In September 2022 we presented the new Troika Worlds Bundle featuring recent acid-fantasy supplements and adventures for Troika! from Melsonian Arts Council. After January 2021, when we presented the core Troika rulebook and many supplements, the RPG continued strong, and its bizarre hallucinations (along with a permissive third-party license) have inspired many indie designers to tune in, turn on, and drop new titles on DriveThru and itch.io. This new assortment of visionary titles fueled by wild creativity gave players a new chance to trip the light fantastic.
With Troika‘s simple, beginner-friendly 2d6 roll-under rules system and three character stats (Skill, Stamina, and Luck), nostalgic Fighting Fantasy players will feel at home – until they see Troika‘s description: “Players travel by eldritch portal and non-Euclidean labyrinth and golden-sailed barge between the uncountable crystal Spheres strung delicately across the hump-backed sky.” And there are spells like Coal Resolve (“turns one’s heart into a burning ember of grief”), Thought Vapor (“The wizard can cause their nose to exist in multiple alternative realities”), and Zed (“No one knows what this does, but everyone who has cast it disappears instantly, never to be seen again”), as well as items like ruby lorgnettes and pocket gods (“If you whisper a secret to one and throw it away, you regain 1 Luck”). It’s all smart and vibrantly written, but every couple of pages you say aloud, “Wait, what?”
Troika! character backgrounds aren’t balanced, as such; the best word may be “distinctive.” Yet this is a pallid term for classes like Befouler of Ponds, Epopt (“You are a roaming seer, selling your visions at courts and fetes. Road weary and worldwise, your unpopular visions cause you to constantly move on”), Journeyman of the Guild of Sharp Corners (an assassin in training), Lonesome Monarch (“you are now a lost and lonely sovereign without a kingdom”), Member of Miss Kinsey’s Dining Club, Monkeymonger, Parchment Witch (a long-dead sorcerer covered in perfect paper skin), Rhino-Man, Skeptical Lamassu, Vengeful Child, and Yongardy Lawyer. (The people of Yongardy “follow the careers of their favourite solicitors, watch all their cases, collect their portraits, and sneak into the court after hours to dab the patches of blood on white handkerchiefs.”)
Though Troika! has been called “hipster Planescape,” you’ll find little pretense or posturing in the books from original publisher Melsonian Arts Council and the many supplements by others. No fancy fonts nor mannered slang here; the weirdness is pervasive but Old-School minimalist. Paging through these concise entries, each studded with terse, evocative references, we gain a pointillistic impression of the setting, as we do from the flavor text on Magic: The Gathering cards. It’s not even clear what “Troika” is – it seems to be a hub city a la Planescape‘s Sigil. Together all the passing mentions – an Exographer or Red Priest here, a Gremlin Catcher or Derivative Dwarf there – artfully sketch a plane-hopping multiverse of lighthearted half-crazed wonder.
“The Blancmange & Thistle” adventure in the Troika! Numinous Edition rulebook sets a characteristic tone reminiscent of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. The party’s goal: Reach the top floor of their bizarre and dangerous hotel. Wait, what? Take the lift – right? Sure, but on the next floor the Cloud of Green Gas (“a higher life form that doesn’t understand solids well”) gets on with you, or the Pushy Wall Merchant, or Too Many Tigers because why not. Okay, what about the stairs? There’s Owls in the Stairwell, a Demon Seawater Leak, and His Moist Magnificence, King Juniper Jupiter Lexx-Hafwall IV, i.e., an enormous slug. On the roof, the Feast of the Chiliarch is in full swing. There many adventures (specifically, d3x10+d6 adventures), along with fireworks and traditional novelty fondant arrangements, await.
Could this ever make sense? “Ride it out and see what happens,” the text advises. “You can apply meaning and history to everything in your next session in light of the events of the first. Encourage the players to connect the dots for you.” Excellent advice for many RPG sessions, and the touchstone of Troika!: a brassy willingness to float zany ideas and commit, with unique panache, to anything that happens.
This new Troika Worlds offer gathered many recent supplements from the Melsonian Arts Council, experienced explorers of the hump-backed sky, and talented newcomers. There were four titles in our Starter Collection (retail value $46) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete Troika Numinous Edition core rulebook (previously in the January 2021 Troika Bundle) and these third-party supplements:
- Leafpunk (Jen Kap): Picking up the pieces of a crumbled world after a botanical takeover. The future is yours to graft.
- A Bug’s Guide to the Shimmer (Deeply Dapper Games): In a subterranean world of glowing mushrooms and winding tunnels, you’re a hive-mind in a humanoid bug body, searching for long-lost artifacts and succulent nectar.
- The City of the Red Pox (Dark Forests Press): The Princess Dressed in Yellow Silks assaults the walls of the Serene Republic of Antar, and of reality itself. All will be judged.
Those who paid than the threshold (average) price also got our entire Bonus Collection with four more supplements and adventures worth an additional $49:
- Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs (Melsonian Arts): A whodunnit aboard the ice-harvesting ship Nantucket Sleigh Ride on the glaciated world of Myung’s Misstep.
- Very Pretty Paleozoic Pals (Melsonian Arts): In the Permian Nations Sphere, fabulous Dimetrodons defined wetland fashion. Behorned Xenacanthus sharks deftly negotiated sacred treaties. Nautiloids and Ammonites plumbed the deepest of philosophical depths. Then the Humans arrived to take it all.
- Bones Deep (Technical Grimoire): Your group of skeletons walks the ocean floor, finding lost treasures, nefarious mysteries, and cute pets.
- Aetherjack’s Almanac 1-6 (Axes & Orcs): Backgrounds, nonplayer characters, Aetherjammer warships, and other details of traversing the humpbacked sky.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to this Troika Worlds offer’s pandemic-related charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief sends protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.
