: complete, simple, and flexible, yet easily expandable. It's not math-heavy and looks to be quite amenable to the kind of off-the-cuff gaming I enjoy these days. It's also unambiguously old school, as its rules demand both player cleverness and referee adjudication for satisfying use. Likewise, both editions I own are paragons of verbal economy -- there's barely a wasted word in either and their page count is well within my limited tolerance.

And, yes, Tunnels & Trolls is a bit silly, at least compared to the stolidness of most other RPGs, but that's OK. Older and wiser now, I no longer see silliness as necessarily antithetical to seriousness. Indeed, I often think it's an important complement to it. My games nowadays are filled with whimsical asides and comedic moments, in addition to grim and perilous encounters and philosophical musings. This isn't an either/or situation, at least not in the way I used to think it had to be. Gaming is supposed to be, above all else, fun and, reading T&T, you can tell that author Ken St. Andre had a lot of fun with his creation.

That's as it should be with any RPG and, while I don't think Tunnels & Trolls should become a model for all other RPGs any more than I think that of OD&D, I do think the hobby might be a more enjoyable place for all if the ethos of T&T were more widely imitated. That, for me, is the greatest lesson I took away from my investigations into this venerable game, whose community, while smaller than that of my own preferred system, is no less enthusiastic, creative, and open to newcomers.

More creditable still is the fact that, after 30+ years, T&T is, essentially, the same game it was at its debut. Certainly there are differences between v7.5 and the 1975 1st edition, but those differences are minuscule compared to the differences between the LBBs and D&D IV. From where I'm sitting, T&T remains the kind of hobbyist game that old school D&D fans wish our game had remained and without the need for imagining an alternate history. In short, there's a lot to like about it and I wouldn't hesitate to play in a game if I were ever asked to do so again.

I still don't like the spell names, though.