Recently I ran a session of the tabletop RPG Trophy Gold for my gaming group, and because one of us had already read all the introductory adventures, I decided to make my own one, called The Everbarrow. And since it seemed to go pretty OK, I thought I’d make it public here.

Grab The Everbarrow, an adventure for Trophy Gold set in an eerie burial chamber.

Trophy Gold and its precursor, Trophy Dark, are interesting RPGs. They’re very simple, with no stats to check against, and about communal storytelling that’s as much led by the players as the GM. They’re very different to modern D&D, though they actually evoke early D&D’s focus on rolling dice to generate dungeons and collecting treasure.

Adventures are written as a series of interconnected “sets”, which are scenes or locations that have a single predetermined goal, like “Dock the ship” or “Acquire the egg”. The players roll dice to examine each set; a failure means learning more but danger from monsters and traps looms. Success earns tokens that the players can either spend to find treasure or, if they’ve collected enough, to succeed at the set’s goal. And the ultimate aim in Trophy Gold is for the players to collect enough treasure to pay their dues before their “ruin” runs out.

The result is a slightly weird but absorbing mix of freeform expression and abstracted push-your-luck game design, and it can come together into a rich play experience if you buy into it.

Is The Everbarrow any good? I don’t know! I enjoyed writing and GMing it? If you play, let me know.