Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game vs Troika!
Compare Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game and Troika! side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game | Troika! | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Scifi | Fantasy, Scifi |
| Play Style | Space Opera, Licensed IP, Ship-Based, Sandbox, Skill-Based, Classless, Tactical, Cinematic, Random Tables, GM-Friendly, Exploration | Rules-Light, Weird, Random Character Creation, Low-Prep, Improvisation, Deadly, Random Tables |
| Core Mechanic | Roll a d10 and add your Skill bonus (one-tenth of your skill score, rounded down) — equal or exceed the GM's difficulty number to succeed. A natural 1 always fails and a natural 10 always succeeds, within reason. The same roll plus a weapon's Accuracy bonus drives combat at all three scales (personal, vehicle, and spaceship) against a target's Defence score. | Three stats: Skill, Stamina, Luck. Roll 2d6 under Skill + Advanced Skill to succeed. Initiative uses a random token-draw stack — unpredictable turn order. Luck is a consumable resource that depletes with each test. |
| Dice | d10 | 2d6 |
| Complexity | Medium | Very Low |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Runnability | Low | Medium |
| License | Proprietary (Frontier Developments licensed IP) | Open (Troika! SRD) |
| Cost | $$ | $ |
| Publisher | Spidermind Games / Modiphius Entertainment | Melsonian Arts Council |
| Year | 2017 | 2019 |
| Best For | Groups who want to play freelance starship commanders trading, exploring, and dogfighting their way across the 34th-century Milky Way. Particularly suited to fans of the Elite: Dangerous video game who want to expand the experience with crewed ground missions and off-ship intrigue. | Fast, surreal science-fantasy adventures with minimal rules, random character generation, and a vibrant third-party ecosystem. Ideal for one-shots and improvisational play. |
| Highlights | Three integrated combat scales (personal, vehicle, and spaceship) share the same d10 resolution but each has scale-specific actions and damage rules. Spaceship combat uses a two-zone abstract flight system with zone-restricted actions — joust, dogfight, broadsides, ram, and others — so manoeuvre matters without a grid. Sixteen ships from the video game (Sidewinder through Anaconda) are statted with full component, weapon mount, and modification rules. The Random Generation System provides d10 tables for generating star systems, missions, encounters, and military objectives between or during sessions. | Simple rules, creative backgrounds double as setting material, large third-party ecosystem (700+ titles), chaotic initiative creates unpredictable combat, affordable |
| Considerations | Spaceship combat has more moving parts than personal-scale checks: shield recharge, equipment actions, floating bonuses, component criticals, and ammo all need tracking each round. The conversational prose style is approachable to read but slow to navigate when looking up a specific rule mid-session. Single-pilot ships are the default; running larger crewed vessels with multiple PCs at the same console takes GM adjustment. The setting is locked to the video game's 34th-century three-superpower politics, which constrains departures from established lore. | Initiative stack can leave players unable to act for long stretches, mixed roll-under/roll-over mechanics confuse new players, setting is implied rather than described, minimal tactical depth |