Background: The Last Ranger

The Last Ranger

You were once a member of five or six man team that fought against the darkness in the universe. You and your team were able to transform into different colored suits and were at your strongest when you worked together. Though the day finally came when tragedy struck and you were the only member that was able to survive and escape the final battle. 

Advanced Skills:

Synchronized Posing (3)
Big Stompy Robot Piloting (3)
Unarmed (2)
Run (1)
Climb (1)
Awareness (1)
Strength (1)

Equipment:

- Convenience Store Bento Box (2d6 Charges)
- Faded Photograph of your Team
-Bracelet/belt buckle/or other small accessory that lets you summon your colorful costume and big    stompy robot
-Armor (light) while transformed
-Melee Weapon while transformed

Special: Big Stompy Robot - You can use your accessory to summon your Big Stompy Robot. When you do this, your former teams theme song plays from nowhere, and your team and their own robots fail to arrive. You can pilot your Big Stompy Robot and deal damage as a large beast. Fighting in your robot deals catastrophic damage to your surroundings, so upstanding costumed heroes use it as a last resort. Your whole teams robots could merge together to do damage as a gargantuan beast, or maybe more, but that's not important anymore.

Note: This Background was made possible by a user on Discord by the name of  ItemMerchant. I merely provided the core idea and ItemMerchant wrote out all of the moving parts.

Review: Vol. 1 Spacejamming Freebooters

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. 

Background: Samurai Out of Time

Samurai Out of Time

You were once from a feudal land where you enforced your Lords will with an in iron conviction and fought the monsters that lurk in the shadows. In was one of these great battles with unnatural forces where you were thrown into a distant world in a distance. It has been over fifty years since that fateful battle and you have realized two things. The first one being is the battle against the darkness and you need to protect those that can't defend themselves has never ended. The second thing being that time has left you and you do not age.

Advanced Skills:

Katana (3)

Etiquette (3)

Martial Arts (2)

Pistol (2)

Bow (1) 

Equipment:

- Katana

- Pistolet (Three Reloads)

- Ceremonial Demon Armor (heavy)

- Custom Motorcycle

Special: You do not age and are effectively immortal though you can still be killed.

Review: Supercalla

Disclaimer: A PDF of this was provided to me for review purposes. 

Supercalla is a supplement for Troika! by Random Order Creations (you can find my review of it here). It provides 37 new backgrounds for Troika! with a baked in and implied setting. It also includes character creation rules and other tweaks to the core mechanics found in Troika!.

What is the setting you ask? It is if Judge Dredd, Mad Max, and Blade Runner had a lovechild and that child was named Supercalla! Each page and the descriptions of the backgrounds are all very evocative and reinforce this implied setting. 

  

Presentation: Supercalla is 50 pages of single column full color art and formatting that really captures the feel of an highway to hell. It also includes a great custom character sheet. It is well organized with a table of contents, character background table, and various other GM friendly tables to help out in various situations. It is written and illustrated by James V. West and his art style is just fantastic and really captures the feel of Supercalla. The setting just drips out of the images and the formatting. 

Character Creation: The character creation in Supercall slightly deviants from the one found in Troika!

1.  Determine Skill Stat: 1d3+3
2. Determine Stamina Stat: 2d6+12
3. Determine Luck: 1d6+6
4. There are certain possessions the characters start with if they are not a robot or droid and there are certain possesses robots and droids start with
5. Roll d66 to determine background

This section also states a rule I really like - the whiff rule! It states that if you roll less then 5 you can sacrifice two levels of advanced skills to bring it up to 5.

 

Resolution and Crunch: My thoughts and breakdown on Troika! and its system can be found in my review if it here.

Final Thoughts: This is really impressive all the way around. All of the art and the backgrounds are full of flavor and reinforce the implied setting - you could even run a post apocalyptic Deadlands style game as well. James V. West style of art really reminds me of Bill Willingham and Vaughn Bode which is a good thing. 

There is so much potential for campaigns, one shots, and just idea mining found in these 50 pages that makes it so impressive. 

With that being said, I wish there was more setting information that was actually written out and more art. 

You can find Supercalla on drivethrurpg in pdf and print on demand.

Always remember that regardless of where your iron horse takes you, follow the rules of the Highway!

Review: Troika!

"HOLY LSD INDUCED FEVER DREAMS BATMAN!" - Robin

So, this kind of sums up my excitement over Troika!

I have to say that this game took me by surprise. From my understanding it is a hack inspired by Fighting Fantasy and British 80's role playing games. The cover alone invokes such interest and curiosity I do not know how anyone seeing this in a shop or online could not be drawn to it.

"Imagine, if you will, that Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett have returned from the dead.They both pile into a Ford Cortina and take a long drive across the American Southwest,pondering the nature of the fantasy genre. Once they arrive in California, they legally acquire several ounces of the finest cannabis sativa and hotbox the Cortina. Then they write an RPG. This, roughly speaking, seems to be what produced Troika, a delightfully simple and delightfully absurd game." - Aaron Marks

"There is more flavor in one paragraph of this than in a dozen OD&D knockoffs." - Gary M.

I have to agree with the words above. This game is a breath of fresh air and just reading it puts the imagination into overdrive and it is just enjoyable to read. 

Presentation: The book is an A5 hardback that clocks in at 109 pages that are full color. The typeset is set on a background of colored pages that remains easy to read. Then art is a mix of full color, black and white, and psychedelic line art. It really invoked a weird and gonzo idea of a setting where anything can happen. The art really makes the book enjoyable to flip through. 

 

Character Creation: This is actually the most fun I have had during character creation in a long time. Lets see what I roll up:

1. Roll 1d3+3 to Determine Skill (4)
2. Roll 2d6+12 to Determine Stamina (20)
3. Roll 1d6+6 to Determine Luck (8)
4. Record baseline possessions that all characters start with (2d6 Silver Pence, a Knife, A Lantern and a Flask of Oil, a Rucksack, and 6 Provisions)
5. Roll d66 on the Background Table and record Possessions and Skills (rolling for or choosing a background is where I think the game really takes off)

Finally, fill in the usual origin story stuff to give your character some more life. 

Resolution: As you saw in character creation, this is a rules lite game but the mechanics are solid. 

Roll Under when Unopposed:

• 2d6 under/equal to your skill*
• Climbing, lifting, casting spells, etc.
• 6,6 us always a fumble/failure

Roll Versus During Contests:

• 2d6 + your skill VS. their 2d6 + skill*
• Combat, Racing, arguing, searching, etc.  
• 1,1 is a fumble/failure

These include advanced skills which are skills like Great Axe Fighting. These are added to your base skill level for the 2d6 roll.

Fighting and Not Dying:

• Melee - Roll Versus, Higher wins and deals damage. 6,6 deals double damage. 1,1 fumble, suffer +1 DMG. 
• Shoot - Roll Versus thier evasion/Skill. If you shoot into melee random targets. If you take an AIM action, on next turn roll twice and take the best roll. 
• At 0 Stamina you die at the end of the round
• Under 0 Stamina, you are dead usually. Luck Roll?
• 8 Hours rest, regain 2d6 Stamina and 2d6 Luck
• Provisions regain 1d6 Stamina (max 3 times per day)

Cast a Spell

• Requires one free hand and the ability to speak. 
• All spells have a Stamina cost. Spend the required Stamina and roll under your skill. Success then the spell happens. Failure nothing happens, and on a fumble roll on the mishap table.

Luck

• Luck functions of a save vs. effect mechanic in addition to of a character does something that is completely crazy and off of the wall. Roll under your luck to succeed or for reduced/no effects. Luck is reduced by 1 regardless if the roll us successful or not. 

Crunch: Resolution sums up most of the mechanics but the crunchiest bit is the initiative system. Basically, the GM assemblies a bag of tokens. Each PC gets 2 tokens (all all PCs are color coded) then the NPCs get tokens equal to their initiative, and there is an End of the round token. If the end of the round token is drawn, all the tokens are put back into the bag and a new round begins. This system makes combat extremely random and deadly as enemies tokes greatly outnumber the PCs because enemy tokens are based initiative. Take Lizardmen for example, they have initiative 2 so if the party fights four of them, that is 8 tokens. There is an optional rule listed about limiting enemy tokens. 

Troika also makes a player roll to retrieve something out of their bag. This also adds an random element in the heat of the moment to see if what the character needs is at the top of their bag. 

This game also possesses a simple encumbrance system. All characters have 12 slots of inventory. Above 12 slots the character starts suffering encumbrance penalties. Large Items take 2 slots (Heavy Armor takes 6), all regular items take one slot. Ammo and other things is considered one slot unless a character is carrying a lot of said item.

The last aspect I have not mentioned is how Armor and Damage Works. Each weapon has an damage table. When you land a hit, you roll a d6 and consult the table for that weapon. The higher the roll does more damage and there is a 7+ box just in case you have a bonus or some type of magic or ultimate weapon. In contrast, Armor comes in ratings of -1,-2, and -3. Shields add an additional -1. Armor reduces the result of the d6 damage roll to a minimal of 1.

Final Thoughts: This game has really impressed me. Even before I read through the book - the cover, the artwork, and the layout just gives this game so much flavor and soul by itself. Then when I read through it? Truly a mind bending experience. It does not come right out and explain a setting but all of the backgrounds and other information provide a strong implied setting that can either be used or just minds for ideas. This game even makes me like things I usually do not like such has paying stamina to cast spells (one of the reasons for this is the costs are modest and seem fair/balanced). It is becoming one of my favorite games and if my upcoming campaign was not already built on The Black Hack 2e then I would switch over to this in a heartbeat.

I think the initiative system is over complicated and leans in the favor of the adversary. I wish the book would have included an alternate initiative system or a token system that does not favor the adversary so much. There is a Initiative Deck but it is sold out on the website and currently not available through drivethrurpg.

Though, I think the game double dips into the myths that haunt the OSR about character weakness. This weakness comes from the low stamina and high damage plus the obscenely lopsided initiative system. These things are easily house ruled and does not tarnish my love for this game.

You can find Troika! and other Support for it at these places (Please note that the current print is sold out and there is a reprint in the works, which you can preorder):

• Troikarpg.com
• Amazon
• Drivethrurpg 
• Axes and Orcs Compendium: Volume 2 (36 additional backgrounds) 
• 36 Desert Themed Backgrounds 
• 36 Backgrounds in the flavor of Spelljammer! 
• The Werewizard! 
• Supercalla: 36 Post Apocalyptic Backgrounds in the spirit of Mad Max. Has an implied setting...
• GM Screen/Rules Reference   

Another bonus that is becoming my favorite thing that game designers are doing is turning the inside covers into a GM screen.