Random generation makes better ideas.

D66 attitudes of those encountered:

11 - Exhausted
12 - Bewildered
13 - Quizzical
14 - Belligerent
15 - Cordial
16 - Mollified
21 - Conceited
22 - Sympathetic
23 - Covetous
24 - Disinterested
25 - Impatient
26 - Servile
31 - Sickly
32 - Immature
33 - Merry
34 - Provocative
35 - Content
36 - Infirm
41 - Insolent
42 - Bitter
43 - Melancholic
44 - Resigned
45 - Irksome
46 - Insufferable
51 - Satiated
52 - Regretful
53 - Relieved
54 - Exacerbated
55 - Genial
56 - Optimistic
61 - Irritated
62 - Wrathful
63 - Mirthful
64 - Joyless
65 - Curmudgeonly
66 - Fearful

Genial ogre, irksome knight, content peasant, and so on. Two things jammed together without your input are better for it.


They traditionally dispose of their dead...

1. ... after 42 days of treating them like they were still alive
2. ... by dumping them in the forest
3. ... by cremating them in their house. Then building another on top.
4. ... throw them in the sea, no matter how far away it is. If they are washed back up it is an omen of a restless spirit and suggests their ghost doesn't want to leave.
5. ... by stacking stones on top of them until they are pulverised. Funeral cairns litter the countryside.
6. ... in great big tubs. Special assistants are set with jugs to collect the juices from special spigots. The juices are burned as the true spirit while the corpse is ground up for animal food.

What are you supposed to be ashamed of?

1. Pointing
2. Bare backs. Capes are essential, but nothing else is.
3. Uncovered ears
4. Revealing the webbing between your fingers. Most erogenous of zones.
5. Boobies (1-2=Just male 3-4=Just female 5-6=Both)
6. All skin. All of it.

Traditional beautification

1. Teeth filed to the gums
2. Ears clipped and jagged
3. Split nostrils, cut at the sides making them look like dainty little wings.
4. Head flattened with cord and boards as a child
5. Gums dyed with lacquer
6. Arms bound to the torso up to the elbow, so the truly beautiful walk around like t-rexs.

The ruling order...

1. ... are ancient in-bred families
2. ... is a foreign culture with its own language and rituals
3. ... is a hereditary priesthood
4. ... grandmothers, ranked by the quantity of grand children
5. ... died out years ago, leaving their silver palaces empty. No one noticed.
6. ... are elected per village every year. They consider it a burden and is often used as a punishment.

What I'm Doing

It is essential that everybody knows exactly how exciting, maudlin, and envelope pushing I am being at all times. While it is safe to assume "very" in all these cases it's only polite that I confirm your blinkered confidence now and again.

I sometimes pretend to be a real publisher, who prints other people's work, in order to mask the obvious narcissism of primarily printing ones own. Crypts of Indormancy is coming out next month, which I didn't write, and it's exactly the kind of adventure I never see—erudite and weird non-European alt-history, written with a strong, identifiable voice free of niche trends. I like it so much that it's being printed to proper standards and in huge bulk. All in.

After that we'll likely see a couple of smaller adventures, a standalone RPG about cockney burglars, and some other projects that are so far away that to speak of them might spook 'um into the tree line.

In the meantime I'll be writing nothing but Troika! forever. The full scope of the game is beyond my means, so I've had to make some hard decisions about how to get there. I considered various crowd funding beg-a-thons: Kickstarter could pay for all the art right away, but leaves me vulnerable to change and comes with a gaggle of hungry punters attached (I love you, but it's a psychic burden to be beholden), while Patreon would let me charge a subscription to MEEEEE and allow me to be as erratic as I pleased, but the fact that it's double-dipping selling your work, once to patreon and once at the end when you actually have something, made me a bit ill with grasping shame.

So instead I'll channel TSR and enter supplement hell. Build the book piece by piece in self-contained chunks. Make them handsome, make them fat, and make them now. The first one is going to be Empires of Foliage and I will never admit to what it is about. There will be 72 new backgrounds, a number of enemies, plus miscellaneous spells items and other related things all connected to the central, poorly hidden, conceit.

Also Undercroft, soon-ish maybe.

Background: Good Dog

You’re not a magic dog, you’re not a talking dog, but you are a good dog.

Possessions
A neckerchief OR a collar and half a leash OR your favourite ball

Skills
3 Awareness
3 Dig
2 Run
2 Track
2 Sneak
2 Swim
1 Sleight of Hand
1 Tunnel Fighting
1 Bite Fighting

Special

Decide if you are, in addition to being a good dog, a big dog or a small dog. Big dogs get +1 Bite Fighting and +1 Dig, small dogs get +1 Tunnel Fighting and +1 Awareness.

May only carry half the normal number of items. Has all predictable dog related limitations, like not being able to wield a sword. May however cast magic is you find someone that can teach dogs to do it. Good luck with that.

Playing a totally mundane dog in Troika! would be very appropriate. Not everyone has to be a show stealing attention hog, some of us just want to be loved and rescue people from wells. They're emotive creatures as demonstrated by the players usage of body language while playing them:

I growl in a way that says "there's a goblin hiding in that tree drawing pictures of us while we eat"

or

I stare at them in the manner of someone who wants to buy that magic necklace and get it fitted to dog sizes. Use the money in my satchel.

The Good Dog has more baked in potential than all your lamassus or floating-head-conglomerates combined. You have to work to make those as fun.