I picked up the Troika Bundle of Holding (offer ended 1st of Feb), but I didn’t know then that I would be looking at troika now. It is entirely possible that the person, Glen, who asked me for solo rules also picked up this bundle, and that is why the sudden interest.
One of the components in the bundle was the initiative cards. These are really simple picture cards, no meaning attached to them, you just print off as many of the eight designs as you want, and use them as the tokens to count the initiative.
That card pack is something like 8 pieces of art for $20, which in my opinion is a bit steep, but who am I to value other people’s art?
The important thing is that someone has already set the precedent of using cards in a Troika game.
I was walking the our dogs earlier and I had the idea of taking the 52 cards from a standard pack of cards, putting a meaning, a yes-no answer and maybe a d6 and a 2d6 roll on each one.
Then I thought, why bother with the cards at all?
Why not put all of these into a grid, make them really easily printable. Cut them up, fold them in four, and draw them from your dice bag or a hat, it would have to be a really cool top hat or a rather bohemian berret.
The gain from this structure is that the barrier to entry is really low. As long as you can print, or at worse, you can write them out on to scraps of paper yourself.
Most oracles use a likelihood modifier. You are more likely to find a bottle of absinthe in a bar than you are in a field, for example. If all our chits/tokens/cards are in the same hat, how do we account for likelihood?
The easiest solution I can think of is to draw two and if you think the answer is more likely to be a yes, you take the most positive result, if you think the answer is more likely to be negative you take the least positive of the two chits.
You read the chit, use the dice rolls, meanings or answers, and then return the chits to the hat or bag.
It is random, you can apply bias to it, and has an almost zero barrier to entry.
I have always wanted to create a pack of cards. This would be my chance to create a card set!
The more I think about this, the more I am taken with the idea!
Do you think I am being daft?