First Thoughts About Tunnels & Trolls

I started playing Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) way back when it was first published in the mid-70's. I lived in a small town Texas lacking even the rather limited means of communicating with fans of games and gaming in other states available back then. As a result, T&T escaped my notice for a long time. When I asked around nobody really knew anything about it. When I got to college another gamer I met told me it was just a badly written knock-off of D&D. I was firmly embedded in the TSR camp at that time and let it go at that.

Then years later I joined the Kickstarter for Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls. Maybe it was a renewed interest in a game I knew nothing about, maybe it was just a desire to support a company that helped promote the gaming hobby back in the day. At any rate? Deluxe Edition was a lot of book so I decided to read the 5th edition of the game first (available as a PDF from DriveThru et al.).

So in the following weeks I'll be presenting a series of posts regarding my thoughts about T&T. These will often be given in comparison with D&D, specifically the 1974 boxed set edition of the game though I may reference some of the supplements and other pre-1983 editions of the game.

Right away one may be excused for thinking "but is really fair to compare a later edition of T&T with the first edition of D&D? Shouldn't you compare the first editions of both?" This isn't really a comparison with a desire to find which is the best game. I'm really no more interested in game rules wars than I am D&D edition wars. I'm just interested in how the D&D I'm most familiar with compares to the version of T&T many players of same like the best.

You, fellow gamer, are invited to share this journey of discovery with me. I'll discuss a variety of observations and opinions about both sets of rules, you're invited to join in if you so desire. First post will be tomorrow and will cover player-character classes. I'll try to post once per week until I've covered the T&T 5th edition rules from cover to cover.

Until tomorrow!