​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. 

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/.

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: