Troika

Erik creates a character

Troika is an unpredictable, fast paced, rules-light, multiplanar RPG inspired by old-school British fantasy. Think Warhammer (FRP and 40K), Fighting Fantasy, and Dragon Warriors. Think Moorcock, not Tolkien. New Crobuzon, not King's Landing. It's the brainchild of Daniel Sell and Jeremy Duncan.

I just finished running a two session game of Troika. It was a lot of fun, especially the second session, when I got a better sense of how to handle NPCs. Small differences in Skill level can be quite significant in combat.

Character generation is quick. There are three stats: (general) Skill, Stamina (which functions as hit points), and Luck (which decrements). There are also Advanced (i.e., specific) Skills and Spells, which function similarly to Skills in terms of  dice rolls.

The game uses a 2D6 die roll mechanic. You try to roll equal to or under the sum of your Skill + Advanced Skill (or Spell) when you are not in combat or direct competition with someone else. During combat and competition, Skills (and targeted Spells) are successful when you roll higher than your opponent.  Casting reduces Stamina, as does damage from weapons, which can also be quite variable.

The system has two killer apps. One is character generation. After generating your three core stats, you roll a D66 (i.e., two D6's, with the first die representing the 10-60, and the second die representing 1-6). The number you roll specifies your character Background, which can be anything from Cacogen (a "hideous" alien, a la Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer series), to a Chaos Champion, to a Gremlin Catcher, to a Golden Barge Pilot (think baroque 40K starships, or the starships with solar sails in Wolfe's Urth of the New Sun) - and many other Backgrounds.

The Backgrounds are evocative, and help define and give directionality to the setting and the activities of the player characters. As well as the evocative descriptions, Backgrounds also provide Advanced Skills and possessions/equipment. For instance, the Gremlin Catcher gets a "small but vicious dog".

Here's a sample character:

Jay's Cacogen

The other killer app is the game's unique approach to initiative. Each PC puts two dice of the same color in the GM's dice bag. (You need a pair of D6's of a unique color for each PC at the table.) Each NPC has an Initiative score, and the GM puts that many dice in the bag to represent each NPC. Initiative is determined by pulling dice from the bag. One additional die of a unique color is also placed in the bag as a turn-end counter. If your die is pulled, you have initiative. Most rolls are contested, and if the defender has the higher roll, then the "defender" can deal damage, even when they don't have initiative. A round ends as soon as the turn-end counter is pulled, which can happen at any time. The initiative system is therefore quite unpredictable, since adversaries (or PCs) may keep initiative for a few successive die pulls , and a round may end at any time with a pull of the turn-end die.

In tonight's two-hour session, players encountered and healed a fungal space-narwhal that had been wounded by an adamantine space-harpoon; the Chaos Champion faced off against a Mind Sloth inside a secret Chaos shrine hidden within a golden barge - shown here using a paper miniature created by Evlyn Moreau:

Paper miniature by Evlyn Moreau

 And, the Golden Barge Pilot faced off against a fearsome Mumbling Bird who was trying to steal the dead-captain's portolan; the creature is shown below:

This was a really fun, trippy game!  I look forward to running Troika again at a convention or at our game table in the near future. Be sure to check out the Troika Kickstarter if this kind of old-new weird sounds like your cuppa java!

Non-Stock

Yochlol by Tony DiTerlizzi

I was admiring Tony DiTerlizzi's beautiful illustrations in the Planescape monster books the other day and had the realization that Planescape is a setting where you don't need elves, dwarves, and orcs. There are numerous other races that are weirder and more interesting. And for that matter, the humans in this setting are pretty interesting, too. I don't see how you could live in and/or visit Sigil and be anything but interesting.

As I was reading the books, I came across a number of things that could be readily ported over to Everway and Otherway - particularly the latter, as there is more room for monstrous races the further you get from the human-centric realms close to Everway. But still, no need for elves, dwarves, and orcs among the non-humans.

Which got me thinking about the numerous monsters showcased over at Hereticwerks. Not an elf or a dwarf in sight, which is not surprising, since Hereticwerks takes far more inspiration from the 19th Century fantastic and horrific than from Tolkien.

While searching for images of the Hlyss, I came upon this post over at Old School Heretic (another blog by the creator of Hereticwerks). It's an essay written over three years ago that has some interesting things to say about the originality, or rather the lack thereof, in the fantasy mainstream in gaming. The phrase "fantasy mainstream in gaming" is not a term used in the original post. I am using it here because my feeling is that a lack of originality in fantasy creation is not exclusively a problem for the OSR. It is really a problem for the entire field of fantasy gaming, with a few exceptions, which are noted in the essay.

And check out the illustration that accompanies the Old School Heretic post. It's a creature I want to know more about. We need more of creatures like it.