itch.io

Yeah, same thing - probably a typo on my part not replacing one with the other.

Great questions! Thanks for asking, this is helpful for me to know what needs clarifying.

1. The intent is when you mark a Desperation or Wound that it's immediately added to that character's deck, and then the same Desperation or Wound stays with them until they unmark it / clear it. So if Barf has a his three calling cards and a wound in his deck, and then he marks a Desperation mid-duel, you immediately shuffle that Desperation (a random Diamond) into his deck, and it stays there even into the next scene if say his opponent runs away next round. But the value/rank of Desperation and Wounds comes up rarely enough that the exact card or value is relatively immaterial relative to just having the Diamond or Heart in the deck, so if Barf's deck gets disassembled between sessions or something, the important thing is that it comes back with the same calling cards and number of Diamonds/Desperation and Hearts/Wounds next time he's on screen.

2. A Heart always beats all other suits, and a Diamond always loses to all other suits.

3. The intent is indeed that other City players could grab the Bastard and send in goons, or even grab another character and enter the scene. Doing so might be socially impolite between players if other people aren't feeling it, and whoever's scene it is should really be the star of the show, but sometimes a great way to be the star is for the Bloodhound and her friend to be interrupted by goons and have to work together to defeat them (or whatever).

Happy to clarify further if you're curious about anything!

Hehe thank you! Very proud of the cover.

I'll probably include solo play suggestions in the final release of the game, but the short version is "keep the rules the same and do all the parts yourself!"

Thank you! If you do, let me know how it goes!

Oh that rules! Trophy feels like a great framework for a revenge game! Will keep an eye out for Revenant.

Let me know how it goes! Also if you want to playtest the new version of Trouble I ended up writing after the commentary came out, let me know!

I can't stop looking at the illustration of the fucko missing a glasses lens getting a gun an knife shoved in their face. The vibes of this game are immaculate.

Love this thing. Aaron King (the last commenter) ended up bringing it in for a "cool things we liked from 2023" podcast episode (the transcript at this link has our collective thoughts; just ctrl-f "undertree"; whoever's reading this doesn't have to listen to the whole show): https://diceexploder.substack.com/p/2023-year-end-bonanza

I also read The Left Hand of Darkness this year! I remember her going out of her way to be like "the Gethens definitely aren't male or female, but we only have gendered pronouns in English, sucks to suck," but maybe that was the introduction of the version I have, or maybe I'm misremembering. It is kind of wild that no one tried to make singular they more of a thing earlier.

Anyway, more power to the protagonist of Ancillary Justice coming from a society that uses she for everyone, walking into a bar where they still have two gendered pronouns, being like "god, it's so hard to remember which is which, and they get so pissy when you get it wrong," and then winning the bar fight that breaks out when she fucks it up.

In conclusion, this is my favorite joke I've written in years:

Me trying to come out as nonbinary: "I'm something of a Gethen myself"
My friends: "getting laid at most once a month?"

That's great feedback too - I hadn't thought about you getting in there as facilitator. The one time I played it I was Merv.

Thanks for all the reporting.

These are delightful! Every one of them is so good!

With this many people I probably would've given another person to PVD's side - HR, specifically, was always a role I was considering including but didn't have space for. I've been worried that PVD and Merv are over there getting bored, you know? They deserve some more trouble.

Truly though I love every one of these characters. They're better than a lot of mine. Great work.

OOoooo, yes please do! I'm out on the Hollywood picket lines a lot these days and have been thinking about ways to expand this out. Would love to see what you did. Glad it ran well!

Thank you for listening!

Thanks Rob!

Hey thanks for the praise!

If you're looking for a more fantasy and OSR-y take on this and have the $ to spend, you should also check out Trophy Hearthfire, either in the Codex - Hearthfire issue or the Hearthfire section of Trophy Gold (assuming you haven't already). Basically you a list of downtime actions in your fantasy town, and every time you take one of them, you answer another question from its list. So when you go Carousing the first time, you describe your favorite tavern in town. The second time, you describe your favorite meal there (and other people tell you why your choice is bad, actually). When you put money in your Hoard, you narrate flashbacks about what's motivating you to get money by adventuring. etc.

Though of course, whatever you're doing yourself is probably more interesting and exciting for your table. :)

These are such kind words, and I'm so glad you had a blast with it! Thanks for the session report!

That's great to hear, thanks for the kind words delotox. I intended for these vignettes to, among other things, act as kind of training wheels for anyone not used to framing scenes like this. Hopefully it won't be just you who's out there creating new vignettes, but your whole table who can start to build out scenes around their downtime actions! I'd love to hear how it goes for you!

Not sure what happened on my end, but I had the wrong file open, and there's nothing wrong with these downloads. Sorry for the mistake / to bother you!

Hey, you've got letter-formatted downloads, but portrait-formatted preview images. Do you have an .indd for the portrait version, too? If not, no worries!

Excellent. Thank you!

Hey! This game is so lovely, I'm really looking forward to playing it. I have a couple questions about how Festival Day works. First, how are challenges chosen / distributed to players? Second, how / when does the game end? I keep looking and haven't been able to find an answer in the text. Thank you for any help!