​I ran my first session of Trophy Gold last week, and I have some thoughts—thoughts that will hopefully be helpful to folks getting ready to run or the play the game themselves. These thoughts aren’t meant to be authoritative, nor are they presented in any particular order. They also assume you are familiar with the basics of Trophy Gold. 

Character creation is fast and fun
As in core Trophy, character creation in Trophy Gold is really quick. Basically, you choose some elements from a set of tables—Name, Drive, Occupation, Background, Backpack Equipment, and Rituals—write them down, and you’re done. You don’t roll any dice or assign ability scores, but you still have a lot of interesting choices to make. What’s particularly cool about Trophy is the wide variety of character configurations you can end up with. You can have a Bankrupted Merchant who is now an Historian trying to raise money in order to arm the resistance against Lord Haffir’s tyranny, or a Grief-Stricken Poet who is now a Sorcerer trying to buy the orphanage where they were mistreated. There are so many interesting combinations, and each is rich with storytelling opportunities. 

We actually used the Trophy Gold character generator by Ramanan S, which made the process even quicker. You can find that right here. We also used the character keeper by Evan Bucholz for online play (note: set the zoom to 75% for a better experience). You can find that here. 

Character elements have a huge impact on both story and gameplay
The characters may not have any numbers associated with them—and they might be seemingly-shallow compared to other fantasy game characters—but the various elements that make up each character have a HUGE impact on both story and gameplay. 

I think an example is best here: 

In our game, Fraser was playing an Oracle called Kel. Kel’s Oracle occupation gave him the skill Trances. When Fraser was deciding what to narrate in order to trigger a Hunt Roll, he decided Kel might be using his Trances skill to actually expand his consciousness and examine the wider terrain around him. I thought that was a great idea, so I gave him a Hunt Roll to search the area, with a light die coming from the Trances skill. He described how Kel was burning incense, meditating, and so forth, in order to go into his trance state. He got a 5 on the Hunt Roll, meaning he was successful (+1 token), but he’d also have to face a danger of some sort. I described how tapping into this divine consciousness attracted a large, arachnid-like creature with the model of a tiny city on its back. Fraser responded to this danger by invoking another skill he got from Oracle, Gods. He described how the Gods skill would allow him to actually commune with the spider creature, who he deemed to be a minor deity. We did a Risk Roll and Kel successfully avoided the danger, but as the result of a Devil’s Bargain, he had to take a child of the spider deity into his body. 

As you can see from the example, the mere presence of a few words on Fraser’s character sheet lead to very cool story outcomes, all of which were the basis for die rolls. If you’d like to see how this all played out, check out the embedded video at 01:05:00. 

Equipment and creative problem-solving
Related to the above point, the characters’ equipment lead to a lot of very interesting and creative problem-solving by the players. Unlike in a PbtA game, where simply getting a 7+ on a die roll leads to your character overcoming a diffculty, you have to use your smarts as a player to solve problems in Trophy Gold (this is true of most OSR games). As the GM, it was very enjoyable watching the players puzzle over how their pot of grease or 300’ of twine could be used in a situation (and so they could get an all-important light die in a Hunt Roll or Risk Roll). I’ll also add here that the Dungeon World-like equipment slots are another fun avenue for creativity, though, unlike DW’s Adventuring Gear, Trophy Gold equipment has a bit more of a creative constraint in that you can only choose from a list of approved items. In play, though, it felt really similar to Adventuring Gear, which is one of my favorite rules from DW. 

The “push your luck” aspect of the game is ever-present
When I interviewed Jesse Ross, the author of the game, for Fear of a Black Dragon, something he emphasized in the conversation is the “push your luck” aspect of Trophy Gold’s gameplay. On paper, I understood what he was talking about, but it wasn’t until I saw the game in action that I truly appreciated this aspect of it. Hanging over everything are the characters’ Burdens—essentially, the price of coming back to town in order to rest up—and these Burdens inform so much of the players’ decision-making. Importantly, as the players are collecting tokens from Hunt Rolls, they are tempted to use some of them in order to collect treasures, which will help them meet their Burdens and, ultimately, allow them to save up to satisfy their Drive. On the other hand, they need save enough tokens to actually complete the goals of the dungeon, and the longer they spend doing Hunt Rolls in order to collect tokens, the greater chance they have of running into some sort of danger that will kill them. And this tension is SO palpable at the table. 

The “push your luck” aspect also comes out in combat, but we haven’t quite yet seen that in our game. However, I can say that…

Combat is INTENSE
Holy shit. It has been a long time since I’ve played a game where combat felt truly lethal and where the stakes of each die roll were extremely high. We only had one combat in our session (prior to that, the players were using Risk Rolls to avoid it) but the players immediately understood what was at stake. They could probably survive one or two bad die rolls, but a third bad die roll would almost certainly have killed one of them, or, at the very least, it would have made going back to town a much more expensive proposition (since they’d have to spend their hard-earned Gold on healing). Fortunately for them, they defeated the creature in one roll (they rolled a 9 on two black dice when they needed an 8 or higher). But right up until the dice results were revealed, the tension was thick. 

The presentation of sets is a key GM skill in this game
This may not necessarily be how Jesse intends for the game to go, but I think the presentation of sets is really, really important when running Trophy Gold. The thing about sets is they represent discrete areas of the adventure, and they don’t necessarily equal each other in terms of geographical area covered or length. So, for example, in our session we managed to get through 2 sets: the first was a miles-long journey to the dungeon and the second was just 2 areas in that dungeon. No matter the size of the set, it’s completed whenever the players spend 3 Hunt Roll tokens to do so. I think in order for players to properly judge when to go ahead and pull the trigger on completing the set, they need to understand the goal of the set, whether that be in-character or out-of-character knowledge. 

Here’s what I did: much like moving from Ring to Ring in core Trophy, I actually announced to the players “You are now moving into the next set.” I even went so far as to give the players a lot of explicit, out-of-character knowledge about the set. So, in the first set I said “This set is about the journey to the ancient tomb. The goal of the set is the find the entrance to the ancient tomb.” In the second set I said “This set is the False Tomb. Your characters believe it is the real tomb, but as players, you know your goal is to locate the entrance to the True Tomb.” Since the spending of Hunt Roll tokens is a strictly out-of-character thing (your characters have no sense or notion of this), it made sense to me that the presentation of goals should also exist on the same, meta plane. And I’m here to tell you: it worked beautifully. The characters get to have their dangerous, thrilling, hopefully-lucrative adventure, while players and GM work together to advance the story in a way that makes sense. 

The Hunt Roll scales beautifully 
The Hunt Rolls were very effective. In fact, I think everyone at the table was pretty shocked by how great this particular mechanic is. My comment on The Gauntlet Forums about only using the Hunt Roll for large areas should be disregarded. In fact, it scales beautifully to both large areas and small areas. 

Once you get the hang of it, the Hunt Roll is a very intuitive rule. Basically, as the GM, you describe a thing in the environment. If a character goes to investigate, you have them do a Hunt Roll. This leads to the core gameplay loop of Trophy Gold: Hunt Roll leads to danger presented leads to Risk/Combat roll. Spend your tokens and move on to the next set or engage the gameplay loop again by doing another Hunt Roll. It worked great and the players loved it once they understood how it worked. 

The main thing I think you need to consider when it comes to the Hunt Roll is how flexible you are able to be in the moment as a GM. In the sets I was using, the dangers and treasures presented were enough to satisfy most Hunt Rolls and token spends, but there were a couple of occasions where I had to make up a treasure on the fly, and if that’s not something you are comfortable doing, you may want to have a treasure table handy (the one in the Trophy expansion found in Codex - Emerald works great). I didn’t need any on-the-fly dangers, but I could see a situation where it might be handy to have something like that in your back pocket, too. 

I strongly recommend watching the video embedded below (gameplay starts at 39:46) to see how to effectively use Hunt Rolls. 

The Risk Roll from Trophy is very sturdy in this context
In core Trophy, the Risk Roll is paramount; it governs every conflict in the game. Trophy Gold has a couple of new rolls to help it better tell a classic fantasy adventure story, but the Risk Roll is still quite prominent and is highly-functional in this new context. The changes to the text of the roll, particularly the addition of allowing equipment to give you a light die, helps make it fit into this OSR-ish frame. And, as ever, the Devil’s Bargain remains a terrific engine for collaborative story telling. 


Questions I had
I did have a few questions about the game as I was running it. I’ll address those here. 

Do you pool hunt roll tokens? The text of Trophy Gold isn’t clear about whether you can pool your Hunt Roll tokens in order to achieve the set goal. I conferred with Jesse and he said that you can, in fact, pool them, which is the call I made during the game. 

How do Rituals work in combat? We had a moment where we weren’t quite sure how Rituals were handled in combat. I made the call that they were simply fictional positioning—that you still made the Combat Roll as normal, but that you could use your Ritual to narrate what your character was doing in the scene. Jesse told me this was the right way to handle it. 

What will going back to town be like? We haven’t yet returned to town and engaged the various procedures there, and I’m curious how this is going to go from a storytelling standpoint. As written, it’s a very mechanical process (spend Gold to satisfy Burdens, spend Gold to lower your Ruin, spend Gold to get new equipment slots, store Gold away, etc.). I’m curious whether and how we will get some story there, since there isn’t a lot of textual support for building narrative into these procedures. 

The bestiary is intriguing, but I wonder how it feels long-term. I really liked the bestiary as a sort of high-level form of character advancement; it was really fun to name the encountered monsters and to know that that knowledge outlives the characters. But we haven’t yet played long enough to experience the mechanical advantages you get from the bestiary, nor to just generally understand how it affects the long term gameplay and story. I’m intrigued, but need more data. 

Overall impressions
I loved Trophy Gold. It is exactly how I want to do OSR-style fantasy adventure from now on. I thought I’d never find a game to wean myself off World of Dungeons with, but this is definitely it. It has the feeling of an OSR game—of rich, deadly dungeon exploration—but with a flexible, narrative system that appeals to me.

Session video
You can check out the session we played in the video embedded below. To jump straight to the gameplay, go to 39:46. 

Trophy Gold can be found in Codex - Gold, which will be available on DriveThru in November. 

SUNK CREDITS FALLACY
While I still have many bits to figure out, the final big puzzle piece for my Alpha Centauri hack has been mechanics for developing the colony itself. For this I'm adapting one of the best systems from Mutant: Year Zero: the Ark-building mechanics. They're great and solidly involve the players. I'm always surprised some version isn't present in more Mutant games. So far only Forbidden Lands has anything close. A modified version to represent the PC's ship in Coriolis would be awesome.

At the beginning of most sessions in Mutant: Year Zero the players collectively decide on projects. These develop a new process, raise a building, or enact a societal change for the mutants of their Ark (Cropland, Tavern, Surveillance). They start from near zero because up to that point they've relied on the Elder to lead them. PCs can work on a chosen project, rolling one of the skills associated with it. Each success rolled generates a Work Point. When the project has enough points, the group adds it to the Ark. It can add new effects to daily life, but more importantly it raises the Ark's rating in one or more of the four development tracks (Culture, Food, Technology, Warfare).

The Ark overall improves as they hit mileposts on those four development tracks. For my hack, I changed them to Food & Survival; Defense & Military; Culture & Infrastructure; and Tech & Discovery. Those echo the tech tree tracks from Alpha Centauri. I've made the tracks longer, while upping the potential points from any single project. So far  I've only created what I call "Tier One" tracks-- those they have available at the start. As we move along I will add to this. Breaking it into parts creates some mystery (and makes it easier for me to work on). 

SEE ALSO
36 Moods for an Alien Planet
Colony Zero
Your New Home in the Outworld Colonies

COMM SYSTEM Most communications within the colony are section to section. This would focus on building a basic shared communication network throughout the colony. Key personnel would have individual communicators. Out in the field it would allow for short range communication within a team (but not back to base).
DEV Requirement: None
Skills: Manipulation or Technology
Work Points: 2 × number of PCs
DEV Bonus: Culture & Infrastructure +4D6

HAB UNITS Currently most colonists sleep in shifts in barracks, divided by faction and role. This puts effort into building smaller shared units, allowing for a measure of privacy and personal space. Also reduces chances of cross-contamination and infections.
DEV Requirement: Culture & Infrastructure 5
Skills: Human Perception or Society
Work Points: 3 × number of PCs
DEV Bonus: Cultural & Infrastructure +5D6, Food & Survival +1d6
 
RECYCLING TANKS Enhanced reclamation technologies put into place. All waste products and materials must be carefully cycled back into the colony’s systems. Based on shipboard systems.
DEV Requirement: None
Skills: Manipulation or Society
Work Points: 2 × number of PCs
DEV Bonus: Culture & Infrastructure +4D6
 
AGRI-POD Isolated facility used to test and grow Earth-based plants and seedlings with native soil and other components.
DEV Requirement: Food & Survival 5
Skills: Endure or Planet Lore
Work Points: 3 × number of PCs
DEV Bonus: Food & Survival +5D6, Technology & Discovery +1d6
 
BIO-LAB Enhanced reclamation technologies put into place. All waste products and materials must be carefully cycled back into the colony’s systems. Based on shipboard systems.
DEV Requirement: None
Skills: Science or Planet Lore
Work Points: 2 × number of PCs
DEV Bonus: Technology & Discovery +4D6

BASIC ARMORY Machine shop dedicated to the production of simple weapons: blades, knives, bows. Reduces the cost of simple slug thrower and slug rifles. Bullets can now be bought 1 material for 6 bullets.
DEV Requirement: Science & Technology 5
Skills: Technology, Melee, or Shoot
Work Points: 3 × number of PCs
DEV Bonus: Technology & Discovery +5D6, Defense & Military +1d6

​For the full backlog of Age of Ravens posts on Blogger see here. ​

The Trophy actual play podcast is now live!  
Before I begin talking about Ring 3, I want to let you know that The Gauntlet is now producing an actual play podcast for Trophy. The first series is a play-through of The Flocculent Cathedral incursion, featuring myself, Fraser Simons, Bethany Harvey, and Lowell Francis. If you have been following this blog post series, I strongly recommend taking a listen to this podcast. The production values are very high, and each episode is a manageable 30-40 minutes long. Importantly, each episode is a different ring of the incursion, and you get a really good sense for how to run and play this game. You can find the series right here.

Now let’s talk about Ring 3 of the incursion. These notes are not presented in any particular order, nor are they meant to be “authoritative.” They are simply my observations from running the game. 

The calm before (and after) the storm
Ring 3 is situated just after the hard environmental challenges of Ring 2 and just before the monstrous terrors of Ring 4. It is a bit of a decompression phase, a chance to breathe, and you should treat it as such. This isn’t to say it’s a “slow” or less dramatic part of the game (in fact, it can be the most intense ring, emotionally-speaking) but it is a time for the treasure-hunters to take stock. Have you had any scenes at camp yet? If not, Ring 3 is a great opportunity to do so. Did something particularly intense happen between two characters in a previous ring? If so, frame a scene in Ring 3 so they discuss it. 

Focus on the personal
Minimize environmental dangers, minimize direct attacks from the forest, and emphasize personal matters. The danger and drama of Ring 3 comes from seeing how people in an extreme situation cope with each other and themselves. Even when you have no choice but to pose external threats in Ring 3 (perhaps because of a Devil’s Bargain), you should ask the players questions about how that external threat affects their treasure-hunter personally. A very loaded and leading question will usually get the job done. An example: 

The treasure-hunters are facing down a wild cat in Ring 3 as the result of a Devil’s Bargain. One of the treasure-hunters has a drive related to impressing his disapproving father. Before a risk roll takes place, the GM asks the treasure-hunter how this wild cat reminds him of a hunt he was on with his father—a hunt that went poorly and caused his father to upbraid him. 

Don’t forget conditions!
As the GM, you should always be asking the treasure-hunters questions, and in Ring 3, those questions should focus on the personal and interpersonal. How did it make you feel when Kasien lost the map? Why is this mission worth enduring this misery? What does Orlen do at camp that drives you crazy? Importantly, don’t forget to ask about conditions. In practice, because you’re so focused on environmental dangers and the characters’ drives, it can be very easy to forget that one of the treasure-hunters is now behaving in a very strange way, or has some kind of strange physical affliction. Ring 3 is an excellent opportunity to remind the players of these strange things, and you can do so by asking them a question as simple as “How does it make you feel?” And, of course, if the situation warrants it—say, because a fellow treasure-hunter’s condition is particularly disturbing—invoke ruin rolls. 

Sow the seeds of betrayal 
The seeds of betrayal that are planted in Ring 3 should, theoretically, bear fruit by Ring 5.  Terrors in Ring 3 are almost always about how the treasure-hunters begin to mistrust one another. If you are following the text of the incursion closely, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting the treasure-hunters to turn on one another, even if it’s just in small ways for now. 

The reduction roll also has a major part to play here. I almost always have a treasure-hunter hit Ruin 5 somewhere in Ring 3. The first time this happens, you should take a minute to remind the players of the consequences of hitting Ruin 6 and then explain how the reduction roll works. Then, you should very explicitly ask the player of the treasure-hunter at Ruin 5 if they would like to have a scene in order to trigger a reduction roll. They will almost always take you up on this (much to the chagrin of the other players) and, before you know it, treachery and villainy abound. 

We now have a new way to enjoy Gauntlet Hangouts games! Thanks to Gauntlet Community member mystery_dough, the recorded Gauntlet Hangouts sessions listed in this roundup are now also available in audio podcast form! Browse episodes and get subscription information at http://gauntlet.hellomouth.net/.

I‘ve come to appreciate Legacy as one of my three favorite Powered by the Apocalypse rpgs. It’s probably in my top ten games period. In it you play a family and a character in a world just emerging from the shadow of an apocalypse. It has generational play: moving the timeline forward and changing the world as you go. The first game I ran for The Gauntlet was the first edition and I did a terrible job. Later I ran the new edition from the beta for The Gauntlet, still terribly.
​
It wasn’t until my third attempt that I made serious effort to understand the game. I run a ton of systems, so I’m pretty good at picking up the highlights and running from those. I’d skimmed Legacy and assumed I could spot differences and patch over gaps with my PbtA knowledge. But Legacy has many moving parts—and they support each other. I’d missed how powerfully some systems shaped the game feel.
​
So I want to help others with a quick overview of what Legacy is, how it works, and what’s worth picking up. As of this writing, The Bundle of Holding still has a Legacy collection up. I hope to show the value of that.

The System
Your Family and Character
Play Features
Core Rules
Core Supplements
Additional Worlds
Stand Alone Games 

THE SYSTEM
I won’t try to fully define Powered by the Apocalypse games. Legacy shares some basics with those, but also has a unique framework. Typically PbtA plays as a story game, with a conversation that continues until you hit a trigger. That trigger may be a specific action or the need to resolve some key uncertainty. What you do and how that resolves is called a Move—which can be specific to a particular playbook (your class), a basic move everyone can use, or something else.

When a move is triggered, players roll dice, usually 2d6. Results commonly fall into three types. Full success, meaning the character gets what they want or they have the most options. Partial success, meaning that success comes at a cost, lesser effect, or with a complication. Finally a miss means that the character does not succeed or must pay dearly for success.

A move’s impact depends on the system. In some games, a move in a conflict might simply inflict damage. In others, the move roll might determine everything about the fight. Legacy leans towards moves with a broader effect.

The GM does not roll in PbtA games. Instead the GM makes moves, usually when a player rolls a miss. Legacy calls these reactions. Reactions can be hard or soft, depending on the possible consequences. GM reactions might inflict harm, change your relationships, take away resources, or other options.

Legacy assumes a post-apocalyptic world, though the nature of that world is left in the hands of the players. It could be more grounded like Fallout or more fantastical like Numenera. In Legacy each player creates and controls a family and a character within the family. At the start of the game, the scattered communities of the world have begun to build and move forward.

YOUR FAMILY AND CHARACTER
At the family level you decide the course of your whole community. Each family has a playbook which sets out all the choices for family creation. These include questions and features which define the community, the world, and what came before. Each family has several unique moves, special abilities related to their theme. So The Lawgivers of the Wasteland have Round Up the Posse where they can call up a gang of locals to assist in their mission. The Enclave of Bygone Lore’s Deep Knowledge gives them several fields they have an advantage in. The Order of Titan has Kaiju Threat Alert which lets them warn other families about impending dangers and gain treaty via that.

Treaty represents connections and debts between families. Some moves require treaty to function. The family move Call in a Debt lets you spend treaty to gain a bonus in interactions with another family, take a surplus from them, or push them into a particular course of action. Targeted families can spend treaty or make a test to resist.

Other family moves include Hold Together, Conduct Diplomacy, Seize by Force, and Subterfuge. Families have two key currencies: Tech which you use to gain advantage on rolls, and Lore which you spend to reveal secrets about the world. Additionally, each family has surpluses and needs (like morale, food, security, etc). You need surpluses to keep the family going and eventually to make wonders which change the world. You balance surpluses against your needs; if you have more needs than surpluses, you’re more at risk when hit by events and when you jump forward in time.
 
At the character level you play a single member of that family. They’re important, but their role within the family varies. On the meta-level you the player make choices for your family. Your PC may or may not be the one pushing an agenda forward. You define this via a “role” you choose (Leader, Agent, Rebel, Outsider). Each playbook has different abilities for these roles and different triggers for when you switch between them. Changing your role lets you advance your character, but when you’ve been all four, you retire.

When you change a role, you can add +1 to a Stat or gain a new playbook move. Each playbook has handful of thematic moves. For example The Envoy can know secrets of other families, the Firebrand can blend in with a crowd, the Survivor can work past their own pain. Each character playbook also comes with a unique harm track.

PLAY FEATURES
Zooming in and out
In play you move between the family and character levels. Family play works at a grand scale with settlements growing, resources being seized, and alliances forming. To color these moments, you might quickly move in to look at your PCs’ place within those events. But if you move to focus on an important scene or task, you Zoom In. For example you might Zoom In for PCs heading out to meet a new faction, facing a threat, or going on a quest.
 
When you Zoom In on a PC, the table checks to see if other PCs want to involve themselves. If anyone’s PC doesn’t, they still get to play in the scenes. In this case they make up a Quick Character from the lead PC’s family. Each family has a unique set of moves for these characters. QCs also have a relationship to the PC and their own stats. It only takes a few moments and this mechanic is, to paraphrase Paul Beakley, Legacy’s secret sauce. In play Quick Characters don’t feel like throwaways, they often have their own arc. They also reveal more about that particular family.

When that Zoomed In scene concludes, we Zoom Out. Any PC who wasn’t present chooses from a set of benefits and narrates what happened to them during that time. It’s a great way to handle troupe-style play. The game overall continues—doing multiple passes of family play until something feels like it has the weight for a Zoom In. The rules suggest beginning a campaign with the PCs together working on a task related to several of their agendas from roles.

Play Choices
The core rules have eleven family playbooks. Each feels distinct and unique. But they’re also open enough that you could play the same family twice with very different approaches. The rules break the families into three groups. Ruins types work well in most kinds of campaign. These include The Gilded Company of Merchants, Lawgivers of the Wasteland, and Tyrant Kings. Echoes types assume that the world has lots of technological relics and marvels hanging around. These include The Cultivators of the New Flesh, Enclave of Bygone Lore, and Pioneers of the Depths. Finally Mirrors type family playbooks introduce an odd or world-changing element. These include The Order of the Titan, Servants of the One True Faith, Stranded Starfarers, Synthetic Hive, and Uplifted Children.
 
Likewise Legacy offers a ton of choices for characters. The thirteen playbooks also break down into the three types mentioned above. Ruins playbooks include The Elder, Envoy, Firebrand, Hunter, Scavenger, Sentinel, Survivor, and Untamed. Echoes include The Reaver and Seeker. Finally the Mirrors types are The Machine, Promethean, and Remnant. If that seems too much, don’t worry. As mentioned above, the rules include a scenario with pregens, a basic history, and an outline for the GM.
 
Turning Of Ages
At some point your group will feel you’ve dealt with the key threats or elements. You can then choose to move time forward: a few years, a decade, a century, etc. This is called The Age Turns. Each family rolls +Mood (# of surpluses - # of needs) to see how their family fares. This gives a number of trials and/or tribulations chosen from lists. You could choose to give your family new moves or raise a stat. Afterwards you can make changes to your family based on events: settlement patterns, doctrines, culture. You narrate this and add elements to a shared map created at the campaign start. 
 
When the age turns, your character marks a role and advances. At this point you can narrate how their place has changed within the family. Alternately you may decide to retire that character, beginning anew with a different playbook. This flexibility means you can really tell a generational story.
 
The turning of the age offers a great opportunity to think about what you want from the next age and how you might build a Wonder. These are grand-scale, civilization-impacting projects. If you’ve played Civilization or similar games, you’ll see the connection. Legacy’s core rules offer six choices (Age of Discovery, Energy Revolution, Total War, etc). Creating a wonder requires your family sacrifice five surpluses, not an easy thing. If you succeed, your family gains a benefit as do families who have treaty with you. Wonders offer a great goal for players—if you’ve clawed together some stability and dealt with threats, you can start to plan a way forward. 
 
OVERALL
Obviously this doesn’t cover everything happening in the game, but these elements feel unique and important. Legacy takes some getting used to. Elements can be highly abstracted. A single roll can have a massive impact. Rather than blow by blow, most actions resolve a whole situation and set up the next one. If you’ve played other PbtA games, be aware that family and character creation will almost certainly take a whole session. If you want to get running quickly, consider playing the quick start set up in the core book or one of the additional QS scenarios UFO Press has released.

WHAT TO BUY?
CORE RULES
Legacy Core: The single-volume Legacy core rules has enough to play from. The hardcover is excellent with solid binding and two ribbon bookmarks. It also has multiple indexes. The pdf offers the advantage of hyperlinks and term searches if you’re comfortable working with purely electronic editions. Only the GM needs to purchase the core book, but players will likely find the material useful and relevant. Given that you can choose moves from other playbooks and need to plan for Wonders, it may be useful to have at least two copies at the table. Regardless, you’ll want to download and print out the pdf handout sets for your table. You can find them here. These have all the moves and playbooks as well as GM reference sheets. With a single copy of the core rules and these sheets, you can easily run an extensive Legacy campaign.

CORE SUPPLEMENTS
UFO Press has released two hard-cover supplements for Legacy with new options and themes. Both show off the richness of the system. They’re a great example of how a PbtA game can expand its material.

The Engine of Life: Subtitled “Hope and Rebirth in a Ruined World.” This volume offers a more positive spin on the post-apocalyptic setting. It keeps an undefined fallen future, but offers advice and tools for games focusing on building and cooperation. EoL includes essays on love; tradition; and culture and revolution. New optional mechanics include the Prophet role, Havens, Festivals, and more. Surprisingly, given the richness of the base game, it adds six new family playbooks and seven new character playbooks.

Three of these new families (The Coalition, Eternal Masquerade, and Syndicate of the Lost) are Ruins-type, working with most campaigns. Two fit with the deep tech settings of Echoes worlds (The Architects of Tomorrow and Timestream Refugees). The latter in particular gives support for players who want to define more of the future or past. Finally the Serene Choir is a Mirrors type, bringing more weirdness. Here you play a family of fallen “angels” or like beings who have fallen into this world.

The character playbooks lean more conventional, with six of the seven fitting with most campaigns. I particularly like The Matchmaker and The Storyteller. Both lean into community and connections. The Prodigy is the odd one here, literally. This character has tremendous powers and a strong sense of the future to come (and how they can shape it).
Finally Engine of Life includes four new wonders. These offer a welcome addition to the palette from the core book. Each speaks to connecting the communities to a central idea or generally offering a form of rebirth. The final chapter gives a quick-start using some of the ideas and elements from these rules. Like other quick starts, it gives a good on-ramp for GMs who want to try out the play without much prep or set up.

End Game: Subtitled “Doom and Entropy at the End of All Things.” This mirrors Engine of Life, presenting a darker, crumbling take on the post-Fall world. If you thought your Legacy game wasn’t grim or PvP enough, this offers a host of tools. The essays here cover The Horror of Isolation; Tragedy; Synergy and Creative Planning; and Strategy. New mechanics include a Traitor role, Doom Clocks, Nightmares, and more. It adds six new family playbooks and six new character playbooks.
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All of the family playbooks seriously reshape the tone and feel of the setting. Three are Echoes type (The Bonded Pack, Failed Guardians, and Doomsday Riders). The last of these possesses a massive arsenal of weapons and tech. They’re suited to a game of warring factions. The other four are Mirror-type (Ascendant Afflicted, Deathless Elite, Evolved Survivors, and Eldritch Servants). They’re all high-concept. For example the Afflicted has your family cursed by a contagion that you can use to infect other families. If you wanted to run a zombie horde, this is your chance.

The character playbooks lean equally strange. Two—The Martyr and Road Warrior—would fit in most campaigns. I like the description of the latter as a form of Knight Errant. The other four are Mirrors-type (The Foundling, Hellion, Herald, and Warlock). The Foundling challenges your character’s relationship to your Family. On the other hand, The Herald allows you to switch through a set of heroic archetypes, changing up the role rules from the core game.
End Game’s four new wonders aren’t obviously as dark as you might expect. They do embrace a world that needs defenses or escape from terrible threats. The most interesting of these is the Race for the Stars. This one actually builds on previously created wonders, meaning that it really only comes into its own in a long campaign. Finally like Engine of Life, End Game wraps with a quick start setting with four defined families and characters. (Unfortunately as of this post, End Game appears to be unavailable). 

Wasteland Almanac: A pdf-only collection of settlements, devices, and threats. Each has twenty entries with a name, brief description, and some questions to help you shape the ideas. A product for the GM which is interesting and useful but not essential.

QUICK STARTS
UFO Press has released two Quick Starts of Legacy: Titanomachy and Non-Compliant. Both have four pre-generated families and characters. They provide a sketched out setting, rich enough to play from but with enough room for you to fill in spaces. There’s a basic overview of the mechanics and a step by step guide to beginning the game. It’s amazing how much material the designers get into a tight package here. As of the writing, the pdfs of both quick starts are free on DTRPG and you can purchase a relatively low-cost PoD version.

Titanomachy has you playing families on a colony world who have been devastated by the coming of Gigas who smashed down the infrastructure and sent the homeland into darkness. Now your families have begun to rebuild and figure out how to face these foes. There’s an Attack on Titan vibe, mixed with a little Godzilla. Non-Compliant, on the other hand, offers a recognizable fallen Earth. You play families in the free zone of Salt Lake City. Outside lies a world being terraformed and exploited by alien forces.

ADDITIONAL WORLDS
UFO Press has released four new settings for use with Legacy. These can be purchased as pdfs or softcovers. These four plus the stand-alone Rhapsody of Blood can also be found in a “Worlds of Legacy” slipcase edition.
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Generation Ship: You play characters and families in a generation ship still far from its final destination. Has new rules for the starship’s environment itself acting as a challenge. Instead of Wonders, you have Ships Systems. Investing in those can change the world as a whole (and introduce new problems). Hews close to base Legacy, making it an easy alternative.

Godsend: The largest of these setting supplements. Instead of families, you play divinities: gods who need faith to change the world. At the character level, you play an Avatar. However, you play the Avatar of another player’s divinity. Quick Characters are replaced by the Apostles. But the biggest change Godsend makes is that it is diceless. It’s a striking approach, ala Dream Askew, and could be a model to change other Legacy settings. The book offers a broad range of playbooks, but your group’s reaction may rest on if they like diceless approaches. This is the supplement with the most changes from the base rules.

Primal Pathways: A “biopunk” setting of strange evolution. Has an interesting system of traits for focusing characters. You play deliberately inhuman but sentient creatures. Offers interesting tools which you could adapt across Legacy games. It’s well done, but may be a stretch for some groups.

Worldfall: A space colony setting not unlike Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. Has a tight set of seven playbooks each for Cabals (family) and characters. Rather than taking a broad or threat-based approach to colony stories, Worldfall focuses on the politics between factions. The end goal is to shape and control the colony’s philosophy and governance. Excellent and focused setting.

STAND ALONE GAMES
So far UFO Press has released four -ish stand-alone Legacy rpgs.
Rhapsody of Blood: One of the Worlds of Legacy, this can best be described as Castlevania the rpg. I mean that in all the best senses—atmosphere, the meta-story’s cyclical nature, a morphing castle. In RoB you play an Explorer from a Bloodline travelling into the depths of a nightmarish castle to battle an ancient evil. The journey may corrupt you, it may kill you, and it may end with betrayal. When the castle’s vanquished, Rhapsody of Blood rolls forward and you see how the next generation faces the legacy of their past.

RoB offers an amazing and tight distillation of the Legacy mechanics combined with a great system for exploration. It’s well worth picking up. The ever-amazing Maria Rivera has expanded Rhapsody of Blood with her Choir of Souls supplement, which adds seven new Explorer playbooks.

Voidheart Symphony: An in development but available stand-alone sequel to Rhapsody of Blood. If RoB is Castlevania, then VS is Persona, complete with Tarot archetypes and covenants. Here rather than generational play, your characters face a manifestation of the castle and then come back to the real world for days or weeks before the next conflict arises. It’s a dynamite game even at these early stages and a must have if you dig later Persona video games.

Free from the Yoke: This version of Legacy takes its inspiration from Slavic fantasy. In it you play Houses (aka families) who have thrown off the influence of the distant Empire. Now you have to figure out how to manage, negotiate, and move forward. FftY has a striking set up which balances an evocative setting with imaginative space for the players. Legacy veterans will recognize much of the basic system here.

But Free from the Yoke also offers several changes. Some are modest, like the new Pitched Battle House Move. But the biggest change comes in the form of the Arbiter. This is the person who led the Houses out from under the Empire’s thumb. Now all the Houses must serve and assist with the Arbiter’s ambitions and plans. Play is structured around Ages, the time in which the Houses work on and contribute to one of the Arbiter’s projects.

The GM manages the Arbiter and uses one of three playbooks to represent how they came to power, who serves them, their agenda, and what projects they favor. Ages are made up of Seasons, with a move to represent transitions between them. When a Season changes, each house must roll to see their place and influence within the Arbiter’s court. When the Houses complete the Arbiter’s project you resolve the larger Turning of Ages.

It’s a great game, showing how you can use Legacy to explore a more focused story with generational play. The addition of the Arbiter creates new play options for the GM.

Mysthea: Based on an Italian board game property, Mysthea had a successful Kickstarter campaign. The full version hasn’t been released yet, but you can check out the Quick Start available for free on DTRPG. Like other Legacy QS games, it has the basic rules, a scenario set up, and paired family/characters (for up to five players).
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In Mysthea you have a House (family) and a Hero (character). Play centers on the city of Montara which has recently been devastated. Players work to further their House’s agenda and gain influence and control within this city. The setup has question prompts tied directly into the pre-gens, a nice touch. Mysthea adds interesting new tech. Covenants are the bonds between Heroes. They power moves like Aid, Evoke a Covenant, Test a Covenant, Declare a Covenant. It adds a treaty-like options at the character level. The rules also have a flexible magic options to change a character’s scale.

House Actions work similarly to family actions from base Legacy. However rather than free-floating play, each House gets a set number of House Actions. Players decide the length of time between character play and that sets how many everyone gets. Most moves feel close to the original, nicely tweaked for the setting. There’s an additional Rituals move which lets your House spend resources to do big magic.
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The actual game will include more (seven Houses and eight Heroes). It will have Wonders which fit with the history, rules for longer time jumps, and more magic mechanics. In particularly I’m interested in the city creation mechanics promised in the final version. If you’re interested in fantasy and Legacy. I recommend checking out the Quick start.
 
OTHER PRODUCTS
UFO Press has also released an Art of Legacy book with illustrations as well as Sounds of the Wastelands, a collection of music.

SEEDING SCENARIOS 
Mutant: Year Zero has a ton of little tech that I love: community building mechanics, exploration flavor generators, rival/protect questions in character creation. In particular I like how it builds scenarios. Each session the GM generates a random event-- just before, at the start, or at the end of a session. The game wants the GM to approach these story starters with fresh eyes and not overplan. MYZ keeps these tight; based on the brief concept and questions GMs should be able to flesh out and improvise play. It helps that Free League sells a deck of MYZ cards which include these events. 

I want to take the same approach with my Alpha Centauri: Year Zero space colony hack. I haven't yet made these into cards (but I'm tempted to). Below you'll find 41 random events to kick off scenarios. Some take inspiration from MYZ events, while others come from SMAC and beyond. I hope these will be useful for others running sci-fi games. 

AC: YZ COLONY EVENTS
Roll d66 each session. The GM may choose to skip this if enough threats are already in play.
Most of these assume early days of the colony. If it has made significant advances along the tech tree, adjust accordingly. Events will often put pressure on colony systems; consider temporarily subtracting from development levels until the situation’s resolved.
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11 Faction vs Faction
The leadership of two factions come into conflict. Is it the highest leaders or just their seconds? Are these Admins or some other role? What are they fighting over? (Resources, Justice, Privileges, Personnel, Mission Agenda, Personal Grudges). What have they done so far? Who have they pulled in? How long before this conflict gets nastier? Roll +1d6 for each faction’s Strife Clock until resolved.
12 Internal Dissension
A member questions their faction’s leader. Do they want a voice or look to usurp power? Is the dissension expected or does it come from an unusual place? What do they want? (Resources, Justice, Privileges, Personnel, Faction Agenda, Personal Grudges). What have they done so far? Who have they pulled in? How long before this conflict gets nastier? Roll +1d6 for the faction’s Strife Clock until resolved.
12 Bizarre Weather
The colony’s shaken by a series of strange weather events: tornadoes, heat waves, lightning storms. Are these just natural phenomena of the planet? If so, then the challenge lies in understanding it and finding ways to protect the colony. On the other hand is it purposeful? If it’s a machine run amok or calculated attack perhaps the source can be found and dealt with.
13 Derelict Aquatic Station
Scouts report the tides have beached a large floating structure. The location lies several days beyond current explored boundaries. The vessel could be an extraction or purification ship. There’s a strong possibility of uncontaminated metals, intact systems, and perhaps even clues to what happened to the earlier colony ships. Do the factions organize groups or is the race to get there a free for all?
14 Wild Growth
Some form of flora or fauna surrounding the colony goes wild. It could be a fungal bloom, releasing choking spores. Or perhaps plants undergoing an explosive spread. If the outbreak’s based on wildlife, a species undergoes a rapid population increase either due to a birth cycle or migrations. Has something triggered this? If flora, what kinds of lifeforms does the growth draw?
15 Food Systems Polluted
The colony’s central food production systems break down. Mechanical systems finally give out or an infection strikes the protein vats. Who knows of this? How long do they keep it secret? The cost of rations rises as do factional tensions. The only hope is to go out across the planet to look for a solution (salvaged parts, local antidote, etc). Roll +1d6 for each faction’s Strife Clock until resolved.
16 Rogue Robot
Some kind of autonomous machine threatens the colony. Is it a group or a single large robot? Did it come from one of the previous colony ships? Is it something which self-assembled? Or is it an alien device? Does it attack colonists outside the walls, destroy infrastructure, or something more insidious?

by Jason Cordova

We are currently running an incursion-writing contest for the Trophy RPG. You may want to go check that out before you continue reading this. It can be found here. 

One of the ways we built-up The Gauntlet during the heyday of G+ was through the writing contests hosted by Discern Realities, our (soon-to-be-revived) Dungeon World podcast. Our attitude was “Anyone can do this, anyone can create awesome stuff for this game!” And people really loved it. Our contests were a fun, low-stakes way of getting folks involved in the act of creating TTRPG content, and they were truly the glue that held The Gauntlet together for a long time. The Gauntlet ethos has always been that no one is an island of creativity—that our best efforts in TTRPGs are community efforts. And we continued this idea of community creation through the Codex miscellany features, as well as the general Codex editorial preference for games and supplements by newer voices. ​

Here are some specific reasons I am excited about the Trophy contest. 

The core Trophy rules are currently free
When Jesse and I designed this contest, our number one concern was easy access to Trophy’s rules. We knew a lot of people would be learning about Trophy for the first time, and so we decided to make Codex - Dark 2, the issue of the Codex zine the game can be found in, completely free, despite the fact it is our bestselling issue on DriveThru. You can download that issue right here. 

The contest is highly accessible
The core Trophy rules contain all the guidelines you need to write an incursion, including a sample incursion so you can see how it all comes together. Further, because Trophy is so rules-light, you can begin writing almost immediately since you don’t have to spend time internalizing a complex system. 

All of this leads to a standout feature of this contest: accessibility. Anyone can write something for this contest and, so long as they follow the incursion-writing guidelines (which have been finely tuned to produce dependable outcomes when followed), they can feel reasonably confident they have produced something fun and playable. It’s an inviting process, and we’ve already heard stories of parents writing entries with their kids, and romantic partners writing an entry together. 

Outside-the-box incursions
Our officially published Trophy material is uniformly dark fantasy because we have a brand to develop, and we are certainly hoping to see plenty of dark fantasy contest entries. But there’s nothing in the guidelines that requires incursions to take place in a fantasy setting. I’m personally excited to see how people drift a lot of the assumptions about Trophy. I hope we see a wide variety of settings: Western, cyberpunk, historical, modern-day, you name it—I think Trophy can handle it. In some ways, this contest could be a bridge to whatever is next for Trophy as a system, and I find that very interesting. 

A fun, low-stakes way to celebrate creativity
Sure, there are a few cash prizes, but honestly, that’s only because we have some money to spend. Ultimately, Jesse and I are just hype to see what people come up with, and we’re excited to provide a space for people to be creative. This contest is a celebration of creativity, and to emphasize that, we’re giving folks custom dice and a “Play to Lose” magnet just for participating—kind of like party favors. 

Anyway, we hope folks will get as excited about the contest as we are. I’m including all the relevant links related to the contest right here: