When I first discovered Troika! I went looking for live play sessions to get a feel of how the game flows and all of that jazz. The first live plays I came across were Spelljamming Troika! Here is Session 1, Session 2, Session 3, Session 4, and Session 5. The live plays did two things, the first being it made me miss the Spelljammer setting and the second thing it did is make me very curious about the Troika! backgrounds the games used. I reached out to the game master and he told me he created a whole supplement for his Troika! inspired Spelljammer game and was generous enough to provide me with a review copy.
Presentation:The PDF opens up with a great cover page with full color art, a use with Troika! page, and an explanation page about this supplement and how to use it. Then comes the 36 backgrounds. These backgrounds are presented in a clean two column format with the various skills and equipment as bullet points.
Character Creation, Resolution, and Crunch: All of this follows the same process as in the core Troika book. There is advice that explains the players use the Troika! Astrology Skill for navigation and astrogation. The Troika! Strength skill is used for managing your ships rigging. Spacejamming Freebooters goes on to introduce a new skill called Spacejamming which governs everything else about the ship such as piloting, gunning, using a Spacejamming helm, or anything else that is not familiar to you.
Final Thoughts: The supplement for Troika! is really well put together and the backgrounds capture the fell of Spacejammer. I am also impressed how the author avoided skill bloat by using already existing skills to cover some of the Spelljammer flare and only introducing a single new skill as a catchall for other ship related skills/technology. Not only does this make me happy, it fits with the theme and system of Troika! I would have liked to see a few pages giving a setting primer so to speak and maybe some interior art.
You can find Vol. 1 Spacejamming Freebooters on itch.io. Other Resourced regarding Spelljammer can be found on drivethrurpg.
I personally would also suggest reading some pirate themed literature like Treasure Island. I would also highly encourage you to watch Treasure Planet. These will help give you some additional flavor and feel for Spelljammer.
This looks really cool. Recently received Troika! in the mail. One of my first RPGs, and this product is in line with the kind of setting that interests me. Nice review
ReplyDeleteThank you. I miss the old settings.
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