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A review by jason_pym
Troika! by Daniel Sell
5.0
TLDR: A brief fanzine-style rpg with a minimalist but neatly elegant 2d6 system in a hinted at Terry Gilliam-esque fantasy world.
I love this book. It has restored my interest in table-top roleplaying games after being away for decades. This is a compact wonder in just 50 pages, you’re just given a bit of a taste and your imagination spirals out on its own creative explorations. Imagine you’re a player and roll up one of these as your character:
There’s also the Exotic Warrior, whose possessions include and ‘exciting accent’ and ‘a tea set or three pocket gods,’ the lost and Lonely King without a kingdom, the members of Miss Kinsey's Diner’s Club who carry an embroidered napkin and metal dentures that can strip all the flesh from one small appendage, and the Befouler of Ponds. It’s just begging to be played.
Even if you just got your players to roll up characters and got them to just talk to each other the stories would just make themselves.
Troika! lurches enjoyably from weirdness, to humour to the horrific. Here are some of the spells, many taken directly from the old Fighting Fantasy rpg which Troika! is built on, but given a far more entertaining write up:
Whereas D&D, even fifth edition which looks closest to what I’d be interested in, never grabbed me enough that I'd actually spend the time and money on it, this is really a breath of fresh air.
The impression I get of the Troika! world is a kind of mishmash of eighties fantasy and horror films, mostly Terry Gilliam, a bit of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth and Story Teller, the Gremlins movies, that kind of thing. Sell himself says he aimed at a mix of Gene Wolfe and Viriconium, inspired by the feel of Planescape, and the humour of 2000AD/1980s games workshop. Although we only get hints and glimpses, that’s the atmosphere, and the writing style reinforces the idea of the sarky, off-key, gonzo, feel. The character types mentioned above are a good example, but also what comes through is that in Troika! the universe is made up of the ‘million spheres’, which seem to be weird little pockets or reality, like different planes. Beings move between he spheres on golden barges, and sometimes there are other interactions between the spheres: Troika goblins, for example, seem to be a pesky sphere infestation:
Like the system, which is so simple and easy to run, the idea of the spheres is a great rationale for anything goes. We played through the Slumbering Ursine Dunes adventure (also a fantastic publication) and had a blast. Highly recommended.
For an even more rambling review looking at the rules in depth, compared to Advanced Fighting Fantasy, can be found here.
I love this book. It has restored my interest in table-top roleplaying games after being away for decades. This is a compact wonder in just 50 pages, you’re just given a bit of a taste and your imagination spirals out on its own creative explorations. Imagine you’re a player and roll up one of these as your character:
Monkeymonger
Life on The Wall is hard. One is never more than a few yards from an endless fall, but those precarious villages still need to eat. This is where you come in with your edible monkeys (the distinction is purely for appeal, since all monkeys are of course edible). You used to spend days on end dangling your feet off the edge of the world watching over your chittering livestock while they scampered hither and thither, but there was no future in monkey meat or on The Wall. You wanted much more and so stepped off. Or you fell. Either way you and some unlucky monkeys are here now and that’s all that matters.
Possessions: Monkey club, butcher knife, d6 small monkeys that do not listen to you but are too scared and hungry to travel far from you, a pocket full of monkey treats.
Thinking Engine
Your eyes are dull ruby spheres, your skin is hard and smooth like ivory but brown and whorled like wood. You are clearly damaged, you have no memory of your creation or purpose, and some days your white internal juices ooze thickly from cracks in your skin.
Possessions: Soldering iron, detachable autonomous hands OR centaur body (+4 Run)
Special: You don’t recover Stamina by resting in the usual manner — instead you have to spend an evening with a hot iron melting your skin back together like putty… You may recharge plasmic machines by hooking your fluids to them and spending Stamina.
Life Line (a spell)
Created by the Horizon Knights to enable them to take the fight to the Nothing. They would cast this on their squires and dive off the edge of creation. While this Spell lasts the caster’s essential bodily functions are linked to another, enabling them to breath or eat for them. They will need to breath and eat for two, making it hard to do anything useful while linked. The Spell lasts for a day, until cancelled, or on the death of the linked person. Note, if the linked person dies, starves or is choked you will suffer.
There’s also the Exotic Warrior, whose possessions include and ‘exciting accent’ and ‘a tea set or three pocket gods,’ the lost and Lonely King without a kingdom, the members of Miss Kinsey's Diner’s Club who carry an embroidered napkin and metal dentures that can strip all the flesh from one small appendage, and the Befouler of Ponds. It’s just begging to be played.
Even if you just got your players to roll up characters and got them to just talk to each other the stories would just make themselves.
Troika! lurches enjoyably from weirdness, to humour to the horrific. Here are some of the spells, many taken directly from the old Fighting Fantasy rpg which Troika! is built on, but given a far more entertaining write up:
Darksee
The wizard reaches into his sockets and extricates his eyes. Thus freed, the dark void behind them can see perfectly well in pitch blackness and suffer excruciating pain in light… Be careful not to lose those eyeballs though, they are the only way to end the spell.
Drown
Cause the targets lungs to fill with water… They start to drown and are incapacitated with water pouring out of their mouth.
Leech
The necromancer must place his hands on a living subject, allowing his fingertips to transform into sucking apertures, draining them of blood.
Presence
Creates the sense of being watched by a patriarchal figure. Some find it comforting, others not so much. (I love this one because it is purely a story telling spell, not something you could use to give yourself superpowers or in combat as a spare weapon).
Whereas D&D, even fifth edition which looks closest to what I’d be interested in, never grabbed me enough that I'd actually spend the time and money on it, this is really a breath of fresh air.
The impression I get of the Troika! world is a kind of mishmash of eighties fantasy and horror films, mostly Terry Gilliam, a bit of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth and Story Teller, the Gremlins movies, that kind of thing. Sell himself says he aimed at a mix of Gene Wolfe and Viriconium, inspired by the feel of Planescape, and the humour of 2000AD/1980s games workshop. Although we only get hints and glimpses, that’s the atmosphere, and the writing style reinforces the idea of the sarky, off-key, gonzo, feel. The character types mentioned above are a good example, but also what comes through is that in Troika! the universe is made up of the ‘million spheres’, which seem to be weird little pockets or reality, like different planes. Beings move between he spheres on golden barges, and sometimes there are other interactions between the spheres: Troika goblins, for example, seem to be a pesky sphere infestation:
The moment a sphere bobs to the surface, the goblins will creep out of the nooks and crannies to start expanding their labyrinth. Left to their own devices, they will eventually tame and cover every surface in walls and hedges and tunnels and steel and whatever else is in goblin-vogue.
Like the system, which is so simple and easy to run, the idea of the spheres is a great rationale for anything goes. We played through the Slumbering Ursine Dunes adventure (also a fantastic publication) and had a blast. Highly recommended.
For an even more rambling review looking at the rules in depth, compared to Advanced Fighting Fantasy, can be found here.