It’s a rainy afternoon in the Great Metropolitan Rain Forest and none of my projects seem to hold my interest. To avoid buying Minecraft Dungeons I found my old Diablo II disks, installed it, and spent a few hours with the carpel-tunnel-syndrome inducing game, and decided after all to finally do something I’ve been wanting to do for a few years: Pick up a Tunnels and Trolls solo adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WARNING: Role-Playing Neepery Ahead<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That meant rolling up a new character. The Deluxe T&T<\/a> Rules are slightly different from what I remembered when I played 40-30 years ago, but the basics are still there and I decided to keep things simple and “challenging” by recording my first eight stat rolls into a first level human warrior. I rolled enough gold to give him a club and buckler and then set about trying to find an adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is always Buffalo Castle<\/a><\/em>, but I’ve played that enough to not be surprised by it. As we’ll see, I probably should have done Buffalo Castle first anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have several old print copies of the classic solo adventures and also a folder full of electronic copies of solo adventures. I opened up the Adventurer’s Compendium<\/a>, which is a collection of short solo adventures that were originally published in Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the magazine from Flying Buffalo that promoted T&T and fantasy in general. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The first adventure is Kingmaker <\/em>by Michael Stackpole. This adventure appeared in SA #1. Despite thinking I had a chance with my club (3d6<\/abbr>) and buckler (3 hits), the adventure strips that away from you and dumps you into the adventure <\/p>\n\n\n\n First thing I do is fail a L2SR<\/abbr> on strength. Then I was faced with a fight that was mathematically impossible to beat: My poor schmuck only got 2d6+3 in unarmed combat, while the ogre was 3d6+17. He’d have roll negative numbers for me to have a chance. Now, the game designers understand this can happen and usually there’s an out that says if you can make a saving roll on Dexterity or Luck or something, you can can avoid all damage and wail on your opponent. It helps when the situation is a much smaller opponent (me) against a larger slower opponent (the ogre). Great. First level human character. Trollworld must be littered with the bones of 1st level human warriors. I rolled two 5s, Thanks to DARO<\/acronym> I rolled again and got a 7 and actually made the L2SR on Dex to hit the guy but not enough to kill him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second round, tried again. Failed the SR. Fortunately there’s a rule in dT&T that lets human re-roll one saving roll, so I took it. My second roll was less than my first roll. Again, no mathematical way to win in a fair fight, so my character turned into paste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I waved the magic wand and looked through my collection of adventures. A few years ago, in anticipation of this rainy afternoon, I purchased Hobb Sized Adventures<\/a> from Rarr! I’m a Monster Publishing<\/em>. Jumped in to the very first one, Tomb of the Toad <\/em>and survived by first combat experience. The second was twice as difficult and I was just as dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n