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

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.

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.