City Running Troika!

(City Running Troika! available at DriveThruRPG)

So, I'm leaning away from being in the rules business and Troika! popped up for me.

The system is ultra simple. Each character has three attributes:

• Skill, which is the number added whenever a character tries to do something;
• Stamina, which score defines altogether general health, sturdiness, and hit points; and 
• Luck, which is kind of a catch-all saving throw that decreases the more you use it.

Then, actions are further bumped with advanced skills and spells. Each advanced skill and spell has a numerical value to it, typically 1 or 2 or, more rarely at the beginning, 3. This numerical value gets added to the skill attribute whenever the character takes some action.

Up to three skills or spells used since the last rest can be improved +1 when the character has completed a rest and has an opportunity for reflection. This is done by attempting to roll greater than the total skill points for the advanced skill or spell. (A character can also learn new advanced skills or spells if there is someone more experienced to train her.)

Characters get their beginning advanced skills, spells, and an often bizarre backstory by rolling for a random background. 36 backgrounds are included in the rulebook, but there are many, many, many sources for Troika! backgrounds. Ich.io is a good resource for backgrounds, both free and to purchase.

The rulebook comes with an introductory adventure that takes place in a fancy hotel within the City of Troika. The author of Troika!, Daniel Sell, has published several discrete details of city locations, but, perhaps intentionally or perhaps because Troika! is a young game and more will be forthcoming, there is not a comprehensive overview of the city itself. 

I read that Daniel Sell got some inspiration for Troika! from a series of stories by M. John Harrison published between 1971 and 1984 about Viriconuim, a shifting, dystopian, post-apocalyptic future Earth.

Looking for role-playing material on Viriconium lead me to Logan Knight.

Logan Knight, under the Creative Commons non-commercial license, publishes a large number of random city tables for his own setting that are based on Harrison's Viriconium city.

Originally for my personal Troika! game I am running, I assembled a good number of the setting tables and adopted them to Troika! After running the random scenarios for a few sessions, I came to believe that Troika! players in general would enjoy the resource.

I edited a nice edition and tried to get through to Logan Knight to see if he had any concerns about my publishing and could not get a reply (there was a comment on his website about getting a new job). Anyhow, with his work being under Creative Commons non-commercial, I went ahead and released City Running Troika! for free on both DriveThruRPG and ich.io.

Hopefully Troika! players will discover and enjoy the product, and also hopefully Logan Knight won't be pissed off.