I already considered the zine version of Trophy Gold and Dark to be the tightest designed games in my library. Nothing felt out of place; Jesse Ross had codified a vision. Reading the zine version impacted me and my designs in a powerful but subtle way.
The book only increases my respect.
What do I think of it so far? I say so far, because I haven't tried the megadungeon, although I'm curious. The wording of the rules has been vastly improved, making the core loop the clearest storygame mechanic I've ever read or used at the table. But the book goes further, adding town and journey rules. They're not super involved, but add context to the characters and the world. You may not want to use them, sure, and the core gameplay would not suffer for it. But there's a lot added by these mechanics.
The gist of Trophy Gold is thus: when the GM tolds you to roll, gather as many d6s as you can (usually between 2-4) , and look at what the highest die is: 6 and you get what you want, 4 and 5 you get what you want with trouble, 1-3 you don't get what you want and it all goes wrong. There's three different kinds of rolls that interface with this base concept: Hunt, Combat, and Risk (the catch-all for doing something risky, including casting spells), and they all have different effects based off of what you're trying to do. You may take a Devil's Bargain (a bad thing that happens no matter what) for an additional die... and these are meant to be group activities; you're supposed to goad each other into greater and greater heights of stupidity. The amount of laughter this one mechanic has generated at my table is hard to overstate, folks.As dark as this game gets, as horrifying as it frequently is, it is hilarious. I've not laughed so hard at a game in years.
The Hunt roll is one of the smoothest systems I've ever run into, provided your players know that to ask a question is to roll dice. The GM then tells them if they get an extra die to throw in or not, usually basd off a skill or some story advantage. Everything, and I do mean everything, funnels through the Hunt roll. The GM need do nothing except go off of the results of that one roll. If you are an OSR player you know this as someone taking a turn and the GM making a roll for a random encounter. In Trophy Gold it's just the one roll. It's elegant. The Hunt roll will kick back tons of wrinkles, all the time, and will keep everything moving on a constant basis, either because the player knows where to go or because something will interrupt them. The players are just rolling dice and you're jumping in to tell them what dice to roll and how many, and everyone's throwing in ideas of how badly it can go and the GM is just sitting in the back, laughing, taking notes. It's fantastic. The Hunt roll is the type of mechanic that every single game should aspire to imitate in spirit, if not outright.
The Combat roll is fantastic because of the ecosystem that it's hooked into more than the actual roll itself. Which isn't to say the roll isn't bad! Combat is dangerous, with lots of chances to get hurt, especially if your teammates chicken out; the more people that drop out of a combat due to wounds the worse it is for everyone else. When you do the kill the monsters you can get Gold off them in the form of body parts that can be sold, as well as examine the creature for creatures, name it, and enter it into the shared journal bestiary the group is supposed to maintain. As time goes on combat will turn from "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING" to "Oh yeah, take its knees out!" It's a fun little advancement technique that cuts out one of the most problematic parts of RPGs, numbers. Whenever a game finds ways to do advancement that qualitatively change the experience, rather than just up numbers, you should pay attention: it's a sign someone has a clear vision of their piece.
The Risk Roll is the most "normal" part of this game, with the least implications on it. And that's fine; not everything can be this huge groundbreak innovation in a game, you've gotta have something to just do the hard work. The Risk Roll does this.. .although its expansion into spells is extremely cool. Spells are just a name with a short description, and you and the GM figure out if it applies best to the situation or not. Given the consequences for casting a spell can be extremely nasty.. be wary if the GM just keeps saying "yes". The balancing factor of spells in this game are that you may succeed and not like what you get. And that is going to be a lot more common than you think.
There are Journey and Town mechanics in the book version of Trophy Gold. They're not meant to be anything more than a small narrative beat between dungeons, something to contextualize why your (possibly not so) lovable losers are out doing what they're doing. It's simple, to the point, and poignant stuff. These are a great upgrade from the zine.
My favorite addition, however, is the versus and helping rules. The original zine didn't have anything for those situtations, and if there was ever a game I have run into where you will want to help or hinder your fellow players Trophy proper is that game. You could kinda hack something in, but Ross has clearly done a lot more testing and thinking on the subject and has crafted rules that are hilariously awful to deal with, cementing the mood of dark humor and despair that is a Trophy game.
I've run a few of the sample dungeons in the book and have found myself really impressed by what happens with these barebones outlines when you throw the Hunt roll at them. If there's anything that I resent about these sample dungeons, it's that you technically don't need them; you could just draw up a general structure and use the Hunt rolls to figure out the rest. Hell, probably could grab a bunch of OSR tables and throw them at the GM to answer questions. If anything, the game and how it's written at this point obfuscates the reality of what a GM would actually need to prep for the game and why.
Ultimately, Trophy Gold in book form is an absolutely fantastic time. I've not heard people laugh this hard in a very long time at just some of the absolute worst situations one can orchestrate. The mechanics are simple but extremely deep when people decide to play with them. The book is a marvellous and dark beauty. The guidance could be clearer, sure, but that's usually a problem in most RPG systems. This is an amazing time. It's worth figuring out.
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