[Review] Troika! (Core rules); Artpunk Prime

[Core Rules]
Troika! (2018)
Daniel Sell (Melsonian Arts Council)

It is time to take another critical Artpunk darling to task! We’ve done Mork Borg, which is not without some problems but could certainly be used for some 1-3 hour sessions between serious gaming, so what about Troika! Winner of a million awards! Indie darling! Occasionally notorious for having a fanbase with maybe some mentally-unstable twitter activists! Le Ennies! Le Critically Acclaimed Writing! Le retenir un pet en faisant du vélo! The Avantgarde Art! Are you ready to have your socks rocked off by TRVE sophisticated highbrow entertainment?

Troika is a 120-page OSR-adjacent game based on the Fighting Fantasy ruleset and is probably a good illustration of the relative differences in strengths between the artistic crowd and the more conservative oldies. For adventures, random tables, dungeon-dressing, novelty, freshness, relentless creativity is an asset that can be wielded to create something extraordinary. DCO, Gardens of Ynn, Slumbering Ursine Dunes, I am not an Artpunk fan but there are some gems there. The games are a different story. Game design is one part art and three parts engineering. You are building a complex framework of rules meant to simulate fantastical adventure. Troika! bypasses some of these initial difficulties by porting over its core rules from a tried and true albeit obscure source but the end result is still something with lots of ideas but mostly little idea how to harness them.

The premise is intoxicating with the promise of infinite potential. We are treated to an implied setting, the megapolis of Troika located somewhere in the heart of a universe of crystal spheres, kept together by star-spanning fleets of golden barges, a kaleidoscopic mixture of influences lifted from Moorcock, Book of the New Sun, Planescape and WHFRPG. These disparate nuggets, each with lovingly crafted whimsical prose, is meant to delight and astonish, and soon you, the innocent and neotenal OSR-newcomer, will be giggling with glee like a teenage girl after her first pony ride. But to me, the jaded, troglodytic OSR-gatekeeper, this provokes suspicious scowls and blubbers of dissaproval as I poke it mistrustfully with my reviewing stick. Yes you have promised me the sun but can you actually fly me there?

So! Troika! is peak Artpunk, all razzle-dazzle and quick dopamine hits, low on calories and vitamins. It uses a stripped down version of Fighting Fantasy, a game of which I knew nothing until I started reviewing this but which I might decide to pick up and play afterwards, sexed up with 36 disparate character options, Oooh! and Aaah! and trailing off somewhere near the tail end of the damn thing. Like I usually do, let’s just roll up a character and explain as we go.

Troika characters, like their more blue-collar FF cousins, have three attributes: Skill, Stamina & Luck. We roll 1d3+3 for Skill, which is a generalized competence modifier used for every check, 2d6+12 for Stamina (which is hp) and 1d6+6 Luck (sort of like a saving throw but it goes down every time you use it and is replenished by rest). This is all core FF. We roll dice, get a Skill of 6 (!), 16 Stamina and 7 Luck. We also begin play with 7 pence, a rucksack, a knife, a flask of oil + lantern, 6 provisions, which is fortunate since unlike its spiritual liege Troika doesn’t seem to have an equipment list of any kind, meaning the acquisition of new materiel is going to pose some problems. We shrug it off, roll d66 to generate one of 36 backgrounds, and continue on our blissfully unaware way.

The Backgrounds proper are adapted from the FF archetypes and represent an eclectic and colorful hodgepodge of the greatest hits of Gene Wolfe, Dancers at the End of Time, Planescape (or maybe Zelazny’s Amber), and weird twisty takes on classical tropes, with only Vance noticeable by his absence. The master of weird whimsey expelled from the canon of a weird whimsical fantasy game? Curiouser and curiouser. There are races of banished giants, journeyman assassins, exiled monarchs, gremlin-catchers (complete with Small and Vicious Dog!), thinking machines, petty spellcasters, mathomagicians and assorted ne’erdowells, each distinguished by a handful of advanced skills (which are added to one’s skill base when determining the total bonus), the odd special ability and some more equipment. Each is accompanied by character portraits ah la Banksy and ‘Le critically acclaimed writing’ to the maximum of a paragraph, presenting an initially charming facade, a kaleidoscope of wonder.

If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best

We roll 62, getting a Vengeful Child, with dead parents! which nets us an oversized Longsword with +1 to hit and damage while we use it, which might be one of the most powerful weapons in the game (the weapon list is mostly standard stuff with one or two plasma fusils added to it). We also get an old hunting bow with 12 arrows. Our Advanced skills are Longswordfighting 3, Awareness 1, Climb 1, Bow Fighting 1, Run 1, Swim 1, and the ominously titled Vengeance 1, which is not explained in the advanced skill list 😛
Our character has now been generated.

The idea of these advanced skills is that all resolution in the game is either 2d6+skill+advanced skill contested, or you roll 2d6 under your skill + advanced skill for static checks. The skill list covers most of the basics straight from FF (Disguise, Second Sight, Run et. al.), and includes a few new ones like Piloting the Golden Barge, or Astrology (which should be Astronomy but whatever). There is about as much description to the new skills as there is to the old skills and the whole is light but flexible.

I suspect Sell is a semi-hardcore FF fan? There are a few minor tweaks to the game rules that are alright (like simultaneous critical hits will cause both characters to hit and shatter their weapons) but the major innovation is terrible and I fucking hate it so I will rant about that now. The worst artpunk rule since the dice-drop. Initiative is resolved by taking 2 poker chips or colored crayons or whatever the fuck for each action the characters and monsters have [the monsters get initiative], then put an End of the Round Token in there and putting it all in a bag or maybe one’s butthole [1] and then drawing from the bag one at a time. The GM may take monster actions using any single monster, meaning if you have 7 goblins and 1 Worm that Will Devour the Sun, and you draw any enemy token, the GM can just take a Worm that Devours the Sun action. The GM is kindly requested not to abuse this ability as it would be to the deteriment of the game, which is certainly a way of resolving things. So variable turn length, actions are a chaotic mess, I have to get another poker chip set and a dice bag. Can’t we just do group initiative, 1d6, multiple actions per round? Whenever you must ask the GM to abide by the code of gentlemen and not use your system intelligently it might be better to simply put a hard limit there. It is a new way of resolving initative but I am not convinced it is a better way.

This innovation is ironic since some of the stripped down tinkering with the FF system [2] is not bad. You won’t find quite as many modifiers to, say, ranged combat as in AFF but there’s rules for firing into melee, Grappling, there’s an innovation where the location of your equipment will determine how likely it is you will be able to draw it and use it in a single turn…this is not bad. As written there is no limit to the amount of times you can inflict damage (every melee attack is an opposed check, with the winner inflicting damage on the loser), meaning that a character with high skill that is attacked often during a round has a very high chance of murdering all of his assailants. It reads very volatile and fast. I think going into the underpinnings and the understanding behind what some of these rules are meant to represent may be crucial for a long term game but there are bigger hurdles to overcome first. Damage is done by rolling 1d6 and referencing a table (an FF conceit, so if you roll a 1 for a sword you do 2 damage, but a 3 might do 4 fe), and FF’s armor dice has been folded out in favor of a static modifier to damage rolls. This means that as written armor can never REDUCE DAMAGE TO 0. You always take some hit point damage if you lose an opposed test. I’m not sure about that one. As written hit points never increase and you are restricted to 12-24, meaning your character is going to run out of gas pretty soon.

What else about the system proper. There is a rudimentary advancement system, another departure from FFA, every time you use an advanced skill succesfully you may put a pip there (up to 3 maximum), with a roll over mechanic to see if you increase them every time you rest, which seems like a monstrously fast increase if you don’t mind me saying so. There is mention of learning new skills and training costs but again, no cost specified. You have to do the work man. If you are going to have a game about adventuring and treasure you have to provide these sorts of prices or else it is not grounded in anything, and the wealth you accumulate has no context. This generates imprecise, short-lived tossfiddle, which I guess is fair if you want that, but then why bother with training costs at all?

There is an item list for some of the equipment you get at character creation but there is no equipment list proper, and no list of prices. I think this is a huge loss. Even in a game where you travel the multi-verse, you are going to have certain universally available goods, or perhaps you can come up with a clever way of exchanging all of that currency. Instead we get little, items give a +1 to skill checks involving certain tasks, a list of weaponry in the front (which is decent, I will say), and every once in a while you get a nice item or tibdit; Witch hair rope is immune to magical manipulation, Salt is used against demons as a poor man’s silver, Ruby lorgnettes are used to detect magical activity. These hints of flavorful background items are fun, but this needed much, much more. The omission of proper treasure & magic item tables, the lifeblood of any adventuring game, is missing, and this is a proper shame. You have an entire multiverse to play with and there is nothing here. A wasted opportunity.

There are of course precedents for omitting equipment tables or magic items. One can imagine that with a rules-light retroclone of standard B/X with some tweeks certain elements can just be ported over with minor adjustment only. Lamentations eschews both bestiary and magic items but this is a deliberate choice, meant to enforce deliberation and restraint in the creation of magical treasures and foes in this more low magic setting. The implied setting of Troika! is brimming with potential wonder and whimsey, one expects to see an entire catalogue of weird and wonderful items.

The magic system in Troika! is again, an stripped-down port from FF, ditching the various modifiers to the casting check and keeping the essential spells and with a handful of spells added if I am correct (I could not find any parallels to Life Line & Blood Shroud fe). Spellcasting is harsh, you pay 1-6 (depending on spell level) Points and must roll under your skill to succeed. The spell descriptions are reminiscent of OD&D, 2 sentences, and on occasion I prefer the FFA versions because they seem to anticipate common problems. Contrast this description:

With this one:

Its a little bit tighter, it covers a bit more eventualities and is a bit less ambiguous, like the difference between OD&D and AD&D. There are some interesting additions to the spellbook; Stepping between mirrors, linking your life-force with that of another caster, smearing yourself with Daemon’s blood to make yourself immune to their predations for hours or Smell people’s thoughts and feelings. Magic is made a bit more ‘weird.’ One curious omission here is the lack of baroque Vancian names for spells, which seems like a no-brainer. Someone will have to explain the omission of Vance from whimsical, wondrous magic. Why pass up the opportunity to go from Firebolt to Serten’s Igneous Projectile Caster for example? There is even the ominous Zed spell, which costs (?) points and causes all who attempt it to vanish, never to be seen again. Bravo!

Speaking of which, FINALLY I tease a fucking Vance reference out of you.

Was that so hard?

Maybe the next critical component of a new game, the bestiary! Creatures are easily put together, having stamina, skill, initiative and an armor score, along with what damage table they roll on, and maybe some special abilities. Bestiaries are probably the best doorway into an implied setting? The mixture in Troika is heady, initially dazzling, but lacks a certain coherence or purpose to it. The nigh infinite potential of the planes makes it seem like only a glimpse is caught. There is a second problem which is one of priority. Description focuses on being clever or poetic, in the manner of a bargain-bin Patrick Stuart, and we get our tingles, but we aren’t making a coherent world or even neccessarily learning anything game related about the creature. This is the type of writing I am talking about.

Contrast it with a good one;

Which has hooks and lore and demeanors threaded through it all in one and delivers the whole in 2 paragraphs. Cheff’s kiss muah! But you have an entire multiverse to populate and only 36 entries to do it with. Alzabo, Zoanthrope, Thinking Machine yes yes we enjoy our Gene Wolfe. The unique entries are all good stuff, witches that fly around in spirit form and drink the innards of sleeping men, or go about shapechanged as hogs, growing mineral tendrils, or the blanket-shaped space predator, or a snake that whispers sweet nothings as it crushes you, or mentions of a Palace filled with Tigers. It’s creative work, even hits like Manticores and Harpies have been given a new paint job. It inspires momentary delight but it does not cohere into anything more. I was looking for the spread, whether it covered a broad range of foes, and then it struck me; it doesn’t really matter. Any collection of whimsically endowed MM paint-jobs or cross-section from Fire on the Velvet Horizon would have sufficed just as well.

The main problem with Troika is that its individual component parts are potentially compelling but there is no framework or structure or even underlying coherence behind it, essentially relegating it to the ghetto of momentary diversion, a short-lived decadent spat of whimsey (?) which must ultimately fizzle out for lack of a staying power. It really needed more things like this;

Or this:

It promises multi-planar space exploration adventure of infinite potential, sounds good sign me up, but provides no framework, structure, or even hint of what that would look like. It is a small wonder Troika 3rd party material is generally poorly regarded. It would be attractive to creative types yet it fails to provide that which creative types are most in need of and least interested in creating themselves; a solid framework which can be adhered to, tinkered with or even consciously rejected!

The Troika! campaign, is not covered. This is the section that was arguably most needed. Okay, you have sold me on the Golden Barges and the city of Troika! which is ambiguously ruled by the Autarch and suffers from Owls, great! I am ready to buy passage onboard a golden barge to travel to the Crystal Sphere of V’aalumquarth to hunt for the mad Thinking Machine gourmand Draxidor-9’s Penultimate Curry Recipe at the behest of Miss Kinsey’s Dining Club, what is the ticket price and how much Lammergeier-jerky rations do I buy?, and then the GM just starts drooling and crying and shaking her head and my adventure is fucking over. Some sort of progression, even as a suggestion, is key. It could be very simple. First you do a dice-drop…

No seriously. Planescape was wild, and you are essentially aiming for something in the spirit of that, albeit it less coherent and good. But Planescape never had a campaign format, it always seemed like there were too many options. Figure something out. You fuck around in Troika at lower levels, maybe in some sort of extradimensional labyrinth, buy passage onboard your golden barge at mid and at high some sort of domain play will probably be involved, probably centred on Troika, which serves as type of Sigil/Amber. Dimensional adventuring should take place at any level. You need something to do with wealth, something to aspire too, something to fear etc. etc. It doesn’t have to be like D&D, in fact, it probably shouldn’t, but it should be considered.

The sample adventure THE BLANCMANGE & THISTLE kind of underlines my point, that this type of creativity needs a scaffolding or a structure to cohere or it lacks weight. The idea is that you book passage in a hotel (I guess it is the only hotel?), there is but one room, and you must either take the elevator, and be subjected to various bizarre encounters, or take the stairs, and be subjected to various bizarre encounters, so you have your choice of two railroads. It comes across as much more dada-istic and surrealist then the previous subject matter.

The elevator is weird, you are bombarded with a host of surreal encounters and to the author’s credit, they are not straightforward combat. The largest threat comes from a hotel guest composed of poisonous gas which must either be endured, avoided or persuaded to not kill the guests. There is the possibility of offending the Mandril elevator-keeper. The stairway involves more combat with surreal hotel guests, bizarre environmental hazards like demonic water or a dreaming wizard creating bottomless pits in the ceiling etc. etc. Creative encounters, structured haphazardly.

The game ends with a list of hooks, sample provided here. Which goes full on surrealist bufoonery but again, there is no real framework, and that’s kind of the point. Do as thou wilt! has ever been the commandment of the Evil One, and the results have always been disasterous.

So what do we do with Troika? The answer is probably not that much. It feels like a game half-done, where all the creative work is taken to with admirable gusto and spirit but once it becomes time to get one’s hands properly dirty and stumble about in the greasy innards of Fighting Fantasy the author becomes desinterested and merely holds up his hands. I am astonished none of these supposed critics that were acclaiming the writing touched upon this point. This is something to read and be ensnared by momentary flights of fancy, put together something in an afternoon if the depression medication arrives on time, run one’s companions through it and then have a guffaw and a titter at one’s own wit, or perhaps have a screaming meltdown after it is discovered the house contains an insufficient number of poker chips for the initiative sequence, only to put it back on the coffeetable afterwards where it will remain. Certainly higher ambitions then Mork Borg, but to its credit Mork Borg can fall back on a traditional dungeon-crawling format, which Troika really cannot. I would suggest aspiring Artpunkmen looking for a meatier yet Artpunky alternative might be interested in Nightmares Beneath, which seems to be the real deal.

Prettily coloured, pleasant-smelling whiffs of smoke.

**


[1] This does not seem an entirely unreasonable suggestion considering its fanbase
[2] My frame of reference was Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2e