Basically, characters are expected to be anything from temple-knights who carry around half a dozen swords to demonstrate their readyness for the end times to a Monkeymonger (comes equipped with 1d6 trained, edible monkeys) or a Thinking Engine (who has to weld it's whorly, strangely-wood like skin back in shape to regenerate). My favourite player background, however, remains the Ardent Giant of Corda:
Every Giant has a different story about Corda, well told and interrupted with tears and laughter, of how they lost it and mean to find it soon enough, but oh, what of today? We should drink and cheer, we'll search once again in the morning!This passage not only perfectly encapsulates both the lyricism and the wackiness of Troika!, it also displays how setting is presented in this game. You won't get chapter headlines like "An Overview of the City of Troika" or "A Traveller's Guide to the Humpbacked Sky". Instead you get all of these allusions and suggestions that begin to form the mirage of Golden Barges travelling through said humpbacked sky to countless worlds encased in crystal spheres. When you've read through Troika!, you'll have idea of its cosmos in very broad strokes, and you'll have lots of details (like dwarves being made rather than born, and some of them coming out ill-made, or pocket barometers being the current fad in the city of Troika, even though the city has no discernible weather).
Now, you can either see this as an "Oh my god! You're telling me I'll need to be constantly hunting for the tidbits of information to learn about the setting?", or as "Whatever comes up while we play the game becomes part of our Troika! universe. Whatever doesn't come up doesn't. When something comes up that contradicts something already established, it's either untrue or both of the contradictory statements are true. Suck it up." Obviously, the latter is where the fun lies with Troika!.
The System: Character creation
Troika!'s rules are obviously based on the Fighting Fantasy solo gamebooks (Warlock of Firetop Mountain and the dozens of books that followed), expanding them with some possibilites for specialization beyond FF's stat trinity of Skill/Stamina/Luck. I you know your FF, you'll find some elements in Troika! that are inspired by them (remember the Rhino-Men? They're here), but as opposed to Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2nd Edition (AFF2), the other FF rpg out there, it is very much its own thing.
In Troika!, you get three core stats: Skill, which is how good you're at everything, Stamina, which are your Hit Points, and Luck, which is what it says on the tin. They are rolled at character creation and they never change permanently (however, Stamina and Luck will go down temporarily a lot of the time). While Troika! doesn't offer any advice for it, you can easily go with point buy if rolling seems to potentially unbalanced to you.
Here's a suggestion: You could either substitute the point buy system from AFF2, or - what I would recommend - act as if you had rolled 1,3,4,6 on the four d6 rolls you do for character creation (you'll have to convert one of these d6 results into a d3 result for Skill); the latter actually gives you some interesting choices to make, since you get a better bargain overall by putting the 1 or 3 in Skill for a skill score of 4 or 5; putting the 6 in skill gives you the best possible score of 6, but you "loose" a point when converting the 6 into a three on a d3. Putting the 4 in Skill (for a score of 5) would be just stupid, but don't let me stop you.
After that, you continue by rolling d66, which gives you a background (Ardent Giant of Corda, Thinking Engine, Monkeymonger and that stuff). The background gives you a few points in advanced skills (which add to you Skill score for tests), spells, special equipment and the occassional specific feature (like the ability to eat minerals). Again, there's nothing to keep you from just choosing a background, but I'd recommend rolling. It's impossible not to come up with something delightful.
And that's it, you have your character.
Tests and Combat
For tests, you need to roll under your skill+applicable advanced skill with 2d6. For opposed tests, you add the 2d6 to your skill+advanced spill and compare to your opponent. Combat is opposed rolls, with the winner dealing damage to the loser. The initiative systems seems a little strange on first view, with all combattants putting markers in a bag and the GM drawing them to see who goes next, until the "end of turn" marker is drawn and all markers go back in the bag for the next round. It's possible that your marker doesn't even come up in a given round. However, that's not as big an issue as it might seem, because every time you are attacked, you get a chance to deal damage as well (so you can theoretically defeat an opponent without your initiative marker ever being drawn). Overall, it worked quite well at the table after the initial confusion had died down.
What didn't go down that well was the fact that you had to roll low for normal tests and roll high for opposed ones. Now, I played this as a one-shot and took only about 5 minutes to explain the rules, so this was not quite unexpected, and it didn't really detract from the fun. Still, if you feel that this is a problem, I suggest that you switch to roll-high for everything, with players having to beat a target number of 14 for tests (which gives them the same chances as with roll-under).
For damage, you roll on a d6 weapon table, and in combination with crits and fumbles, you'll easily get everything from a scratch to an instant kill out of this.
Advancement and Balancing
There's a simple BRP-ish "make check marks on the advanced skills you used and roll over them to improve at downtime" system. There doesn't seem to be much room to improve in your core capabilities, but you can always branch out by learning new stuff. As mentioned, the three core stats never improve. Troika! is clearly not a game about levelling up, and I guess there won't be huge differences in overall capabilities between a character who has been played for twenty sessions and one that has been just created - which is how I like it. If your character becoming the ultimate badass is a significant part of the fun in gaming for you, then I don't recommend Troika!. Also, if you really care about balancing, Troika! is not for you. Even if you use point-buy (as outlined above), some backgrounds are just "better" than others. I'm quite fine with that, because Troika! is deadly enough that no one can feel safe and chaotic enough that everyone will get their chance to shine.
Magic
Spells are basically advanced skills that cost Stamina points to use; everyone can learn and use them. You'll find standards like "Amity" (makes them like you) and "Jolt" (makes them twitch), but also things like "Coal Resolve", which turns your heart into a burning ember of grief, thereby making you immune to pain, "Helping Hands", which makes hands spring forth from an inaminate surface and do you bidding, or (another favourite) "Presence", which creates the sense of being watched by a patriarchal figure.
Enemies
NPCs work slightly different than PCs - they have no luck score, but roll anything on their skill, and if they have spells, they don't need to pay Stamina to cast them. Both helps to avoid book-keeping for the GM. There's a fine selection of creatures in Troika!, with dragons being astral creatures of hyper-light, manticores bookish, and some witches donning the skin of a pig and walking abroad among their sleeping neighbours. If you've read the character backgrounds, you know to expect the unexpeted from the enemies chapter (some backgrounds pull double-duty as enemies).
The Blancmage & Thistle
The scenario included in the core rulebook. I haven't played it yet and only read it superficially before deciding to go with the separetely published Fronds of Benevolence for a first try. While "The Blancmage & Thistle" is obviously as full of wild ideas as the rest of the book, I felt, from first glance, that it was a little bit too far out there for throwing it at a random group of players on an open gaming night.
My Verdict
Obviously, I love it. It's perfect for one-shots, it's unafraid of both being silly and being beautiful, it is ridiculously easy to hack. Beyond that, porting rules and setting elements between this and AFF2 is trivial, allowing you to expand Troika! into a more full-fledged campaign system, if you should desire.
Rating
Fierce: 5 out of 5 creatures
Beautiful: 5 out of 5 creatures
Next Time
I'll review the Troika! chapbook Fronds of Benevolence.
Oh, yes, another thing
There's a kickstarter up for another Troika! supplement, Very Pretty Paleozoic Pals.
Great idea about the target number for skill tests. I'll hopefully be running a one-on-one session of The House of Red Doors soon and I'll probably suggest that to the player.
ReplyDelete