Sunday Musings - T&T, Not D&D

Each week, Adam times out exactly an hour and a half to write an article relatedin some way to tabletop hobbying.

This week, we get tunneled, trolled and TTRPGed

There’s a funny thing that happens when you bring up Tunnels & Trolls at a table full of gamers. First, there’s the inevitable blink of confusion. Then, maybe, a knowing smirk from the one old-schooler who still keeps their dog-eared copy of Buffalo Castle on the shelf next to the coffee machine. And then—if you're lucky—a story. Usually involving way too many six-sided dice, a character named “Sir Cluckalot,” and a saving roll that went terribly, gloriously wrong. But here’s the kicker: for all the talk of dragons, dungeons, and Critical Role-shaped cultural dominance, Tunnels & Trolls might just be the better game. Yes. I said it.

Let’s unpack that.

Back in 1975, Ken St. Andre took a look at the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons, scratched his head, and said: “Nah.” Too many rules. Too much faff. Not enough fun.

So he did the unthinkable: he made his own game. One with fast character creation, simple mechanics, and a tone that practically begged players to try stupid things and laugh when they blew up. Tunnels & Trolls wasn’t just a clone; it was a counterpoint. A challenge. A philosophy in 40 pages or less. While Gygax was building a legend, St. Andre was inviting people to break it and build their own.

Now, if you’ve ever tried explaining D&D 5e character creation to a newcomer, you know it’s like trying to teach someone to build a Volvo from spare parts before they can even turn the ignition. T&T skips all that. You roll some dice. You assign them to stats. You’re in. Want to be a wizard with no pants and a talking turnip sidekick? Sure. Knock yourself out. Combat? Dice pools. Not elegant, but undeniably satisfying. Like tossing a handful of jellybeans across the table and hoping they add up to “alive.” No Attack Rolls and Damage Rolls—just one glorious dice-chucking moment per round, and if you die, you probably deserved it.

In a world where solo TTRPGs are now en vogue (thank you, lockdowns and digital loneliness), Tunnels & Trolls was doing it decades ago. Flying Buffalo Inc. pumped out solo modules like they were the pulp fiction of fantasy gaming—quick, wild, full of traps, and usually fatal in the most amusing way possible. Imagine: a game where you don’t need a Dungeon Master, a scheduling app, or six people with matching calendars. Just you, a pencil, and a slightly unfair dungeon that asks, “Do you open the suspiciously ornate chest?” (Hint: no. But you will.)

D&D is many things: a rules system, a franchise, a Netflix adaptation waiting to happen. But it can sometimes feel like you’re playing a tax return simulator with dragons. T&T, in contrast, asks only one thing: do you want to have fun? And then it proceeds to reward you for trying to cartwheel across a collapsing bridge while juggling three goblins and casting a spell named “Take That, You Fiend!” Seriously. That’s a real spell name. Humor wasn’t an afterthought in T&T—it was a design pillar. From its character options to its saving rolls (a mechanic that lets you try just about anything with a bit of dice luck), the game leaned into player creativity, not just optimization.

Here’s where T&T quietly schools D&D: progression. While D&D’s classes sometimes feel like flowcharts with capes, Tunnels & Trolls lets your character grow organically. No multi-classing headaches. No feat trees. Just your stats, your choices, and whatever weird backstory you decide to shoehorn into a dungeon crawl. You want to be a sword-wielding wizard who moonlights as a poet and runs from kobolds because of childhood trauma? That’s not just allowed—it’s expected.

No, it doesn’t have Matt Mercer. It doesn’t have a hardcover slipcase edition with gold-foil bookmarks. But it does have something D&D lost somewhere around its third corporate acquisition: heart.Tunnels & Trolls is the scrappy underdog of fantasy gaming. The garage-band RPG that never made it to the charts but inspired a generation of gamers to pick up their dice and do it their way.It doesn’t pretend to be balanced. It doesn’t try to simulate realism. It exists purely to let you and your friends (or just you and your imagination) tell a ridiculous, amazing, personal story. And in the end, isn’t that the point?

If D&D is the blockbuster franchise, T&T is the cult classic—rough around the edges, filled with personality, and surprisingly satisfying after all these years.

So the next time your game night gets cancelled, or your DM burns out, or you’re just tired of arguing about action economy—grab a handful of d6s, print off a solo adventure, and give Tunnels & Trolls a shot.

You might just remember why you fell in love with RPGs in the first place.