Enter the Tunnelmaster

Clickbait opener 

The D&D killer has finally dropped: Tunnels & Trolls, by Ken St Andre, with illustrations by Liz Danforth, published 1975.

Interior illustration from T&T 5e by Liz Danforth

More seriously 

I've been playing a lot of Tunnels & Trolls at the Table-Time server lately. It's fantastic. (No, it's not a "D&D killer", there's no such thing, it is not even desirable, just play the games you enjoy. I'm still playing D&D.)

I haven't interacted with the T&T community, if there still is one, so I have no way of knowing if what I describe bears any resemblance to T&T as others have played it. Here I will explain the game as it strikes me, and what's so good about it.

Player-side fun

Tunnels & Trolls is designed for 3 to 5 players, including a GM. I find old-school D&D's insistence on a big play group stifling, not to mention impractical, so this is a nice change. The game is intimate. 

Players are explicitly playing a game, which can be won or lost: "As long as a character remains alive... you are 'winning'. If ill fate befalls the character, or if you overextend yourself in playing your character's capabilities, the character dies, and it is your loss." (5e, 1.9)

Players are responsible for creating several (usually 2 to 4) ne'er-do-well adventurers, who will risk their lives for treasure and a high score. They play every character simultaneously, rather than managing a stable.

Here T&T solves the extreme deadliness of low-level D&D without putting its finger on the scale (cough AD&D cough). Your character can die, and you'll keep playing, without a moment's downtime, because you've got more than one.

These adventurers are strongly individuated in terms of stats, equipment, and species. Your adventuring party will probably include characters as diverse as a wealthy pixie (who nevertheless cannot carry their money or equipment) and a hulking (7 foot!) elf wizard without a pot to piss in.

Characters are a bit slapstick, as are their spells, the dangerous circumstances which confront them, and indeed the game as a whole. 

The adventurers are risking their life for treasure and a high score. They're expected to act decisively (which may not mean boldly or heroically), try their damnedest to figure out the dungeon's puzzles and dangers, and accept losses (which are frequent) gracefully. 

We have not moved far from the realm of traditional D&D just yet. More to come.

Generic resolution

T&T features gaming's first generic task resolution procedure. You roll 2d6, doubles adding and rolling over, add a stat, and try to beat a target number (20, 25, 30...). You get experience points proportional to your roll and the difficulty of the check.

(If you're interested, I analyzed the math behind the procedure here.) 

This is important historically, but nothing to get fired up about in 2025. Not until we fuse it with the...

"Abstract" combat procedure

Combat in T&T is side-based with simultaneous resolution. Both sides roll a number of attack dice; the high side wins, and deals damage equal to the difference between rolls. A single round of combat takes about 2 minutes in fiction.

This procedure gives very little room for individual action or indeed interesting narration at all. It is a relentless statistical grind, one which will probably go poorly for the players. Thus players will probably want to circumvent or modify the usual combat roll by stunting.

The T&T rules text calls out the possibility of stunting but refuses to give a concrete procedure for adjudicating stunts. Rather, it gives stunting players the same sort of freedom we find in early Champions, with special effects. Here are the basic possibilities for applying a stunt:

  • A stunt can be interpreted as a mere piece of flavor text, requiring no roll, and achieving nothing formally, while remaining available for future reincorporation
  • A stunt can apply before, during, or after the combat roll
  • A stunt can modify, augment, mitigate, or replace the results of the combat roll
  • A stunt may or may not preclude normal participation in the combat roll

For instance, the 5e rules text gives an example stunt: a hobbit tries to roll between the legs of a clumsy giant, to hit the giant without himself being hit. This stunt is resolved and applies before the normal combat roll, and its results replace the combat roll. Since the hobbit in the example succeeds, the giant cannot make the combat roll at all, and the giant deals damage freely. If he had missed, the giant would have made a combat roll, and the hobbit would not have been able to roll.

Other stunts might reposition the enemy, modify their combat roll, modify the players' combat roll, negate armor, incapacitate an enemy, whatever.

The play group is only bound by their expectations and understanding of the fiction; whatever stunts will be allowed, and the way they will be resolved, will be entirely to taste. 

This is the single most expressive procedure I have seen in classic fantasy tabletop adventure gaming. The possibilities, in the hands of a skilled play group, are endless. We have not yet scratched the surface.

Referee-side fun

Most games make some noise about referees or GMs or whatever they call it being tough but fair. T&T leans harder into "tough" than other games: for instance: "for his own honor, the GM will usually want to kill all the intruding delvers he can!" (5e, 1.8) Such hints are sprinkled throughout the text.

I have chosen to interpret these hints as part of a general philosophy of play, in which the referee is supposed to be adversarial to the players. I am supposed to try my damnedest to kill the adventurers, and if I do, then I win.

But I'm not just trying to kill them. I'm trying to have fun and challenge myself. I want to put the players in a position where, if they play better than me and are lucky, they will win, and if I play better than them and am lucky, I will win. I want to flex my muscles. I want to push myself to try harder, to think of ever-more-cunning traps.

So there's no problem with bullshit "rocks fall and everybody dies" moments. I don't interpret the players' statements in the most unfavorable light possible. What would be the fun of beating them, if I were doing that? No, I want to play as evenly and fairly as possible, right up until the point where I hose the little fuckers. 

When the players lose they say, "That was fiendish, you bastard!". When the players win, they say, "Ha! What do you think about that? You'll have to get up a little earlier in the morning to pull the wool over our eyes!" and I say "I'll get you next time!". And we all mean it. It's great fun.

(If I can get into some hairy RPG theory nonsense: in old school D&D we usually play with a gamist agenda, but the GM doesn't get to participate as a challenger. They have to enjoy the challenge vicariously. In T&T the referee participates as a challenger.)

Dig your dungeon!

T&T, like D&D before it, encourages referees to create their own dungeons and even worlds for play. Unlike D&D, it does not provide a procedure to do so, nor any rules for determining encounter difficulty, encounter density, or treasure. All these aspects of the dungeon are up to taste.

And whose taste determines these things? Mine, quite literally, more literally than you might suspect. The T&T rules text offers a suggestion: the dungeon should have "a motivating character, a proprietor -- mastermind who created the complex within the logic of the fantasy world itself (this is frequently an alter-ego of the person who created the dungeon on paper)." (5e, 2.5). I am the Tunnelmaster. I dug the dungeon. It is mine, an expression of my personality and interests.

I cannot say too much about the dungeon I have dug, not even its name, because my players read my blog and they have only seen a little of it. Here are some hints.

  • A collection of monsters based on my nightmares and family members
  • Factions of humans engaged in bizarre activities, locked in tension so tight nothing can move
  • Plenty of wild animals acting in exaggerated fashions
  • Traps and logistical problems about traversing great distances, heights, temperatures, and water
  • Only 2 doors, because I hate the "standing outside a door" conversation

This is not a dungeon, it is my dungeon.

In my ideal T&T play group, every player is simultaneously a Tunnelmaster, and we take turns delving into the dungeons we have each dug, upping the ante at each other, challenging each other to make an environment that is engaging, deadly, fair, and promising.

Commandments of the Tunnelmaster

  1. Dig your own dungeon. If you need to run a published module to practice the system first, that's fine, but don't make it a habit. Dig your dungeon as yourself. You are going to war. Your dungeon should reflect your actual interests.
  2. Remember that, while you are trying to destroy the other players, you are also trying to challenge yourself. These two principles are equals. Hold them together, in tension. Don't make a scenario where you can destroy the other players without effort, and don't make a scenario where you aren't trying to destroy the other players.
  3. Be as fiendish as possible and don't give an inch. 

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