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One of the earliest competitors to Dungeons & Dragons, Ken St. Andre's Tunnels and Trolls role-playing game carved out a niche by being somewhat less complex than the competition and by providing a long line of solitaire adventures. Indeed, Tunnels and Trolls was the first role-playing game to support solitaire play, and a number of its adventures still remain in print. Many of the adventures have gone through multiple editions (and sometimes dramatic rewrites), evolving from amateurish efforts into professional-looking products. Several adventures were released in England in 1986 in two-book combined volumes (except for City of Terrors, which was released by itself). These editions were edited to remove some mild sexual content and had simplified rules included so that they could be played as stand-alone gamebooks as well as solitaire role-playing adventures. In more recent years, many titles have become available in electronic formats as well.
Collections
The Amulet of the Salkti and Arena of Khazan (Arena of Khazan and 1 more item)Captif d'Yvoire and Beyond the Silvered Pane (Captif d'Yvoire and 1 more item)
Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls Adventurers Compendium (Circle of Ice and 9 more items)
Gamesmen of Kasar and Mistywood (Mistywood and 1 more item)
Naked Doom and Deathtrap Equalizer Dungeon (Naked Doom and 1 more item)
Sword for Hire and Blue Frog Tavern (Blue Frog Tavern and 1 more item)
Mini-Adventures
Cry Wolf!Role-Playing Games
Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls (Abyss)Tunnels and Trolls 1.0
Tunnels and Trolls 2.0
Tunnels and Trolls 3.0
Tunnels and Trolls 4.0
Tunnels and Trolls 5.0
Tunnels and Trolls 5.5
Tunnels and Trolls 7.5
Tunnels and Trolls: The Complete Fantasy Game Rule Book
Role-Playing Materials
Take the MoneyThe Vaults of K'Horror
Solitaire Adventures
A Computer Generated DungeonElven Lords
Pocket Adventure 1: Goblin Lake
Pocket Adventure 2: Abyss
Pocket Adventure 3: Circle of Ice
Vampire's Vault
1. Buffalo Castle
2. Deathtrap Equalizer Dungeon
3. Labyrinth
4. Naked Doom
5. Dargon's Dungeon
6. Weirdworld
7. Overkill
8. Beyond the Silvered Pane
9. City of Terrors
10. Sorcerer Solitaire
11. Sword for Hire
12. Arena of Khazan
13. Sewers of Oblivion
14. Sea of Mystery
15. Blue Frog Tavern
16. Mistywood
17. Gamesmen of Kasar
18. Beyond the Wall of Tears
19. Captif d'Yvoire
20. The Amulet of the Salkti
21. Red Circle
22. Caravan to Tiern
23. Dark Temple
24. When the Cat's Away (Solo for the Intellectually Challenged and 2 more items)
Related Documents
Advertisement
Tunnels and Trolls "At Last!" Advertisement
This advertisement for the Corgi edition of Tunnels and Trolls comes from Computer Gamer issue 13, page 51. Thanks to Ryan Lynch for sharing the image.
Tunnels and Trolls: Put Some Adventure Into Your Life Ad
from Dragon #38, page 49. Thanks to Pedro Panhoca for the scan.
Bibliography of Items About "Tunnels and Trolls"
Articles
You Against the System: The SF Expansion and Solitaire GamingMini-Adventures
Blood and HonourThe Bullow Lands
Coming Down the Mountain: a Mystic Japanese T&T Adventure
First Command
Golden Dust, Red Death
Hot Pursuit
Kingmaker
The Legend of the __________ (adj) __________ (n)
The Mad Dwarf
Nymphomania
The Old Dwarf Mine
Rogue's Quest
Seven Ayes
Stop, Thief!
The Sunk of Tarsis
Thief for Hire
Wild Ride
Reference/Non-Fiction Books
Dungeons & Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing GamesSolitaire Adventures
Hela's House of Dark DelightsA Sworded Adventure
Related Links
Flying Buffalo
This long-lived adventure game company sells solitaire adventures for the Tunnels & Trolls RPG along with some Lost Worlds books.
http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/
(last verified: 2019-04-12)
User Comments
Tunnels & Trolls has the distinction of being the second Fantasy Role-Playing Game published (the first was, of course, Dungeons & Dragons).
According to designer Ken St. Andre, he liked the alliterative nature of Dungeons & Dragons's title, but realized he couldn't use it, so he sought after something similar - his first suggestion, Tunnels & Troglodytes was soundly pooh-pooh'ed by his friends, someone suggested Tunnels & Trolls, and the rest is history.
In addition to being the 2nd FRPG (the designers of RuneQuest, a highly acclaimed FRPG, credit E. Gary Gygax for opening Pandora's box... and Ken St. Andre for proving that it could be opened again), T & T has the distinction of being possibly THE first to have a universal task resolution system, what was (and still is) referred to as "saving rolls" (possibly due to D & D's initial inspiration) but are actually attribute checks by which a character's chance of performing a task was dependant on an appropriate attribute and an assigned "difficulty rating" of the task.
T & T is now in its 5th edition (which came out sometime in 1979) and has been out of print for a while but a new version of the 5th edition rulebook (called version 5.5) will be published sometime in 2005 and will include Buffalo Castle, the first solitaire adventure for T & T.
Differences between the earlier editions (the 4th edition being the most common) and the 5th edition were fairly minimal: earlier editions had less powerful "normal" weapons while the 5th edition added the warrior-wizard as a fourth character class (before the 5th edition, the only classes were warrior, wizard and rogue... and the rogues had to make some difficult choices once they reached 7th level, being forced to choose between becoming a warrior or a wizard). The only "glitch" in using one version of the rules over the other are the fact that adventures designed for 5th edition characters might have monsters that are a bit too powerful for earlier edition characters.
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