We played a single session of Trophy Gold to get a feel for the game. I was curious to see if it could serve a similar purpose to The Mountain Witch – a game to get to know new players, and practice co-creation, having a satisfying arc in a single session.
I need to preface all this with an acknowledgement: the incursions are not meant to be played in a single session, so it’s not a surprise I felt rushed and constrained. To me this is a design miss, but then Trophy Gold is the campaign variant of Trophy Dark, the original game. I should’ve respected what it says on the cover!
The game does a wonderful job of setting the scene inside character creation without a single sentence of lore dropping. Just masterclass worldbuilding as you go, and completely random character creation with tables this good is just fun! You don’t know what you’ll get, but it’s guaranteed to be a fun combination.
We struggled a bit with the rituals. I would’ve preferred them to be completely freeform, whereas now they come with a bit of handholding, reining you in. Players enjoyed improvising the spells, and it would’ve been nice to let them run (more) free with them; the mechanical cost for the characters is already high.
We played The Smoldering Moor incursion from the book. The just dying down wildfire makes for a memorable high fantasy backdrop. It worked pretty well, if you discount the rushing I had to apply to get through everything in one evening. I liked that the players had to think about how they feel about the characters they meet, as it’s not at all immediately clear who you should side with, if anyone.
I was surprised by how much mechanics there actually are. They felt like getting in the way in a single session game. I can see how they could power things in a longer campaign, but here it felt we were too constrained for time. I stress that I’m used to running one shots and generally don’t struggle with pacing this much. Trophy reads like a lighter proposition than it actually was for us.
As a detail, coming up with Devil’s Bargains, ways for a player to get more dice on specific rolls, was challenging at times. Again, a more relaxed pacing probably would’ve helped, just allowing more room to breathe, but it’s not like we were rolling all the time, either. Both myself and the players struggled here.
I like the dark fantasy feel of the game, but this amount of mechanics – five different rolls, and resources and mechanics that just won’t come into play in a single session – is just too much for a one shot, and they got in the way of roleplaying at the table.
I am intrigued by playing Trophy Gold in a slightly longer format to allow it to breathe, but this one shot flavor left me disappointed. I can get a similar amount of content with more emotional weight to the table with The Mountain Witch. I’m going to try the original flavor, Trophy Dark, next, to see how that would work in comparison.
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