Troika! (role-playing game)

This article is about the 2018 tabletop role-playing game. For the role-playing video games development company, see Troika Games.

Troika!

Cover of 2nd edition ("Numinous Edition"), 2019
Designers	Daniel Sell
Illustrators	Jeremy Duncan, Dirk Detweiler Leichty, Sam Mameli, Andrew Walter
Publishers	Melsonian Arts Council
Publication	2018
Genres	tabletop role-playing game, fantasy
Website	www.melsonia.com/collections/troika

Troika! is a science fantasy indie role-playing game with a surreal multiverse setting. It was created by Daniel Sell and published by Melsonian Arts Council in 2018 under a free license, encouraging other indie role-playing game creators to use its rule system to create their own projects.

Description

Troika! embraces randomness to produce unexpected player characters adventuring in unexpected settings. Character generation is randomized, with 36 possible backgrounds for characters including burglar, keyboard player, necromancer, dwarf, gremlin hunter, demon tracker, rhino-man, paper witch, etc. Many of the backgrounds bestow a special ability. For example, the Befouler of Ponds, who urinates into ponds and drinks stagnant water, is immune to diseases normally associated with stagnant water.

Each character has three main attributes: Skill (to attempt any actions); Luck (can be used to modify the outcome of dice rolls); and Stamina (a measure of health. When Stamina reaches zero, the character is dead.)

Every enemy has six possible reactions to meeting the characters (determined randomly by the gamemaster); for example, goblins may prove to be more gossipy than aggressive.

The combat system also encompasses a certain amount of randomness, which in turn makes combat more lethal: To determine who can act during combat, all players put two chips into a bag, and the gamemaster adds two chips for each monster, as well as one chip that signifies the end of the round. If the "end of round" chip is drawn before a character's chip for several consecutive rounds, the character could die of wounds before getting an opportunity to act. RPG historian Stu Horvath warned, "Expect one-shots [campaigns that only last one session] and very short campaigns that leave players shaking their heads in puzzlement."

Publication history

Troika! was created by Daniel Sell with illustrations by Jeremy Duncan and published by Melsonian Arts Council in 2018. The Troika! System Reference Document and license agreement encourages the creation of third-party content. As a result, many independent creators have released their own products based on its system. As of November 2024, Itch.io lists 701 physical games (as opposed to video games) with the "Troika" tag.

Sell told an interviewer that the titleTroika!

is a word that convincingly sits between fiction and reality and can have some resonant weight while also being fun to say. Troika the city is the way into the world for the players. If it was called, for instance, Boslog you're just moving towards this distant thing that you'll have to build up (or not) meaning around, while Troika you're already taking some baggage with you and might find some fun synchronicities. Nonsense words are never very fun.

However, Stu Horvath conjectured the title simply refers to the three attributes that each character has.

In 2019, Melsonian released a revised and expanded Numinous edition that included an introductory adventure, "The Blancmange & Thistle". An official expansion by Luke Gearing and David Hoskins, Acid Death Fantasy, followed in 2020.

Reception

Ben Brosofsky for Screen Rant recommended Troika! as an alternative to Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, particularly for fans of Planescape.

J.R. Zambrano for Bell of Lost Souls called the game "cosmic fantasy at its finest."

Michael Barnes for There Will Be Games praised "the flexibility of Troika!, which is one of the best rules-lite systems out there right now."

Aaron Marks for Cannibal Halfling Games wrote, "Every element in this game is tightly written and evocative, so as soon as you read them you’re immediately struck with not only what the thing is, but also how insane it is."

Christopher John Eggett of the Tabletop Gaming Magazine wrote about its universe: "it's a world that’s got the structure of a joke, but without a thigh-slapping punchline; you're more likely to end up with a knowing smirk."

In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath noted, "Troika! is one too many googly eyes in an M.C. Escher landscape that periodically melts into iridescence." Horvath commented on the strange random character backgrounds, saying, "[they] imply a strange and slippery world that verges on the nonsensical."" Horvath concluded, "It's absurd. But also very charming in its way."