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.