Thursday, December 9, 2021

TROIKA! Character Set #2 (Version 1)

More Troika!, since that's where my mind's at! Who knows, maybe I'll get to my own d66 table? Probably not. Trying some fancy stuff with specials and new spells. Let me know what you think of it!

1. Angel Amnesiac

You are like a human, but with wings. You have a golden band floating above your head. It’s cracked. You don’t remember anything but your name and what you can do, but not why you can, or why others can’t. Time to find out I guess.


Possessions:

• Cracked Aureole

• Flaming Sword (how do special weapons?)

• Billowing White Robes
• Strangely Melodious Robes


Advanced Skills:

4 - Sword Fighting

3 - Singing

1 - Language: Celestial
1 - Angelic Spell: Fear (Assume frightening presence with loads more wings and loads more eyes and smoke and lightning and holy choruses)
1 - Angelic Spell: Random

1 - Angelic Spell: Random


Special:

Angelic spells and memories are locked until a way is found to repair the aureole. A fun option might be to wait with rolling the random Angelic Spells until this is managed, discovering them together with the character.


Spell List: 1d3 (tens) + 1d6 (singles)

11. Babble
12. Banish Spirit
13. Befuddle (hearing heavenly chorusses in the mind)
14. Coal Resolve
15. Ember
16. Exorcism
21. Fear (so many wings and eyes etc.)
22. Fire Bolt
23. Flash
24. Invisibility
25. Light
26. Peace

31. Presence
32. Sleep
33. Teleport
34. Thunder
35. True Seeing
36. Undo 


2. Initiate in the Mystical Order of Janitors

You look like a normal janitor, but you hold the keys to secret knowledge granted to you by Janus.


Possessions:

• A Mop and Bucket OR A Toolbox

• Blue Coveralls.

• A keychain with 20 keys of different sizes and materials.


Advanced Skills:

2 - Secret Signs (Mystical Order of Janitors)

2 - Small Repairs

3 - Cleaning

1 - Janitorial Magic: Looking Through the Door (Looking into the now, the past, or the future, either here or elsewhere, as long as there is a door or window to look through.
1 - Janitorial Magic: Skeleton Key - The key used can open any lock, if the spell succeeds.

Choose One: 1 - Pole arm Fighting // 1 - Maul Fighting // 1 - Knife Fighting 


Spells:

11. Astral Reach,
12. Breach,
13. Find,
14. Grow,
15. Helping Hands, 

16. Ironhand, 

21. Levitate, 

22. Light, 

23. Lock, 

24. Open, 

25. Protection from Rain, 

26. Quench, 

31. See Through, 

32. Sentry, 

33. Shatter, 

34. True Seeing, 

35. Undo, 

36. Ward.


Special:

Mystical Janitors can use keys to enhance certain spells, if they can be somehow be used as a normal key should in the casting of the spell. 


Roll on each table for each key:

1. Iron: substitutes 1 stamina

2. Iron: substitutes 1 stamina

3. Iron: substitutes 1 stamina

4. Silver: adds +1 to spell skill level

5. Gold: substitute 1d6 stamina

6. Ivory: opens hidden knowledge


1. Small: +2 to spell level, but lesser effect of the spell.

2. Large: Fills a small slot on its own.

3. Antique: opens to the past, but not farther back then the age of the key.

4. Found: looks/opens to another location, on the same sphere.

5. Found in the Humpbacked Skies: looks/opens to to another location, regardless of sphere.

6. Heavy: fills a small slot on its own.


Other keys might be used to different effects, based on the GM’s discretion.


3. Simian Bass Player

You’re a primate that plays the bass.


Possessions:

• Either an Electric Bass or a Contrabass

• A fancy suit with a floral shirt.

• A Knife


Advanced Skills:

3 - Play the Bass

2 - Climb

2 - Etiquette

1 - Knife Fighting

1 - Brawling

1 - Acrobatics


4. Unwilling Messiah

People believe you are the Messiah, and you actually might be, but you just want to sleep in and play video games. You wish they all would just leave you alone. They don’t. Will you get away from your calling or will you succumb?


Possessions:

• Portable Video Game System

• Nondescript Trench Coat

• Soft, Downy Sleeping Pillow

• Cozy Blanket

• A Baseball Bat


Advanced Skills:

3 - Playing Video Games

2 - Sneak

2 - Sleep

2 - Spell: Mystical Visions

1 - Being Pursued by Devoted Followers


New Spell: Mystical Visions:

Every Time the Unwilling Messiah has an exceptional experience, test Mystical Visions. 

Exceptional Experiences include but are not limited to: A Good Night’s Sleep, A Very Fine Meal, Falling in Love, Being Knocked Out, Being Dumped, Receiving a Compliment from Someone You Look Up too, Being Robbed, Watching a Cat Video, …
The Visions might be of things to come, that have already happened or that are happening right now. They might also be a calling by a god or demon or other mystical entity (like the mystical three eyed goat on the top of Mount Granola.)

Special: 

Every time you enter a new location, roll Being Pursued by Devoted Followers to see if you’ve been found out. The GM might include bonuses or negatives for the locations, like if it’s crowded, or if you are not in civilized lands, or …
Remind your GM about is at the start of the first session. After that, it’s their responsibility.


5. Infernal Bureaucrat

You are a devil that likes contracts very much and are traveling the spheres for someone wanting a hellish contract made. You can use the souls gained with these to power your magic.


Possessions:

• A Jar containing 1d6 floating Souls

• Form Fill Contracts (5)

• Parchment (5) and Blood Red Quill

• A shadowy, black cloak


Advanced Skills:

2 - Bureaucracy

2 - Etiquette

1 - Spell: Random

1 - Spell: Random

1 - Spell: Random 

1 - Spell: Random

1 - Spell: Random

1 - Spell: Random


Special:

Infernal Magic can be used by substituting a soul for the cost of stamina. Each regular, human soul used counts as 1d6 stamina (roll when used). Some special souls might give more, some might less.


6. Royal Beautician

Your customers might already be kings, queens and emperors, but you make them look the part.


Possessions:

• A beautycase filled with the tools of your trade (Large)

• Either a Brick Filled Handbag (damage as club) or Brass Knuckles (damage as club)
• A Taser (as Pistolet, but non lethal)

• 100 Business Cards (Small Item)


Advanced Skills:

4 - Trade: Beautician

2 - Gossip

2 - Etiquette

1 - Brawling or Fist Fighting

1 - Pistolet Fighting

Monday, December 6, 2021

TROIKA! Character Set #1 (version 1)

So, recently I've been thinking about Troika a lot again, and I've gotten back into creating characters for it.  This time I'm going about it, thinking how interesting it would be if they showed up at the Blancmange & Thistle Hotel (the adventure in the back of the book). So I've been treating it a bit as a psychedelic version of the joke where some people walk into a bar. Thinking which types of characters would be fun to play in that adventure. I'm grouping them in sets of six (because you can roll a d6 for them in that way).

Anyway, here they are:

1. Forest Wild Man

Dressed in leaves and your own hair, covered in dirt and rippling muscles, you are a man or woman of the woods. Civilization is confusing, but intriguing. Will you endure the strangeness of it or will you flee back to the trees?


Possessions:

• A Wooden Maul
• Clothing made of leaves

• A small animal friend that lives in your hair. (tell us which animal and give it a name)


Advanced Skills:
3 - Animal Friend 

3 - Wrestling

2 - Maul Fighting

2- Surviving Nature


2. Misplaced Teenager

You were just minding your business, trying not to get bullied while also catching the eye of that classmate you find pretty and cool. You should’ve never walked into that new curio shop and bought that mystical book. Somehow now, you are in the book. Will you ever get out? Do you want to? You never finished binging that series! 


Possessions:

• Backpack full of school supplies

• Packed Lunch

• 1d6 of loose change

• Weird book. (Describe it)

• School Uniform or Leisurely Teen Clothing.

• Choose One: A) A football, B) Glasses, C) A Sketchbook and pencil or D) A Skateboard.


Advanced Skills:
3 - Hormones

1 - Sports

1 - Maths

1 - Foreign Language of Choice (limit: normal school taught languages. French, Spanish, Latin, Greek, German, …)

1 - History

1 - Science

1 - Social Studies

1 - Arts


Special:
• Add +1 to one of the school subjects and -1 to another. If you want another language, you can add that as well.

• Change one of the subjects to Hate [Subject]. For example: 2 - Hate Maths.


3. Blob

You are a gelatinous blob. You have no bones, no face, no pockets. You are a simple life form. 


Possessions:

• Half digested skeleton


Advanced Skills:

4 - Absorb

2 - Assume Shape

2 - Sticking to things

2 - Digest


4. Intergalactic Junkyard Scrounger

These vagabonds scour the multiverse, scrounging in the garbage left behind by all civilizations, looking for treasure. 


Possessions:

• A bundle of trash-treasure (heavy)

• Knife for prying

• Lead Pipe for bashing (as Maul)

Advanced Skills:

3 - Scrounge

2 - Wayfinding

2 - Repurposing

1 - Awareness

1 - Climb

1 - Acrobatics

1 - Secret Signs: Junkyard Scroungers

1 - Maul Fighting


Special:
You may Test your Luck to just so happen to have exactly the (common) discarded tchotchke, bauble, or gewgaw the situation requires.


5. Traveling Door to Door Salesman

Traveling door to door and sphere to sphere to sell your goods, you can be encountered practically anywhere.


Possessions:

• A cheap suit

• A suitcase of novelty snow globes (or pots and pans, screwdrivers, encyclopedias, pocket gods, …)

• A crumpled picture of their family

• A cheap, rundown car


Advanced Skills:

3 - Sales Pitches

2 - Fist Fighting

2 - Smiling

2 - Driving


6. Snail Pilgrim

Bound by mystic contract to carry a small giant snail on their back until it finds a place it is satisfied with to live these poor souls can be seen carrying their large burden throughout the spheres. When more than one of them is in the same spot in the same time, things can get sticky, as a battle of dominance over potential spawning grounds commences. Once a spot is claimed and approved by the snail, it will be terraformed for them to inhabit.


Possessions:

• Small Giant Snail (heavy)

• Walking Stick

• Good Walking Shoes

• A terraforming starter kit.


Advanced Skills:

4 - Hiking

2 - Localized Terraforming

2 - Stick fighting

2 - Following Directions

RISUS dice mechanics with less counting

  Risus is not a mathematically complex game, but it would be very ableist to assume that all people are comfortable enough with counting th...