Trophy Gold: First Impressions

I honestly don't  really know why I backed this Kickstarter, which is based off of the Codex Gold magazine, which was in turn based off of Trophy, which was in their Codex Dark 2 issue. I didn't really take a look through. I've got a bit of an issue with just randomly backing crap, and this was definitely one of those times. I'd look at the rules and wonder how they played. I didn't feel too terribly impressed, but at the same time I knew better than to judge.

And then I played a session of Blades in the Dark. We all know how that went.

It was time to take a closer look.

Oh, to be clear: this is the version from Codex Gold. I don't have a copy of the book. Not yet.

What we have is a system that looks kinda like Blades. The basic dice pool mechanic (roll a pool of 2 or maybe 3 dice if you're lucky, reference highest), along with the Devil's Bargain, was there... and that was it. I mean, even the Devil's Bargain seems like it has been expanded to include the entire group getting a say on the contents of said bargain. Hacked into the system are Ruin (starts 1, spells and harm up this stat, DON'T GET TO 6) , Burdens (starts at 0, gets higher with property and combat weapons, don't come back with less Gold than your Burden or die), and Gold (stash up 100 gold and you get to retire!). There are three types of checks in the game: the Hunt, Combat, and Risk rolls. The Hunt roll is your basic seeking information check, except that success grants you a token, which you can then use to cash in for either nice treasures you find along the way or to actually get information. Combat Rolls are... just evil. Looking at them makes me wince; they really don't want you fighting in this game. Risk Rolls are the catch-all for anything related to information and combat.

In an interesting twist, everyone in this game can take on spells. It increases your Ruin, which makes them a bad idea, but the spells are literally just a sentence for description, and thus are very open to manipulation. Granted, it doesn't take very much to get Ruin by the look of it. Let's see how long people live in this game, shall we?

We'll see how this goes....