Forty years ago, a kid from down the street told me about this cool new game, Tunnels & Trolls. Something about his explanation kept eluding my grasp. Was it a computer game, like Pac-Man or Chuckie Egg? A board game, like Risk or Monopoly? No. There was no computer and, usually, no board.
Much of the game took part in the imagination, with the players assuming the roles of heroic warriors or powerful wizards. A “game master” described the setting, used a combination of dice and judgment to decide what was possible, and even improvised all the bit parts in the drama. It was a “role-playing game”, a radically new way of having fun. At the age of 11, I was spellbound.
