How Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls came to be
By Steve Crompton
Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls came into being by a fortuitous alignment of several different events.
The seed of Deluxe began when Ken St Andre and Steve (me) started work on some maps of Trollworld for a possible book about that realm.
In Europe, Patrice Grille had begun work on a French translation of T&T which would also update the rules and call it the 8th edition. He had communicated with Ken for input as well and Patrice put together a manuscript. Patrice hired Liz Danforth to do some new illustrations for this book and asked her if she knew anyone who could lay it out. Liz recommended Steve Crompton, who she'd heard had recently laid out some some books in Spanish. Steve got on board and laid out the French book using art from the original 5th edition and Liz's new art, along with some of his own. When the French edition was published, both Liz and Ken were quite happy and many English fans wished there was a version like this in English.
By the greatest of coincidences, Flying Buffalo was essentially out of any copies of the current English rulebook. It was then that the idea of actually going ahead and doing deluxe T&T became a distinct possibility. Bear Peters who had been involved with T&T since the very beginning (as far back 1976)was a major booster of this idea and helped bring the group together for discussions. Steve Crompton proposed calling it Deluxe, rather than an edition number as the concept for the book was to create a deluxe version of the 5th edition, rather then a new edition of the T&T rules. Rick Loomis (owner of Flying Buffalo) also wanted the rules to still be backwards compatible with the existing solos he had in stock. That kept the rules from straying too far from the original 5th edition framework.
Rick Loomis had already had several successful Kickstarters and so the team (later known as the Fellowship of the Troll) Decided to Kickstart Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls.
The rest as they say is history... (or eventually will be)
