thedeck

Baby's first adventure game blog

  • He/him

I initially ignored Troika due to its gonzo setting, bias against non-d20 systems, judging a book by its cover, whatever.

I saw the Questing Beast video reviews and the recommendations on /r/osr over the years but I just wasn't ready to see its merits.

Then I see that Troika is now 100% free and I figure why not give it another chance.

This game took some stuff I loved about Into the Odd, Knave, and Cairn (quick & flavorful character generation, slot-based inventory, risky combat) and brought its own cool ideas I'd never considered:

  • Attacking in melee can backfire
  • Rolling to retrieve items from your pack quickly
  • HP as a cost for spells
  • Rolling to cast spells (with miscasts)
  • Armor encumbrance = double its DR value
  • Skill, Stamina, and Luck

It also kinda bugged me that almost every roll used a PC's Base Skill, which is d3+3 at character creation and never changes.

So a PC with 4 Skill will always be rolling 2 worse than a PC with 6 Skill at general tasks.

And it bugged me so much, I thought I must be missing something. I reread the rules, asked around the discord, and it turns out I had it right.

The discord mentioned the idea that some GMs let players choose their Skill at character creation, with 4 being "Hard Mode" and 6 being "Easy Mode". And that's cool I guess, kinda like choosing from a set of stat arrays.

But I wanted to see what would happen if I added Into the Odd's stats into the mix.

But that wasn't the only thing I wanted to try bringing over:

  • STR, DEX, WIL
  • Starting equipment tables based on stat rolls
  • Improving stats over time
  • Equipment as character
  • Spells as items

So that's what this blog's gonna start out as. My process trying to combine Troika and Into the Odd.


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