Play report: Troika! Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs (one shot)
This one's almost 2 months late but I didn't have the blog set up back then.
SPOILER ALERT for Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs
I ran for Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs by Ezra Claverie for Troika! one slushy December evening at the Sword & Board. Two people came, which is was more than the zero I was expecting for my first-ever public one-shot (and two more than one of the guys at the shop told me to expect!). I knew them both from playing at the shop - a huge relief for first-time nerves!
I had only played Troika! remotely before and had never run it. Neither player had played, either, and neither really knew the rules. I created a rules summary document as much to cement my own understanding (a practice I find very useful) and shared them at the table. Can't recall if anyone found them useful; we also had enough print copies of the rulebook for the three of us. I also printed a couple player-facing maps of the ship, which were useful.
Character creation required minor supervision for players new to the system and a bit of an overview of how advanced skills and spells work. I also gave them an overview of skill, initiative, and damage. EZ PZ. We ended up with a Claviger and a Zoanthrop.
The characters explored the ship a little and went around chatting with various people. I let them explore the ship till they got bored - some social interactions, nothing too exciting.
Fast-forwarded to the first murder and rumours buzzing about that. The characters decided to go investigate after hearing rumours and took the elevator down to the engine level - the Claviger used their lock master (the spell? maybe an advanced skill? can't remember) to open the locked elevator and they rolled another successful Skill check to hit the close door button before a crew member could stop them. Down in the engine room, they bluffed their way as a safety inspectors past the engineers to poke around.
The characters then went to the second floor came up the stairs in the cargo bay where, as written in the module, cargo was unsafely stowed. The Zoanthrop, playing arbitrarily as they felt the background demanded, started restowing the gear more safely. This worked out very well with the inspector bluff when a crew member found them and brought in the captain and first mate. Some good roleplaying got them to lead the investigation of the crime and they found several of the clues (including discovering the rival). Because the players seemed happy to roleplay the interactions and committed to the bit, I do believe most of the interactions were resolved through rp rather than opposed skill checks. The characters conducted investigations throughout the night, including looking at the security footage (such as there was) and interviewing the crew.
Leading up the sesh I'd been worried about how to inform the players about the uslurper. I'd seen a Reddit post by r/MervinMilvus sharing a page of a newspaper they'd dummied up to tease some info about it. I liked that idea a lot but ultimately decided to not to do anything so baroque1 and to just improvise and to see if anything they did might strike up speculation about unusual clues that might lead to someone suggesting the uslurper. However, because they focused on NPC locations and motivations instead of the clues, this didn't come.
By the time the characters' investigations were running out of steam, I ruled that it was time for the second murder. At that point, some crew member posited a uslurper out loud and I RPed the back and forth between a few of them that gave the opportunity to lay out the lore (old wives' tale) and rumours. Ultimately, the characters opted for the cilantro gauntlet, which of course sparked the confrontation with the uslurper. So we got our combat in, and I think managed to do wrap it up within a round - but a pretty full round.
That brought us to a full session so we got to debrief after. Here were some of our thoughts:
- Backgrounds: the players had wished for some weirder backgrounds for first-time play, especially the Zoanthrop. That was a tough background to RP when there were just two players to move the story forward, and I suspect it requires a bigger party to shine in contrast to other characters. The Claviger was okay but the combo of the two backgrounds left the players feeling they'd been shortchanged on the legendary weirdness of Troika!. They suggested rolling or picking from a shorter, curated list of the very weirdest Troika! has to offer (like my personal fave, Slow Sleigh's Astropithecus Truckensis).
- Module selection: the players felt that the setting and tone of the module was also a bit of a letdown for a first Troika! experience, being a slightly sci-fi murder mystery rather than something extravagantly gonzo. My GMing may have had something to do with it, but I think Slow Sleigh is genuinely on the normier side Troika! offerings. In retrospect, I may have chosen it because it felt a bit more approachable for me as who's still trying to let go of control freak tendencies who feels that perfect mastery and prep are required to run something. Although I do like the module for the most part, I don't think I'd use it for players' first encounter with the game in the future.
- Initiative: the most polarizing part of Troika!. One player didn't mind it, I love it (in principle, at least), but one player didn't like it. His was the character that was least favoured by the randomness. I suspect it would be more fun with a bigger, rowdier table. I would not want to change this if running Troika! again, but I'm sensitive to the way it might not favour individuals and that this might impact their enjoyment.
And a couple personal reflections as a GM:
- Time-blindness: being new to GMing again, I don't have a great sense of what's enough to fill a session and was a little nervous about that going into it. I ended up printing a few pamphlets and even though of running the intro adventure Blancmange & Thistle if everything went too quickly (to that end, I had them do the trip in reverse - from the scud town to the spaceport - so there would be a more logical transition if necessary). Turned out not be necessary, and character creation + the module filled about 2.5ish hours. I suspect this anxiety about time will get better with experience.
- Trusting no/low-prep approach: as mentioned above, I've felt pressure to be some idea of a "perfect" GM - in my mind, that means totally prepared, slick in every transition and improvisation, free of awkward pauses, and able to anticipate and shape every character decision or action - and that has kept me from GMing RPGs as much as I'd like. I also find the arguments for no/low-prep GMing to be persuasive, so it's just a matter of letting go of whatever weird fixations and personality traits keep me from just jumping into it. Overall, this was a pretty successful experience and positive reinforcement in that direction. Focusing on knowing the rules well helped with confidence, and having a reference that I'd put together myself (so I could instantly find things) also helped with that. I should remember to keep breathing calmly and take a beat if necessary to react to curveballs (like a Zoanthrop challenging an ice miner to a drinking match for no reason, convinced he'd have to win because he had no brain to get drunk) rather than reacting quickly. I think I did an alright job of that, but always room for improvement that will probably be helped by just doing it more.
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Actually, I thought it would work best if fleshed out to a few pages but didn't have the opportunity or inspiration to write anything, and fuck AI.↩