Well, I got my hard copy of Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls in the mail yesterday. It was an annoying and stressful day (Thank you Internets.) but I powered down in the evening and took my little book to bed and read through it. First, this ain’t a review because reading through it got me thinking about the early days of the DIY hack D&D movement. Before there was an internet. Before there was an OGL. Before there was even an idea of the OSR.
Let’s look back at the history of Tunnels & Trolls. I’m not going to quote every thing from that link. Just follow it for the whole story. But to break it down for the purposes of my post here. It’s simple Ken St Andre looked at D&D and then made his own stuff. He simplified and changed rules he didn’t like. Changed stats and monsters and eventually made a whole new game out it. That’s DIY.
From those early days of gaming, there many publishers and I can’t really talking about people taking D&D and doing their own thing with it without mentioning Empire of the Petal Throne. Yes, the original was published by TSR but it was a setting that did it’s own thing. It went beyond the normal stuff.
Then’s there Arduin. It had it’s host of oddities and legal troubles but it still was D&D hacked. But dig through it and see the craziness there. The charts, the races and the house rules. It was more DIY stuff.
Lastly and the one I’m most fond of Talislanta. Once again a very similar system tweaked and reworked. And it’s a crazy wild world. I just love it. And bonus. All the PDF’s are legally free. It’s worth your time to just check out the world.
Yes, this was one of those rambling posts. I just felt like curling up with a few things that felt cool and comforting.
I leave you with this.