Rebellion Unplugged Seeks to Bring Tunnels and Trolls to a "New Age"

Tunnels and Trolls, a fantasy game that many consider the second modern TTRPG after Dungeons and Dragons, is coming back around with a new reboot titled Tunnels and Trolls: A New Age.

T&T was originally published in 1975, a year after Gary Gygax published the first version of D&D. While the game is not as well known as its increasingly popular rival, it has maintained a steady stream of fans over the 50+ years and multiple updates.

“The original Tunnels and Trolls was created as a reaction to what D&D did in the 1970s. It saw D&D and said We want to make that, but make it more fun, more accessible, and fill it with life and creative stuff,” Benji Corless, the marketing manager for Rebellion Unplugged, told TTRPG Insider. “So our goal with this is to try and distill down the core essence of 50 years’ worth of a game into something that’s a bit more modern and has skin on the bones.”

While it’s nice to see older games getting a new face and update, it’s entering a market where there are more fantasy games than ever. D&D remains the market leader, while games like Pathfinder, Shadowdark, Daggerheart, Mork Borg, and dozens of others offer their own takes on the genre. So why try Tunnels and Trolls: A New Age?

The main appeal for Tunnels and Trolls: A New Age is the “modularity”, according to Corless. The game is designed to be pick-up-and-play, so players can create a character and run an adventure with very little effort, while DMs can focus on running a game without too many worries. The game uses a stat system similar to D&D but relies on dice pools instead of D20s, making the math for determining success significantly easier. It also adds mechanics that allow players to have dramatic successes and failures via “exploding” dice pools that exist whenever you have matching dice.

The rules, alongside the game’s lore, hope to create a setting that “feels earnest but also doesn’t take itself too seriously,” Corless emphasized. The current version draws heavily on Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Discworld, and The Lord of the Rings for inspiration.

The game also hopes to lean into T&T’s history of solo games. The original game published some of the first fantasy-themed gamebooks, offering solo players a way to go adventuring without a DM.

 T&T: A New Age leans into this as a concept by offering “side quests”, which are solo adventures that a DM can give a player during off-time or if the majority of a table is unable to play. They can run through the adventures and get appropriate rewards. It’s a distinct way to help players stay engaged, even when scheduling conflicts make it difficult to play with others.

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Maintaining Tunnels and Trolls’ Long-Lived Legacy

Tunnels and Trolls was initially written in 1975 by Ken St. Andre and published by Flying Buffalo. Andre said he loved the idea of D&D but found the rules confusing, so he made his own. The game would gain some momentum in 1975 and was viewed as a serious competitor to D&D at the time (in part due to its simpler ruleset). T&T's publisher would receive multiple updates over the years and eventually set itself apart with a tone that was a bit sillier than D&D.

While Flying Buffalo released multiple editions over the years, it went quiet after the publisher was acquired by the holding company Webbed Sphere in 2021.

In 2023, tabletop and video game publisher Rebellion Unplugged announced that it had bought the T&T rights from Webbed Sphere with the hope of rebooting the property.

“Tunnels & Trolls will always hold a special place in my heart,” Rebellion Unplugged CEO Jason Kingsley said in a statement. “It sparked a lifelong interest in roleplaying, and fed into my love of the fantasy genre which has stuck with me to this day. I’m delighted to bring it into the Rebellion, and can’t wait for the new adventures from the Unplugged team.”

Corless called T&T: A New Age a “bold reimagining” and a new chapter of the game that doesn’t use the original ruleset, but updates it to try and feel more modern. “The idea is to take the ethos and what the old game was trying to achieve as a reaction to the original games. We're trying to take that and carry its spirit forward,” the marketing manager said. This was also a decision made to separate the game from previous editions so that new players aren’t confused. “If we put a number on Tunnels and Trolls: A New Age, we would have a lot more of a direct comparison to old editions, and that might scare people off,” Corless argued.

Legacy fans shouldn’t worry, however; the majority of legacy T&T books are currently available on DrivethruRPG.com, and the company intends to continue support for that content. It is also seeking ways to adapt a lot of the older content to modern standards.

You can learn more about Tunnels and Trolls: A New Age at their Kickstarter, which launches on March 17. They also have a quickstart available.

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