SuperTroika!: Secret Identities

-This step is entirely optional. Not every superhero needs a secret identity. 
-Treat any task directly related to alter-ego's job as a skill with 2 ranks. this can stack with archetype or origin skills at the referee's discretion. you cannot increase this rank without retiring from superheroics to focus, but you may advance in your profession as a result of gameplay events.
-You have 1d6 family members and 1d6 close friends who will likely be put at risk by your activities.
-Lose 1d3 max luck points for each friend or family member you fail to save. (re)gain 1d3 max luck points if you manage to reverse their new status (falsely imprisoned, insane, dead, etc).

ALTER-EGO 
11 taxi driver
12 mechanic
13 lawyer
14 news photographer
15 artist
16 actor
21 teacher
22 student
23 private investigator
24 religious leader
25 idle rich
26 journalist
31 forensic investigator
32 mortician
33 lab assistant
34 writer
35 musician
36 librarian
41 stage magician
42 circus performer
43 engineer
44 police officer
45 paramedic
46 intel analyst
51 hacker
52 office intern
53 bounty hunter
54 sales rep
55 restaurant server
56 construction worker
61 janitor
62 dockhand
63 curator
64 cook
65 bartender
66 stunt double

Heroes of Troika: Powers and Weapon Damage

I wrote up some of the possibly less than obvious powers, and damage tables for modern weapons and energy blast type powers.

Feats of Strength ended up being the most complicated power to figure out, which I didn't expect, because it needs to increase melee damage directly. 

I'll edit this post as I come up with more powers so they're all in one place.




Signature Weapon Fighting
You possess a favorite weapon which you know better than all others of its type. It could be an heirloom katana, a heavily customized firearm, or even an energy weapon that you stole or invented. It may help to use your Origin and Archetype as guides in selecting them.

Forensics
You’ve developed the ability to determine what’s gone on in a small area by analyzing the aftermath. This can be used for tracking, reading a crime scene, etc.

Hand to Hand Fighting
Includes unarmed combat as well as any melee weapons that aren’t too bizarre to figure out.

Energy Blast (3)/Energy Strike (3)/Massive Blast (6)
Just like regular Fighting Skills, Roll Versus whatever combat skill your Target is using, and whoever wins the Roll hits. Most Archetypes must choose a type of energy (such as fire, sound, radiation, or lightning) during character creation.

Warding Circle
Knowledge of the sigils and seals required to protect oneself from Mystical entities. These barriers also provide a +2 bonus when defending against magic attacks and take at least ten minutes to draw competently. 

Suggestion (3)
You say a thing to an NPC, and they believe it. They realize their mistake if anything explicitly causes them to rethink the situation, but won’t think to question it on their own until then. 

Absorb Damage
Roll to try and shrug off successful physical attacks without taking any damage at all. If you fail the roll, your opponent still deducts your Rating from their damage roll (to a minimum of 1). Only if you critically fail do you take damage as normal.

Feats of Strength
Breaking things, moving things, etc. Also: whenever dealing physical damage with a hand to hand weapon, apply double your Rating as a multiplier to your damage result.
EXAMPLE: Gronk succeeds in hitting Nab with an unarmed attack. He then rolls 1d6 on the Unarmed damage table and rolls a 5, which normally does 2 points of Stamina damage. Because Gronk also has a Feats of Strength Rating of +3, he multiplies his damage result by 6 for a total of 12 points of Stamina.

Survival
Encompasses wilderness survival skills as well as those that apply equally in an urban environment, such as first aid.

Shape Reality (8)
Successful use of this power lets you do anything you want. Failure is catastrophic and usually manifests in a way that reflects the cruel irony of the fates and/or GM.

Flight (1)
You don’t normally need to test this power in relaxed, uncontested scenarios. Simply assume it succeeded and deduct a Stamina point as usual. Elements such as a need to move quickly, heavy wind, or narrow spaces make the task more difficult.

Grappling
More specific than Hand to Hand Fighting, this covers maneuvers like grabbing and pinning opponents, throwing them, disarming them, etc. All these maneuvers can also be attempted with Hand to Hand Fighting, but characters with this skill generally have a higher Grappling Rating.








UNARMED
1 2 3 4 5 6 7+
1 1 1 2 2 3 4
(for any hand to hand attack, multiply damage result by double your feats of strength rating)

PISTOL 
1 2 3 4 5 6  7+
2 4 4 6 10 12 16

ASSAULT RIFLE 
1 2 3 4 5   6 7+
6 6 8 10 12 18 24

SHOTGUN 
1 2 3 4 5 6 7+
1 1 6 6 10 22 30
(add +2 to the damage roll at close range)

FRAG GRENADE 
1 2 3 4 5 6  7+
4 6 10 14 20 28 38
(add +4 to the damage roll at close range)

ENERGY BLAST/ENERGY STRIKE 
1 2 3 4 5 6 7+
4 6 6 12 18 24 30

MASSIVE BLAST 
1 2   3 4 5   6 7+
8 12 16 20 28 36 44

More Supers Archetypes for Troika

Continuing from last post, here's six more.
SCALE SHIFTER (atom, ant man)
Powers & Specialties
-4 size manipulation (must check every time size doubles or halves) (3) 
-feats of strength based on size (up to +5, equal penalty to agility based skill tests) 
-2 hand to hand fighting 

STREET OCCULTIST (origin must be MYSTICAL) (john constantine, mr. e, dr. occult, sabrina) 
Possessions -pocket divination system: cards or dice or pendulum etc. 
-chalk 
-warding tattoos (-1 to magic attacks) or focus (+1 to powers) or obedient familiar 
Powers & Specialties 
-3 warding circle 
-3 occult lore 
-2 suggestion (3) 
-1 augury (3) 
-1 summoning (4) or banishment (4) 

ENERGY CANNON (cyclops, black canary, gambit) 
Powers & Special Abilities 
-4 energy blast (choose one energy type) (3) 
-3 massive blast (6) 
-2 hand to hand fighting 
-1 athletics 

SUPERSOLDIER (cpt america, sgt rock, punisher) 
Possessions 
-signature weapon (+2) 
-medium armor 
-survival kit 
-first aid kit 
-multitool 
Powers & Specialties 
-3 fighting (all) 
-3 athletics 
-2 awareness 
-1 feats of strength 
-1 survival 

PARAGON (superman, thor, sentry, shazam, captain marvel, wonder woman, martian manhunter) 
Possessions 
-lair that is incredibly difficult for others to get to 
Powers & Specialties 
-3 feats of strength 
-3 hand to hand fighting 
-2 absorb damage 
-2 flight (1) 
-2 energy blast (3) 
Complication 
1 debilitatingly allergic to a relatively rare substance. 
2 possess a powerful signature weapon (+2) without which all power tests suffer a -2 penalty. 
3 normally exists as two people (each has half of your score in skill, stamina, and luck) who must combine to activate powers (unstable when fused for too long). 
4 you lose the energy blast ability and gain a signature weapon (+2). 
5 set feats of strength and hand to hand combat to 2 each, change energy blast to telepathy (3), add 2 shapeshift (2). 
6 a rival personality with full access to your powers takes over while you sleep. 

ELASTIMORPH (mr. fantastic, plastic man, ms. marvel) 
Powers & Specialties 
-4 stretch 
-3 absorb damage 
-2 grappling 
-1 hand to hand fighting

Spandex Troika

Okay I’ve been putting this off fuckin forever now.

I’m still alive! Just been really really busy. Silent Titans by Patrick Stuart is finally off my plate, as is the Numinous Edition of Troika! by Daniel Sell. I’m helping Corey Brin put the finishing touches on Wet Grandpa (generic OSR rules) by Evey Lockhart while I plow through Fronds of Benevolence (Troika! rules) by Andrew Walters, both of which are Adventures I Would Totally Run For My Friends. There’s at least one thing I’m not supposed to talk about. Oh and Beckett might have some more of those tshirts I made in his shop.

That’s not what this post is about. This post is about superheroes.

I’m usually not one to think all that much about game mechanics, but I realized while working on Troika! that it’s the perfect system to model games about pretending to be superfriends. I’m not going to argue that point right now because that’s boring and I’m drinking and I want to get to some of the content I’ve been coming up with for it.

The biggest mechanical change is making the players roll dice one more time during character generation. Maybe two more times actually, I haven’t decided. I know, I know, that sucks, but hear me out. If you’re not familiar with Troika!, it uses a randomly determined Background to model a couple different things that, in a supers rpg, kinda need to be separate, which I’m calling Origin and Archetype. Like, Iron Man and XO-Manowar both have the Power Suit Archetype and roughly the same powers, but one is a rich inventor and one is an ancient barbarian who found an alien artifact. The Flash got caught in a freak accident and Quicksilver was born that way.

The other big difference is just giving some archetypes a few more ranks in skills than Troika! normally allows. That’s fine because they are superheroes.

(The maybe second extra dice roll is probably going to be an optional thing where you have a random day job for your alias with a couple skills at 1 rank but then you have a secret identity to maintain and close ones to protect as a tradeoff. I don’t know, I’m not there yet.)

Anyway here’s six archetypes:

FLEDGELING PSIONIC (11, jean grey, xavier, psylocke)

Powers & Specialties

-3 telekinesis (4) (((((this means 3 ranks in telekinesis, which costs 4 stamina points to use)))))

-3 telepathy (3)

-2 energy shield (3)

-2 energy blast (3)

-2 flight (1)

Complication (((((roll 1d6)))))

1 confined to a wheelchair.

2 1d6 rival personalities.

3 you don’t have a physical body of your own and must possess one to access your powers.

4 change 2 energy blast to 4 energy strike, 2 energy shield to 3 hand to hand fighting, telekinesis to 1, telepathy to 1, change 2 flight to 3 athletics.

5 test luck or destroy all electronics in ¼ mile every time you use your powers.

6 if you fail a psionics test you take damage as large beast unless you spend a luck point and test your luck.

ASSASSIN (elektra, ninjak, black widow, james bond, hawkeye, the black kaiser)

Possessions

-signature weapon (+2)

-rope & grapple

-1d6 smoke bombs

Powers & Specialties

-4 stealth

-4 signature weapon fighting

-2 hand to hand fighting

-2 athletics

Complications

1 You killed your master; your fellow students seek revenge.

2 Complex religious code; test luck the first time you make any action to see if it is permitted.

3 You have an “evil” twin who wants to steal your identity.

4 Your employers have decided that you’re no good to them alive.

5 Your past crimes are coming back to haunt you.

6 You cannot resist an honorable challenge.

BRUTE (thing, hulk, luke cage, hellboy, armor)

Powers & Specialties

-4 feats of strength

-4 absorb damage

-4 hand to hand fighting

Complications

1 feared and hated for appearance

2 must transform into a rival personality to use powers, rage triggers involuntary transformation

3 clumsy as hell — all important and breakable objects within 5’ of you have a 1/3 chance of doing just that at any given moment.

4 you look like a large but normal human, but all power ratings are adjusted by -2

5 your arms end in massive club-like stumps instead of hands with useful fingers

6 your powers only last for an hour at a time and must spend 4 hours recharging

TRANSLOCATOR (flash, nightcrawler, kitty pryde)

Powers & Specialties

-4 flight or superspeed or phasing or teleportation (1)

-3 athletics

-3 hand to hand fighting

(((((they don’t all need to have complications)))))

SHAPER (dr manhattan, franklin richards, timothy hunter, green lantern, spectre, dr strange)

Powers & Specialties

-4 shape reality (8)

-2 energy shield (3)

-2 energy blast (3)

-2 teleportation (1)

-1 flight (1)

Complication

1 completely resigned to a future only you can see (test luck to attempt anything ever)

2 you are a child (set skill and stamina to minimum, lose all powers except shape reality)

3 your powers are controlled by a rival personality with a very specific code (code should be a short sentence, test luck to determine its stance on any non-obvious issue)

4 can only create or manipulate objects and energy constructs of a certain color (lose teleportation, increase energy blast and energy shield by 1 each, replace shape reality with hard light construct (4))

5 to access your powers you must possess a human host, who becomes a rival personality

6 hunted by cosmic entities that sense the use of your powers

POWERSUIT (origin must be ITEM) (iron man, x-o manowar, luthor in his battlesuit, steel)

Possessions

-power suit (+5 superheavy armor)

-give up 1 armor point for each integrated weapon system: machine gun (2 stamina cost, as assault rifle), rocket propelled grenades (4 stamina cost), energy blast (3 stamina cost, choose an energy type)

Powers & Specialties

-4 ranged fighting (stamina cost by weapon type)

-3 flight (1)

-2 feats of strength 

-1 sensory array

And here’s the origins (as of now, may change a lot):

	1. MYSTICAL	2. BIOLOGICAL	3. MUNDANE	4. COSMIC	5. TECH	6. TEMPORAL
1. BORN LIKE THIS	changeling	inborn mutation	displaced royalty	anthropomorphic concept	sentient robot	time capsule
2. INTENTIONAL CHANGE	faustian pact	biohacked mutation	oath of vengeance	spiritual ascension	cybernetic enhancement	one-way traveller from the future
3. ITEM	magic artifact	serum dependent	government issue	hyperdimensional tech	inventor	future tech
4. INTENSE TRAINING	trained by a hermit	raised by wild animals	rogue agent	star god cultist	test pilot	centuries old
5. ACCIDENTAL CHANGE	possessed	symbiotic organism	marooned survivor	sucked into a work of fiction	radiation exposure	marooned time traveller
6. ORGANISATIONAL	trained by monks	experimental clone	active agent	alien soldier	hi-tech entrepreneur	active time agent

Sorry about the formatting. I don't know what I'm doing.

Will post more soon.

Contacts (Insurgency)

In Delta Green, bonds are meant to be your character's emotional support network, NPCs you can rely on (at least to a point) to help you deal with the massive psychological trauma inherent in the job.

These bonds could be with your spouse, childhood best friend, Very Good Dog, whatever. The point is that they don't directly represent an in-game resource as written, though they do help agents recover some of their sanity between sessions.

That doesn't model an insurgency campaign very well. For one thing, your closest bonds as a dedicated freedom fighter, after a little while fighting alongside your comrades, are probably going to be with them, not anyone you left behind. For another thing, if you have every reason to assume you're being watched by people who want you dead, you don't go visit your family between missions.

This frees bonds up to do something more appropriate to the context.

Basically what I want is: someone at the table says "hey we need fake IDs to try and get on base and none of us have the forgery skill" and then someone else says "fine then I have a cousin Smirnoff who makes those for a living" and they write it on their character sheet and then the player cell has a new resource and the occupiers may or may not find a new way to get close to the PCs.

Rule Changes:
>Call it "contacts" instead of "bonds".
>Each contact has 85% in one professional specialty.
>You don't have to decide who your contacts are or what they do until it comes up in-game.
>Your contact score = CHA x 4.
  >>Roll under with d% to call in a favor.
  >>If the roll fails, they still have a 50% chance of deciding to help you ("but I swear this is the last time do you hear me!?"). Either way, their contact score goes down by 1d20 points.
  >>If your contact score ever reaches 0%, they refuse to help or even see you ever again.
  >>You can potentially increase your contact score by doing favors for your contact.
>There are conditions that add bonuses or penalties to these rolls (maximum total of 99%, minimum of 1%).
  >>Absolutely no chance of being found out: +20% bonus.
  >>Favor will likely earn money or status for the contact: +20% bonus.
  >>Satisfies a preexisting grudge: +40% bonus.
  >>Secrecy* score is 60% or less: -20% penalty.
  >>Secrecy* score is 40% or less: -40% penalty.
  >>Public Support* score is -10% or less: -20% penalty.
  >>Direct physical danger to self or family: -40% penalty.

You could, if you wanted to, game this system to give you a contact you could use to reduce your PC's mental strain, just like a bond in the rules-as-written. You'd just need to use a contact slot on a mental health professional who could then use their skill to help keep you from losing your shit.

*These are two of the scales I've been using to track how the PCs' actions affect the overall campaign.

Faux Silent Fever

Time flies when you’re busy as hell. This seems like a good moment to step back and take stock.

First order of business: a project I worked on won an Ennie! I did the graphic design for Fever Swamp by Luke Gearing, which it was announced last week won Reece Carter’s Judge’s Spotlight award.

Daniel Sell of Melsonian Arts Council dumped a big messy pile of really great ideas into Jarrett Crader (editor) and my laps. It was our job to make those ideas as usable at the table as humanly possible (and make sure the physical object looks, you know, elegant and shit). Both the print and pdf version have gotten great reviews and every review I’ve seen has at least mentioned the part we played. So that whole project feels like a pretty big win for me.

This has all been a validation of my belief that modules like Maze of the Blue Medusa and Blood in the Chocolate have made a pretty big chunk of the scene realize they were starving for intelligent, well-designed supplements, that they can actually use to make running great games easier. The medium of role-playing games is at a similar moment to one that comics went though, when Karen Berger was in charge of DC’s Vertigo imprint. RPGs are officially for grownups now.

Speaking of Maze, I’m also doing layout on a pretty extensive adventure called Silent Titans, penned by Patrick Stuart and being illustrated by the absurdly talented Dirk Detweiler Leichty who seriously needs to be doing this stuff full time. It’s been pretty slow going because we've been reinventing a few wheels, but holy shit will all this back-and-forth experimentation and refinement be worth it.

And one thing that’s juuuuuuuust about ready to release: Faux Pas, written by Beloch Shrike of Blogs on Tape fame and illustrated by Anxy (plus a couple maps by me,  and it's edited by Jarret Crader). It’s the first issue of a new zine called Hocus. It’d work for a one-shot, but really it’s the sort of module you’d want to slot into a hex on your campaign map, for your players to stumble into when they least expect it.

Oh and of course Beloch is recording an audio version of Faux Pas, just to see what the reception looks like. I’m pretty sure the usage case he’s got in mind is you listen to it while you’re driving or painting or gardening or masturbating or whatever and then when you actually want to run the game, just a glance at the description should remind you of what’s going on. Also maybe it helps out the vision impaired? That would be pretty cool, I guess we’ll see.

There’s more stuff lined up but it’s way too early to talk about most of it so I’ll just stop now.

Kovakistan Liberation Party

This is not about a political faction.

So… we’re at a point where everyone reading this has tried out Jeff Rients’ carousing rules right?

If you aren’t familiar with it, the idea is PCs can get a bunch of XP if they blow hundreds or thousands of monies throwing a giant party. If they do that, they have to make a saving throw vs. poison or get shitfaced and have to roll on the table to see what they did while they were blacked out.

The other evening, I was running Kovakistan and an unusual situation came up, where I actually wanted to play the party out. The PCs weren’t looking for bonus XP at all, they wanted to throw a party and invite everyone in the same high-rise project as their safe house to build support for the revolution.

I didn’t tell them this but the risk they were taking was that the party might get too loud (with celebratory AK-47 fire and patriotic shouting and whatnot) and be heard by a passing USIncorporated patrol, possibly triggering a massacre that would be the PCs’ fault.

There wasn’t anything stopping me from still using the carousing rules but in a different way, making the PCs roll saving throws to avoid blacking out whenever they get more fucked up. But some of these players were doing a good enough job of keeping up with their characters that there was no need to artificially handicap their judgement.

KOVAKISTAN PARTY RULES

If all goes well and all encounters are dealt with successfully, public support for the revolution goes up by 1% for every hour the party goes on for (this is for Delta Green, which uses a resource roll instead of keeping track of the players’ money. if i was using this for D&D, it’d just be 1% per 100 monies spent on the party or something). If your characters are open about their identities with the party guests, this also affects public support for their cell and/or faction specifically, but there’s a risk of someone giving away your location to USInc. forces.

Every hour (or more often if you feel like it, just adjust the public support reward to compensate for the added risk) roll 1d8 and 1d10. If the d8 results in a 1, two Kovakistani Police officers show up. They’ll call for backup and try to shut the party down if they aren’t dealt with somehow. KPs are usually open to large enough bribes, but they'll know they can come back to shake the PCs down in the future. Kidnapping them and using them for an execution video may be an effective propaganda tool, but would harsh the partygoers’ buzz enough for them to leave.

(and if the KPs had recognized any of the PCs from wanted posters the jig would be up, but they had all disguised themselves earlier)

The d10 is to see what happens at the party that the PCs now have to deal with. Things can happen more than once; ref's discretion whether they involve the same NPCs as the first time or not.

1. Someone has gone and grabbed their AK-47 and starts shooting into the air, while bellowing the Kovakistani national anthem. If this keeps up long enough for the Americans to notice, they’ll send a reaction force to “disperse” this illegal gathering.

2. A skeezy looking dude with a coke ring and his hair slicked back just pulled up in an American muscle car. He’s got a duffel bag in the trunk full of drugs that he’s willing to share, but it won’t be long before he starts creeping out the women. If they start leaving, everyone else will, too.

3. Someone is stealing peoples’ cell phones (1d20+6 so far) and people are starting to notice they’re missing. The thief will try to sneak away after realizing the jig is up. Public support goes down by 1% for every phone lost, so catching the thief is advisable.

4. A couple twenty-something dudes with a few years of krav maga training have lost their shirts somehow and are fighting for fun in the parking lot. People are laying down bets (yes of course the PCs can get in on this). Everything is fun and games unless someone loses an eye. If a PC challenges the winner and beats him, public support goes up by 5% in addition to the normal boost just for throwing the party. If the PC injures their opponent badly enough to hospitalize, maim, or kill him, public support goes down by 10% instead.

5. Someone catches their significant other at the party with the S.O.’s side piece. First words then blows are exchanged and a pistol will soon be drawn.

6. Basically the same as #5 except it’s either a rap battle or a break dance battle (referee’s discretion).

7. Someone who is too drunk to remember why is bleeding everywhere. Like a big-ass stream of blood spurts out with every heartbeat. If this person dies at or after leaving the party, no public support points will be awarded for the night.

8. A group of partygoers leaves for a while and returns with a goat and a chainsaw, with which they sacrifice the goat. Everyone yells HAIL SATAN and the public support boost for throwing this party is doubled.

9. The booze and/or drugs are starting to run low. The PCs have 2d6*10 minutes to replenish the supply somehow or the partiers will start to leave.

10. Someone decided to light a bunch of shots of dangerously strong basement hooch and the resulting kitchen fire surprised everyone enough that someone else dropped the bottle in the middle of it and now the safe house is on fire.