T&T Solo Adventures

No Referee, No Problem
It's way less of a problem today than it was back in 1976 to find someone to run an adventure. Thanks to the internet, finding a game, or a group, has become an easy task. It's hard to imagine, but there was a time before internet, before computer gaming, before personal computers of any kind. Buffalo Castle, as far as I know, is the very first solo dungeon and it allowed a single person to play Tunnels & Trolls by themselves. The solo adventure trend would catch on and several T&T solo books followed the publication of Buffalo Castle. Then others started designing solo adventure books, often with their own simple rules in the same book, under titles such as Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, etc. Eventually several major role-playing systems did their own solo adventures and together with the solo adventure paperbacks which appeared in many bookstores, the entire solo gaming experience became quite popular for a time.
With my purchase of Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls at Gencon recently, I have been reading through that tome and unboxed some of my old T&T solo adventures, including Buffalo Castle. Written by Rick Loomis, owner of Flying Buffalo Inc., publisher of T&T, Buffalo Castle is a 38 page, 8.5" x 11" paperback booklet nicely illustrated with art by Liz Danforth. One of the nice things about T&T over the years is the "fellowship" that has been the creative genius behind T&T, (Mr. St. Andre and friends including Rick Loomis and Liz Danforth) have remained consistently involved. In other words, I see the same names on the new dT&T rules that have been on T&T products from way back.
The organization of Buffalo Castle is each numbered page has several lettered paragraphs so that there is a 28 B and a 15 A, etc.  The way the solo works is simple and efficient. The player gets up a character using the T&T rules and reads the intro paragraph(s) which gives the background and any special rules for the solo. Buffalo Castle is obviously a castle, the player goes inside and moves around by making choices that sends the PC to various numbered and lettered entries where puzzles and encounters with various traps and monsters may occur. Basically it is a dungeon crawl without a referee, Mr. Loomis having set the whole "dungeon" up through the design. Having played through Buffalo Castle again yesterday evening I can say it may not be the only gaming option for those evenings at home alone, but it's still a fun option.