Through Wednesday, April 15 we resurrect two offers featuring the trailblazing FRPG Tunnels & Trolls – the second fantasy RPG ever published. The revived September 2018 Tunnels & Trolls Bundle has the Deluxe Edition rules (2015) and many solitaire adventures. And, from June 2021, the resurrected T&T Adventures (formerly titled “Tunnels & Trolls 2”) has the Beginner’s Bundle and nearly two dozen solitaire and gamemastered scenarios. If you’re new to Tunnels & Trolls, you can start with either offer.
Originally published by Flying Buffalo in 1975, Tunnels & Trolls stayed continuously in print and remained rules-compatible across all editions for more than 50 years – an unequalled longevity record. Buffalo founder and president Rick Loomis passed away in 2019. In May 2023 Rebellion Unplugged, the tabletop division of UK creative studio Rebellion, acquired Tunnels & Trolls and set about bringing the game into a new era. In fact, the Rebellion Unplugged Kickstarter campaign for Tunnels & Trolls: A New Age is in progress and doing very respectable numbers. A New Age reimagines the dark tunnels and ancient trolls of the past with a fresh, streamlined rule set that remains, like the original game, lightning-quick, immediate, and thrilling. The campaign ends Tuesday, 14 April, the day before these two revived Bundle of Holding offers.
The Rebellion Unplugged version of T&T remains true to the Flying Buffalo spirit in emphasizing roleplaying and gamemaster rulings over charts and reference books. In straightforward dungeon crawls, play is quick and exuberant. YouTube reviewer Dave Thaumavore says, “This latest edition has clearly surpassed D&D 5E in terms of product and appeal.” And A New Age makes a cosmetic alteration that generations of gamers might consider long overdue: the spell names.
Buffalo-era T&T was known, perhaps notorious, for its bumptious sense of humor, seen most prominently in its naming of spells, such as “Oh Go Away,” “Alaka-Scram,” “Poor Baby” (a healing spell), “Upsydaisy,” and “Take That You Fiend.” In a December 2009 Grognardia retrospective, Old School Revival blogger James Maliszewski confessed the spell names, in particular, made him snobbish about T&T in his early years: “Whimsy and humor were antithetical to ‘serious roleplaying,’ and so games that evinced either were seen as unfit for play by discerning gamers. […] If I were to pick a single mistake I made in my gaming education to call ‘tragic,’ it would be my rejection of Tunnels & Trolls back when I had the chance to become better acquainted with it. […] I’ve been missing quite a lot. T&T is a very cleverly designed game: complete, simple, and flexible, yet easily expandable. It’s not math-heavy and looks to be quite amenable to the kind of off-the-cuff gaming I enjoy these days. It’s also unambiguously old-school, as its rules demand both player cleverness and referee adjudication for satisfying use. […]
“Older and wiser now, I no longer see silliness as necessarily antithetical to seriousness. Indeed, I often think it’s an important complement to it. My games nowadays are filled with whimsical asides and comedic moments, in addition to grim and perilous encounters and philosophical musings. This isn’t an either/or situation, at least not in the way I used to think it had to be. Gaming is supposed to be, above all else, fun and, reading T&T, you can tell that author Ken St. Andre had a lot of fun with his creation. That’s as it should be with any RPG and, while I don’t think Tunnels & Trolls should become a model for all other RPGs any more than I think that of OD&D, I do think the hobby might be a more enjoyable place for all if the ethos of T&T were more widely imitated. That, for me, is the greatest lesson I took away from my investigations into this trailblazing game, whose community, while smaller than that of my own preferred system, is no less enthusiastic, creative, and open to newcomers. […] I still don’t like the spell names, though.”
TUNNELS & TROLLS BUNDLE [from Sept 2018]
T&T earned fame for its solitaire pick-a-path dungeon crawls. Flying Buffalo produced the first solo RPG adventure ever (Buffalo Castle) and followed with dozens more. Having trouble finding players? This bargain-priced Tunnels & Trolls Bundle revival from September 2018 once again presents Buffalo Castle and no less than ten other solo adventures, along with several gamemastered modules, the 2015 Deluxe rulebook (funded in a powerhouse January 2013 Kickstarter campaign), and more. Play like it’s 1975!
Pay just US$7.95 to get all thirteen titles in this revived offer’s Solitaire Collection (retail value $41.50) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks:
- A fun 64-page manga-style set of Tunnels & Trolls quickstart rules, produced by T&T Adventures Japan (where T&T is big) and presented here in English translation. A perfect intro to the game, this booklet gives all the rules you need to play the solos in this collection, plus a solitaire and two gamemastered scenarios.
- Five starting T&T solos: Battle School, Buffalo Castle (the first solo RPG adventure ever published for any game), Sea of Mystery, Sorcerer Solitaire, and Goblin Lake Deluxe.
- Three mid-level T&T solos: Agent of Death, Naked Doom, and Sewers of Oblivion.
- Three killer T&T solos: Arena of Khazan, Deathtrap Equalizer Dungeon, and perhaps the most fondly remembered of all the solos, Michael A. Stackpole’s City of Terrors.
- Elven Lords Deluxe, Mike Stackpole’s 1990 follow-up to City of Terrors, in an expanded edition with new art by Liz Danforth.
And if you pay more than this revival’s threshold (average) price, which is set at $17.95 to start, you’ll level up and also get this offer’s entire Gamemaster Collection with ten more titles worth an additional $49.50:
- The complete 386-page Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls core rulebook (2015), plus the Deluxe GM Screen.
- The T&T First Edition rules (1975), and the 1976 First Edition of Ken St. Andre’s standalone spinoff game based on T&T, Monsters! Monsters!, where you play monsters guarding your dungeon home from so-called heroic intruders.
- Adventurers Compendium: An 88-page collection of nine solo adventures and three gamemastered scenarios unearthed from Sorcerer’s Apprentice magazine.
- Four classic T&T gamemastered scenarios: The Complete Dungeon of the Bear, Dwarf World, Seven Challenges of Kartejan, and Uncle Ugly’s Underground Doom.
- Vault of K’Horror: A looting expedition into a tomb of ancient vampires.
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Tunnels2026
T&T ADVENTURES [June 2021]
This revived June 2021 T&T Adventures offer (formerly “Tunnels & Trolls 2″) adds many solo and gamemastered scenarios from the 1980s and ’90s. Pay just $12.95 to get all twenty-four titles in this revived offer’s Adventure Collection (retail value $67):
- The T&T Beginners Bundle with quickstart rules, pregenerated characters, and several scenarios
- No less than 18 solitaire adventures (totalling 862 pages!): Alice in Weirdworld, Amulet of the Salkti, Beyond the Silvered Pane, Beyond the Wall of Tears, Blue Frog Tavern, Captif d’Yvoire, Caravan to Tiern, Dargon’s Dungeon, Dark Temple, Grimtina’s Guard, Labyrinth, Mistywood, Overkill, Red Circle, Deluxe Saving Fang From the Pits of Morgul, Sword for Hire, Weirdworld, When the Cat’s Away
- Five gamemastered adventures: Catacombs of the Bear Cult, Goblin Crag, Grimtooth’s Tomb of the Warhammer, Isle of Darksmoke by Larry DiTillio (Masks of Nyarlathotep), and Ken St. Andre’s Trollstone Caverns: Lair of the Silver Serpent
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/TunnelsAdventures
Note: The older titles in these two offers are new, good-quality .PDF image scans of the original 1980s and ’90s hardcopies. Text is clear but not usually copiable; OCR hasn’t been applied.
When you are ready to play, go to Paragraph 1.1 – or rather, to the Bundle of Holding – before these revived Tunnels & Trolls offers vanish together into the tunnels Wednesday, April 15. And support the Rebellion Unplugged Kickstarter campaign for Tunnels & Trolls: A New Age!
TUNNELS & TROLLS BUNDLE [Sept 2018]
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Tunnels2026
T&T ADVENTURES [June 2021]
