Tunnels & Trolls (Review Part 6): So, any good then?

Well, after all that is T&T worth buying… Well, it would be essential for an old school gamer if it was the only game in town, but it isn’t… it has D&D to overcome… Something that’s obviously never going to happen because if it was it would have happened 30 years ago… But T&T is [...]

Tunnels & Trolls (Review Part 5): Unmagical Magic

I’m not going to go into too much detail about magic in T&T because, basically, it’s nothing you’ve not seen before: a mix of spell lists, divided by spell levels and casting costs, bahhhhh… But let me say that I absolutely hate the way magic is conceptualised in T&T. Basically it is described as a [...]

Tunnels & Trolls (Review Part 4): Combat or the individual vs.society…

Combat in T&T is where the game really stands out. It’s almost unique in RPGs and it’s either going to be loved or hated… When I first read the rules as a young chap, I hated it – but today with the span of years between my past endeavours as a ref and today, I [...]

Tunnels & Trolls (Review Part 3): Saving Rolls or the first Unified Game Mechanic…?

“Next up, Combat!” or so I said in my last post… But thinking about it I think Saving Rolls are a better place to start, as they do crop up in combat encounters, albeit in a only a supporting role to the main combat system. Also, I’ve heard it said that T&T’s saving rolls were [...]

Tunnels & Trolls (Review Part 2); Character Creation and Improvement (or Is it Broke and Does It Need Fixing?)

Character creation in T&T is totally innovative and will transform the way you role-play forever… providing you can get your feeble mind around its pioneering concepts! Let me try to explain… Firstly you character’s physical and mental abilities, called Prime Attributes, which are neatly categories into six distinct areas. These are Strength (abbreviated to ST [...]

Tunnels & Trolls (Review Part 1): D&D rip-off or old school classic with a naff name?

Why one thing can be inherently acceptable and another inherently not is a strange intangible that must keep better read scholars than me awake in their ponderings until the cock crows (or the crow cocks), but for whatever the reason the name Tunnels & Trolls has always caused much mirth and an intense feeling of [...]

Lankmar: City of (incomplete) Adventure

The second of my reviews on ‘games based on authors associated with the magazine Weird Tales’ will, I promise, be a lot shorter than the previous instalment. Partly for economy, partly for user-friendliness (screeds hardly make for easy reading on iPads and their ilk), but mainly because Lankmar, based on Fritz Leiber’s  Fafhrd and the [...]

By Crom! It’s Conan the Roleplayian…

Conan Role-Playing Game by David pre-‘Zeb’ Cook TSR (1985) I suppose it’s no mystery why Tolkien’s cosy take on Epic Fantasy became the predominate model  for so much of mainstream fantasy RPGing, whereas Robert E. Howard’s  sword & sorcery mix of heroic horror and pre-historic  brutality was deeded unacceptable as the face of role-playing orthodoxy [...]

ElfQuest

Elfquest by Steve Perrin (Chaosium 1985) Long-time: no-post, but better late than never I suppose… Bit of a strange one this in my RPG collection: it being a relatively early second generation RPG that I only ended up owning about six years ago or so: at a time that I long since stopped gaming and [...]

Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play

Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play So far I’ve mainly ‘reviewed’ (ahem!) games from the golden to silver-age of role-playing that I barely or never actually played.  A compulsion to buy games that you’ll never actually play seems to haunts all role-players for at least some time during their role-playing career. However despite the impression that I may [...]