Another Bundle - Troika

[ffutures]

This is a new bundle for Troika, a surreal RPG which was last on offer in January 2021. This time there's a lot of new material and it's being treated as an all-new bundle, so people who bought the last bundle won't get the new material free.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/TroikaWorlds

This new Troika Worlds offer presents recent supplements and adventures for Daniel Sell's Troika! RPG, a psychedelic fantasia on the 1980s Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. Since January 2021, when we presented the core Troika rulebook and many supplements, the Melsonian Arts Council RPG has 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.

With Troika's simple, beginner-friendly 2d6 roll-under rules system and three character stats (Skill, Stamina, and Luck), nostalgic FF 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 gathers many recent supplements from the Melsonian Arts Council, experienced explorers of the hump-backed sky, and talented newcomers. We provide each title complete in .PDF. Like all Bundle of Holding titles, these ebooks have NO DRM (Digital Restrictions Management), and our customers are entitled to move them freely among all their devices. (By publisher request, the DriveThruRPG versions of some of these files are inobtrusively watermarked.)

Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) goes to this 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.

The total retail value of the titles in this offer is US$93.50. Customers who pay just US$12.95 get all four titles in our Starter Collection (retail value $46) as DRM-free ebooks, including the complete Troika Numinous Edition core rulebook (Melsonian Arts Council, retail price $18 – previously in the January 2021 Troika Bundle), Leafpunk (Jen Kap, retail $10), A Bug's Guide to the Shimmer (Deeply Dapper Games, retail $10), and The City of the Red Pox (Dark Forests Press, retail $8).

Those who pay more than the threshold (average) price, which is set at $19.95 to start, also get our entire Bonus Collection with four more titles worth an additional $49, including the recent Melsonian supplements Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs (retail price $7) and Very Pretty Paleozoic Pals: Permian Nations (retail $14), along with Bones Deep (Technical Grimoire Games, retail $15) and the six-issue compilation of Aetherjack's Almanac (Axes & Orcs, retail $13).

 


Last time I said "This looks interesting and VERY surreal - if that's the style of play you like it may be for you." I really don't see any reason to change that. However, if you already got the previous bundle you may want to consider whether you need the new material.