Players: Kimi Hughes, Katie Potts, Kurt Potts, Sean Nittner
GM: Mike Ferdinando
System: Trophy Gold
Scenario: The Bruja, the Beast, and the Barrow by Ratking Productions
“The wizard’s mistake was trusting us to do the right thing.” – Neven, on being a desperate treasure hunter.
I had been itching to play Trophy Gold (and/or Trophy Dark) forever. Judd Karlman has talked about so many good games of it that I wanted to see it in action. And this was a hard choice because Gene Astadan pitched a game about sexy knights and elves from the Meg and Vincent Baker that of course I knew would be awesome, but Trophy was on my bucket list and now I’ve played it. TL:DR we had a blast, largely due to the evocative character creation, Mike’s GMing, and our table vibes, which were impeccable.
Wild Character Creation
Rolling in different degrees of randomness and picking from the table, we created these adorable monsters:
Kate played Mahera, the ostracized ex-councilor who dabbled a bit too much in the criminal arts for polite society. Her big goal was to get other to do the work for her. Middle management at it’s finest.
Kimi played Benah, a blacksmith who believed that if she could forge the perfect gift, she could get her husband back…from the dead. Thought we never made to to him, we had a spirit swapping plan for when we did. Next adventure!
Kurt played Minnesota Bones, a gravedigger with an odd array of fishing supplies and a healthy appetite for treasure hunting.
I played Neven a grounded sailor (he struck ground on the Isle of Cadaverous Moans) where he met Bones. They each found magical gauntlets; Nevens allowed him to swap bodies and he’s now in Bonses bodies, hence the shovel and ashes in his inventory. Sword bros!
The play is the thing
We traveled the Crystal Frontier Desert in search of plunder among the fallen sky tombs. On our way their we entered an unground cave, fought the automaton protectors, and defeated them via body swapping, but in doing so Neven contracted the fated Tomb Crystal Poisoning!
Curse and disease are endemic ailments of the adventuring life, and finding reliable treatment is never an easy task in the wastelands of the Crystal Frontier, but Marble Eye, the witch of Pickbone Mound is said to have the panacea for everything.
We found the wizard atop a mound and as payments for his service, we round up to feral hogs by feeding them truffles and luring them to the wizard. Neven had become quite attached to one of the hogs, an old sow that he named Bently for her bent tusk.
Marble Eye sacrificed one of the hogs and lowered Bently down into a pit. We were to escort her though a dungeon to tie her to a hitching post at the end…surely not to cause her any harm! (after being trampled by her, Neven had grown a real affecting for the massive pic).
Below we found amphora with wine that was preserved over the ages. Minnesota Bones drunk form it and had visions of fighting alongside a friend on the back of a chariot. When he returned to our world the spirit warrior was beside him. Hey, no steeling my sword buddy. Neven was distraught, not only could he no longer touch Bones (for fear of transmitting the Tomb Crystal Poisoning) but he had a new spirit buddy as well!
Deeper in the dungeon we found the blue skinned demon that Marble Eye had bound and negotiated to learn where the treasure was with the intent that we’d free the demon and kill Marble Eye instead. It seemed like a not-so-great plan, but Benah saved the day by casting a ritual to turn the demon to ash, his skull, the only thing left behind. We walked bout like kings laden with coin, a magic spear, and a golden ground….just enough to pay our rent (erm, burden). And we didn’t have to hurt Bently!
Thoughts on the game
We were in a pretty silly mood (Minnesota Bones. Sword Bros. Middle Management!) but this felt like a good game for that energy. Trophy did some neat things with the Hunt and Risk rolls (despite our interest in it, we never made it to combat) but I think the real magic was that random character generation and the proliferation of proper nouns (Council of Exarchs, Blossoming Sea, etc) that gave the game an “out of time and place” fantasy vibe like that of Fritz Lieber and Jack Vance.
We had a blast.
