Trophy Dark: Treasure, Glory, and Betrayal.

Winner of the 2023 Silver ENNIE award for best game, Trophy Dark is a tragic fantasy storytelling game where treasure-hunters enter a haunted forest that doesn’t want them there. It is not a story of heroes, but rather, of flawed and desperate characters seeking hidden riches in order to reclaim that which they have already lost. While many fantasy role-playing games focus on the hero’s triumph, Trophy Dark has its eyes squarely on the fool’s demise.

This idea allows the players to create a different kind of story. Not a D&D story, where heros find the path to power and glory laid at their feet, or where the evils of the world can be vanquished by a ragtag group of rascals. We’re talking about stories like The Statement of Randolph Carter (Lovecraft), Klara and the Sun (Ishiguro), The Duchess of Malfi (Webster), King Lear (Shakespeare), and Disgrace (J.M Coetzee). Stories that are profound, but which hurt. Stories that make you wonder why and set your head spinning. Stories that make you think. Stories that stay with you long after the book has been read.

To this end, the ruleset (adapted from Cthulhu Dark) is simple, elegant, and brutal. There is only one statistic, Ruin, which tracks the character’s path to oblivion. Rolls to accomplish anything are inherently risky, and attempting to fight the monsters in the forest results in instantaneous death. Character creation is quick and simple, with players rolling for or choosing names, backgrounds (including skills), motivations (called Drives), and rituals; dangerous spells that enable characters to achieve miraculous results.

The world in which the game is played is described in broad terms, enabling the players to define a great deal of it themselves. The Forest is a generic term to describe a cursed or blighted area abandoned by humanity, but which hides objects of great value. It could be a marsh, an abandoned city, or even the sea. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that humans have plundered it’s resources and stolen its secrets, and it wants them gone.

Gameplay is highly collaborative, with players describing just as much of the world and the events in it as the GM. To that end the companion book, Trophy Loom, provides endless tables with details and story threads for the GM and players to improvise on in the game. The idea is that the setting is organic, flexible, and different for every group. But one thing is constant: there is a forest called the Kaldur, and it wants to kill you. There are no heroes seeking glory, just Treasure Hunters desperate for coin: poor folk, fallen aristocracy, outsiders, the lost.

This is not a game of victory and triumph, but one of desperation and loss. But it is the players who describe their decline, the terms on which they bow out and the meaning (if any) of their demise. What results is are stories that are dark, compelling, and often bittersweet.

Get it here: https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/402818/trophy-dark

Check out the Lovecraftian game that inspired Trophy Dark: Cthulhu Dark

If you’re into weird horror fantasy roleplaying, check out Lamentations of the Flame Princess