tag: troika

TROIKA! It’s just fun to write down. The caps and the exclaimation mark are part of the name, even. It’s a silly game of nonsense lands and people and animals. I think of it as a less-complicated version of Hypertellurians - you don’t have a crazy selection of powers, or stat damage across three stats. Instead, scatter a couple of points across Skill, Stamina, and Luck, and then pick or roll a background. Backgrounds are things like Befouler of Ponds or Questing Knight rather than “urchin”. They give you some belongings and some skills; like spells or the ability to fight, scry, or dive. Like a very light class. So, I had a single session to fill, and I thought this would be a perfect pick. I’ll just run a lightweight pointcrawl across a city for a bit, what can go wrong? DEAAATH! That’s what. ...

The blog has been pretty empty in 2022, as I’ve changed timezone and country, and not played many RPGs. But I’m getting slowly back into the swing of it again, and as I’m doing that I realised it’s the same time of year I’ve been writing what I want to play next. After two years of lockdown-triggered online experiments, the real world beckons. So, compared to last year, I have finally run a session of TROIKA!...

So, about a year ago, I looked at what games I wanted to run next. I was pleased I wrote it at the time as it reminded me what I wanted to play, and I’m even more pleased now to go back and look at it again. I have played from the list: UVG. Admittedly, I didn’t play as much as I wanted, but I got a flavour of it, and of the SEACAT engine. I still want to run this, but it can only be as a campaign; I just don’t see the interest in a one-shot. To me that’s a SEACAT one-shot, not a UVG one. In fact, I’m very interested in using Into the Grasslands to use ItO instead of SEACAT. Hypertellurians! A few times. I really like the setting but, like a lot of OSR, I find it very difficult to balance. I keep an eye on settings for it, but even the official Mottokrosh ones seem to have terribly difficult enemies to fight. Mind you, I always end up making games too easy… Beak, Feather, and Bone. It’s a bit like The Quiet Year, but with more birds. ...