and other things.Īgain, to this day I'd NEVER recommend anyone at all to not try or play T&T. I found that rolling surprise, initiative, attack, damage, then most of the same for the other opponents was more intuitive, easier and quicker to track and.at the table (where it matters) easier to narrate the game's mechanics and simply faster despite the 'feeling' that it wasn't.Īll of this of course disregards the bizarrely high demands of points needed for a wizard to cast higher level spells etc. I witnessed some great stuff over about four years (including a low-level Hobbit downing a dragon with a single sling stone to it's eye and into it's brain, thanks to exploding doubles on a combat/stunt SR and it was a great moment and fun and such, but.still there remains the question of why even bother with standard combat.). Well, yes, PCs of any stripe can 'write their own tickets' with such and come out on top but this turns the game into "Let's SR our way out of this!" which brings into question the idea of the standard combat mechanic even existing at all. There's virtually NO way out of his inevitable fate. In T&T, if a fourth or even sixth level warrior goes toe-to-toe with the same goblins possessing the SAME Monster Rating he had no trouble going up against one of at level one and there are four of them against him.forget it. In old school D&D/clones and so forth a fourth level fighter can still plow through three or four goblins in a round or two. things get overpowered and overwhelming soon. RISUS can also be likewise abstract, even more so than old school D&D, and sometimes, even more so than T&T, but RISUS is actually faster.).ĭue to the nature of how it's structured, no matter how you counter inflation of dice, etc. And grinding to a halt with a very abstract combat system is not cool, even if you're cool with a very abstract system (I am. All the while you may also be rolling Saving Rolls for 'special attacks' each round (the spider's poison or web, the giant's smashing with rocks, etc.). Very soon you're inevitably rolling seven or ten or fifteen dice.and adding them all up.and adding up all the many dice for the opponents.and subtracting two to three digit numbers and then subtracting for armor.and possibly distributing points of damage amongst multiple combatants. It really isn't very long before the inflation gives way to many more dice no matter how things are split up. One is quickly convinced/seduced into how 'fast' and 'easy' it is. However, the 'at the table' reality is something different.Īt very low levels it works out well. Pretty handy.Īnd, no surprise, no initiative, no separate attack roll and separate damage roll, no defensive rolls, etc. a few, etc., then the mechanic remains exactly the same. The cool thing is that the mechanic is versatile. That reads and sounds SO fast and SO easy. You simply roll the total for one side and roll the total for the other and the difference goes toward damage for the losing side (minus armor, if applicable). "When one reads and imagines the T&T combat mechanic one 'sees' this: (I recently posted this on G+ so I have it at hand, luckily.). I'll give you and others who may read in the future the brutal and honest truth. I ran T&T exclusively for over four years and there was a time here and other places when questions related to the game sometimes resulted in: "Ask Mach Front." Sssooo. I'm late to the game but feel obligated to reply. If you're planning on building your own T&T house game from the ground up, it's really all you need. That's what I'm using to run my online game here.
#Troll trouble game rules free#
Even a poor and uncreative DM can at least fall back on the D&D game rules for exploration and combat and run a successful game, but T&T doesn't really work that way.įYI: The free T&T Light rules are 5th edition, with one or two additions from 5.5e. The design does mean that any version of T&T is much more work out of the box than D&D ever has been. Most of what I've seen from 7th and Deluxe add even more possibilities and details, but also clamp down a little bit on what is and isn't "official" T&T. At least up to 5.5 the rules even read that way, not as a rulebook but as a compilation of various rules discussions and possible solutions. Even more than Original or Basic D&D, T&T is a toolkit for framing your own rules. I've read pretty much every edition up to 5.5 a few times each, but I can't comment much on 7th or Deluxe edition since I don't own those.įrom what I have gathered about them, though, I think I would prefer 5th edition, based on how open and free-formed it is. I've been an interested T&T reader for a little while now, but only just recently started my first game as a play-by-post.