Old Men Running The World

Category: review

  • Trophy Gold: A Review

    Let Me Take You To One Side And Bend Your Ear About The Fine Role-playing Game Called Trophy Gold.

    A version of this article was originally published on the TEETH RPG newsletter.

    Trophy Gold, by Jesse Ross, is the game that I am most regularly recommending TTRPG people read and play. It’s not what I thought it would be, while also somehow being exactly what I wanted. A complicated feeling! But it scratches quite a profound itch. 

    In the space of the following sentences, I shall try to explain.

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  • Trophy Gold: Another Review

    This review was originally posted to Kieron’s newsletter . It’s been edited slightly, as there was a whole section about how folks often unsubscribe to the newsletter when I wrote at length about RPGs, which clearly isn’t needed here. A note on content too – I don’t trace the genealogy of mechanics at all. This was written as an entryist review to speak to a curious audience mostly unaware of the indie rpg scene of the last decade and change.

    I’ve been searching for treasure for a long time. I have my freeform player-narrative games. I have my doomed horror games. I have my classical adventure games, in various traditions. I have a whole bunch of games that do great things which are entirely separate from all the things that D&D did and does. But I didn’t have a game which found a precise spot I craved satisfied two core things at once.

    In short, I had an itch. Trophy Gold scratches the itch. It scratches the itch firing a crossbow bolt through it. It is intensely co-operative. It is intensely merciless. It was exactly what I needed.

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