ADVENTURE SPARK TABLES - Broken Luck TROIKA! Zine WIP #4

A quick update on the Broken Luck Troika! zine.

OK, first, I'm not going to make it in time for the Troika!Fest Jam. I'm a bit sorry about that, but I am learning to accept that in order to make good stuff one might need some extra time. Trying to be ZEN about it.

Also, I've learned that to make good stuff one needs to ask for feedback from talented people, and that's what I did. perplexingruins, who by the way did the amazing art of the zine, pushed me to be more creative with the layout. I worked a lot and went from a very boring layout to something better.

example spread

Leo Hunt, author and artist behind Vaults of Vaarn, encouraged me to be more consistent and also more Troikish, and Ian Yusem, the man behind, well, a lot of stuff, had shown me the way to some more foolishness, helped me understand better some Troika! fundamentals, and also asked for more adventure tables in the mood of those that I've already put in the zine.

So I'll allow myself to indulge in table design for a couple of weeks and add more Adventure Tables describing the Gods, the Godly Palace, and its dwellers - Because the zine revolves around five backgrounds of unlucky souls banished or punished by childish and resentful gods.

The goal here is to deliver five backgrounds, a cursed Major Arcana Tarots system (all pluggable into any sphere setting), and suggest a Godly palace/setting. So far I have four D6 tables:

• Which immortal did you piss off?
• The Godly Palace is hidden
• The PCs are in
• And they are

And to those, I'll add:

• To enter the Godly Palace you must (pass a test, fight an NPC, go through something odd)
• Minion Generator
• The Gods are (doing crazy stuff, of course)
• And after a while, The Palace will (more crazy stuff happens, why not?)
• God generator

TLB Podcast #4 Chris - McDowall - Electric Bastionland

Chris McDowall is the creator of the RPGS Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland. Both games share a fascinating weird industrial early XXth century setting and have been extremely influential to the indie RPG scene for the way they handle game mechanics. As a matter of fact, if you’ve listened to previous episodes of this podcast you might have heard other designers mention Chris’ games a few times.

In this episode we talk about Fear, a strange fascination with the London Underground Railway, a rural English county nobody knows about, one hundred failed careers, miniature wargames, and Intergalactic Bastionland.

You can listen to the episode here: 

On Youtube, with EN subs:

https://youtu.be/eCZ-OjJlF_s

Or on the major podcast platforms:

Apple Podcasts

anchor.fm

spotify.com

Pocket Casts

radiopublic.com

Google Podcasts

Breaker

And soon here:

Castbox

Overcast

Buy Electric Bastionland here:

https://bastionlandpress.com/

Or find Chris at his youtube channel

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQO6EwDBUxOYRR6jcAtv_0A

On his blog

https://www.bastionland.com/

Alec Sorensen's early sketches for Electric Bastionland

HOLY DESERTER Background - Broken Luck Zine WIP #3

The Broken Luck Troika! zine completion is getting closer (you can read about why/how I started working on the zine here, and about the KID GOD background here). ETA should be 20 April 2021.

The zine contains

5 backgrounds: Kid God, Holy Deserter, Sun Helmet, Fake Demigod, Roaming Fortune Teller

22 Arcana Major Tarot cards spells + Arcana Tarot combos spells

3 Broken luck tables:

• Which immortal did you piss off?
• Where the Godly Palace is hidden?
• Using the backgrounds as NPCs

Quick Adventure Sparks (triple D6 Table)

Recap of the 13 custom Advanced Skills

AND 8 amazing perplexingruins illustrations. 

A soundtrack by spookyrusty.

As a preview here is the Holy Deserter background

HOLY DESERTER

You’re a Holy. A born killer. The most beloved creature of the Gods, breed to celebrate their rituals and defend their name. Long ago you left the Godly Palace to track a treacherous and impious being. You hunt them for years, across countless spheres, until you forgot what or who you were after. Ashamed of your failure you swore never to set foot back in the Palace. Anyways you totally forgot where it is. You’re a homesick deserter. Other Holies will attack you on sight.

Possessions


Owning is a sacrilege. You’re a deserter but you still have your dignity. You don’t even wear clothes. That would be a disgusting and shameful gesture.



Advanced skills


2 Oblivion spit - your acidic saliva induces short term memory loss


3 Maul - your crystal claws inflict Axe like damage


3 Colorshift - you can change your color and that of the objects or beings you touch


2 Spring - when you fall bounce with no damage





Special 

You can take your incandescent lava eyes out of their sockets.

Your blood made of inframicroscopic blue crystals is flammable.

You are fluent in Godly tongues.



[EDIT] Been trying some layouts. Nothing definitive yet.

[EDIT END] 

KID GOD Background - Troika!Fest Jam - Broken Luck Zine WIP #2

Quick post. The work on the Broken Luck zine for the Troika!Fest Jam has continued. (it started here)

I've been rewriting some content originally drafted for The Lost Bay, which universe has a pantheon of annoying divinities, giving it a weirder, space fantasier feel. In the process, I've been very much inspired by perplexingruins older drawings.

There should be 4 to 6 six backgrounds, magical Tarots, associated spells, and a few tables to generate unluck. Hopefully, I'll post it to the Jam by the end of next week.

Here is a first background that sets the tone of the zine

[Edit!! and here is a layout page draft, sorry for the multi-updated messy post]

KID GOD

[Edited the 13 April 2021]

You’ve always loved mortals. They’re so funny with all that blood pumping through their veins. They make you laugh and cry, so much. The Holies never approved your illicit proximity with those frail beings. They stripped you of immortality and cast you out of the Godly Palace. Now you too can die, and experience the mortal coil.

Possessions

Cosmic Pajama, covered with perpetually exploding protostars (counts as Medium armor) - Plastic Sun Helmet (toy, looks cool) - Sound Sword (made of the purest of sounds, screams when wielded) - Golden Peaches (1D4 fruits, glow when danger approaches under 20 ft, then rot)

Advanced skills


3 Give life - to small dead beings or objects, they obey you


3 Empathy - what you touch feels what you wish


2 Sense death - in a 1 mile radius


1 Sound sword fight

Special

Your ultrafluid iridescent metallic blood is the most valuable substance in the creation, it heals instantly any wound (2D6 Stamina recovery). You might be hunted for that.
You are fluent in Godly tongues.

TLB Podcast #3 - Ben Milton - The Waking of Willowby Hall

Ben Milton is behind the popular YouTube channel QUESTING BEASTwhere he does reviews and flip throughs of RPGs and OSR books and zines. Watching his reviews, I've been struck by the constant attention he has for the layout or the design choices of the books, and how these choices might affect the playing experience.

Ben is the author of MAZE RATS and KNAVE, two rules-light RPGs, that had a great influence on the OSR scene. Ben recently published the WAKING OF WILLOWBY HALL, a fairy-tale med fan adventure in a Haunted Manor.

In the episode, we talk about mathematician Edward Tufte, teaching Game Mastering to kids, an angry cloud giant, Ben's obsession with rules, and how a childhood book can affect game design choices.

You can listen to the episode here: 

On Youtube, with subs:

https://youtu.be/5UWDT-d9qRI

Or on the major podcast platforms:

Apple Podcasts

anchor.fm

spotify.com

Pocket Casts

radiopublic.com

Google Podcasts

And soon here:

Breaker

Castbox

Overcast

Find Ben Milton's games here

https://questingbeast.itch.io

Sam Mameli's early sketches for The Waking of Willowby Hall

A Troika! Detour - Broken Luck Zine WIP #1

> BTW there's been progress on the Troika! zine development, check here <

So I'm taking a short detour from The Lost Bay development.

I've been asking myself a lot of questions lately. Questions that can end into an unsolvable loop, like: D20 or D6? 3 stats or 1 stat? PC backgrounds or tables? I feel that I need to answer those before continuing to write the TLB zine.

As I decided to get to know better Troika!, for that research purpose, the Troika!Fest Game Jam 2021 was announced. So I took that opportunity to dive into the Troika! SRD, knowing that the limited time at my disposal would prevent me from getting stuck at the bottom of an unclimbable too big of a project. 

I am reworking some tables first drafted for TLB and designing a small supplement for the Game Jam. The theme is Tarots, not as playing helper tools, but as in-game magical objects. The supplement revolves around an unlucky character, The Roaming Fortune Seller, that can be alternatively a PC background or an NPC (yes, I like the unlucky ones)

There should be 7-8 tables, which is not too much, but enough to be challenging as I am trying:

• to design all the tables in a consistent way
• to imply some sort of micro setting
• to avoid redundancy.

I guess this is my first closed project, as opposed to the open ongoing development of the GM Tools, which is more a work in progress prefiguration of The Lost Bay.

It has been super helpful to read again Crapland by HypatiasAngst, a Troika! super crazy setting, super inventive, super effective in delivering the fictional world. And the same can be said of A man on the road by Ian Yusem, a two-page supplement that delivers a kind of game agnostic great wicked NPC, that I've been studying with attention. 

The zine/supplement/whatever will be adorned by several illustrations made by Perplexingruins. And by the way, most of the super evocative drawings I'll use come from the Patreon benefits one gets when supporting him.

So without spoiling the zine, here is the Background description, and a drawing (check the crazy mesh work!). The Jam ends in 27 days, and I'll try to share the zine in a couple of weeks max.

ROAMING FORTUNE SELLER BACKGROUND

You used to chitchat and drink cocktails with the Gods. You told them their fortune with frightening precision. One day you became overconfident and pissed off an Immortal. They banished you from their palace and cursed your Tarot Deck: it’s broken, useless and soiled by weird magic. Now you wander restlessly and can barely predict what you will have for breakfast tomorrow.