While the rest of the TTRPG world debates side versus individual initiative, Troika’s system revels in a more unpredictable chaos. But as great as the system is, it occasionally turns up a dud result; the round starts, and the first token drawn is the Round End token.
Weird, right?
In the game’s fiction, going a Round without drawing an initiative token indicates that, for that minute of combat, your character was simply too dazed, bewildered, or counteracted to be effective in combat. When this happens to everyone, it feels a little anticlimactic.
And thus we come to the Farce.
The Farce
During some of our recent Troika games, Gabriel suggested that these empty rounds deserved a little narrative zhuzh. So we started explaining what our characters had been up to while they failed to do anything combat-relevant. These non-critical fumblings became a fun opportunity to joke around. Action-free rounds started feeling more fun, with the gaps between dice rolling helping keep combats feeling fresh. Low Stamina characters sometimes caught temporary reprieves during Farces, giving players a good chance to mix comedy and tension.
Farces also provided good narrative prompting for me as a GM. While the players joked around, I found reasons for monsters to switch up targets and tactics, new elements of the scene to riff off of, and opportunities to show the character of enemy characters. It keeps a pathetic tone that pairs well with Troika’s tendency to have combats decided by big hits.
Joking around is one of TTRPG’s great pleasures. The other is levelling up! Incentivize good storytelling during a Farce by handing out a Tick in a relevant Advanced Skill (preferably a new one) to the craziest failure to fight. Giving a mechanical inducement without affecting the current combat keeps more game-oriented players engaged in the storytelling and horseplay.
And that’s the Farce!
Eager to experience the chaos of the farce, but you don’t have a Troika game right now? Pick up Drawn from the Margins, explore Chapultepec, or solve the Murder at the Motel Zotel! We’ve also got a great random table for those adventures that pull your players across the humpback sky: what’s been happening in Troika since you’ve been gone?