What Would Conan Do?

I'm slow, alright. There are two books, both of which were originally going to be in Troika itself, but I would be a mad man to publish a 300 page monster that is 90% tables and 100% niche/not D&D.

But you've seen them before, so you know what's coming. You think that god thing is complete? HAH.

Anyway, how the hell do you run Troika!?

Strangers Meet At A Crossroads

My favourite campaign structure is to front load everything, make an area or sprawling situation to explore with no thought of who will be doing it. Then drop whatever party you roll right in the middle with no guide.

My last campaign, the Empires of Foliage, started with everyone being passengers on a golden barge that ripped its hull open and crashed into an unexpected crystal sphere. The party emerge from emergency life blobs and find each other. It was a big boat, so no one knows each other but they know enough to know that they were the closest thing they had to allies. Job done.

From here they start to explore their surroundings, ask questions, touch things and find out how stuff works. The first session should have some immediate questions the party can investigate (all games are investigations).

• Why did we crash?
• Where is the ship?
• Are there any other survivors?
• Why is there four feet of blossoms everywhere?
• We have no food. Can you eat the pink fruit?
• What are these fleshy pipes running under the blossoms and where do they go?

And then off they go.

This structure has the benefit of allowing any variety of backgrounds you care to use. Their time together investigating their situation will give plenty of time for them to rub together and make some sparks. Use these sparks to plan for when they escape their situation and you need to widen the world.

The mutual bullshit that backgrounds encourage as players explain themselves to each other also helps you work backwards. Don't offer too much about their pasts, let them go with it. But also remember that you're a player too and can also BS.

It's perfectly ok for them to never get home. Have them be strangers in a strange land forever, play quantum leap, star trek, ulysses 31. The million spheres are huge, and once you go off the beaten paths you're screwed.

CYO Pre-gen

Good for one shots, but equally viable as campaign starters, is to build a closed list of backgrounds and let the players at them. An excellent way to seed the background of the adventure, giving each player a different background with a different bit of information. Player introductions are easy since no one is expected to play amateur theatre class exercise and can just read out "my thing says I used to be a farm-boy, but I picked the spectacles from a wise man's vision matt and learned I was the reincarnation of the Near-Sighted-God-Killer, so that's why I'm here"