troika! review

what's good about troika!? it's a fresh retroclone. it has lethal combat, but everyone starts at 14+ hp. the promise of levelling (a somewhat false promise in many retroclones) has been done away with mostly. there is the initiative system that is oft-touted and I really love it for some surprising reasons*. but there's also the fairly ridiculous damage system, which although it seems awkward (you have to cross reference a roll to a table to determine damage, a modifiable roll even), it gives us what we've always wanted; sorta realistic damage values. like, a knife probably doesn't do much but it can fuck you up! it's not just a puny d4.

that being said not having a levelling system hurts my heart a little bit. I mean, there is a system for progression: you improve your skills, which means you do better on rolls, but there's no d&d/WoW classic rpg dripfeed of new cool class abilities... that appeal is near and dear to me, but we must make sacrifices...

...the argument against such a dripfeed is of course, an emphasis on picaresque fantasy "strange people meeting in strange places" which is what troika! says it's about. your characters are not starting from the bottom, they are starting as wanderers, and of the two I think being a fully-formed picaresque wanderer is preferable to an endless series of 1st level eggs.

...finally, troika! encourages planar prep, as at the drop of a hat you must be able to invent or at least remember new spheres for your friend's toons to be whisked off to in the case of a particularly bad whoops! table roll, if not for some other reason. it has that delectable rpg vibe where the rules contain in just a few places campaign-breaking levers. this is something LOTFP does that I always talk about-- that "summon" spell.

also there's a little monster manual in the back of the book bc its so concise; to paraphrase my friend, "they had the room to just squeeze a little monster manual in the back!"

*initiative system being good: the way troika! initiative works is that everyone places initiative chits in a bag along with a end-of-round chit, and chits are drawn randomly; if your chit is drawn, you take an action, if the end of round chit is drawn, all chits are placed back in the bag. this makes chases in particular easy to run; you may simply draw more chits than your opponent does, so you may get away; therefore no tedious comparison of movement speeds in order to draw an equation are necessary. many tedious elements such as these may be folded into the randomness.

....also everyone talks about how good the backgrounds are so it's a well-tread point, but the backgrounds are very good; all of the players love rolling up

troika! ghost powers

1. possession
1. ghosts may attempt to possess the living. 
2. ectoplasm
1. ghosts may exert ectoplasm which may remain as goo or take the form of small living creatures or other hallucenogenic f/x as appropriate
3. communication
1. ghosts may appear, recognizably ghosts, to and/or speak to the living
4. flying
1. ghosts may fly and pass through walls. they may not pass through lead, ivy, or more than three feet of stone (or salt rings… -ed)
5. vulnerability to fire
1. ghosts touching fire take damage as appropriate
6. vulnerability to light
1. ghosts may not manifest any powers (#1-#3, #8) in the presence of any stronger than candle light and will lose possession in strong light
7. affecting other ghosts
1. all ghosts treat each other and all possessions (both their inventories and possessed people -ed) (and only each other and all possessions, this means spells and so on -ed, although you may cast spells if you possess somebody ) as if they were fully corporeal. 
8. ghost objects
1. ghosts may pick up “ghost objects” of recently destroyed objects

d50 troika! macguffins

1. single testicle of god
2. a pokédex
3. the tape from “escape from new york”
4. beautiful and sexy jewel thieves chase after the world’s rarest diamond so you’ll become really popular with sexy beautiful jewel thieves if you get it
5. baby with extremely huge head can be crawled into and if you do you get an automatically good idea
6. the six magic puppet strings to run the World Marrionette
7. angel wings + surgery (you can take people into or out of heaven)
8. the subtle knife
9. the smartest man on earth almost knows everything so you have to either prevent him or help him learn the last thing
10. workable portal to trove
11. working film projector / the know how
12. dictionary of all words, you can cross out words. also grammar nazis
13. other low hanging fruit??? someone’s trying to steal silk from the orient
14. the orient is trying to steal silk back heh heh
15. grocery store’s just trying to stay open versus an oppressive developer
16. sword in the stone but it’s still in the stage where everyone’s trying to politcally manuever around it
17. dick-stealing cat
18. rival adventure group doing an important thing and you’re continuously in the way by incriminating coincidence
19. death is trying to play chess with you
20. conflicting apocalyptic warnings and mutual demonization from two intelligent items
21. letting your players know the sun is going to burn out soon and then you’re going to end the campaign
22. aggressive suitors
23. fortune-teller warns of a dangerous sea voyage. quest-givers all try to get PCs to go on a voyage after this
24. bank holding all of their wealth fails
25. god begins sending you burning bushes, etc.
26. pursued by the apparently sentient idea of taxes
27. debt collectors making life difficult
28. divorce if at all applicable
29. kings hanging out with you
30. national feast in your honor goes hairy
31. inform a player that their coming-of-age ceremony is almost due
32. the draft
33. macular irregularity needs treatment or go blind
34. someone’s drone bombing your country
35. everyone seems to be adopting a prohibitive religious cult about an ear
36. prison 
37. jesus of nazareth doin stuff
38. bastardettes
39. seduced and organ stolen, keeps happening
40. grifters invade land
41. battle baby fights are becoming popular
42. roll again and work in trepanning
43. they look like they’re
1. meth addicts
2. cannibals
3. a secret psychic cult
4. but they’re actually:
1. evolved dinosaurs like in the super mario bros movie
2. rebellious women
3. communists
44. communism is being badly implemented
45. sherlock holmes trying to figure out that crime the pcs did
46. the connection between local street toughs and hidden goverment psychic kids program has grown too strong
47. the people have found a portal to (fake) heaven 
48. aliens land
49. incredibly violent ghost
50. serial killer sending in letters to the newspaper