Everybody’s Doing It: Tunnels, Trolls and Kickstarter Projects … !

You know, it HAS to be said: Debbi — author and recovering lawyer that she is — does seem to be metaphorically leading the proverbial pack, bless her.

Mostly where she’s signed up with crowd-sourcing project, Kickstarter, to procure funding for her Sam McRæ series.

She’s not the only one, seemingly.

Did I ever tell you I used to play role-playing-games, many moons ago … ?

Well, I did: an especial favourite was the long since gone Tunnels & Trolls: the second such game ever published.

Cheap, cheerful … and leaving me, certainly, with a bucket of 6-sided dice that I’m fairly sure I’ve still got, somewhere … !

The thing is, though … ?

It’s not until I started veteran fantasy artist, Liz Danforth, on Twitter, that I found out something that interested me.

There’s a Deluxe Tunnels And Trolls reboot in the pipeline.

Well, THAT pleased me no end.

And even though I can’t contribute cash … ?

I can — if nothing else — plonk it in the sidebar, with Debbi and Kevin D’s Dropkixx poster.

Enjoy … !

India … And Glorantha …

Hmmm …

Well, there’s a thing.

I managed to dig up a bit of an ol’ favourite that had been sitting on my shelves for some time.

I’ll admit, I was something of a rôle-playing-game buff, in my younger days.

One of those games was the rather yummy Chaosium produced RuneQuest.

Which, at the time, was rather special.

Dungeons and Dragons had paved the way for the hobby, but even it’s most die hard fans would admit that the game could be a bit clunky; rules sprouted at the drop of a die, and backgrounds proliferated like mushrooms in swamps.

RuneQuest went in a different direction.

For starters, the actual rules mechanics were a lot simpler; and came down to three different types of percentage-based roll.

And the background?

Whooh!

Dungeons and Dragons built up quite a few, relatively samey backgrounds; most being some sort of variation of Middle Earth: or Chivalric romance.

RuneQuest, by comparison, had Glorantha.

Originally invented by Greg Stafford in 1966, Glorantha was tied into “RuneQuest” on its original release, in 1978.

And was relatively influenced more by bronze age Greece, than by Middle-Earth.

Which, for me, made a very pleasant change to many of the games doing the rounds, at the time.

But the simple fact that there was a game with such a fresh background made it incredibly popular, and influential in its turn.

As far as I can remember, from my days in the business, almost every rpg, since, had to have its own background word.

That’s one hell of an achievement.

More Links

Just in case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been adding links, down the sidebars!

I’ve put in another charity link –to the Adopt a Bollock campaign, to raise awareness of testicular cancer– and a couple of gaming links, one to the Grognardia link, for those vintage Dungeons & Dragons players, and another to the official Magic: The Gathering, as I know some of my readers play.   I’ve also thrown in one to a friend of mine’s dog-walking service, and to the Hutton’s facebook group, as well.

Enjoy, folks!