Snail Wrangler [Troika! Background]

Snail Wrangler

Snails. They’re everywhere, man. God’s perfect creations. But someone needs to wrangle them, and that someone is you. It’s your job to round up the feral snails that would surely disrupt productive business if left to roam wild. You’re always on the watch for threats to your mollusky flock, and your trusty fusil is always near at hand to drive off the squirrels, turkeys, and snail rustlers that would prey upon your charges. 

Possessions

• Fusil
• Belt with 3 fusion cores
• Snail crook (treat as staff)
• Shelljack (light armor)
• Loyal riding snail (moderate beast, armor 2, with proper bags can carry twice as much as a mule)
• 1d6 snails, fist-sized or smaller, of below-average intelligence

Advanced Skills

• 3 Riding
• 2 Healing
• 2 Awareness
• 2 Fusil Fighting 
• 2 Staff fighting
• 4 Language: Snailish
• 4 Secret Signs: Snails

Special

You are immune to all snail-borne diseases such as snail pox, the slimy fever, and meningitis.

Klausritter for Troika!

Klausritter

You are a Knight of the North, a defender of children and protector of the innocent. You bring joy and warmth to the world during the darkest nights of the winter.

Possessions

• Red fur clothing (as modest armor)
• Longsword
• Loyal reindeer mount (modest beast)
• Large sack full of 4d6 toys

Advanced Skills

• 3 Prodigious Strength
• 4 Toymaking
• 2 Sword Fighting
• 1 Animal Husbandry
• 1 Riding
• 1 Spell: Open
• 2 Spell: Peace
• 1 Spell: Sleep

Special
Children’s toys do not encumber you at all, no matter how many you carry. You cannot reliably retrieve them during combat.

Wizard Slime for Troika!

Wizard Slime

Slimes are cute but semi-dangerous monsters that resemble brightly colored dollops of gelatin with googly eyes, about the size of a footstool. Most slimes spend their lives randomly attacking neophyte adventurers only to be slaughtered by the same. But ever since you slurped up that dead wizard, you’ve become a bit smarter than your slimy brethren. You know there’s more out there that wandering the forest, waiting to be beaten to death by some kid with a wooden sword. You’ve made your way to Troika, ready to find your fortune under the Humpbacked Sky.

Possessions

• Jaunty little wizard hat
• People Potion (turns you into a human for 1d6 hours)

Advanced Skills

• 2 Sneak
• 1 Pseudopod fighting (damage as small beast)
• 3 Alchemy
• 2 Spell: Jolt
• 1 Spell: Helping Hands
• 2 Spell: Random
• 1 Spell: Random

Special
Your gel-like body prevents you from wearing armor, but you can still use weapons as normal or slam enemies with extruded pseudopods. You can’t wear a backpack, but you can safely stow gear inside your body, retrieving it like any solid character would from their own pack. Your malleable form allows you to squeeze through any gap or space of an inch or more. Your gear doesn’t squish with you, so you may need to drop some items to fit through some spaces. 

Dandy Highwayman (Troika! Background)

Dandy Highwayman

Qua qua, da diddly, qua qua, da diddly

Clothes. More than just a way to keep you warm and dry, they’re an extension of your soul, your personality, your inner self. Fashion is ever-changing, and what’s flash and new last week is dull and gauche now. You’re obsessed with clothes and the fickle whims of fashion, so much so that you’ve turned to thievery to fund your obsession. But no brutish thug, you. You’re a dandy highway man with swagger and poise. It’s important to look good while you rob from the rich and give to your closet. 

You’ve exhausted the sartorial possibilities of your homeworld (or maybe there’s too much heat from the constabulary). Now you’ve come to Troika to see what the Humpback Sky has to offer in the ways of fashion. 

Possessions

• 2 very Fancy pistolets
• Belt with six plasmic cores
• Flashy clothes, including mask and cloak (+2 to Swagger)
• Face paint
• Mount (horse, ostrich, strider bug, or some similar large beast)

Skills

• 3 Swagger
• 2 Riding
• 2 Pistolet Fighting
• 2 Sneak
• 3 Fashion Sense

Special

Every month, you must spend fully half your income on flashy new clothes. If you do, you gain +2 on all Swagger rolls. If you don’t, you receive -2 on all Luck rolls until you update your wardrobe. 

Leopard Women of Venus for Troika!

The Kickstarter for Leopard Women of Venus still has 18 days to go, and we’re just $400 away from funding. If you haven’t checked LWoV out yet, click the link above and give it a look-see! I think you’ll like it.

Speaking of crazy sci-fi-fantasy settings, I’ve spoken before about how much I love Daniel Sell’s Troika. I think Leopard Woman would fit in quite well beneath the Hump-Backed Sky, executing who knows what kind of missions for the sinister Science Robots. So here they are as a Troika background.

Leopard Woman of Venus

You once were a normal citizen with a caste and a job--just a comfortable cog in a subterranean techno-socialist “utopia.” Then your masters, the Science Robots, chose you for some reason. They filled you with radioactive leopard blood and rewired your brain with pranic circuitry, making you faster, stronger, better. Now it’s your duty to defend Venus from all manner of alien evil. What threats does the city of Troika hide?

Possessions

• Comet Fire Helmet (as fusil)
• 3 Plasmic Cores
• Leopard Skin Armor (modest armor)
• Flying Saurian (Medium beast, flies)

Advanced Skills

• 3 Saurian Riding
• 3 Comet Fire Helmet Fighting
• 2 Hand-to-Hand Fighting
• 2 Propaganda
• 2 Spell: Leopard Blood

Leopard Blood (X)

The Leopard Woman channels her prana through the irradiated leopard blood coursing through her veins. She gains a bonus to her Skill on her next action equal to the number of Vitality she spent when casting the spell.

Leopard Women of Venus for DCC now on Kickstarter!

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Veteran of the Time War (Troika Background)

Read this article at BernieTheFlumph,com!

Troika! is a weird and wonderful science-fantasy RPG from Daniel Sells based on the classic Fighting Fantasy rpgs from the UK. It's intended as a love-letter to Planescape but with a dedication to never explain anything abut the setting in the official books.

"Backgrounds" are an essential part of the character creation process, as they determine the skills and abilities your character starts with (but not what they end with). There's broad collection of strange backgrounds in the book, and the Troika fanbase has had a lot of fun creating and sharing their own.

I've been killing time by putting together my own backgrounds. It's pretty easy and very fun. When I get enough written up, I'll probably put them into a simple zine. Until then, here's the Veteran of the Time War.

Veteran of the Time Wars

Proud, ancient Chronotopia was the most advanced civilization in the multiverse. Its noble chrononauts were dedicated to the observation and preservation of the timeline, never interfering with history except when they felt like it. Then the Null Collective came from the Darkness Between with a hunger to devour all of time and space. The Time War raged across a thousand multiverses, creating and destroying infinite realities over the course of a hundred lifetimes.

Now the Time War has ended. The Null Collective was erased, but Chronotopia was reduced to a ruined cinder floating in dead space. You are the only survivor. Now you’re in Troika with nothing but your trusty cosmic multi-tool and the smoking wreckage of your Impossibility Engine. Is this strange city some fragment of a forgotten realty broken off from an aborted universe? What is its connection to the Time War? No one seems to know.

Possessions

• Many layers of vintage clothing (counts as light armor)
• Unreasonably long scarf
• Cosmic multi-tool (+2 on all tinkering rolls, except screwdriving, which is -2)
• Irreparably ruined Impossibility Engine.

Advanced Skills

• 2 Mathmology
• 3 Universal Trivia
• 2 Tinkering
• 4 Verbosity
• 2 Awareness
• 1 Running

Special:
Thanks to your people’s advanced evolution and connection to the Time Matrix, your body has remarkable regenerative abilities. If you die, permanently reduce your Luck score by 1 and give your character sheet to the GM. They will change three Advanced Skills on your sheet (retaining their current score) and give it back to you. At the end of the scene, you wake up with a new face and full Stamina. Describe your character’s new appearance and personality.

Troika Backgrounds (Hobomancer, Sneaky Snake, Moleman, Prodigal Vampire)

Daniel Sell's Troika! is really something special. I love the crazy, loosely-detailed setting that mish-mashes all sorts of psychedelic science-fantasy world-hopping weirdness. The whole thing encourages you to create your own new backgrounds for characters. So that's what I did!

The Hobomancer and Sneaky Snake come from the (Ennie Award-winning!) Hobomancer RPG and Hobomancer Companion that I helped write for Hex Games. I've written about Molemen on this blog several times, but they're inspired (shamelessly lifted) from John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise. And as for the Prodigal Vampire... well, I just like vampires.

Hobomancer

The Songlines span the entirety of the multiverse. The Hobomancers travel along this network of Creation energy, often on magical trains. Many of these trains find their way to Troika. As a hobo, you have forsaken your old name and taken up a life of travel and freedom. As a Hobomancer, you have been initiated into fraternity of wandering mystics and shamans, dedicated to protecting The Song.

Possessions

• Bindle (+2 carrying capacity, damage as a staff).
• Banjo, fiddle, or harmonica.
• Bottle of hooch, cheap but potent.

Advanced Skills

• 3 Secret Signs: Hobomancer
• 2 Panhandling
• 3 Train Hopping
• 1 Folk Music
• 2 Trainwhispering (Lets you communicate with trains of all sorts)
• 1 Bindle Fighting
• 2 Second Sight
• 1 Spell: Mulligan Stew
• 1 Spell: It’s Right Here in My Bindle!
• 1 Spell: Random

Special
When rolling into town, you can find temporary employment if you make a successful Luck roll.

New Spells
Mulligan Stew (2)
By mixing together a bunch of normally inedible items (shoestrings, empty cans, a rock, whatever you can find) into a pot of boiling water, you can create a tasty and nutritious stew. If successfully cast, the spell creates a number of provisions equal to your roll. The stew must be eaten within an hour or it turns into inedible slop.

It’s Right Here in my Bindle! (1)
Name a mundane, non-food, non-weapon item able to be held in one hand and worth less than a half a day’s wages. Make your spellcasting roll, and if you succeed, it’s right there in your bindle.


Sneaky Snake

Your ancestors ruled over vast, interdimensional empires, commanding mighty golden armies of armored dinosaurs to trample fledgling human tribes. But your kingdoms fell into decadence and complacency. Loinclothed, sword-swinging human heroes toppled your onyx pyramids, shattered your temples, and trod your high-priests into the ground. Ten-thousand years later, the descendants of the fallen Serpent Kings still lurk in the shadows, practicing the arts of deception and planning for the return of the Empire. The Sneaky Snakes are almost ready to rise up again, and have been for several dozen centuries.

Possessions

• Fancy robes.
• Disguise kit.
• Ornate, wavy-bladed dagger.
• Fangs, with atrophied venom glands (damage as modest beast).

Advanced Skills

• 3 Disguise
• 3 Parseltongue (Lets you speak to snakes and other reptiles)
• 1 Stealth
• 2 Poisons
• 2 Spell: Illusion
• 1 Spell: Assassin’s Dagger
• 1 Spell: Random
• 1 Spell: Random

Moleman

You are a native of subterranean realms. You have large teeth, tiny black eyes, and hairless pink skin covered with a thin layer of luminescent mucus. Despite your hideous appearance, you come from a sophisticated culture that values industry and learnedness. Your ideas of natural rights and representative democracy are alien to most other cultures.

Possessions

• Powdered wig.
• Frock coat.
• Stack of pamphlets and handbills.
• Fencing saber (damage as sword).

Advanced Skills

• 3 Rhetoric
• 2 Natural Philosophy
• 2 Political Theory
• 2 Comparative Religion
• 2 Mathmology
• 3 Spelunking
• 2 Sword fighting

Special
Once per day, you can produce a wad of luminescent mucus that sheds light like a lantern. This light lasts a number of hours equal to your skill and can be stuck to any solid surface.


Prodigal Vampire

When the Sunshine Collective conquered the world of Chornabos, the vampire nobles that ruled the Black Cities were forced to flee in exile. Many of these displaced vampires settled in Troika. Now you’re trying to maintain your dignity and rebuild the network of influence and prestige that you once enjoyed.

Possessions

• Fine clothing, several decades out of fashion.
• Sword-umbrella.
• Fancy jewelry, worth 2d6x10 silver pence.
• Bat wings (fly as fast as a man can run).
• Retractable fangs (damage as modest beast).

Advanced Skills

• 3 Etiquette
• 2 Bite Fighting
• 2 Flight
• 1 Stealth
• 1 Spell: Amity
• 1 Spell: Fear
• 1 Spell: Befuddle

Special
You cannot eat normal provisions. When you make a successful bite attack, you can choose to immediately slurp up some of your target’s blood (assuming they have blood). This doesn’t cause any extra damage, but you gain the benefits of consuming a provision (regain 1d6 Stamina). You can only feed like this three times per day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner).

You automatically fail any Luck rolls while you are exposed to direct sunlight. While in the smoky city of Troika, beneath the Hump-Backed Sky, this is rarely a problem, but keep your umbrella handy.