A one-shot/short campaign game Rooted in Trophy.
Play out short but intense stories of character development in a wild intergalactic world of your making! Features world building in the style of Trophy’s already extremely collaborative gameplay!
The pdf can be found here:
EPISODE V
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BabXYc78jmGqBddY8jgGz52rJCxb2hUj/view?usp=drivesdk
Any feedback, but actually trying the darn thing, would be greatly appreciated!
EDIT: added EPISODE VIII v1.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KfKSTm8E5H6T4UHNyyAeoKAe8Ft_e_tQ/view?usp=drivesdk
Faster. More intense. Much more collaborative
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That’s good timing as I am just looking into Trophy. This has a lot I like. The Idea of creating the crawl together and using it as a scene framing tool is quiet excellent! Though some I am unsure of. The Reckless roll seems like needlessly intrusive towards the players agency, and I am personally not a fan of that. But different playstyles and all that.
Rolling only when something is related to the drive is interesting. However the Drives themselves are so short term and almost arbitrary I fear the game would devolve quickly into everyone trying to achieve their sometimes opposed thing or nasty thing. I feel the drives in Trophy work so well because they are long/medium term and contain a lot of world building as well. Though I am just familiar with Trophy Gold. Overall I think it feels very adversarial between GM and Players but also between Players (especially with certain drives like Destroy your Friends Life.), and that may colour my perception of it. I felt very uncomfortable reading it and I could not see myself playing it. However the way you resolve drives with Vindication and Betrayal and that the drives are met per scene and not per game probably makes for a fast and furious game which I like. Kind of reminds me of Fiasko.
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Thanks for the feedback!
SPACE OPERA is actually extremely team-based and collaborative; if you help someone your Vindication goes up… And so people do everything they can to make sure they can get all get a good ending in the fiction. It’s a really small but important rule. At least that’s what I’ve found at my table, but then again I’m a rather jovially adversarial GM. So there is that.
Also: don’t underestimate how goofy people get when you give them permission to just rattle random shit off the top of their heads. Last session we all busted out laughing because we decided that the volcanic planet Filts was navigated with special stilts… Filts on stilts. Yup.
The Reckless roll is definitely a preferential thing and I respect that. I’ve found that people need some form of permission to act out. Maybe that’s just my table, but the types of decisions needed to make the story go at the clip I envision would be pretty stressful to have to think up. So the Reckless roll is there for you to relax into it. Well, that’s the intent at least.
It sounds like I need to clarify that “friend” or “boss” should NEVER apply to another PC. Ever. I hope that clears that up and I’d never want a table to do that.
I appreciate the kind words and constructive criticism. This will be the first game I release (aiming for ZineQuest in August), so the game’s still got a few revisions to go!
Hopefully I cleared some things up. Regardless, thank you.
EDIT: what about for Reckless leaving it as an option, and if you decide to up your action into something reckless it automatically increases your Vindication?
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That makes it much clearer, thank you! Missed the helping part. In our group I have players that outright refuse to play anything that could be considered evil. Just to clarify my perspective. Its sometimes hard to step back and evaluate neutrally.
I do like the idea of incentivising acting reckless instead of forcing it. For my group that wouldn’t be needed as “most outrageous and reckless action” is their usual MO. So as usual YMMV. But anything that encourages behaviour instead of forces it is good. 
Good luck with the Zine.
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Dude that’s a really good point too! I don’t intend this to be a PVP game for the most part. Not enough time for that.
You’ve been very helpful, thank you so much!
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So SPACE OPERA EPISODE VIII v1 is now up! Having listened to feedback on here, I’ve attempted to clarify the text and overhauled Reckless actions. The game is a hell of a lot more collaborative… faster… and intense.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KfKSTm8E5H6T4UHNyyAeoKAe8Ft_e_tQ/view?usp=drivesdk
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A blog post I wrote today, trying to process this game.
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