The Melsonian Arts Council is currently running a pamphlet adventure jam for Troika! over on Itch.io. Here's a link: https://itch.io/jam/troika-pamphlet-adventure-jam I absolutely adore Troika and pamphlet adventures so thought I'd take a stab at reviewing every submission to the jam. I'm going to be posting short reviews in batches of 6, in submission order (from oldest to newest). After the conclusion of the jam and I've finished all my reviews, I'll post some summary thoughts and assign arbitrary awards to my favorites. I'll try to have fun with this, and I hope you do too.
You may ask, who is this man and what authority does he have to judge these works? I have fair familiarity with Troika, having both played and run dozens of sessions. You can read some of my Troika writings on this very blog. I wrote three (and am in the process of writing more) pamphlet adventures for Mothership, one of which is so far published. I am a pamphlet fan.
Game jam entries are made under time constraints and many of these pamphlets were released for free. My intention with these reviews is to provide fair and honest criticism and feedback for the works on their own merit, not evaluate them as commercial products. I will try to be as constructive as possible.
Here's some links to the other batches of reviews, updated as I post them:
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Carnelian Riddle in the House of Indolent Blooms
What is there to be said about Micah Anderson's Carnelian
Riddle in the House of Indolent Blooms? It's good. It's very good. It's
beautiful to behold. It drips with dazzlingly imaginative ideas. It's more than
worthy of the Troika compatibility Fortle. Players stumble through the
fantastical and logic-twisting grounds and halls of the Carnelian Sphinx's
Grand Observatory in desperate search of social faux-pas lest they be trapped
there for 100 years. The author jam-packed this pamphlet to the point of
bursting. It easily hosts enough material to run a short campaign, but the tiny
text verges on the point of impracticality for the format. To praise all that's
praiseworthy here demands far more space than these short reviews allow. There
are riddles. Good ones. The NPCs delight. The rooms fill me with wonder. I
almost wish I hadn't read it because I want to play it, badly. I'd buy a fancy
printed version if one were made. You should too.
Suburban Cathedral
Suburban Cathedral by Sean F. Smith plunges adventurers into
a subterranean mystery. Molemen imprison an earthquake generating creature in a
monster infested cathedral beneath a fissure-ravaged town. For what purpose,
the pamphlet doesn't say. Six intriguing creatures compose the meat of this
scenario. I appreciated that the author provided a truncated (2 options) Mien
selection for each rather than scrapping the mechanic entirely. Alas, there's
little more here than the creatures and a d6 table of mostly
setting-disconnected treasures. The pamphlet loses precious space to verbose,
passive language, an unnecessarily large Troika compatibility logo, and a
section of unhelpful notes on map-making. I'd have liked to see a public domain
floor plan instead. The encounters procedure relies too heavily on monsters and
misses opportunities to reinforce the earthquake-plagued subterranean setting:
no cave-ins, no quakes. The mystery at the heart of Suburban Cathedral gets my
imagination going, but the incomplete-feeling content of the scenario leaves me
unsatisfied.
13 Story Bazaar
13 Story Bazaar by Jonathan Dersch tasks players with
retrieving a magical flying vase from a rooftop antique store for their
grandmother. 24 encounters laden with tomfoolery and danger complicate the
climb through 13 floors of shops. A handful of encounters engage multiple
floors or the tower as a whole: feuds between establishments, vehicles to
traverse multiple floors. Most add threats or texture to a single floor. This
scenario was originally written in 2019 for OSR systems and it shows. Bazaar lacks
the color of a Troika adventure and too-often prefers the generic to the
specific. Classifications of generic establishments, generic fantasy NPCs, and
often-vanilla-feeling encounters cast a grey pall over the otherwise fun and
dynamic premise. The scenario includes a separate pdf with Troika-compatible
NPC stats and a single (charming) background that breathe some Troikian whimsey
into the pamphlet, but not quite enough to sufficiently alter the tone.
Undeath of the Author
Undeath of the Author by Quinn B. Rodriguez is, as the
author states, insufferably meta. I have little experience with and love for
lyric games (of which I believe this is one), and therefore do not feel
qualified to review this pamphlet on its own merits. As a Troika adventure, it
is not.
The Milk Provider
The Milk Provider by Gustavo Tertoleone gleefully assaults
the reader with neon colors and pop culture references. The rear blurb asks if
I'm brave enough to enter the crazy unicorn's lair. I'm genuinely unsure. Said
lair brims with madness: sentient LSD, a K-Pop band, candy people bursting from
jelly pools. The writing is verbose and
often confusing but who cares, we're here to do acid and have fun. This is the
perfect scenario to toss a bunch of your rowdy drunk friends into and together
drown in its chaos.
Vast Marsh of the Snail-Holm
Vast Marsh of the Snail-Holm, another by Sean F. Smith,
casts players into a plasma-storm-swept marsh in search of a magically
imprisoned butcher's wife. This short hex crawl threatens players with natural
beasts and pests. Giant frogs are as weird as things come out in the brackish
pools and reed beds. The adventure relies on the path of the abovementioned
plasma storm to sweep players from the most direct route and send them fleeing
deep into the marsh, but the confusing language governing its movement and
total lack of indication of its effects fails the GM. The adventure concludes
with a solid 3-room dungeon inside a giant snail shell, though I wish I knew
more about the being generating the storm than its stats. Should the players
succeed in freeing the butcher's wife, she rewards the players with an
opportunity to learn butchery skills--which I like. There's a nifty scenario
here, but it's buried beneath a poorly explained central conceit and dull hex
crawling encounters.
These are great reviews! Thanks for taking the time, I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.
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