Troika 19280!

Troika! is a great game. So when I saw there was a Troika! jam, the first thing I thought to do was to combine it with the 1928 jam.

Troika! is an interesting game. It's based on the system for the old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and without leaving that base completely behind, it's evolved way beyond that. This is means it has the same three stats as those old gamebooks (SKILL, STAMINA, and LUCK) but there are "Advanced Skills" to make you better at specific things, plus a magic system based on the skill system, with the "standard" effect that you burn STAMINA to cast spells.

I loved the Fighting Fantasy books as a kid and as a young adult, which means I like most games that use the same bones. Besides Troika! there is Quarrel + Fable, Advanced Fighting Fantasy, Warlock!, Denizen! and Fight and Sorcery!

Aside: So, 2/3rds of those games have an exclamation point in their name, which I'm guessing is because of the Sorcery! series of gamebooks that used the system for a sort of four-book campaign and added a magic system. (The Fighting Fantasy books were generally stand-alone.) On that note, one of the things I like about Quarrel + Fable is that it uses a version of the Sorcery! magic system, which involves having the player memorize three-letter codes for the spells.

Returning to Troika!, one of the coolest things about Troika! is that the game uses it's simple setup to provide a lot of evocative flavor. The game is set in a sort of multiverse, with all sorts of "spheres" across the "humpbacked sky" which are reached by "golden barges". Most importantly, there are 36 (d66) backgrounds in the game; you roll one for your character and it gives you a paragraph of evocative prose about the character's place in the multiverse, a bunch of additional possessions beyond the starting package, possibly including intangibles like "Quixotic mission," plus well as skills and any special rules unique to that character type. Here's a couple example from the main rulebook:

 

Basically, it's using a very simple framework to provide and suggest a lot of setting detail, but without an infodump, and mainly covering what you need to understand your character. Also, this doesn't lock you into whatever personality or vocation that your background implies. To quote the rulebook: "Backgrounds are everything your character was before you came along... Slide into the role and make it your own."

So, you know, if you want your Questing Knight to start learning magic, there's nothing stopping you, except perhaps finding a teacher. Take a left turn once you start play, if you want. This is facilitated by the simplicity of the system: All your skills are based off of the SKILL stat, so once you learn the skills, you can be just as good at sorcery as swordplay. STAMINA, the equivalent of HP, is valuable to both sorcerer and swordsman, since higher STAMINA is useful for both surviving combat and casting spells. For everything else, there's LUCK, which can be used to boost your other rolls, among other things.

So, though it was a lot of work, I had a lot of fun making my own set of d66 (36) new backgrounds for Troika! To make it valid for both the Troika! jam and the 1928 jam, I (loosely) based each new background on media from 1928, but also gave a science fiction or science fantasy twist to each of them.

https://xiombarg.itch.io/19280

I leaned hard into using possessions to create flavor. I gave out intangible possessions much more often than vanilla Troika! because it's such a fun trick.

Note some of the intangibles here, like "a longing for Earthly Paradise" and "simple, dignified humility and kindness." Also, one thing you see in vanilla Troika! is physical possessions that imply a lot as well, such as the book and photograph I gave the last TIGGER.

BTW, can I just pause to say a lot of fun stuff went into the public domain in the US this year? The second Winnie the Pooh book, Steamboat Willy, multiple hobo-related things (such as "Big Rock Candy Mountains" and Beggars of Life), Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Millions of Cats, the 1928 version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the original Peter Pan novel and play, Orlando: a Biography, a Tarzan novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, an Oz novel, and The Threepenny Opera. And all that is just off the top of my head; I didn't even mention any of the paintings or music from that year. It seems that 1928 was a banner year for literature, art, movies and music.

Obviously, I had a lot of fun twisting stuff from 1928 into a more science fictional or science fantasy form, from Tigger as a created organism to the Kitty Christ's literal nine lives, thanks to cloning. 

All the art is public domain and I made sure to make everything greyscale and high contrast so it's easier to print.

As you can tell, I'm very proud of this one, and very excited! Check it out. Let me know what you think in the comments.