A Melody In Your Name

I call everyone "Darling" because I can't remember their names.
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor

One of the things that has turned otherwise interested parties away from Tunnels and Trolls is the silliness of the spell names. One of the reasons Ken St. Andre gives for the names is that, at the very least, they are more memorable than their counterparts in other games. Although that may be true, it can ruin the atmosphere of a gritty, swords-and-sorcery flavored game if, when faced with some shadowy apparition from the netherworld, your wizard calls, with a flourish: "Oh, Go Away".

(As a side note, it seems like it's easier to make a 'serious' game silly than the other way around. Worth pondering, that.)

Following is a list of Level 1 Spells from the 5th edition, along with suggested translations.

Detect Magic: Sense Magic
Lock Tight: Holdfast Portal
Will-o-Wisp: Glimmerlight
Knock Knock: Unbind Portal
Oh There It Is: Expose Hidden
Take That, You Fiend: Vexing Smite
Vorpal Blade: Keen Edge
Oh-Go-Away: Repulse Foe
Teacher: Instruct
Hocus Pocus: Ensorcel Staff

Some of the names aren't so silly, as you can see by the list above, but if the impetus behind "silly" names is to make them more memorable, I suggest that these alterations would do that, without compromising the atmosphere of the game.

cheers,
Adam

Late to the Party, Again

Since I've only just recently replaced my stolen laptop, I wasn't able to be the first on the block to share this news, but I'd be remiss in my duties as a self-proclaimed general in the OSR if I didn't mention the Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls Kickstarter. They've already hit their funding target, but I'm sure more money wouldn't hurt the end product. And a lot of the old gang have their input, too: Liz Danforth, Jim "Bear" Peters, and Steve Crompton are working along with Ken and Rick. It looks very, very promising.

cheers, Adam

The Ringing and The Singing of the Bell's curve

How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells -
Of the bells -
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells   -- Edgar Allen Poe, "The Bells"

(This is a sorta-followup to this post, just so you know.)

I've been knocking about the idea of replacing a d20 "to-hit" roll + damage with 3d6 + static modifier. Suppose a sword does 1d8 damage and a 1st-level fighter with no BAB needs to hit an AC 16 target. What is the expected damage done? Assuming an average roll of 4.5 points of damage x 0.25 (25%) chance of hitting, you have 1.125 points inflicted per round.

Now, suppose we use 3d6. Alone, 3d6 have a 4.63% chance of rolling 16 or higher. So that translates, with an average d8 die roll, to .208 points per round. But here's the trick: rather than rolling damage, the sword adds a static number to the 3d6 roll, and additional damage is determined by subtracting the AC from the eventual result. Assuming the sword gives a static 5 point bonus, we get a 25.92% of hitting, on average, 4 points, or 1.0368. Fairly close.

The idea behind this is, people are often going on about how high rolls on a d20 should somehow represent that their attack was extra special. These people do not understand the difference between a bell curve and a linear distribution, but if we don't want the fun experience of having a high "to hit" roll to be spoiled by rolling 1 for damage, we need to swap out systems.

In d20, people like to have at least the possibility of doing extra damage on an unmodified, or "natural" 20. How would we model that in 3d6, you might ask? One answer would be to swap something from the latest edition of Tunnels & Trolls: the concept that doubles and triples add and roll over. So if you roll 5,1,5, you take the two fives, re-roll them, and add that number to the total; say the second roll is a 2 and a 4, you have a total of 17, plus the static +4 bonus for the sword. Now you've done 5 points of damage. If those had been 2 and 2, you would roll them yet again.

(To be accurate, in T&T you only add and re-roll doubles when rolling two dice, and triples with three, but the principle isn't that far off this way.)

The numbers seem to work out if you take half the maximum die roll and add one, so a d4 gets 3, a d6 gets 4, etc.

Now, some purists would accuse me of tainting our dear retro-D&D play with such blasphemous bell-shaped results, but I think this is perfectly within the spirit of the OSR, since this is a simple mechanism that can be swapped out with the existing one without changing any other element of the game. (Magic swords that have different bonuses "to hit" and for damage might be a problem, but consider reversing the adds: a sword, +3 to hit and +1 damage becomes +1 to hit, but +3 damage. So our average damage becomes 3 points. A 40% chance of getting 5.5 points with the traditional system equals 2.2 points. Tweaking the numbers, +1/+2, gets us closer, at 2.72 points. Taking doubles and triples re-rolls into account gets us closer still.)

cheers,
Adam

Tunnels and Trolls: optional archery changes

Speaking of "swingy", I've also house-ruled the archery rules for Tunnels and Trolls a little bit.

My archery/missile rules include an 'easier' table:

1-30 ft: L1-SR on DX
30-100 ft: L2-SR
100-200 ft: L3-SR
200-300 ft: L4-SR
300-500 ft: L5-SR

...plus or minus 1-2 levels for very large or very small targets.

The archer makes the roll and notes by how much he has exceeded the target. So if I needed a 5 and rolled 11, I'd note the 6-point spread. If the target is a sentient, moving creature, it gets a L1-SR, but has a penalty to the roll equal to the amount the archer exceeded, in this case 6 points. So if I had only needed to roll a 4 or better, I would now need to roll a 10 or better. (If two characters are shooting, optionally it would take a L2-SR beat by the sum of the two successes, but only one of the arrows actually hits--you dodge one only to walk into the other.) This (a) allows archers at low levels a decent chance to hit non-moving targets, and (b) allows characters a chance, however slight, to avoid the considerable damage that even a low-level archer can inflict.

As always, these are just my house-ruled suggestions. It is very possible to enjoy T&T playing by the rules as written.

cheers,
Adam

Tunnels and Trolls: Making Spells less "Swingy"

"Swingy" is a term some gamers use for a rule or a system that can make conflicts go all the way for one side or all the way for the other, based on a die roll or some other consideration. Notably, swingy systems don't allow the players much opportunity to influence the outcome once it's known which side is winning, and often don't allow an opportunity to prevent or influence it beforehand without some kind of GM fiat.

Case in point is Tunnels and Trolls' combat spell Take That You Fiend. It does the caster's INT stat worth of damage directly to the opponents CON/Monster Rating, disregarding armor. And though the spell description states that "...it is a singular spell and must be directed at a single foe", it also has a disruptive side-effect that adds to the caster's party's combat total. It can't do double damage, but it can pad the numbers so you don't take any. Other spells, like Hellbomb Burst, simply destroy everything in their range. But at least it's a higher-level spell.

Some in-game rules will negate this, such as possessing a weapon made of meteoric iron, which cancels 3rd level and lower spells. But even then, a higher-level wizard can just cast a 4th-level Take That You Fiend. The 7th edition also introduced a new attribute called Wizardry, which is a rating of your character's affinity for magic; spells cast on a character by a wizard with a lower Wizardry rating simply do not take effect, which is why even non-spell-casting characters would want to boost that stat.

As you can see, very "swingy".

In light of this, I propose a new rule for games where the GM and players wish to moderate the power of combat spells: after having a damaging spell cast on a character, the player can roll a SR (Saving Roll, based on Luck or another of the character's stats); the difficulty level is the level of the spell caster. For every point over what is needed for success, reduce the damage by one point. The "minimum roll" applies for success or failure, but not for the amount calculated.

If that last bit sounds confusing, consider that T&T requires a minimum roll of 5 (on 2d6), regardless of the attribute or SR level. A 2nd-level SR, for instance, requires a total of 25 points (attribute plus roll); so if Len the Lucky (with a Luck of 23) needs to make a 2nd-level roll, he'd only need two points on two dice--but there's always a minimum of five needed. If he rolls, say, a nine in this scenario, he'd subtract seven points, not four. Failing the roll wouldn't help him at all, though.

Alternately, you can let the magic system work as-is in most cases, but in any case where the spell would kill  your character, you get to make the SR and keep as many  points of CON as you made the roll by.

This alone is probably not enough to ease the "all-or-nothing" feeling of some T&T magic. It's possible that some spells (like the aforementioned Hellbomb Burst) need to be rewritten or discarded for this style of play. (Please take note of that last clause: if you like T&T's magic as-is, I'm not saying your fun is Wrong and Bad. I just like my wizards to have less of a combat role, because that's where I like warriors to shine.) I'll delve into that a bit more in future posts.

cheers,
Adam

Tunnels and Trolls

Among the older games I love is Tunnels & Trolls. Created by Ken St. Andre as a faster, simpler D&D, Tunnels & Trolls is currently in its 7th edition. It underwent rapid evolution in the early years, until the 5th edition, currently the most widely played, was released in 1980. The differences between that one and the current are minimal, which means that much of the material released for one can be used for the other.

The game uses similar stats to D&D, but ditches Wisdom and adds Luck. The combat system is dead simple: both sides in a combat roll up their combat total using a number of d6s based on their weapon or (in the case of NPC monsters), their "Monster Rating", adding whatever bonuses to this number that they have; the lower number is subtracted from the higher, and the difference is applied to the losing side; armor reduces this.

Magic is much freer in T&T than in D&D; wizards have access to a lot of spell early on, and by basing it off of a recharging Strength attribute, the game allows for many castings. The spells also have silly names, which has apparently turned off a lot of people off to the game. It just doesn't seem "serious" to blast an enemy troll with a spell called Take That, You Fiend.

To which I say...hmm. I actually agree with them on that. I'm not fond of T&T's spell names either, although that hasn't stopped me from playing and enjoying the game. I also think the game is a bit "swingy" when it comes to magic, having effects that turn the tables, often decisively, with the casting of a single spell.

For that reason, I set out writing a set of my own house rules, that would allow non-magic-using types to moderate and attenuate the combat effects of magic, and, in the process, rewrite the names of spells.

Others have also done their own take on T&T. Lances & Labyrinths, for example, is an effort to add more D&D-style classes to T&T. And over at Vin's Troll Bridge, people discuss rule changes and additions constantly. So I don't believe this rule re-working is in any way disrespectful to Ken St. Andre, contrariwise, I think this kind of personalization and expansion is an extension of the creative spirit that caused him to create his own rule set in the first place.

In future blogs, I'll talk about some of the T&T rule changes, and eventually post a list of spell names. But I recommend people check out the base rules of T&T, if you haven't already. It's a rules-light system that affords the player and GM a lot of flexibility and creativity.

cheers,
Adam