a Troika! hack, why my campain flopped, how I am trying to fix the next one

    If you just want to see the Troika! hack go here

I recently started a new campaign with some friends. Earlier this year I ran a Mausritter campaign for them, but that fell apart because it didn't match their expectations of play.

The core points of contention at the time were:

1. They experienced a lack of motivation for their characters to adventure. Part of this is a lack of external motivation. I initially told them to make characters that want to go on adventure because we'll play an adventure game and left it at that. Another reason for feeling this way was what they described as a lack of character based motivation. This is because the characters of Mausritter are fairly simple and don't differ as much from each other as 5e, which they are mostly familiar with. Add to that the fact that progression in Mausritter is very light compared to 5e and high lethality, both of which made it harder for them to invest in the desires of their characters.  
   
2. They felt overwhelmed by tactical infinity. Being able to do anything meant they didn't know what they could do. Mausritter has no skill system and outside of magic tablets almost no fantastical abilities accessible to players without adventuring for them. They expressed that they missed the more clearly defined abilities and skills from 5e, buttons they knew they could press to get a reliable result. The fact that the Estate, which is the adventure site I ran for them, has lot of OSR problems (i.e. problems without one clear sollution and many possible sollutions) and a lot of 'unbalanced' encounters increased this feeling for the players.
   
3. Some players expressed the desire to be able to take risks without being almost guaranteed to fail. OSR type games often assume planing compensates for the need to roll, having rolls primarily as a back up for when plans fail. But the impulsive nature of some of the players as well as the context in which we play (usually in the evening on a workday) doesn't match that playstyle very well. Mausritter's chance of succes for saves is low, even when compared with other Into the Odd based games, so rash decisions felt especially punishing. 

These are valid points, some of which we could have accounted for with a better session 0, but some of which they just had to experience to form an opinion on. 

Given the above I want to make sure this game takes these preferences more into account, while also still remaining a game I would be excited to run (because I am not writing a linear story for players to follow, I just don't find that enjoyable). 

So the criteria are:

• Strong character motivations and relations to one another baked into the concept of the game.
• Possible to run as a situation rather than a string of scenes.
• A clear goal with more dilemma like choices to narrow down the tactical infinity.
• A rule set that is more forgiving and more strongly suggests the kinds of actions your character can take.
  

This is what I ended up with:

Setting

PCs are from a small town, relatively close to major city which controls the straight between the Green and Grey seas (think Istanbul).

A long, semi-continuous conflict to control the city has displaced many and let loose many brigand companies on the surrounding lands (think 100 year war between France and England).

Local animistic traditions still exist, but are being actively pushed out as a more organized religion is expanding into the area. Both believe things like forest spiris to exist and that these can be dangerous, but the former tries to appeace them while the latter considers them evil demons that need to be conquered. 

The campaign would start off with undead attacking the PCs' home town, after which they will want to figure out what is causing this and how to stop it. 

System

I initially worked on making a Troika! hack, with 20 custom backgrounds and some rule changes to make all rolls roll-over (link to google doc TL;DR: skill rolls are beat or equal a 9 on a 2d6 only adding advanced skill, luck rolls are beat or equal a 13 adding luck which starts at 8 and reduce luck by one; also taking the modifiers out of damage rolls because I find them counter intuitive, and instead decrease or increase die size). 

I'd run it FKR, maybe even black box so the players would't have to concern themselves too much with the rules. Just know how to roll Luck, how to roll Skill and how to roll Damage and we would be good to go.

In my mind Troika! Also nicely fits my prefered complexity, while still giving players some direction on what they can do through the various advanced skills. And the backgrounds would allow me to tell my players about the world and the tone I like in an easy way.

Anyway, non of that mattered because we ended up using 5e. This is completely my own fault. I could feel that at least one player had made the assumption that it would be 5e, because they asked if they should make characters in advance which is hard to do without a specific rule set. Feeling the urge to please, I gave them the option of either something new or modified 5e. They chose modifed 5e. So again, it is completely my fault as I gave them the choice assuming their assumption.

The silver lining is that I basically have permission to only use 5e stuff I like and change eveything else (I already moved to simultaneous initiative mostly to streamline the action economy). And I guess I now get to find different folks to try that Troika! hack with and run the campaign set up again. So maybe more gaming without too much extra prep?

Also, if anyone is interested, here's a link to the playreport.

I don't have a statblock for the burnbies referenced, but used the 5e zombie without HP, damage instead goes straight to CON and roll under CON to see if the burnbie died (this replaces the IMO aweful con save mechanic 5e uses). They do 1 damage to anyone standing directly next to them at the end of the turn, and 1 damage to anyone dealing melee damage to them without a reach weapon.