# Tunnels & Trolls - Work: Tabletop RPG - Date: 1975 - Made by: Ken St. Andre (Designer) - Houses: Flying Buffalo - Platforms: Rulebook, Solo adventure booklets, Six-sided dice only - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/works/tunnels-and-trolls/ > A Phoenix librarian found the D&D rules baffling and wrote his own in 1975 — cheaper, funnier, six-sided-dice-only, and soon playable alone in a pioneering run of solo adventures. **Why it matters:** The second commercially published roleplaying game proved that D&D's idea could be separated from D&D's rules, launching the RPG industry's first rival and the solo gamebook tradition. ## Quick answers **When was Tunnels & Trolls first released?** Tunnels & Trolls was first released in 1975. **Who created Tunnels & Trolls?** Tunnels & Trolls was made by Ken St. Andre (designer). **Who published or developed Tunnels & Trolls?** Flying Buffalo. **What kind of work is Tunnels & Trolls?** Tunnels & Trolls is a tabletop RPG in the Tabletop Roleplaying Games and Gamebooks & Interactive Books tradition, released for Rulebook, Solo adventure booklets and Six-sided dice only. **Why is Tunnels & Trolls important?** The second commercially published roleplaying game proved that D&D's idea could be separated from D&D's rules, launching the RPG industry's first rival and the solo gamebook tradition. ## Overview *Tunnels & Trolls* is a fantasy roleplaying game designed by [Ken St. Andre](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/ken-st-andre/) and published in 1975, first by the author himself and then by Flying Buffalo of Arizona. It is generally counted as the second commercially published roleplaying game, after [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/) — and the first to show that the new form could be rebuilt from scratch with simpler, cheaper rules. Where D&D was dense, rule-lawyerly and written for miniatures wargamers, T&T was brisk, irreverent and aimed at anyone with a handful of ordinary six-sided dice. St. Andre once described the world he imagined as *The Lord of the Rings* as it would have been done by Marvel Comics in 1974, with Conan, Elric and the Gray Mouser thrown in. ## Origins St. Andre was a public librarian in Phoenix. In April 1975 he saw a friend's copy of the D&D rules, loved the idea, and concluded the actual rules did not make sense — and that they leaned heavily on miniatures he did not have. So he wrote his own. "I just wanted something I could play with my friends at a reasonable price, with reasonable equipment," he later said. He printed about a hundred copies of the first edition in 1975. Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo — a company founded in 1970 to run [Play-by-Mail Games](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/play-by-mail/) games by computer — agreed to sell forty of them at the Origins convention that July. When they sold out, Flying Buffalo acquired the publishing rights and issued its own edition later that year. Accounts differ on the exact months of each 1975 edition. ## How it plays A T&T character is defined by attributes rolled on three six-sided dice: Strength, Intelligence, Luck, Constitution, Dexterity and Charisma (later editions added more). The player chooses a kindred — human by default, or elf, dwarf, hobbit and other options — and a type: the Warrior, who gets full use of weapons and armor and doubles armor's protection, or the Wizard, who casts spells but fights poorly. The Rogue, a sort of self-taught spellcaster, bridges the two. Starting gold is 3d6 × 10. Combat is famously fast. Each side rolls a number of dice set by its weapons, adds "personal adds" for high Strength, Luck and Dexterity, and compares totals. The side with the lower total takes the difference as damage, reduced by armor, and anything left comes off Constitution. Monsters can be described by a single "Monster Rating." A whole melee can be resolved in one exchange of rolls, however many combatants there are. For everything else there is the **saving roll**: roll two dice (doubles add and roll again), add the relevant attribute, and try to reach a target number set by the difficulty level. In early editions, spells were powered by spending Strength, and they had memorably silly names — *Take That You Fiend!*, *Too-Bad Toxin*, *Upsidaisy*. A group session looks like D&D's: a referee, a dungeon, a party. But T&T's other great invention changed what "a session" could mean. Starting with Rick Loomis's *Buffalo Castle*, Flying Buffalo published **solo adventures** — numbered paragraphs you read in an order determined by your choices and your dice. With no referee at all, a single player could take a character through a dungeon: the first line of fantasy [gamebooks](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/gamebook/). ## Reception & impact Early reactions split along a line that would follow T&T for decades. *The Space Gamer* called the first edition "very playable, and a lot of fun." Lewis Pulsipher in *White Dwarf* #2 predicted that T&T players would sooner or later "graduate" to D&D. Jon Freeman judged it cheaper, simpler and faster than D&D, "but not better," and mocked the spell names. Rick Swan, writing in 1990, called it "one of the earliest and most enduring fantasy RPGs" and a perfect choice for players "who react to charts and tables like vampires react to crosses." In 1999 *Pyramid* named it one of the millennium's most underrated games. The fifth edition (1979) became the standard text and was translated into several languages, arriving in some countries, including Japan, before D&D did. St. Andre and his collaborators Liz Danforth and Michael Stackpole later designed the computer RPG *Wasteland* (1988) for [Interplay Productions](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/interplay/), and [New World Computing](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/new-world-computing/) adapted T&T's solo adventures into *Crusaders of Khazan* (1990). ## Legacy T&T's solos laid the groundwork for the gamebook boom of the 1980s, led by [Fighting Fantasy](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/fighting-fantasy/) and [Lone Wolf](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/lone-wolf/), and anticipated today's [Solo & Journaling RPGs](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/solo-rpg/) movement. Historian Stu Horvath calls it the first major divergence from D&D in RPG design, the root of a whole branch of minimalist games. The game has had many homes. A 30th-anniversary seventh edition appeared in 2005 and a Kickstarter-funded Deluxe edition in 2015. After Flying Buffalo was sold in 2021, Rebellion Unplugged acquired the T&T line in 2023, and in 2026 it crowdfunded a new edition, *Tunnels & Trolls: A New Age*. Half a century on, St. Andre's rebellion against a confusing rulebook is still in print. ## Facts - [Ken St. Andre](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/ken-st-andre/) first saw D&D in April 1975, decided the rules made no sense, and wrote his own game. - Flying Buffalo's Rick Loomis sold 40 of St. Andre's self-published copies at Origins in July 1975, then took the game on. - Combat is a single roll per side: both totals are compared and the loser takes the difference, softened by armor. - Spells carried jokey names such as Take That You Fiend!, Too-Bad Toxin and Upsidaisy, which critic Jon Freeman complained evoked "Ali Baba and the Three Stooges." - Its solo adventures, beginning with Rick Loomis's Buffalo Castle, made it the first RPG to publish a line of fantasy gamebooks. - Its fifth edition (1979) was translated into several languages and reached some markets, including Japan, before D&D. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnels_%26_Trolls) - [Wikipedia — Ken St. Andre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_St._Andre) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.