Rick Loomis, the publisher of Tunnels & Trolls and owner of Flying Buffalo Games, died last week. He was a good dude.
https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?41014-Rick-Loomis-has-cancer-needs-some-help
Anybody have any fun T&T tales to regale us with in Rick's honor?
aww, that is sad news indeed. I met him at GenCon a few times. Where got one of my Citybooks, T&T, and Berserker. And a complete collection of the Battletech Lost World battlebooks. And my old LW Unicorn character got to participate in the 1999 GenCon tournament.
Knew him as a fellow PBM game publisher and had some interesting stories about the various games they ran. Starlord is the one I was most familliar with.
We never had much Tunnels and Trolls in my area but I have only heard good things about Rick.
Back in the 4th grade in the mid 80's (when my friends and I were still learning how to play AD&D), I ran T&T, because it was so damn easy and straight forward. A great system! I thought it was pretty cool you could play a hobbit or a pixie.
I traded my 1st edition (white box) D&D set for Tunnels & Trolls.
Seemed like a good idea at the time.
I'm a big T&T fan. Its a great combo of gonzo and high danger. It's not exactly beer & pretzels, but it doesn't take itself seriously, except that PCs are regularly turned into chopmeat with impunity.
Fun trivia - the Ultima CRPG series system was actually inspired by T&T, not D&D. The whole concept of spell points, escalating stats and weapon damage rankings is T&T.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1101733I'm a big T&T fan. Its a great combo of gonzo and high danger. It's not exactly beer & pretzels, but it doesn't take itself seriously, except that PCs are regularly turned into chopmeat with impunity.
Fun trivia - the Ultima CRPG series system was actually inspired by T&T, not D&D. The whole concept of spell points, escalating stats and weapon damage rankings is T&T.
Not to mention Wasteland, which eventually was reborn as Fallout. That uses T&T's modern ruleset, Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes, by Stackpole no less.
Of course, I have a good tale to tell. of Rick Loomis, and flying Buffalo.
The first time I actually met him, was in 2003 at Pentacon. I had of course known him by reputation much longer, having played Tunnels & Trolls in 1979 (because my friend Tom Cavanaugh bought it, and our gaming group tried it as an easy fast play alternative to D&D and AD&D, as well as Nuclear War for the first time in 1980 (it had already been in published for fifteen years by then!). We were also reallly big on Grimtooth's Traps back in the day, and I had several of his 1st edition books, right up until 1985, that I used to stock my D&D dungeons with.
PentaCon 2003 was veeerrrry interesting, because Rick's booth babe at the time, was a young lady by the name of Calye Calhoun who wore a Chainmail Bikini for the first time, and of course was the original Chainmail Girl. At the time, I was the Public Relations director for Pentacon, so was on hand for the costume contest, and Lisa Adams, who was our Director of Operations at the time. handpicked the Judges for the costume contest that year.
We of course had our guests of honor Judge the costume contest, and that was Ed Greenwood, and of course, Larry Elmore and Susan van Camp. This was the year that Stephen Chenault from Troll Lord games showed up late on Friday night too, after he was delayed because his brother Mac had been arrested somewhere in Tennessee after getting into a colorful and active dispute with, I beleive, a Tennessee State Trooper, I can't even remember now, so ask Mac when you see him about that. Many of Steve's Castles & Crusades games are based on real life events, just so's you know. Back to Rick Loomis and Calye though...
So she ended up winning the costume contest with that Chainmail Bikini, of course, and also I think inked an agreement with Larry Elmore, and ended up being featured in a number of his artworks, and that fueled her career in the gaming Industry, and it was all because she wanted to liven up Rick Loomis's Flying Buffalo Booth at Pentacon.
Now Rick always attended every show that he could, especially the small shows. I remember seeing him at Ghengis Con and Tacticon in Colorado in the Late 70's and early 80's, as well as at Pentacon, and every single Origins and GenCon that I ever attended. Pretty sure, that like Lou Zocchi, he was also an honorary member of the Board of Directors at GAMA, and attended Origins and the GAMA Trade Show in Vegas every year, without fail. He was always polite, never publicly involved himself with gaming and game designer politics, but many people went to him, and he got them into the gaming business by selling their games at his booth, or promoting their games, or he would help them promote their games. Behind the scenes he would sometimes invest in game designers and help them bring new products and games to market.
In an Industry filled with gossip and controversy, he managed to stay out of that limelight, and instead focused on and sold a wide variety of great games over six decades. Koltar knows him pretty good too, and the last time I saw him in person, I stopped by his booth and thanked him for showing up at Origins back in 2018, and picked up a little something from his booth. In retrospect now, I'm glad I got the chance to thank him.
Rick Loomis at GenCon 2008 with Calye
(http://www.flyingbuffalo.com/gifs/gencalye.jpg)
T&T was the fourth RPG I ever played, after D&D, AD&D, and Star Wars. It definitely fills a niche...AD&D is SERIOUS BUSINESS, but T&T is whimsical and lighthearted, all while still being extremely deadly.
Only good story I have is one summer (my much reminisced 1-36th to Immortals D&D summer), we decided to take a couple days break from the main campaign to do something else like play baseball mostly...but of course, even a self-imposed three day break leads to playing RPGs in some form. So, everyone decided they wanted to play weird shit, and I said I'd DM it; since it was a one-off, I picked Tunnels and Trolls because it required little to learn and allowed easily making strange characters. We ended up with a balrog, vampire, a leprechaun (I think), and a young dragon. Of course I turned the tables and had them basically doing a Monsters! Monsters! game, attacking towns and stuff after some adventurers invaded their dungeon. We ended up playing that for well over a week before the inevitable TPK (they pissed off the wizard's guild who decided to just raze the entire continent). Probably the most fun short "campaign" I've ever been a part of.