T&T [gaming]

[the_gneech]

Tonight was Tunnels & Trolls night. Alas, pholph was sick and couldn't play tonight, but in his place we had guest star kamau_d_lyon in his place. We got started around 8:00, with everybody rolling up characters on the spot. lythandra went with a warrior, jamesbarrett and Kamau created rogues, and camstone made a wizard.

The scenario is a converted TSR module (N4: Treasure Hunt, written by the always-cool Aaron "CHAMPIONS Guru" Allston), doctored a bit to move to a homebrew setting (i.e., removing non-human kindreds, and changing the orcs and goblins to human pirates and smugglers, respectively). They got 3/5 of the way through the scenario, not bad for three and a half hours of gaming, and managed to do very well for the most part. We ended the session at a very handy break point (the characters, having been warned by a vision of Ishtar that they must flee the island before its imminent destruction and then fought off a ravenous ghoul, are now headed for Viledel's manor to find an escape craft -- and hopefully this "treasure" they keep hearing bandied about).

I'd very much like to finish the scenario sometime -- hopefully Kamau can make it back down again (or Jamie, Camstone, Laurie and I can make it up to New York) before too long. Even if that doesn't happen, tho, I am thinking of doing a similar setup with the regular group here for a secondary game of my own. T&T is a lot easier to get that Howardian sword-and-sorcery feel in than D&D is, without having all the number-crunching of the Conan d20 or other games -- and converting monsters and scenarios to T&T is a breeze. I did 100% of the necessary conversions for Treasure Hunt in about 4 hours, total. It'd be a great system to do a "vagabond adventuring mercenaries" type of campaign in, without requiring the carefully-structured progressions of D&D.

Action (and particularly combat) also moves screamingly fast in T&T compared to, say, Fantasy HERO, which is a big advantage!

-The Gneech

Comments

[frostdemn.livejournal.com]

So... How frequently are the heroes defeated, might I ask? I mean to the extent of cannot-be-revived-and-do-not-collect-200-gold-pieces?

[xylen.livejournal.com]

Tunnels & Trolls sounds like another name for Tapestries muck. :)

[lowen-kind.livejournal.com]

You and crew have to meet up with our gaming group. ;=3

Kamau, and smrgol, have been involved with our craziness to know what kind of mayhem our group can cause. In fact Friday night's session was almost rated "X" for some of the mental images that were being created. ;=3

Converted, eh?

[sslaxx.livejournal.com]

Do you have the converted module up anywhere? Sounds interesting, and I want to get a T&T campaign started somehow.

Re: Converted, eh?

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Well, the conversions aren't that hard. What I did was:

Have everybody build characters as usual, but don't bother to equip them -- they start out with nothing. The chains they're in at the beginning of the game have drained their WIZ to 0, and it will stay at that level for roughly an hour after the chains are removed but then recover at the usual rate.

Since this was a one-shot scenario, I also included, scattered around various places, potions that restored CON and WIZ.

Convert all skill checks to SRs as appropriate, mostly L1 and L2.

Change Hafkris from a half-orc to a human, MR 50 when sober, 40 if still drunk, armed with a cutlass and stiff leather, and the heavy crossbow from the rear hold as appropriate.

Replace "Goblin" with "Smuggler." MR 20 each, armed with gladiuses and very light self bows.

Replace "Orc" with "Pirate." MR 29 each for the standard ones, armed with cutlasses and daggers. The pirate leader in the gully encounter is MR 39 at the beginning of the fight, but MR 20 by the end, armed with cloth armor and a sabre.

The goddess of the temple is Ishtar.

The ghoul in the temple is MR 50, with the special ability of 2/Glue You.

The rest would be spoilers for my group. ;) You can e-mail me at thegneech@gmail.com if you'd like the rest.

-TG