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A pack of tokens of robot knights
I made a new token pack!
This pack is a collection started out as a handfull of tokens I made for a home campaign of Troika!. It expanded into some more and since then I have used some of these for Lancer too.
In the pack are included:
30 illustrated tokens of robot knights and other beings (but all robotic in nature), all tokens infront of a hex, square and circle backdrop.
Its pwyw on itch so pick it up if you feel like it!
Cairn Toads are oddly flat amphibians native to the scrubland and foothills of central Idari. Adults range from roughly fist-sized to the size of a medium paving stone. Cairn toads are highly social animals and become stressed when isolated.
Cairn toads are named for their unique social behavior. At night, they sleep half-buried, disguised as a patch of rocky soil. When the sun rises, the toads will start to climb on top of each other, forming a vertical stack similar to a stone cairn. Once the stack is balanced, they remain completely still until the sun sets, only moving to catch passing insects with their long, sticky tongues. If the stack is disturbed by a predator or toppled, the toads will chase away the threat (they are hard as rocks, though less heavy, but one launching itself at you is painful), then return to the stack. A toad cairn can consist of as few as 3 and as many as 50 individual cairn toads.
The purpose of this stacking behavior is unknown; theories include it being a mating display, camouflage, deterring predators by suggesting human activity, or a symbiotic relationship with nearby predators to lure travellers into their dens.
The call of a cairn toad sounds like stones rubbing together. Incidentally, the sound of two cairn toads mating also sounds like stones rubbing together. They lay their eggs in shallow streams and puddles, where they blend in with pebbles.
Fun fact: the domestic gargoyle was bred from cairn toads a few centuries ago.
(both images described in alt text)
CAIRN TOAD (skill 5, stamina 8, initiative 1, light armor)
Damage as club/thrown rock (if you have made a damage table for throwing rocks, which you might if you’re playing Troika!)
MIEN:
disguised as paving stone
stacked
climbing toad stack
toppled
defensive
catapulting
HEY FOLKS WHO ENJOY ACTUAL PLAY PODCASTS?!
Ya like WHIMSY?
Ya like it WEIRD?
Ya like it when you get to see into a world where a garden gnome, a guy clothed entirely in swords, and an anglerfish-faced fella in a coat go on quests for money to buy Wasp Drinks, navigating their way around sapient mandrills and riddling sphynxes?
Do you want to meet Big Jim Concrete?
You do want to meet Big Jim Concrete.
Listen to Ludonauts! on Spotify :D
vinegarman discovers something secret about his companion
My Troika! character; Rosaceae Vesca Fragaria III, a Sorcerer of the College of Friends, writing a a thesis on psi-bees. Or as she would put it:
Hi my name is Rosaceae Vesca Fragaria III and I have long curly rose-pink hair (that's how I got my name) that reaches my hips, and rose eyes like the dawn and a lot of people tell me that I look like Mercymorn (an if you don't know who that is get da hell out of here!). I'm not related to Naberius the third but I wish I were cause he's a major fucking hottie. I'm also a wizard and I go to the College of Friends in Troika. I love pastels and the colour pink, and I make sure all my clothes are pink. For instance today I was wearing a soft pink houppelande and a pink wide-brimmed pointed hat. I was walking in the town. It was dawn, which I was happy about. A lot of people stared at me. I blew a kiss at them.
I forgot to post this here, but I put together a collection of six Troika! compatible backgrounds inspired by the setting of Destiny 1 & 2 for the Troika Tarot Jam!
Play as anything from a resurrected cosmic soldier to a near-godlike artificial intelligence. Plus six new spells that let you slip through time, retroactively remove someone utterly completely from reality, or just literally annihilate the whole setting. It’s fun!
Check it out here.
And some previews to hold you over while you go download it.
The magnificent giant gun of the venerable saint Jude. Protector of the realm, collector of mass. Saint Jude was born in the 5th age and then shackled to her sun prison. Her gun was very big.
RPG Highlights: Troika! Numinous Edition
Next up on the list is one of my current favorite games, Troika! Numinous Edition.
Quick Summary: Troika! is a science-fantasy, relatively “rules-lite”, random character creation-driven, wild ride of a game. d66 out of 10 stars. Play it.
Longer-Form What It Is: Troika! (the exclamation is important) is an excuse to go wild and explore a gonzo-weird science-fantasy, plane-hopping maelstrom of a game. I love it. I’m going to just quote the entire introduction, because it does some very heavy lifting in setting your expectations and welcoming you to the game.
“You are reading a tabletop role-playing game (RPG) in which one player takes the part of the games master (GM) and prepares the world and controls the people and peril in it while the other players create characters on a journey through that self same world.
You now have the context and key terms to explore the medium independently and nothing I say here can fully instruct you on what is a deep and rich form of entertainment on par with cinema or fly fishing. Treat it like you would any new hobby.
Beyond that what you have here is Troika!: a science-fantasy RPG in which 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.
What you encounter on those spheres and in those liminal places is anybody’s guess — I wouldn’t presume to tell you, though inside this book you will find people and artefacts from these worlds which will suggest the shape of things. The adventure and wonder is in the gaps; your game will be defined by the ways in which you fill them.”
Lovely.
At its core are a few pretty straightforward mechanics. You have some numbers established at character creation that you add to skill rolls to roll under that skill total with 2d6. So, if you have Skill 4 (base stat) and 5 Gambling (a skill) you need to roll under a 9 to succeed on a gambling check. In combat or in contests, each party involved rolls using the same procedure, but the win goes to the higher roller. Pretty straightforward.
There are some extra rules you can layer on top, as well as an explicitly stated expectation that you will be creating your own rules as you play. The “chassis” for Troika! just begs to be hacked, and it really does lend itself to that. Skills in particular make up a big part of this. The given skill list is limited, really on purpose, and you get to come up with more skills as you go.
Another part that makes Troika! unique is the initiative system. Instead of rolling for an initiative, you assemble a pool of tokens representing both players, enemies equal to initiative scores, and an “end of round” token. You then pull at random from that pool to see who goes or when the round ends. Its, admittedly odd, but it works surprisingly well and adds some randomness and tension to initiative orders.
The highlight of Troika! is undoubtedly the backgrounds. Backgrounds function like a class or playbook, they come with a set of starting possessions, skills, sometimes spells, and a short description. Skills and spells help define what your character can do, and offer all sorts of implied hints as to the “lore” of that background. But what does the most heavy lifting is that description. Individually they’re filled with potential hooks and stories, but if you read all the included backgrounds as a unit, it creates this wildly flavorful setting without having an actual setting section. It’s fantastic and more games should do the “implied setting” thing.
Some backgrounds you can pick from (or roll for) include;
Ardent Giant of Corda
Claviger
Gremlin Catcher
Journeyman of the Guild of Sharp Corners
Parchment Witch
Sorcerer of the Academy of Doors
Vengeful Child
Yeah. It’s great.
Quick tangent, but Troika! is also just a great design space to tool around in. You might recall I dabbled in some background making, if you want to get a sense for the flexibility that this system allows for.
Anyways, lastly, I would just like to wax poetically about the art in this book (you can see some examples in the image at the start). There are several artists in this book, and all of them do a real fucking good job. Poetic.
Final Verdict: You should 100% get Troika! Do it now. I’ll wait. If you ever wanted to experiment in systems outside of dnd (and you should do that, there are multitudes out there and chances are one will fit you better than dnd might), Troika! is a great place to start (or end, but really, go on a ttrpg journey. it’ll be fun).
You can pick up a pdf here, as well as check out the free SRD it has all the rules in it seriously. If you prefer dead tree versions, you can pick up a physical copy here. The quality of the hardcover is great, and it definitely feels sturdy and like it wont fall apart at the bindings like certain hardcovers of certain systems. Also, the pdf? Fully hyperlinked. Not even paizo does that for you.
