Tunnels and Trolls
2015 cover for the current version of T&T. Painting is by Liz Danforth
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| Designer(s) | Ken St. Andre |
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| Publisher(s) | Flying Buffalo |
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| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| System(s) | Customizable rpg |
Tunnels & Trolls (abbreviated T&T) is a fantasy role-playing game designed by Ken St. Andre and first published in 1975 by Flying Buffalo. The second modern role-playing game published, it was written by Ken St. Andre to be a more accessible alternative to Dungeons & Dragons and is suitable for solitaire, group, and play-by-mail gameplay.
St. Andre, a public librarian in Phoenix, Arizona, liked the idea of fantasy role-playing after reading a friend's D&D rule books but found the actual rules confusing, so he wrote his own. The first edition of Tunnels & Trolls was self-published in April 1975. In June 1975, publisher Flying Buffalo Inc. released a second edition of the game, and Tunnels & Trolls quickly became D&D's biggest competitor.Tunnels & Trolls had similar statistics, classes, and adventures to Dungeons & Dragons, but introduced a points-based magic system and used six-sided dice exclusively. According to Michael Tresca, Tunnels & Trolls presented a better overall explanation of its rules, and "brought a sense of impish fun to the genre".
The game underwent several modifications between the original release and when the 5th edition of the rules was published in 1979. This edition was also translated and published abroad in the United Kingdom, Germany,France, Italy, Finland, Japan, and it entered these markets before Dungeons & Dragons did in most cases.
In 1999 Pyramid magazine named Tunnels & Trolls as one of The Millennium's Most Underrated Games. Editor Scott Haring said of the game "everybody knows this was the second ever fantasy roleplaying game ... But to dismiss it as just an opportunistic ripoff would be grossly unfair. Flying Buffalo's T&T had its own zany feel – it was much less serious than D&D – and a less-complicated game system."
In 2005, Flying Buffalo updated the 5th edition rules with a "5.5" publication that added about 40 pages of extra material. That same year, Fiery Dragon Productions produced a 30th Anniversary Edition under license in a tin box complete with CD, map, and monster counters, and two new versions of the rules. Ken St. Andre used the opportunity to extensively update the style of play and introduce new role-playing concepts, such as character level determined by character attribute statistics instead of arbitrary numbers of experience points. The 30th Anniversary rules are generally known as the 7th edition. One of the most significant innovations of 7th edition is the introduction of a skills system. The 7.5 edition was released in 2008 by Fiery Dragon, being an update and clarification on the 30th Anniversary Edition.
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