The following is some shit in a .txt that I don't feel like rewriting.
Alright nerds. Let's talk about death and dying and that game with double ds and all the games that are derived from it, which are a LOT.
So we got all these old ass games, as far as games from the 1970's to present can be OLD, where characters just DIED at zero hit points. Sure there were eventually resurrection spells etc, which costs MONEY. But as time wore on there started to be things like being knocked out at 0 and then dying at some negative amount.
Power Move: No I don't Die
Check a box on your Impending Death tracker
Roll 2d6
2-5: Describe the only thing you KEPT in-spite of death and check off an additional box.
6-8: Describe three things you LOST because you didn't die.
9-12: Describe one thing you LOST because you didn't die.
(Un)Death
Combat as War?
Combat as Sport?
How about Combat as Game.
Does it matter that Sport is equivalent to Game?
Not at all. Words have meaning.
As War and As Combat imply from WITHING the fiction of the game we are playing. As Game implies a metastance. We are playing a game, and part of that game is the combat of the game.
Is death always the best consequence for failure in combat? Does any replacement need to advance the state of the game? What does advancing the game even fucking mean though?
How to handle Death in your game with Combat.
The simple "Your Character Only Dies If You Say They Die."
The replace consequences are, and I dislike spelling it out but, discuss with your friends.
"You're a Ghost (For) Now."
Yo. Your PC died. Now hang with your friends as a Ghost with Ghost Powers. Maybe you only do it for a bit until you get your body back, or you stay a ghost, or maybe even you have a limited amount of ghost time before really being gone.
GHOST POWERS!!
You can get ghost powers, which are powers ghosts have that the living cannot use. But let's also consider, powers that can only be learned by ghosts from ghosts that can be used as both or even only as the living.
Ghost Sight?
The Secret Soul Battering Knee Technique?
Ultimate Dam Building Skill?
"The Undead's Soul Is Drawn To The Bonfire"
Lots of MMOs and other video games do this. Death doesn't end the game; it puts you back at a check point of some kind. Maybe any character advancements are lost, or there is some other additional penalty, but always the main penalty is having to traverse all the territory you just traversed only to die.
It's a failure forward. PC knowledge should be continuous, ie they retain the in character knowledge gained between the last checkpoint and death.
There is the accompanying "(almost) everything resets if you die" effect. We're being gamic (not gamist fuck off with that) so major things like bosses wouldn't reset.
06 July 2020
03 July 2020
Breaking Troika's Bones Against Chesterson's Fence
So I learned about Chesterson's Fence, glibly renamed Gygax's Fence, which in short is a "before you change a thing, think about why the thing is the way it is." Super echoes some of views on the AC vs DR of armor and hit points aren't meat arguments in D&D/OSR.
This will be really brief, and to best of my ability specifically about the idea that you can write content for a game wrong.
Starting from the premise that you can write content for a game wrong, and beyond the idea that writing anything wrong exists only as far as it is not understandable. How can you write content for a game wrong? I argue that 1. only if you are writing official or possibly licensed content for that game's publisher or 2. that your content is unusable to anyone who is also using the base game.
Accepting that these are true premises, can a fan actually write wrong content for Troika in specific? I argue, only in as far point 2, as the 3pp writer isn't writing official content, and almost entirely only as far as matters of taste are concerned.
But what about Chesterson's Fence (CF for short)? Why does it matter here?
So I'm going to use an opinion from another blog on the rapid proliferation of Troika 3pp content, which is opinion of someone not affiliated with Melsonian Arts Council.
A summary of their opinions:
So we have to ask, and he gives his own answers, which are to a degree echoed by myself and the larger Troika playerbase, what these all mean.
.
And to an extent I've probably already addressed all of these.
Upon using only d6's.
Well why does Troika use only d6's. It's based on (Advanced) Fighting Fantasy. I could ask Dan himself, but other than accessibility and to be cool and different from D&D all the other games with all the other polyhedra, that is most obvious stance. So game legacy and accessibility. That's pretty much it. Probability probably doesn't factor.
Upon not have a sufficient understanding of the system regarding backgrounds and creatures.
Why are the creature the stats the way they are? If you compare several the prime fantasy rpg monsters, like goblins and dragons, to their counterparts from Fighting Fantasy, especially in the From the Pit book, which is the FF equivalent of the Monster Manual, they are all almost identical or within 1-2 points. So again, legacy with the ancestral game. That's the why. But what is enough understanding to write new creatures? I'm not sure how super secret this knowledge is, but as the MAC discord is easy to get an invite to, I should think not very. Dan's advice is to eyeball and wing-it.
Well what constitutes sufficient understanding of writing backgrounds for Troika? The rules say in short, be cool, not overly detailed, with about 10 points of Advanced Skills with values between 1 and 3, and probably not going above 3. It says they don't need to be balanced as far as numbers, just flavorful and enjoyable. And if you read through the backgrounds in the book, a lot of them adhere to this, but you see backgrounds with Advanced Skills of 4 or greater. The ones in the 5-6 range are very narrow, but the skills at 4 are almost all directly applicable to adventuring tasks, climbing and fighting and lifting.
Upon running counter to the spirit of the game.
What is the spirit of the game? That is on one hand a personal thing. In which case, you politely ignore content you don't like. I know I myself had to bite back some strong feelings about some of the backgrounds written for Troika Jam, keeping them in check in part because of my strong feelings about Mr Otus's post on doing content wrong. But on the other hand there can be an appeal to authority, which wraps back around to how do you write content wrong, which I argue is not following the style-guide when writing official content for the publisher or being unusable to the intended audience.
So appealing to authority, which can be done either from the text itself, see the introduction primarily, from the author himself, or from other folx working on Troika, see the list of credits of which the author and editors should be considered highly.
The text says, and I am not going to quote EVERYTHING:
In the copyright and legal matters page
And
Conclusion:
The math isn't that deep. There isn't a great deep reason on using d6s for everything. The stats are made up. The core game itself violates what some folx have said are rules for making backgrounds. Weapon damage tables are universally "winged" by both Dan in the core book, and Andrew Walter in Fronds of Benevolence. Additionally, Andrew notably didn't know shit about Troika when he wrote Fronds. So how much DOES the average random person playing Troika need to know to write good usable content for Troika? Fuck if I know.
This will be really brief, and to best of my ability specifically about the idea that you can write content for a game wrong.
Starting from the premise that you can write content for a game wrong, and beyond the idea that writing anything wrong exists only as far as it is not understandable. How can you write content for a game wrong? I argue that 1. only if you are writing official or possibly licensed content for that game's publisher or 2. that your content is unusable to anyone who is also using the base game.
Accepting that these are true premises, can a fan actually write wrong content for Troika in specific? I argue, only in as far point 2, as the 3pp writer isn't writing official content, and almost entirely only as far as matters of taste are concerned.
But what about Chesterson's Fence (CF for short)? Why does it matter here?
So I'm going to use an opinion from another blog on the rapid proliferation of Troika 3pp content, which is opinion of someone not affiliated with Melsonian Arts Council.
A summary of their opinions:
- Troika is "hackable" which is inviting to creators to hack.
- This leads to a lot of content that runs counter to the spirit of the rules/game
- This means a lot of backgrounds or creatures that demonstrate as they see a lack of understanding of the system (as a side note this is also a "the math is deep in Troika!" related opinion)
- Intuitive content because of that
- Can be destructive to play
So we have to ask, and he gives his own answers, which are to a degree echoed by myself and the larger Troika playerbase, what these all mean.
.
And to an extent I've probably already addressed all of these.
Upon using only d6's.
Well why does Troika use only d6's. It's based on (Advanced) Fighting Fantasy. I could ask Dan himself, but other than accessibility and to be cool and different from D&D all the other games with all the other polyhedra, that is most obvious stance. So game legacy and accessibility. That's pretty much it. Probability probably doesn't factor.
Upon not have a sufficient understanding of the system regarding backgrounds and creatures.
Why are the creature the stats the way they are? If you compare several the prime fantasy rpg monsters, like goblins and dragons, to their counterparts from Fighting Fantasy, especially in the From the Pit book, which is the FF equivalent of the Monster Manual, they are all almost identical or within 1-2 points. So again, legacy with the ancestral game. That's the why. But what is enough understanding to write new creatures? I'm not sure how super secret this knowledge is, but as the MAC discord is easy to get an invite to, I should think not very. Dan's advice is to eyeball and wing-it.
 |
| I should really make a post on that at some point, it comes up a lot. Your best bet is to go through the enemies section and think "ok, this thing is as dangerous as a manticore (skill) as tough as a bandit (knight of the road stamina) and as nippy as a gremlin (initiative)" or something along those lines. Pretty quickly you'll have a feel for the numbers and be able to stat things up off the top of your head. |
Well what constitutes sufficient understanding of writing backgrounds for Troika? The rules say in short, be cool, not overly detailed, with about 10 points of Advanced Skills with values between 1 and 3, and probably not going above 3. It says they don't need to be balanced as far as numbers, just flavorful and enjoyable. And if you read through the backgrounds in the book, a lot of them adhere to this, but you see backgrounds with Advanced Skills of 4 or greater. The ones in the 5-6 range are very narrow, but the skills at 4 are almost all directly applicable to adventuring tasks, climbing and fighting and lifting.
Upon running counter to the spirit of the game.
What is the spirit of the game? That is on one hand a personal thing. In which case, you politely ignore content you don't like. I know I myself had to bite back some strong feelings about some of the backgrounds written for Troika Jam, keeping them in check in part because of my strong feelings about Mr Otus's post on doing content wrong. But on the other hand there can be an appeal to authority, which wraps back around to how do you write content wrong, which I argue is not following the style-guide when writing official content for the publisher or being unusable to the intended audience.
So appealing to authority, which can be done either from the text itself, see the introduction primarily, from the author himself, or from other folx working on Troika, see the list of credits of which the author and editors should be considered highly.
The text says, and I am not going to quote EVERYTHING:
In the copyright and legal matters page
Anyone may publish free or commercial content based upon and/or declaring compatibility with "Troika!" without express written permission from the publisher...In the introduction
You now have the context and key terms to explore the medium independently and nothing I say here can fully instruct you...
And
The adventure and wonder is in the gaps; your game will be defined by the ways in which you fill them.
Conclusion:
The math isn't that deep. There isn't a great deep reason on using d6s for everything. The stats are made up. The core game itself violates what some folx have said are rules for making backgrounds. Weapon damage tables are universally "winged" by both Dan in the core book, and Andrew Walter in Fronds of Benevolence. Additionally, Andrew notably didn't know shit about Troika when he wrote Fronds. So how much DOES the average random person playing Troika need to know to write good usable content for Troika? Fuck if I know.