BMK BMK The Bitmap Kid Presents ----------------------------- Becoming the Ultimate ----------------------- Part IV - Tunnels & Trolls and Traveller (Runequest will appear in a future issue.) 1 - Tunnels, Trolls and a Pointless Game! It's been some time since I played Tunnels & Trolls, and there's a reason for that. Mainly, it's because it pales in comparison to the Dungeons & Dragons game talked about last issue. Tunnels and Trolls is, in fact, very similar to D&D, all the same basic rules apply with a few changes in the way stats are recorded etc. T&T is more basic and simple to play than D&D, and I suppose it would appeal to beginners, but really all I can say for T&T is that it has a lot more room for solo adventures, something that Dungeons & Dragons just hasn't got at all really. The solo adventures are basically just Gamebooks, like the most popular Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf books, which are based around the T&T rules. The solo adventures that you can get are of reasonable quality, but really if you want a gamebook why not go for the widely available Lone Wolf or Fighting Fantasy which are on the whole better? Not only is D&D more readily available, strongly supported and of far better quality, it is also more advanced without really being any harder or more complicated. I wouldn't recommend T&T unless you really have troubles getting a group together to play D&D but still want to play it. Oh dear. Perhaps a T&T player could write in and tell me why they like it. Although I doubt it somehow. 2 - Traveller. The biggest thing that separates this game from the rest is that it's a 100% sci-fi role-playing-game set in the distant future. Interstellar travel is commonplace and there are comparisons to be made with this and the new Frontier game. Like in the D&D adventure you can more or less do what you want - a whole universe is out there to be explored and the DM (and the players) can go anywhere within it. Orcs and Dragons are replaced with strange aliens and horses replaced with spacecraft. I can see great potential with this game - in one game your characters could be fighting space-pirates in an intergalactic war, in another the same characters could find a planet where the inhabitants are like that of a D&D game with no knowledge of spaceships and aliens. As with D&D there are different game sets to buy. The first - Basic Traveller - comes with three books, Characters and Combat, Starships and Worlds and Adventures. The Deluxe Traveller contains these books plus a Introduction book, a basic adventure and other material to get you started. Again, like with D&D, Traveller has a great amount of information about the intergalactic "world" of the game, providing a shell for your own adventures, although, of course, it can be ignored as much as you like. Characters in Traveller have six different statistics, Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education and Social Standing. The scores, for humans, are made up with a 2D6 throw. Unlike in games such as D&D however, human scores may not go above about 15. Instead, they can gain extra skills to help them on whatever quest they are on. Characters even get old - and can start to lose points at a certain age. Ooo-er. When the character's skills and stats has been rolled up, he must choose and train in a career, that can be anything from the navy to becoming a trader. Aliens can be anything you can think of - and non-intelligent aliens are normally thought of as animals - and are fought in a similar way to D&D. Combat is taken place over die rolls, with an adjustment for skills etc. If the final score is over a certain number, it is a hit. Damage depends on the type of weapon being used. Like in D&D surprise and range etc are also taken into consideration and so creating a simple but quite realistic combat system. In Traveller there are a great many worlds to explore - and any random world can be created quite easily taking into consideration a few statistics like size, location etc. Traveller is a good game. It has set out to accomplish a difficult task - a playable, fun, and flexible game system but at the same time fairly believable and easy to understand and use and in my opinion has done just that. Next SynTax month, I'll have a closer look at Runequest. Honest. I will. I WILL! You don't believe me....? Hrumph! See 'ya then! BMK BMK - o -