Melee, Missiles & Magic is my homage to the first edition of Tunnels & Trolls and is a streamlined 3d6 TTRPG suitable for solitaire adventures, GM-ed games, or for writing gamebooks. It contains a list of spells and a table of monsters.

I played a lot of Tunnels & Trolls solo adventures (its key differentiator) when I was a teenager, and so I was thrilled last year when I found the first edition reprint of the 1975 typescript was now available. (First printed at the ASU copy shop! Go Sun Devils!) Anyway, it was a lot of fun to read, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of RPGs. If you’ve not tried any TNT solo adventures, you should at least try Buffalo Castle, since it is the first solo RPG.

Now, since apparently D&D has me too stuck up to enjoy TNT’s lighthearted spell names (e.g., Knock-knock, Whammy, Upsideaisy), I created a mini-RPG with more serious spell names (inspired by Sorcery!) and streamlined a bunch of TNT’s already streamlined rules. It actually grew out of a BASIC program I’d written, Tunnels & Traps

Wonderful homage to Tunnel and Trolls! This was a lot of fun to read and had a lot of great ideas in the spirit of the game. At just 9 pages it does a great job of concisely explaining its content. I particularly liked the monster list with their attributes, something missing from the original T&T game! Looking forward to more T&T related content in the future!

The Dagda