Also: I made this video available because it’s an excellent example of Trophy play. Definitely worth a watch for people who want to grok the game. It uses The Flocculent Cathedral in case you want to follow along with the incursion text.
Trophy Discussion Thread
6 Likes
As for the 5th ring, in my experience, it’s rarely going to play out as written because, by that time, the group has shaped the story a certain way via failed roll negotiations and Devil’s Bargains. I mostly use the 5th ring text as inspiration for the basic flavor and trappings of the conclusion but otherwise finish in a way that makes sense for the story up to that point.
4 Likes
It makes total sense! I confess I felt that the whole “the ring 1 terrors should be easy to overcome” didn’t make a lot of sense to me in the context of the rules. If it had said “basically don’t use risk rolls in ring 1”, that would seem more logical.
“Ruin rolls happen quite a bit” fits with my guesswork about how the game is meant to flow (the whole premise being that you’re doomed, Ruin seems like the mechanic intended to deliver on that). But my observation is that in the Codex Dark 2 rules (which I’m sensing may not be the full picture regards Trophy), only Rings 4 and 5 seem to have really disturbing material in them. Are you meant to ad lib additional, more disturbing, material?
I definitely felt like I should have been doing more Ruin rolls in Ring 4 than I actually did; in retrospect I’d settled into a rhythm of more-or-less ignoring the Ruin system outside of risk checks. But essentially I felt like in the earlier rings I was mostly following the rules and guidance presented - with one exception where a character got themselves locked into a mausoleum with a bunch of corpses, which should probably have triggered a Ruin roll.
It’s entirely possible some of these questions are answered by all the resources linked above, I haven’t had time to go through them yet.
1 Like
I had quite a few Ruin rolls triggered by the Conditions, actually. Because they can be pretty creepy.
2 Likes
Ruin rolls really should be happening anytime the characters experience anything weird or disturbing or traumatic. Voices from home heard in the forest? Ruin roll. The statue that was 50 yards behind is now 50 feet behind? Ruin roll. The smell of burning flesh? Ruin roll. A corpse with its heart cut out? Ruin roll. A chorus of wolves unseen howling from all sides? Ruin roll. If it would scare or unnerve you it’s a Ruin roll.
4 Likes
Yeah, that’s about right. It can be contextual, too. A former soldier might not be as bothered by the sight of a gruesome corpse, for example.
2 Likes
This would make a great T-Shirt. Ruin Roll.
4 Likes
Any tips for pvp? We had one person playing asssassin and got ruined 3rd ring. She was trying to use reduction roll to outright kill other characters. Fiction backing up that her character was good at it. I always put up a risk first and set it as less lethal.
Example: At one point someone used a ritual to shift their spirit to possess the assassins body. Assassin trapped in other characters body tracked them down and wanted to use Hollow to get them out and herself back in. But first she decided to slit the person she currently inhabited’s wrists. She rolled a 5.
Honestly this was a fantastic turn of events but the other character had only 2 ruin.
I felt weird letting this outright kill the character so we decided she slit the character’s wrists, got back into her own body but the bleeding was able to be stopped quick enough to save from imminent death as a complication.
Again, I love some of the scenarios that come from this game. Mechanically struggling when players are trying to not so subtly kill other characters. If this player had gotten an outright 6 on the roll I’m not sure how I would have handled it.
Another situation. Character skilled in stealth pretended to sleep on other characters watch. Wanted to use reduction roll to stealth kill character who was supposed to be keeping watch. I forced risk roll to sneak up. They rolled 6. Had them make reduction roll to shank player. Rolled 1.
Other player was good sport about it and died fantastically. I gave her another role in story soon after, but I felt a little mechanically lost when it came to reduction roll. Any tips?
Additional tip that we came up with tonight:
Let the players collectively narrate a “post credits scene”. All the characters are dead or wish they were, they’ve probably at least encountered the terrible thing in Ring 5, and there’s nothing left for the GM to tell. So just straight up tell them “and with that, we get the end title. The End. Thanks for playing, Chase and Jessie and Ran, this was a lot of fun and I liked McGhee, Nima, and Orlen. But… what happens after the credits? What does the audience see that blows their mind?”
Much like asking them “what could go wrong” in the Risk Roll, this leads to way creepier and far-out stuff than I’d ever give them.
2 Likes
Yes! Absolutely have a post-credit scene, or an epilogue. Trophy is an intense game, and after playing a good game, I need a sense of closure, something to step away from the intense narration of Ring 5 and disengage slowly with the fiction.
2 Likes
Ran my first incursion, The Tomb of 10,000 Dreams tonight. It’s great to see the story take on a life of its own once the players start adding their own wrinkles to it.
Around ring 2/3 I had them in a boat going through a cave that was so cramped they had to lay down, and as the light from their lantern played on the stone passing overhead I asked them what faces they saw in it. I had a hard time creating tension until this point but I’m really happy with how it played out and began the division between the characters. Shortly after, when failing a couple attempts at fishing for food, one of them was convinced she had been defiling the forest and that she needed to act out in its interest to redeem herself. The other realized the power in the eternal living stone statues that tormented them and he decided to seek this power. Needless to say it ended badly for both of them.
I’m really excited for the full book, and to keep running incursions to see how they mutate with different groups of players.
4 Likes
Also - does anyone have any soundtrack recommendations for Trophy? I was thinking Chelsea Wolfe’s more mellow stuff (like Spinning Centers and Appalachia off of Unknown Rooms) would be good starting out, along with Ben Frost’s soundtrack from Dark for when things get weird.
I use a lot of Brandon Fletcher, Nox Arcana, Midnight Syndicate, and Peter Gundry for dark ambient
1 Like
Hi guys. I’ve made a black and white printer-friendly version of the Trophy Dark and Trophy Gold pdfs. I tried to do it without ruining the esthetics but at the same time limiting the printed areas. The only color page left is the Gold cover.
Given the authorization I’ll be happy to share them through my G Drive, or pass them via email or whatever.
Please let me know if I can share or if you want to review the documents by email. They’re pretty light files (4-5 MB).
2 Likes
I just want to say that I’m kind of backward engineering Trophy back to Cthulhu Dark and running both Delta Green and Trail of Cthulhu adventures with it. It works so well. The ring structure and the conditions is just gold for Cthulhu adventures.
I also want to thank @jasoncordova for his and his friends great work with the trophy podcast. Jason, you are very talented and you are doing a superb job introducing new players to the scene and making things understandable.
3 Likes
Thanks for the kind words! There is much more to come!
2 Likes
I’m running Trophy Gold online for the first time next week. I’ve just realised there might be an issue with light and dark dice. How do people manage them with online dice rollers?
I normally use Discord and Sidekick for rolls, along with a Google Sheet for characters.
This Discord bot has a Trophy dice roller built into it: https://discordapp.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=689734676193083395&permissions=116736&scope=bot
If you do %trophy 2 1 it’ll give you the results for 2 light dice and 1 dark die, for example.
1 Like