Character Creation: Troika!

Not a game you should read while tired. Or absolutely the right game to read while tired, I dunno.

The Game: Troika!
The Publisher: The Melsonian Arts Council
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I'd heard this game mentioned here and there but never heard anything about it and the title doesn't exactly convey much information, so I gave it a miss. And then the Numinous Edition turned up in a bundle, and I backed a game called Bones Deep on Kickstarter. Said game is about being a skeleton that hatches and goes for adventures on the bottom of the ocean, which is not only delightfully weird but scratches a particular itch for me (to wit, sea exploration games, thanks very much Subnautica). 

Anyway, Bones Deep is a Troika! offshoot, and my friend Gus thought they might run it, so I figured I should take a look at the source game. And it's fuckin' weird, and I mean that in a good way. There's a sample scenario that involves riding an elevator in a hotel. It reminds me of Toon on mescaline. The game doesn't have a setting as such, or rather it does, but it's all revealed by the spell and other lists rather than in an actual setting chapter. In practice, I suspect that would mean a lot of group improvisation, which is fine if you've got a group that's down for this particular brand of surreal. 

It's not the most accessible game in the world, I guess? But it reminds me of Nobilis in some ways, in that you kinda just have to trust it and go with it, and I'm game for that. I think, though, that Bones Deep sounds more appealing to me than the base game, but then, oceans.

So let's make a character for this bunch of bananas. Much of this is random. First we roll 1d3+3 to determine Skill (not Skills, but a trait called Skill, which is both a great idea and a little brain-fucky to anyone who's played RPGs for a long time). Anyway, I rolled a 6, which gives me 9.

2d6+12 to determine Stamina: 20.

1d6+6 to determine Luck: 10

Baseline possessions: 10 silver pence, a knife, a lantern and flask of oil, a rucksack, 6 provisions.

And now we roll background! This is a d66. 32 gives me...

Believe it not that's actually one of the tamer backgrounds. Amusingly, I've been finishing off Deathloop recently, which is also about bizarre assassins. 

That's basically it, though. We'll say my Journeyman's name is Wild Bym. Wild Bym, so called because his assassination method has been "get next to target and flail wildly with one or more bladed objects," was recently given a license even though his examiners hate the chaos he brings to the profession (but like, his targets are dead, so it's not like his methods don't work). Bym dresses in the black clothes required of the apprentice, but all different shades of black (yes it does, shut up). He carries poison but he's not really interested in using it, unless it's the sort of thing you can mush into someone's face. Bym has a beard that's not quite as long and wooly as he'd like (yet!), one blue eye and one green one, and a prominent lump on his forehead where he got hit with a sword and the tip lodged. 

I...think that'll do it.