Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique a wide range of modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.

Victory’s Planet is a 100 or so page science fiction hexcrawl for Troika! by Evey Lockhart, the author of Wet Grandpa. I’m always on the look out for interesting stuff written for Troika!, a system I think is interesting and compelling but poorly supported given its popularity.

Straight off the bat, Lockheart hits it out of the park with the writing. The introduction in particular, is seedy, foreboding, and cinematic, although you may choose not to present it to the players (I would). The help wanted ad and bumbled slide deck portrays the incompetence of the corporation at play, elegantly: The only way it could’ve been better was to actually give us the incompetent slides, as now I want to send the players one of those pdf print outs of the slide deck with the notes at the bottom? That’d be a cool handout. The only issue is that you players end up with more information front-loaded here than I’d usually prefer — 14 points and a page of FAQs. Once again, I think this kind of gives the vibe we want from this scene — I expect the player characters to be exasperated with their bosses here, but doing it for the money — but I feel like there might be a way to communicate that without lingering on this scene so much, and expecting the players to take so many notes.

I think that part of reducing this might be to simply expect Baron Erossos, who accompanies the players on their mission, to dole out more information as the mission continues. His character description is exquisite, he has a clear agenda, the player characters have to treat him well to get paid, and so I think a 3-point slide deck accompanied with scenes of slogging through the wilderness of Victory’s Planet and talking about what’s happened, and would be the way I’d actually disseminate the information.

Coming back to Lockhart’s writing, as with her previous work, it’s just dripping with personality and passion incredibly evocative. The planet is described as “it feels like hatred was somehow baked into the fucking stones”. In some places “tilted bundles of basalt spikes impale encrusted sandstone valleys”. The Baron “He could have been almost anything, but mostly he’s sad, uncertain, and nervous.” It’s all just this good. A lot of the less quote-worthy text is still good: It feels like a debrief by a colonial marine from the film Aliens.

In terms of the key, I was initially confused simply because it seemed like some of the spaces would have two separate encounter tables. This isn’t the case; I misread the map. Exploration here is driven by randomness, though, which I’m not sure I love — given it revolves around finding the 5 hidden silos, and more so finding just 1 of them in truth. That said, I think it’s implied that once you reach the hex, the silo in it is usually easy to find.

One thing I bounce off in the text is the foreshadowing of the psychic at the beginning. You don’t land at its source until a significant way through, and it’s detailed in full in an appendix, but it should impact the Baron’s actions, so I feel like an earlier explanation would be better. In modules like this, even though it’s on the shorter side, I — and I imagine most people — have trouble getting through all the location descriptions, and so might not make it to the appendix.

Sadly, the unclear, creepy-as-hell cause for all of this stated in the appendix has no way of becoming known to the players that I can see. This information could be given in monologue by Victory when they finally find her, but there’s an urgency to that scene (or series of scenes) that makes it difficult to see there being time to talk about the cosmic horror of “They broke her and stapled her together again with psychic barbs. In their image, the Stars remade her skin.”, and I want to talk about it. I recognise that this story isn’t entirely true (or perhaps it is — it’s unclear) but it’s still so powerful and creepy and mythic that I want it to feature more than it does.

Despite being presented as a hexcrawl, Victory’s Planet feels very Troika! in that its’ heart lies in a series of interactions within it that bring a lot of joy and pleasure, rather than in the act of exploration. The point of the exploration is that it leads to Jan and Jiffybot and Inheaha’s star-carved tomb, and the revelation of the Baron’s compulsion. The exploration is a vector for these excellent scenes — and unlike most Troika! modules it gives you an excellent reason to interact beyond “oh ho! what comes next?” — I’m not convinced that the hex-crawl is a compelling vector for this, though, or that it adds anything — perhaps a point crawl would be easier? However, what the hex map does provide is an interesting veneer. This is a science fiction Troika! that feels as if it were meant to be played in a Mothership-esque hack of Troika! I recall one being shared at one stage, which was pretty exceptional. The hex map feels more science-fictional, in the same way that the circuit-board maps of Gradient Descent feel science fictional. Would this play better as a point crawl? Yeah, probably. Would it feel better? Probably not. The sense of semi-realism behooves the module. Would this be better in Mothership than Troika!? I think it would, possibly. At the very least, I’d be borrowing a sci-fi hack or writing up sci-fi backgrounds for it. This world wants psychic rather than magic powers. But it isn’t bad in Troika — I just wish that there were sci fi Troika! hacks that had been released.

I’m reviewing the digital edition here, and it is split across multiple booklets, with transcriptions of the map descriptions accompanying the silo maps in one of the booklets, and a lot of the player facing information in another — like those 14 points of background information. This made it difficult to wrap my head around it terms of reading it on my phone in the bath — lots of flipping between documents — but playing at the table it’s all pretty convenient. I do feel like the map document and main document could be effectively combined though, and I wouldn’t have to look at the main document at all. Given the information communication issue, I think the players booklet is great.

Overall, I really like Victory’s Planet, although I have some quibbles with its choices and would make some changes to how information is communicated to the players. The guts of the module, although spread out over a lot of space ludogeographically, isn’t actually spread out too much in terms of gameplay, and the writing is compelling enough that I want to read it aloud. The major flaw here is that the most chilling, cosmic horror aspects aren’t fully (or to be honest even partially) explored, and I’d want to find a way to communicate that horror that drives the story to the players.

If you’re looking for a Troika! module that strays from the typical model, your table enjoys cosmic and sci-fi horror, or you’re just looking for a hex-crawl with beautiful descriptions, Victory’s Planet is a good choice for you. It’s good enough that I feel compelled to create content to fill the gaps left, but I do wish those gaps were already filled, so if you’re anything like me, I’d anticipate spending some time making hand-outs, writing additional encounters, and presenting a slide deck to your players in some kind of comedy of errors. If you’re willing to put that kind of effort in, Victory’s Planet is for you.

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