Troika! MotBM: 1st session notes and take-aways

No Fucks for Zak

An Art Collector and an Arrogant Duelist (specializing in shield fighting, like a badass!!) enter the Maze....meet in a corridor, and decide to join forces....

Random draw (using tarot cards) initiative is pretty fucking cool (somehow this is the first time combat has come up in any of my Troika! games. I blame civility and inquisitive personalities). Some rounds had many actions used before the end-of-round draw, while a couple of rounds only one person went. Definitely need to come up with other ways to use this cycle akin to how the Troll heals Stamina.

Simplifying every Save vs XXx roll (of which there are many in the Maze) to a test of luck is soooooo simple and frees up so much brain space otherwise dedicated to deciding which save and at what difficulty (depending on your d&d, naturally), which is not provided because MotBM is supposed to be (d&d) edition neutral.

Using miens instead if reaction rolls is AWESOME, with much more customizable nuance than I once had thought to apply to reaction rolls

Having rations replace potions/clerics is very useful, and very in keeping with the fluff-fiction of the Maze.

Again with miens: only one random encounter ended up moving to combat since the others were workable in other ways (mostly talking, once by sneaking away from the distracted NPCs).

Said combat was in a place where fleeing was next to impossible, and when the two PCs got split up, luckily the one "on the inside" with the baddie had Teleport....which saved him for sure, though he hesitated for a couple rounds because of the high Stamina cost of casting the spell.

Talking to peeps quickly accrued two skeletons and a lost lizardperson-mummy for the party, which they used like chess pieces & to good effect. They did bust one of the skeletons, which was sad.

Melee rolls where winner-does-damage is the shit! ranged attacks in Troika are terrifying.

Take-away: will definitely be running more of this setting/rules combo! The backgrounds functioned pretty much as I'd hoped, allowing PCs to have a reason to be in the Maze and giving them some appropriate survival skills, not that that stopped them from almost dying.

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Waitwaitwait--what's this about using tarot cards for initiative??

I used tarot cards as they're a bit more quick in the mix of things than playing cards because there's the whole Major Arcana for players to choose from for their cards (except 13, Death, which is (duh?) the end of round draw) and then all the other cards can be grabbed at random to be the enemy's initiative total...then I draw and: 
If Major Arcana, which player is it?
If suit or court card an enemy goes.
If Death, end the round and reshuffle.
Simple.

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